[Primary account from an Imperial Guard]

I saw the blood red blue inky blackness reach over the demon beast we had collected and starved for the assault on the citadel. It was horrible, like we had handed the beast a snack and fed him, as its door. We thought that the death would be easy to swallow, he was a monster an abomination, a traitor. The people under him should been the same. I was the one that aided the beast dropped it… I wanted the glory for the Imperium, for the Supreme Commander to see me. I didn’t think that he would look like a… like a person. That with one sweep of a black razor that beast, dead. Seeding webs reaching under him consuming the land and soon demon. With his hand the demon was being consumed by the pulsating webs, like a starfish expelling it stomach. I see why he’s a monster. He’s a predator. We live because, he fed to his fill.

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There was moment where Elliot was filled euphoria. Where the pleasure of the hunt filled his gut, like a rich meal. Where he stood over the body of the retched beast that had destroyed the lives and families of innocents, He started feeling sick, beginning to hyperventilate. Nausea reaching it claws into every part of stomach. He vomited over the side of the beast, bile filling his nose and throat. That had feeling disgusted him. As the feeling was coming over him the golden mist seemed to dissipate from him. Whereas the primal attitude in his gut was empowering a blue energy in his cells. Elliot shifted his energy to the blue energy as he placed his hand on the beast to pay respects. As a similar spiderweb of a slime mold like biofilm filled around the beast like the one he had seen on the horned-whale. It was absorbed by Elliot’s microbiome, a fire lit in his stomach fueling him. The energy from the flesh of the beast, feeding him.

“What the hell did you just do?” Linea shocked looking at the skeleton of the glutton beast. She had just witnessed of Elliot was unlike any ability she had assumed he had.

“There was a second power in me I guess?” Elliot pondered out loud.

“That was like magickal Beasts do El. Consume for power.” Linea looked at him with concern.

“Are you saying I’m going to become like one of these beasts of chaos?”

“Not exactly these beasts are no different than you or me, they are the true inhabitants of Dragon One, living in the Sheol under the crust coming up to feed during the time of the blood moon. Top of the food chain animal, keeping the resident population under them from over populating the world” Linea’s words hurt her but their reality was truer than she cared believe, “We’re really bottom of a food chain, easy energy.” Linea was spent, “Its like opening the fridge for a late-night snack. That’s what we are.”

Elliot felt more powerful than he had before a deep strength was awaked inside of him. His microbiome quickly metabolizing the gluttonous beast, His body was euphoric. Linea looking at Elliot noticed that he was completely unharmed. Her look was one that she could not completely understand. But what she did glean was that Elliot was not the one that she should worry about. He seemed to be more than just lucky; He was weighted dice in a scale tipped world. She wanted nothing more than to stay by him forever. Linea thought, ‘just maybe, I can help him and in time he could be the one that one day might know me on a level no one else has. Why does that scare me so much though?’. Linea was signing up for a life of danger. She was the one that committed regicide, not the that it should it should be committed against. Linea knew in her heart that his luck would not transfer to her, but here she was signing her life away on a dotted line.

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This was a decision of passion, hot and still burning. Like melted plastic plastered to your skin meld and scorching your skin. I wish I could have been there to taste that fear that must have dripped from her, the desperation to not lose this man she just met. That adoration could make someone do much worse than murder. If Little Elliot knew what a useful tool he had, I wonder what he could’ve done. How I hunger for something like that.

Elliot slept deeply that night, his mind filled with a sense of pride for doing something good. Before he closed his eye for the night he looked over to Linea, never before had he seen her smile like she was now. He could not help but chuckle at the fact that he felt calm in sure an intrepid place. His mind was at peace, for now.

“Tell me…Tell me…” It echoed

“Huh?” Elliot voice rang out in a dark expanse

“Did it feel nice?”, an inky voice slid across the distance to Elliot’s soul, “ Did you enjoy feeding on that beast? Plunging its own horn into its head? Did you feel powerful Little Elliot? ”

“Who are you?”

“Do you want to do that again? Feel that pleasure rush over you from a kill, from dispensing of this world horrors. Getting rid of the unsightly murderer, the decrepit thieves, the sullen beasts that prey?”

“I did what was right.” Elliot looked out over the expanse, searching.

“It felt good, no? It felt good. It felt right.”

“Doing what is right feels good, its altruism. I had to do it but I was reward by the action itself nothing more”

“What if you killed him first? Would that be right?”

“That beast deserved death.”

“And the innocents that died for you to get here. Should a monster come kill you for your deeds then? Are you above them because you were on the winning side?”

“They were trying to come and take advantage of Linea again!”

“Is that all…”

“Obviously not Linea’s family here as well. What are you trying to say!”

“You made a value judgement on life based on a moral point that did not exist at the time. Could not the monster kill those children because it knew you’d kill him and so he’s justified in his actions.”

“You can’t think of the world like, you take a step forward into time and you can’t go back.”

“That sister of yours is dead because she could do the opposite, she had sight of the future. She knew who would hurt her, she let them because she could have stopped them before. You live because of her death. You’re a leach feeding on her time. Your mother blood is on your hands. Should you not die, because of that.”

“I should” Elliot solemnly spoke, “My life is forfeit. In the eyes of my saviors love.”

“Then stop living like you get a happily ever after, while your sister suffers in Sheol for your crimes. You’re the monster Little Elliot…”

“It’s my fault. I can’t escape my sin. I can’t run from the devil; in my sin I have become him”

“Little Elliot, I am very much still here. You have yet to become me. Go feed on the depths of Sheol, bring something from its depths.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you want to do what’s right.”