Oracion's POV

With our eyes locked together, our breaths synced and our goals opposed...I can't help but acknowledge his wicked smile in the moment. His blood coils from behind me, wrapping around my hand and the hilt of the sword unbeknownst to me, pulling it from me and throwing it into a nearby gear in the wall that forces the mechanism to stop turning.

"Tss" I kiss my teeth as he sprints towards me across the blood lake, hardening the blood along his hands like armour as he throws out a punch.

I meet it with my own but the sheer amount of force shocks my entire body, winding me as a deep crack opens up along my arm through the bone and skin. 'Again.' Aluca's voice advises within my head as blood creeps out of my own skin, covering my arm and stitching it back together instantly.

Again, he throws another punch, resulting in the same pain and injury for me. 'Again.' She advises once more. This time I grab his fist as he throws another punch, stopping the force and attempting to sweep his leg from under him with a kick. But his blood hardens around his body again, causing that dreadful pain across my body as my the bones in my leg crack.

'Ignore it'. She advises, my body once again stitching itself back together again but this time faster than before.

Eragon stomps in response, rising spikes from the floor that pierce my arms and torso. Clicking his fingers to release them, only to stomp again to make them rise again and again as my body can only keep healing away the holes. "Oracion...you just...excite me...so much!" He near enough giggles to himself before stomping for the final time, shooting a singular pillar through me before making it disappear as if it was never there.

Just before I hit the floor, he kicks my head and sends me soaring through the room and into the gears. Some sort of blue electricity begins to trace around the room as the cogwheels struggle to maintain themselves. I look above me, noticing my sword within an arm's reach.

I place a hand along my stomach as if the hole's still there, but it's already gone. Eragon walks towards me steadily with his hands in his pockets, "Phantom wound? Let me tell you a secret." He gradually walks into my blind spot of my missing eye, a much slower healing than the other parts of me. "It doesn't get any easier." I shudder from feeling his breath along my skin.

I look behind him, trying to reach for the sword but he pulls it with the blood, throwing it across the room again. "You really have to stop losing that." He laughs but I feel it. An answer from inside me that's attempting to solve the riddle.

I tighten my eyes shut, focusing what I can to my eye and forcing it to heal faster. Standing to my full height and reopening them to Eragon's sadistic smile. "How long has it been since someone's stared at me like that?" He clicks his fingers, sending a wave of thick blood towards me as he first did when I entered his chambers.

I charge towards it with my bare hands, feeling them singe under a boiling heat as the skin tears away and heals at an equal pace. More and more I apply pressure to this brick wall until it eventually bursts around me as I barrel roll through it and far past Eragon.

Picking up my sword, I stab it into the ground to regain my balance. Looking back at him as he stands with his arms held out with open palms. "How long has it been since I've had to bleed this much?" He asks as a crimson mist, far darker than the ones throughout the castle begin to raise from evaporated blood.

The whirling coloured wind now completely covering his figure as he blends into it like a cloud. A slash across my skin appears like an ice cold breeze along my goose bumps. 'I finally understand it.' I think to myself.

'The overconfidence', Again a wound appears on my wrist but all I can do is grip my sword tighter, again, again, again and again. 'The delusion of my strength', My body's attempting to react to it all but his presence isn't even here. That breath of life all things need to take...silenced and muted for this specific moment 'The inexperience of the world outside the Veil'. But amongst the quiet, just barely louder than my blood splatters, I can't help but listen to the sound of electricity running throughout the room. 'It feels like...I should of died long ago.' Blue light specifically lines the walls as gears spin faster and faster.

Just like a cutting board, my injuries begin climbing my body as time goes on. With each hit I step back in weakness, up my legs, through my hands, along my chest until I hold one hand across my own throat in preparation...but it never comes. Instead the mist begins to clear or rather, be drawn in through the clockwork of the gears and cogs.

"What!?" Eragon's voice pinpoints to his exact location by the stairs, with the blood evaporated and the floor finally with friction, I waste no time in bolting towards him with the sword in my hand. Slashing down one of his wrists as his hand helplessly falls to the ground.

But his focus lay not on his hand, but instead on the engraved metallic diamond as it shifts in an attempt to reconstruct itself. A burst of blue energy surges from it as we're both sent to the floor and the scene from the tinted window changes from snow to flames, to a light that burns the sky, an endless sea...my eyes forced to look away from the changing world as the entire castle moves uncontrollably throughout the world, spending no less than a second in each place and tossing both me and Eragon into the air.

"ORACION! Clementine and Ira yell from the unblocked hole in the wall as they hold onto the rough edges.

I continue to grip my sword, feeling shards from the hilt now digging into me as I begin to break it. "THESE LIVES WILL NEVER KNOW PEACE TILL I DIE!" Eragon screams through blood tears as he points his amputated arm towards me, attempting to pierce me with a solidified stake of blood but I split it down the middle with a struggle as we both try to orientate our bodies properly.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

One stake turns into two as he tries to grip my sword with one and he smacks the engraved diamond with the other, shattering the glass and revealing the brightest of blue moons. Almost instantly forcing us both to the ground but panic fills me as he attempts to tear my sword from me once again. But I let go of the hilt, grabbing onto the blade itself and snapping it myself.

He lets go without another moment's notice, re-joining his two tendrils of blood into a giant claw that wraps around me and spreading his last spots to his back, reforming them into large vermillion wings for himself. "WAI-" Clementine attempts to force her way towards us but one gust from Eragon's wings push her back into a wall. His face no longer filled with emotion as he bats against the ground, pouncing into the air with ease as he carries me upwards and through the castle ceiling.

He brings us both to the very top where we're accompanied by nothing more than the glaring moon, "You're running out of time, you know that, right?" He brings me closer, knowing my limbs are fully restrained. "Even if you somehow managed to completely erase Aluca's blood from your system, it'll never undo the changes its done to your body." His eyes point at my elongated fangs that sit uncomfortably inside my open mouth. "The fact that you can even drink her blood and still move? That in itself tells me all that I need, Oracion." He laughs in amusement as if he's solved the riddle to the world. "It's you...it's always been you and always has to be you, doesn't it?"

He gradually spins us as I can feel our skin embracing the moon for all its worth, "You can deceive others, you can deceive your lovers...you can deceive yourself. But I've lived far too long for that." He holds me above his head, concentrating his blood in his makeshift hand before launching me far into the sky above him. The place that was once snow now gone as we've moved locations entirely...further from our home, but I can't help but feel a simple peace at the sensation of the wind across my skin as I begin falling.

Down and down until I eventually pass Eragon, feeling as if time slows for his final words to me. "I'm glad it was you." He whispers before grabbing me by the throat and thrusting our bodies into a frenzied spiral towards the ground.

An echoed but inaudible scream comes to my ears as a ringing sound is shot past my ear, driving itself directly into Eragon's torso as he begins to turn to ash from the broken blade of my sword. But he doesn't look bothered, he doesn't flinch, nor does he seem in any way rushed to remove it from his body. The shard drives itself deeper from the sheer speed he flies at until eventually sinking into him entirely.

I close my eyes for the impact but there's nothing, nothing at all. I open my eyes to see a world of darkness as the vision of a lean woman walks up to me with her eyes an impossibly light red tint. "We'll meet again, some other time...I'm sure of it. But thank you for helping him...it had to be you, even if you didn't truly win this time, Oracion." She turns away from me, unintentionally flicking her hair away as she walks out of my vision and the walls begin to brighten with the glistening moon.

With Eragon's neck laid just in front on top of me, I attempt to take him off with an arm but I can't. In fact I can't feel any of my limbs, none other than my neck. A sign that's far too coincidental as I refuse to hesitate, driving my fangs into his neck and filling my body with what remains of his torso until it finally pops into ash. And with the disappearance of the weight on me, I feel my limbs trickle back onto me as my blood connects like appendages, sealing themselves tighter than before as they lock into place to the bone.

"You won, now what?" Eragon's sole head speaks as I pick it up from resting on me.

'I didn't.' I think to myself. I can't even bring myself to look at him in the eyes at the shame he's knowingly inflicted me with, 'He knows I didn't win, or rather he realised I couldn't.'

Knowing what I came for, I recollect his immediate memories with haste through the blood I absorbed, reaching into his head through the severed part as his eyes roll back and I collect the vial he was trying to protect. I wipe my fist away from blood by using his hair before he begins speaking again, "In the end, all I could develop was a way to split the vampiric and humanity, ironic, right." He asks as if not even a question.

I kneel down to pick up one of the tinted glass shards, leaning it towards his face. "0809" I quote before sliding the shard into his mouth through broken teeth, setting him down with no way to spit it out before handing the cure to Ira.

"It...really exists." Clementine begins to cry as she rubs the burned side of her that refuses to heal, making me realise she was the one who threw the broken sword for me.

"I think this is yours?" Ira hands it to Clementine hesitantly after looking at me. "Your eyes are back to normal, somewhat." He comments but I can't help but look at her, cheering with glee as she spins with the vial. "Oracion?" Ira's voice fades out ever so slightly as I watch her with a tense gaze.

"Hmm" I respond to whatever he's saying. 'But what about Ira' I think.

She pops the lock off the small vial, something limited for only one person.

She steadily begins to tilt her head back but a twitch within me sparks my hand to move as I grab it, now interlocking hands with her as we stare dead at each other.

A tear falling down her eye as she realises, or rather recalls what I previously stated to her. "You're inconvenient." I smile gently to her, planting my open palm against her eye as it's still filled with pieces of the sword's hilt. Bursting her eye to ash as she lets go of the cure.

"Oracion!?" Ira yells at me but I toss the cure into his hands before he can get closer, forcing him to focus on that and that alone.

I feel a drip of liquid run down my cheek in response, rubbing it away to find blood resting upon my knuckles. "Oracion wait!" She steps back from me but I take two steps forward.

"I was used, abused and forced to carry out the wish of another. Did you truly expect a different response from me the moment I had the opportunity to do so?" I watch as she trips over the stairs up to the engraved diamond.

She sticks her hand up to me as if trying to defend herself from me, "You don't get to play the victim when that's all I've ever been since I entered this place. You kept me sane, you gave me hope, but that wasn't even for me, was it?" I question her as she visibly sweats.

"I-" She tries to speak but I cut her off.

"All those times I've passed out from blood loss, all those times I starved, all those times you sat in this castle simply waiting for me to do something 𝘧𝘰𝘳 you." I walk her to the edge of the shattered glass as the sun begins to show itself ever so slightly in this dull land. "For being mostly human, you certainly don't have the emotions to even say sorry, do you?". I place my hand in front of her, "Till the day I die, I obey no one other than death. Remember that Clementine."

I lean forward ever so slightly but without me even touching her, she turns her back to me in order to face the sun, "-...I've never seen it before...but that's all there is to it?" She references as even her tears begin to burn while she tilts her body forward by choice. Blazing her skin and clothes into ash that scatters before even hitting the ground, Finally free to escape the castle and whatever weight she carried here.

Literally.