The water rippled.

As if a single drop of liquid had fallen three rings appeared, spreading slowly outward.

Violet froze. Her mouth was half open, locked in an expression of horrified realization.

Her eyes began to move, and the drifted up to me, bulging with terror.

Then the surface of the dark water shifted. A hand sprang out from the depths, tanned and dripping. It latched into her ankle. Another burst forth, and grabbed her thigh.

Violet screamed her body suddenly unfrozen as she turned backwards the way she had come. Her feet began to sink beneath the water, dragged slowly towards her. She tried to kick, spit flying from her lips as she screeched.

There was something in the water passed the hands that now held her. Something that terrified her to her core.

“Noooo..!” she screamed. “No I’m not… you can’t be real. You can’t be him… it's fucking impossible!"

She was babbling now as he knees sank below the waterline. She began to thrash madly, twisting, clawing at the hands that now dragged her further.

“Help me,” she said, her eyes bulging with raw fear. She reached out towards me, wet fingers only inches from my face.

I watched her with cold eyes.

“Drown,” I told her. “For the men you killed. For the lives you stole. I sentence you to death.”

Violet shuddered violently, water splashing as she tried to claw her way towards the doorway and back into the light. The darkness around was heavy. I felt its weight as I watched her die.

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She cursed me. She pleaded with me. She babbled in mindless terror as she was slowly and inexorably dragged beneath the surface.

Then her cries became terrified high-pitched screams.. before she was lost beneath the surface.

I came up like a man taking his first breath.

Plummeting upwards so fast I was nearly knocked off balance as I slammed back into my conscious mind.

I had dropped my sword, my empty hands still raised above my head. The throne was empty, and behind it Violet still stood.

Her eyes were locked in distant fear, her mouth gaping open like a void.

Black water spilled from within, tumbling down her chin to soak her front.

Calmly I drew Iron Fang from its sheath at my waist and gripped it in both hands.

Then I drove it into her neck. She fell sideways in a spray of dark water and blood. It leaked over the Dias, spearing past my boots and dripping down the steps towards the throne room floor.

I turned, still holding the knife and I was met by a room filled with the remnants of disaster. Nearly two-thirds of the soldiers that had entered the palace with us were dead.

Bodies lined the floor, blood spraying ever inch of stone in a grotesque work of art. When I saw Draxus, Kato and Hade still standing, I breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

Lord Blackthorne was slumped over the arms of Draxus, breathing hard. Blood trickled down his face into his eyes. But he seemed relatively unharmed, if not exhausted.

Xandria leaned against a nearby wall. Her arm was nothing more than a mangled stump. Her teeth were clenched, eyes wide as she stared at something across the room.

I saw the dead Darkblade and knew his death had been the work of a demon.

It was as if the second Darkblade had been turned inside out. The skin was where skin shouldn’t be. Bits of bone and viscera surrounded his corpse like an arc. And in the center of what had once been his chest.. was a large spike of black stone.

It pulsed with unnatural energy.. the same that had been on the tunes in the cave beneath the city. The very same that I had found in the pit where the Cursed Bear attacked us.

Xandria tore her eyes from the sight and turned towards me. She took one look at the dark liquid pooling around my boots and laughed.

The sound bounced off the walls, bitter.. perhaps even mad."

“Hadrian,” she said, wiping blood from her face. “What the fuck have you done.”