Choyera’s words resurrect whispers of my cherished ideals as I take slow steps toward my destiny. I never wanted to be a warrior, but that’s what the world appears to need and what I was fooled into being trained for. So many assured me that a healer or protector was what was needed, but I don’t have time to figure out how that cherished fallacy would help in thwarting a goddess who will birth the demigods of ruin that will nurture the gardens of this world with the blood of the unworthy. I hate that the supposedly godly blood given to me by my ancestors elects me for this purpose and enslaves me to correct the sins of my family. The sins of the fathers do pass onto their sons and daughters, that is a horrible truth that many deny but are forced to reconcile within the depths of their minds.
I know that I will kill innocents as well as the damned. I know that! But I no longer have the time to formulate pig headed schemes that are doomed to sanguine failure. In the end, if I can choose who is going to die, I’d rather have that choice than have it forced upon me like I’ve had to suffer time and time again. It’s the slaves or the slavers, and one has chosen their condemnation.
The chains I use to bind the heart of a pacifistic boy tighten and my hands shake as I stand at the mouth of the cave ready to step onto the wooden balcony to start my slaughter. My heart and mind are weak, and so I dip into a demon’s strength. The lettered scars that create the sentences that form the lines of a scarified boar upon my shoulder open and release me from the chains of my morality. My heart races, my mind quickens and numbs, my muscles become unburdened by physical limitations. Dargot’s fury lives on in me, the demon’s killer.
I let out a bestial roar passed down from my father to his son. Scars on my arms open and sanguine spears crystallize and shoot outward into the air. Screams erupt in a cacophony that are quickly consumed in the void of Shoron Gaol. Heads and their severed partners that carry flaming arrows fall into the pit, occasionally crashing into wooden balconies as these newly made corpses are swallowed in the darkness below. Seeing my prey be consumed by a maw that isn’t my own causes the spell upon my shoulder to burn even more ferociously and my vision clouds with bloodlust. The smallest part of my mind fears how powerful my nightmares have augmented this spell since its first use, but a hunger swallows the fear as another roar escapes my lips.
I jump from balcony to balcony in the pit of Shoron Gaol with such speed that the arrows being fired at me from new forces of slaver pit guards appear to be moving like rocks thrown through water. I make quick work of my escape from the pit and toss Cran who gathers materials to create blades going up the entirety of both sides of his shaft. Cran then begins to spin in a fiery hurricane of death. Pieces of roasted slaver pit guards fly in all directions, as Cran barrels around and around the circular platform that surrounds the pit.
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I sprint toward the tunnel in the walls of Shoron Gaol that houses the single metal gate that protects the only exit to this bastion of evil. Now the only way out of Shoron Gaol is through me. I let out another bone curdling scream to announce my challenge to the slavers that are quickly responding to the alarms of their fellows’ death cries and my monstrous yells.
Terrified slavers that were attempting to make an escape see me blocking their exit and some seeing that it was only a boy barely grasping the years adulthood charge forward with their weapons to meet my challenge in confident ignorance. Scars on my arms fill with the power of my sanguine soulcraft and metal shackles clamp onto my wrists birthing spiked chains connected to metal claws that hungerly search for prey. I swing the long chains, and the essence forced within them by my blood makes them ferocious tentacles that obey my will. The brave and cocky slavers that thought their rival was a boy quickly see themselves hacked in twain to find themselves pleading to their gods in scarlet puddles as they choke on their blood and experience their agonizing last moments of cognition in abject hopelessness.
My breathing grows heavier not in exhaustion, but primal exhilaration. More of my spells ignite upon my arms and plasma orbs dive into slavers that burst into steam explosions as the plasma sears into their chests. More frozen spears launch out of my arms impaling even more slavers that in terror were running toward the gate as a last hope. Those that are impaled by the frozen spears slowly create a frozen forest of trees that possess leaves and branches made of screaming slaver bodies creating a harrowing scene that serves as a promise of what is to come for all the slavers. Cran trembles inertly at the gate watching me indulge in barbarism.
My eyes lock onto the pale slaver who had finally revealed himself from the various tunnels that pock the walls of Shoron Gaol, but unfortunately those tunnels do not lead outside to safety but only to dormitories within the walls themselves. A blade of wind bursts from the scars upon my face carving into the pale slaver’s armor and chest opening up a path to his beating vitality. I dive at the pale slaver with vengeance overwhelming all my thoughts. I thrust my hand through his armor and chest and grab his heart. In his suffering horror he chokes out, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. If I’d known you were a Son of Perdition sent by Aurhea and our matriarchs, I’d have treated you to all manner of honors and pleasures. Please spare me, I’m sorry.”
“A promise is a promise,” I growl with an eerie grin forcing itself upon my face, “do you see them? They are coming to collect you! Now drown in your blood and welcome the clawing hands of hell!”
My hand becomes a fist within the chest of the pale slaver and blood bubbles from his mouth. My heart pounds faster in my chest as I watch the pale slaver’s life slips from his eyes. The sweet terror of his gurgled screams and fading grasps at me in his death throws fills me with a strange ecstasy. I once crushed a man’s hands and wept tears of fear of what I’d become, never did I think that in submitting to the demon that power unchained would feel so… Another roar escapes my lips, the veins in my eyes beat with such ferocious intensity that it feels like they are bursting, and I lose myself to the scarlet visions of carnage.