Alex allows her gaze to wander up the walls, to rest on the white ceiling above the bed. She squints to try and pick out the shapes left behind from the uneven application, frowning passively as she picks out abstract faces among the mass.

“There is quite the divide between us, isn’t there?” Alex asks, not bothering to look towards Nephinae who dotes over Casper’s clothes, sewing up what can be repaired and cleaning those already fixed.

“Is there?”

“I would say so. I would even go so far as to call it a great rift, a chasm if you are so inclined, or perhaps even a fissure.” Alex waves her hand around above her for effect.

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmmm? Not quite the response I was expecting.”

“Would you rather I ponder aloud my otherwise silent introspections.”

“I would rather we return to the way things used to be...” Alex sighs, letting her hand drop with a heavy sigh.

“With you as my Mistress?”

“With you as my friend and confidant...” she rolls her head over, catching a glimpse of the full elf out of the corner of her eye.

She maintains her mask of perfect professionalism, making it impossible to read anything going on behind her delicate eyes.

“Alex... you are my friend.” Nephinae replies though not very convincingly.

“Nephinae please, you don’t have to lie for my sake. I recognize I have been far from perfect, and If I have wronged you or upset you I would think we were both well acquainted enough to work through it.”

‘You have not wronged me. While yes I was upset with the position you took against trying to find Casper, you have since made up for that.”

“Then why does it feel like you are still hiding from me?” Alex sits upright, the pain in her chest too much to bear laying down.

Looking at Nephinae work so diligently with near perfect apathy tore her apart.

Nephinae was the one person she had her absolute trust in, the one person who had been with her always. Nephinae, the elf who had not once left Alex’s side. Alex had to run away in order to escape Nephinae and even then it was with her blessing.

Nephinae, the woman she had shared her first ever kiss with, had grown up with, felt so impossibly far away from her now it ripped Alex apart.

Before she can think to figure out what is happening, the warm sensation of tears begin to fall down her cheek. Her heart explodes with love for this elf, and yet Nephinae shows no love for her...

“What did I do to lose you?” Alex finds herself saying, the words falling from her mouth and spilling into her lap to join the tears.

Nephinae finishes folding one of Casper's shirts, and with the same grace in which she does everything, sets it down, and brings herself up to her full height.

Alex watches, her eyes blurry, as Nephinae walks several paces to stand in front of her, eyes unwavering as she kneels down, and brings the palm of her hand to cup Alex’s cheek.

“Neph...?”

“You have not lost me Alex,” Nephinae smiles, a pure, genuine smile that burns away the ichor slathering itself around the recess of Alex’s heart.

“Then why does it feel like I have?” Alex brings her own hand up, resting it against Nephinae’s.

“Because... I fear what I feel for you.”

“Nephinae I don’t understand-”

Alex’s words aren’t given time to enter the space between them. Nephinae guides Alex’s head towards her, bringing their lips together in a single smooth motion.

Alex’s heart stops, all sensation escapes her, every feeling other than the warmth of Nephinae's lips, the sweet scent of her breath, the comfort of her hand on her cheek.

Her mind is an explosion of thoughts, erupting from every corner only to die just as quickly. She is in the middle of a storm and yet as calm a summer's breeze.

Breath hitching, every muscle frozen, Nephinae moves as if she is going to break their embrace but instead only gives herself a moment to breathe before returning once again to taste Alex.

This wasn’t real, this couldn’t be real. Was this really why Nephinae had been keeping her distance? Fear of this feeling? This incredible unexplainable immeasurable feeling?

“Nephinae...” Alex whispers the words into her mouth, but they are eaten, consumed by Nephinae’s lips, her tongue, her desire.

Alex melts in the palms of Nephinae’s hands, hands that comfort her, heal her, protect her, keep her safe.

She feels so incredibly secure, so loved in this moment it made her heart ache for the love they could have shared years ago... all that could have been.

“Well... Ain’t that a nice show?” A voice calls from the corner of the room, an unfamiliar voice, that sends chills coursing through Alex’s body.

Nephinae freezes too, breaking the kiss, her eyes go wide, staring at something unseen.

“Alex...” She whispers, fear, pure and terrible laced through her words.

Alex spins around, pulling her shirt back over to hide her chest, but she is too late.

Her eyes are filled with a blinding light and stars speckle her vision as the world twists in a sudden, violent jolt.

She feels her body make contact with the ground. Her ears ring, everything hurts all at once and a pressure unlike anything she had ever felt before envelops her.

“Nephinae!” Alex shouts, straining to see as two cloaked figures drive her to the ground.

Nephinae's head bounces off the floor, her eyes rolling back into her head, inches from where Alex lies.

“Don’t you fucking touch her!” Alex screams, spit flying from her lips, eyes struggling to make out anything solid.

A boot comes down on her head, slamming her face down into the floor and pinning her there. The tread digging into her skin, her face scraping against the ground as she continues to spit.

“Casper! Casper!” Alex shouts, screams as loud as she can.

“No, no luck little lady, sorry.” the voice continues, mocking.

“I’m going to kill you if you fucking touch her!” Alex continues to scream, but her voice becomes distorted, echoing off something she can’t see.

Then, the world pitches again. Gravity alters, and Alex begins to fall, tumbling a brief moment through the open air before crashing hard into something solid.

A faint glow, the outline of a portal vanishes somewhere overhead, and the cool comfort of their room is replaced with the ray of warm sunlight, and a stiff breeze.

“Not again, not again!” Alex scrambles up, dizzy, everything spinning.

She stumbles, and collapses to the ground, her knees and hands scraping against hard stone underfoot.

“Shit!”

She wobbles towards a wall, pressing her body against it as support as she stands.

“Nephinae!”

“I am here!” she calls back a moment later, not far, but behind something from the sound of her voice.

Alex rubs her eyes, opens them, and then rubs them again to force the blinding light out.

“Where are we!” she cries, hoping Nephinae could better relay their surroundings.

“We are... outside?” Nephinae responds, uncertain somehow.

“That fucking bastard!” Annabelle's voice cries out nearby as well. “I know I shouldn’t have ever trusted-”

“Casper will save us, right?” Elisayra’s shaking voice comes in next.

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Alex winces, forcing down the ringing in her ears, forcing down everything. The others were too confused, too panicked, too enraged to answer her questions. She needed to figure out what the hell just happened.

Their words form a dissonant symphony. Each speaking and shouting and trying to get answers that no one else can hear.

Alex takes a deep breath, and tries to open her eyes again.

The light filters through, still impossibly bright but no longer blinding, giving way enough to see exactly where she was.

It was high up, with a solid stone floor beneath her feet and heavy metal bars around her sides and above her.

She looked higher than the wall, maybe even higher than the duke's castle. No... it had to be the duke's castle then...

Everything spins, making it hard to understand the details, but as the light fades further she can see they are positioned on a high platform, a balcony somewhere on one of the castle's upper levels, looking down at the main road that goes directly to the castle doors.

Small specks, like ants begin to file from the buildings and alleyways below, called by the sound of some bells, or maybe horns? Her ears were still ringing too much to make out anything clearly.

Alex realizes then that there are people down there, hundreds of them, all moving into the roads, looking up, shouting, pointing.

Pointing at them? There was no way they could make out who they were at this distance. It couldn’t be them...

A gust of wind slams Alex into the metal of her cage, as a blur of red descends from someplace even higher than she was.

The blur turns into a shape, a violent, cruel shape, heat radiating from its scales, and storms rolling off of its massive wings, as it lands on a lower platform, and roars.

The earth itself feels as though it quakes at that roar, the skies seem to part, the people below however do not fear the primordial monster before them. No, instead they cheer, a cheer so loud it threatens to overtake the roar, battling it for dominance over the skies.

“What is happening?!” Elisayra shouts, the confusion running through all of them now. Alex had a vague idea of what might be happening, but she dare not say it for fear of making it real.

“We got fucked...” Annabelle shouts, bile in her every word.

“Where is Casper? Engee? Rathiel, Thodhan, the others, where are they all?” Nephinae tries, fear breaking the mask she tries to wear even now.

“Don’t worry, Casper will be here soon I’m sure.” A more familiar voice says, a voice that makes Alex’s blood boil, a voice that she didn’t want to hear, but feared she would.

***

Casper sits in his dome of quiet, until the calm finally takes a large enough hold to quell the anxiety pressing at his chest.

Opening his eyes, he takes in the smells of the garden, and stands.

He was looking forward to getting a good rest. Though it was early, he felt it was well deserved given just how much they had done. Travel alone was a grueling task, and that was nothing to say for nearly being eaten alive and then swimming for several hours.

Making his way back into the room, Casper stretches and yawns.

The nice cool air greets him, as well as the crushing realization that something is terribly wrong.

The room sits empty in front of him. His clothes folded and repaired, Alex’s shoes left on the floor, spit and blood staining the wood just a few inches in front of him, blood that wasn’t there moments ago.

His senses explode, listening for anything nearby, smelling the unfamiliar scents that linger along with Alex’s and Nephinae's, senses he doesn’t have to trace for long as he can smell them near the castle.

Casper storms his way through the door, checking the other rooms with his heightened senses he can tell there is no one in them, all of their scents lead towards the castle.

Rage builds in Casper's chest, an all consuming, all powerful rage. The air around his hands snaps as he crushes them into fists. Each step cracks the earth as he walks through the gathering crowds.

Bodies bound off of him, collapsing to the ground, stumbling, struggling to get out of his way as he drives a line clear down the center of the straight road.

The sounds of the peoples mutters turn to screams at the sight of him, panic grips the masses, bodies fight to press away as he gets closer and closer, until the crowds part entirely, and Casper see’s what has their attention.

The Last Legion stands in ordered lines around the doors of the castle, above them, a shadow is cast by the mass of the red dragon, the red dragon that smiles with promise of violence as it recognizes him.

Above the monster, atop a balcony, Duke Regalt, and above him, the glowing golden wings of Rathiel, flanked on either side by cages, cages containing the scent of his friends.

“If you try to fight, they all die.” Duke Regalt shouts, his voice booms over the still panicking crowds, over the sound of shifting armor and rumbling breath. “If you even so much as think about moving a muscle from that place there, I will not hesitate.”

Casper hears his words, but they burn away in the heat radiating off of his body.

His eyes burrow a hole through Rathiel, a question, an accusation at the tip of his tongue, one he doesn’t have to give as the half Celestial speaks.

“You are too dangerous, Casper... Please, for the sake of those you love, allow yourself to be stopped.” his voice vibrates the air, the power of the heavens in every word, power, and fear. Fear that wasn’t there before. Perhaps he thought things would go differently, that was until he saw the state Casper was in.

“Why....” Casper spits, no more than a whisper, a whisper Rathiel still manages to hear.

“Casper... please, you must understand that I only want what is best for the people of this kingdom, to protect innocent lives... You may have saved me, and for that I will forever thank you, but you must know that you can’t be controlled. Engee will not always be there to stop you. You are a danger to this kingdom... please Casper, I beg of you. Trust me, trust that I will do what is best. I promise I will make your death-”

The words fade, as time slows to a haunting crawl, and with an explosion of power, Casper is in the air and face to face with Rathiel.

His eyes have only just begun to go wide, the muscles reacting on instinct to Casper's sudden appearance in front of him, but it all moves so incredibly slow it’s almost pathetic.

Casper’s eyes narrow, as he brings his hand around Rathiel's throat.

Time resumes its normal course as Casper drags Rathiel's body through the castle, turning stone into dust as they fly past the walls, miles away from the city to land with an explosion in an open field.

The earth showers up around them as if it were the ocean, the dirt and rock and trees tossed hundreds upon hundreds of feet into the air.

Rathiel's body lurches, blood spewing from his mouth, eyes wide, hands scrambling at Casper's arms that still rip at his throat.

“Casper! Casper please!” Rathiel begs, struggling against the impossible strength.

Casper just watches as the falling rocks and dirt bounce off their bodies to rejoin the earth, watches as trees collide, crash, explode against one another. Boulders shatter into pieces, and the sun returns, piercing through the still cascading debris.

“You are a good man Casper! This... this is exactly why you need to be stopped! This is too much power! It’s too unstable, please! I know you can see reason. I will still kill the duke, I will still kill the king! But these things need time, they need to be done the right way!”

“And how do you know I wasn’t going to wait? Do it the right way?”

Rathiel looks down at Casper's hand around his throat with a sad smile. “Look me in the eyes and tell me, tell me you would have done things the right way. I could sense the bloodlust the moment we got here, the power in the garden, I knew you were going to kill him, kill him before we could do what needed doing...”

“So you decide the best course of action is to take the girls prisoner, to force me, to allow myself to be executed?” Casper scoffs.

“I thought... you didn’t want them to know, wouldn’t risk them learning you are marked, but I suppose it’s a little too late for that now, isn’t it?” Rathiel tries to chuckle, but it scrapes through his throat as Casper tightens his grip.

“Things could have gone so differently, Rathiel.” Casper releases his grip on the man's throat, and watches as he coughs for a time before healing himself.

“I can only do what I think is best... There is never a right answer, only the best one you can make in a given moment. If you killed the Duke before anything was ready, it would have thrown everything into chaos... I couldn’t risk it, Casper...”

Casper nods. “You are a very moral man, Rathiel. You’re right... I would have killed the Duke. I couldn’t wait the weeks or months of slowly sowing the seeds. You are absolutely right.”

Rathiel breaths out a sigh of relief, standing upright inside the crater with a heavy heart.

“Casper, I swear to you I will rebuild this kingdom in time. I will dismantle it brick by brick and make something beautiful from the pieces. The world you and I both want to see... the world we both know is possible. Your friends will be safe, but the mark within you is too strong, too dangerous... I thank you, thank you for understanding.” Rathiel grabs his sword, and squares his shoulders.

“I said you were right, not that I was going to do it.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, Rathiel, but this world can’t change one brick at a time... the people will not change because of policy, the people will not change because of the rule of law. The morals and culture of this kingdom will not bend to fit your designs... no....”

Casper turns to look at Rathiel, watching as the realization dawns on him.

“The only way this kingdom will ever be stopped, this culture stopped, is if it’s burned to the ground, and rebuilt from the ashes.”

Rathiel’s body ignites in golden light, light that extends high into the heavens above, and lasts for only a mere moment in time.

Casper closes the distance, and in a single strike carves a hole through Rathiel's chest, tearing his heart from his chest.

The concussive blast hasn’t yet begun, stuck in a moment in time. Rathiel's body tries to heal, pure gold, the gold of the gods themselves seeks to rebuild him. His flesh stretches, his muscles tighten, the healing process already beginning.

Blessed by the gods he might be, but Casper is cursed by the star, the star that consumes everything.

Greedy

Hungry

The end of all things.

Even his friends.

Casper swipes his hand across Rathiel's neck, and the light around him dies in time with the light in his eyes.

Time resumes, and the shockwave generated from his initial attack turns the half celestial body into pink mist, spraying fragments of feathers against the upturned earth around them.

Rathiel's head doesn’t have time to hit the ground, as it is torn apart by the shockwave.

Casper’s heart breaks, breaks for all of the things that could have been, had Rathiel not been such a moral man.

Perhaps the two of them could have worked more together, Rathiel by his side to rebuild from the ashes Casper would create. But instead Rathiel was too scared, too scared to realize that the only way change will ever happen, is if evil people suffer the consequences of their actions.

Casper crushes the rising guilt, the pain, the regret. There was no other choice. Rathiel was scared, and in that fear he made a decision that sealed his fate.

The one man who chose to trust him, accept him, work with him, be friends with him, made one bad decision. Then again, one bad decision was really all it takes.

The decision for his father to be with his mother, resulting in him being born under the star.

The decision to allow these women into his life, knowing that a day like this might come.

The decision to be with Engee, to try and be with all of them.

The decision to think he had a chance at living a life not surrounded by destruction, even after everyone he loved had died once before.

The decision to let his rage consume him, time and time and time again.

The mark burns through Casper, courses through his veins, boils his blood, turns the mud to dirt and the dirt to glass at his feet.

Rathiel was right, he was going to kill the duke...

Turning back, Casper watches the walls of the city stand stalwart, unmoving, unaware of what had just taken place here.

Perhaps they saw the light, and then saw it die, perhaps a few would know what that meant.

Perhaps a few would have the wisdom to try and run, try and buy crucial moments before Casper did what he had come here to do.

He didn’t know what would come next with the girls, with his friends, the people he had grown to care about, grown close to, grown to love in some way.

But he did know one thing.

In order to build from the ashes, he needed to make ashes.

This city would be a perfect start.