PWAAASCH!
Percival smashed his spoon into the [Hollow King]’s head, blasting the creature straight through the hall’s iron door.
Percival cursed himself silently. He’d intended the strike to be lethal, but he’d instinctively pulled his blow at the last possible moment.
His heart thundered so violently in his chest that he wanted to vomit. He could barely hear a thing over the sound of blood rushing through his ears. He didn’t feel tired in the least, but each of his breaths came shallow and rapid. His jaw was clenched so tight that his gums were numb. His eyes felt strange, and the world was both far too bright and far too dark all at once.
I can’t hesitate, he thought. The more I delay, the more it suffers.
Not wanting to give himself any more time to think, he leapt through the hole he’d created in the door. He entered fully intent on finishing his bloody task, but what he saw on the other side cemented his feet to the floor.
The entire room was a giant hemisphere, at least five hundred feet across and half as tall — far too wide to fit within the Torr Royale without some sort of spacial-magic chicanery. Back in the twisting halls, nearly everything had been made up of grey-veined marble slabs, but here, the marble walls were seamless and veined in gold. Bracketed torches of azure ever-burning flames ringed the room at even intervals, and braziers full that same blazing radiance lit the room above, hanging from the domed ceiling by gently swaying chains of silver.
Under normal circumstances, any of these details on their own would be enough to capture Percival’s attention. Presently, however, the only thing that drew his eye was the swirling tornado of screaming, thrashing, and disintegrating spirits in the center of the room.
Like a twisted reflection of the spirits he’d freed by slaying the Voxwraith, what must have been a million or more human shapes and faces were stretching, wailing, and millimeter-by-millimeter being shred apart into innumerable motes of mind-bending light. The further away a spirit was from the tornado’s center, the quicker they were unmade. Every spirit clawed and scratched at every other stay close to the tornado’s eye, but the centrifugal force of the phenomena’s spin and the violent struggle of each spirit’s neighbors forced them as a whole to slowly drift outward toward their doom. With each passing second, thousands of spirits were utterly erased from existence.
Souls were, as a rule, impossible to sense directly. Laymen often incorrectly equated souls with things like spirits, ghosts, or specters, but those things were just distorted one-way impressions of the soul, as opposed to faithful representations of the soul itself.
Spirits, in particular, were the intermediary between a person’s soul and their body. To use a common but imperfect metaphor, spirits were the “hands” of the soul — hands that were almost entirely numb, but hands nonetheless.
In the same way a palm reader might be able to tell a few things about a person’s life based off of their callouses and the texture of their skin, spiritual experts could infer a thing or two about a person’s underlying soul based off of their spirit, but such inferences were always closer to guesswork than statements of fact.
In that moment, however, staring at the horrible suffering of the spirits arrayed before him, Percival suddenly knew what was happening, and he knew it with greater certainty than anything else he’d ever known before.
Their souls… he realized. They’re being torn apart.
Again, Percival had no definitive proof for this belief — definitive proof for anything having to with souls was hard to come by — but seeing the spirits’ horrific expressions, it was difficult to believe anything else.
At the origin of the tornado was a familiar crown sitting atop a pedestal. Percival had never seen the crown in person before, but he didn’t need to. Its image had been pressed to the back of every coin he’d ever held in his life.
It was the [Couronne Solaire], the [Sun Crown], the divine right to rule given form. Each adult citizen of the realm was sworn to the crown at least thrice over the course of their lives — once at birth by their parents, once more at their confirmation by their own lips, and once again when they reached the age of majority.
As the name implied, the [Couronne Solaire] was meant be as the Sun to its followers, an unattainable beacon of light and life to all below it. Now, however, it was chain, a collar choking the air from its prisoners’ throats and binding them to the earth — binding them to a destruction everlasting.
“[Hollow King]! Stop this! What’s going on?”
The intricate patterns of gold inlaid in the floor and ceiling, the silver lights and braziers at precise intervals, the chaotic flows of divinity and mana whipping through the air…
The ritual was… It was… It was far too complicated for Percival to understand, but it didn’t take a genius to recognize that it was going horribly wrong.
“Cough!” On the opposite side of the domed room, the [Hollow King] peeled itself from the wall and coughed wetly into the crook of its arm. Its head was caved inward where one of its eyes should’ve been. It tried to remain standing on its one good leg, but soon collapsed onto its hands and knees.
Percival flew over and was by its side in an instant, shaking the monster to keep it conscious.
“[Hollow King]! What is this? How do I stop it? Tell me!”
In response, the [Hollow King] tried spitting at him, but the thin membrane of skin covering its mouth caught the glob of spittle and was almost stained red before the color burned away. It spent another few seconds coughing and spluttering as its own bloody spit ran down its throat.
With each passing second another legion of spirits was unmade.
“Please!” Percival screamed. “If there’s even an ounce of Humanity left in you, please stop wasting time! Just tell me how to stop this!”
The [Hollow King] let out several pathetic high-pitched wheezes. Percival initially thought the thing was choking on its own blood, but he soon realized the sound was laughter. The [Hollow King] was laughing. Thousands of spirits were perishing by the second, and the monster before him was taking the time to laugh.
Several more seconds passed. Percival was simply too dumbfounded to know how to respond.
Finally, the [Hollow King] ceased its laughter. It unsteadily found its way to a standing position, nearly falling again in the process, but it steadied itself against the wall. It loomed over Percival’s crouched and confused form, and it spoke.
“Beg,” it commanded, voice raspy and weak.
“Please!” Not hesitating for an instant, Percival pressed his head to the floor. “I am begging! I beg you! I’m begging you! I’m begging you a thousand times! How can I stop the ritual? I beg of you, please!”
The [Hollow King] sighed, and Percival raised his head. “No hesitation? None at all?” It sounded disappointed. “This would’ve been much more fun if you had some pride. Set on annoying me to the very end, aren’t you, little Percival?”
Percival made to continue begging, but the [Hollow King] stopped him by raising of its destroyed right hand.
“There is but one way to save the remaining souls.”
“How?”
“Simple, little Percival.” The [Hallow King] spent several precious seconds straightening its back as much as it was able. It speared Percival with the most imperious gaze it could muster, but the effect was somewhat lost due to its wretched state and complete lack of eyes. “All that is required of you is to relinquish what I have demanded from the beginning: Give me your name.”
“W-What?” Percival didn’t understand.
“Oh? Who’s wasting time now, little Percival? I spoke clearly, did I not? Give. Me. Your. Name.”
The [Hollow King] swept its mangled right arm toward the tornado of dying spirits the same way a noble might gesture toward a work of art hung on their wall. “Do you see what fetid fruit your rebellion has borne? Are you satisfied with the harvest you reap? Are you proud?”
The [Hollow King]’s voice dropped an octave, becoming an inhuman rumble of ash and stone as all traces of humor left its bearing. “All because of you, my ritual has gone awry. All because of you, the spirits of my subjects are dying. All because of you, the [Solarian Courts] are doomed.
“Hear my words and know them to be true, you petulant, tittering, up-jumped fool! Only I, your [King], am capable of salvaging this disaster, and all I require is your compliance with but a single, simple request.”
With a grunt of pain, the [Hollow King] leaned down to place a hand onto the still kneeling Percival’s shoulder, the same way an adult might lean down to speak with an unruly child.
“Entrust to me the means to right what you have wronged,” the [Hollow King] commanded. “Surrender to me what I am owed. Return to me what is mine.” The creature leaned in to whisper directly into Percival’s ear. It’s grip on his shoulder became iron. Its next words came as quiet as a blade in the dark.
“Give me your name.”
A thousand doubts whizzed through Percival’s head in an instant, but he paid them no mind. Every moment wasted on deliberation costed thousands of spirits their very existence. Many a time in the past year, others had suffered because of Percival’s unsteady heart, but now he was resolved. This moment would not be like the others.
He knew what he had to do. The divinity in his heart whispered to him without words, telling him all would be well as long as he did what he knew to be right.
A greater man might have been able to weigh the pros and cons of sacrificing spirits in the present to prevent the [Hollow King] from causing further devastation in the future, but Percival was not a greater man.
All that mattered to Percival was the fact that a million spirits were suffering right there in front of him, and there was something he could do to stop it.
“[Hollow King], I surrender,” he said, bowing his head. “I give you my name.”
The effect was immediate.
Like a line of soldiers resigned and ready to throw away their lives in a battle’s first charge, Percival’s divinity rushed from his heart.
As his strength left him, Perci…
Perci…?
Per-something?
Puh…?
As his strength left him, the nameless man fell flat onto his face, gasping for breath. His muscles spasmed uncontrollably. His divinely conjured armaments shattered into motes of light that flooded into the [Hollow King], and the man was left to flounder on the ground, naked if not for the torn remnants of what used to be a robe.
His mind became as unfocused as his eyes. He still knew who he was, but only in an academic sense. He could still remember his life, but none of it felt his. Neither did those memories feel like they belonged to someone else. It were as if his every experience belonged to no one at all. Even his present circumstances — the hollow pain in his chest, his breathlessness, his confusion — he couldn’t identify with any of it.
Why? The answer came to him easily.
His life felt like it belonged to no one because he was no one.
He was nothing but a nameless man.
“Again, no hesitation?” a voice asked, deep and regal. Its texture was unnervingly pleasant, like velvet jammed into his ears. “You really are a bore.”
The nameless man felt a kick against his side, and he was flipped over onto his back. Above him loomed the [Hollow King]. Its torn flesh was mending right before his eyes, and its featureless face was slowly morphing into something other. An eye here and there, the beginning of a pair of lips, a nose with nostrils capable of unfettered breath — feature by feature, pieces of a face began appearing where a face should be, but none of the pieces fit together quite right. It all looked so wrong.
The nameless man put all those thoughts aside. Mustering his willpower, he fought through his muscle spasms to throw one of his hands awkwardly toward the tornado of dying souls in the center of the room.
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“Ah, yes,” said the [Hollow King], speaking as if it’d just remembered something trivial. “I nearly forgot about that, but don’t worry. A [King] is nothing if not true to his word.”
Muttering chants beneath its breath, the [Hollow King] used both its hand to trace incomprehensible patterns through the air. Its still-forming eyes flicked hither and thither as it closely observed the entirety of the room, adjusting its chants and motions as it went.
The wild divinity slowly calmed under the [Hollow King]’s ministrations, and the tornado slowed its spin. Over the course of several long minutes, the pandemonium disappeared completely. The divinity that’d once churned so chaotically through the air now settled into the veins of gold inlaid within the room’s marble, pulsing and flowing in patterns that the nameless man still could not fathom.
Most importantly, the spirits bound to the crown were no longer being torn apart, but they were still far from free. The tornado had been decelerating at a constant rate, but once it became still, it did not remain still. It continued accelerating in the opposite direction of its previous spin, and the tornado became a vortex sucking spirits into the [Couronne Solaire].
The spirits were subsumed by the crown, absorbed entirely into its myriad jewels and golden body. The crown’s surface rippled and bubbled and squirmed as the imprisoned spirits fought to escape, but not a one could break away.
To add insult to injury, more spirits began entering the room, pulled toward the vortex right through the floor and the domed walls. At first they were a trickle, but soon enough they were a flood.
Did my divinity lead me astray? Or am I such a fool that my divinity couldn’t stop me?
Doubt entered the nameless man’s mind. He could no longer feel the comforting presence of the divinity he’d grown so used to over past year. With every passing moment, strength continued to leave his already enfeebled form, and he’d soon be naught but a husk.
As spirits continued flooding into the crown from every direction, an even more troubling realization entered the nameless man’s head.
I’ve doomed every soul in the [Solarian Courts].
The [Hollow King] scoffed, and the nameless man turned his wide eyes to regard the creature. Individual facial features were still forming where the creature’s face should be, and the features were even mostly arranged in the correct places, but as a whole it still no more resembled a face than a jumble of words resembled a story.
The creature had at some point stopped chanting and waving its arms, so its work stabilizing the ritual must’ve been complete.
“Try not to look so impressed,” it said, wearing a facsimile of a self-satisfied expression. “I’ve studied this ritual for years, nearly every day since I was first bestowed with the [Couronne Solaire]. I was a [Champion of Sol] for over a decade before that, and as [King] of the [Solarian Courts], I handled vast amounts of divinity on a daily basis. With my stolen strength now returning to me, it would be stranger if I couldn’t accomplish this minor feat with ease.” A mouth finished forming upon the [Hollow King]’s face, and it settled into a smirk. “Besides, a [King] has no need to attempt. A [King] succeeds.”
Mustering what little strength he had left, the nameless man raised his hand toward the [Couronne Solaire] and the spirits trapped within.
“Free them… please…” he croaked.
The [Hollow King] let out a short laugh. “Why would I do that? I still have need of them.”
“You… promised…”
“Did I? Ah, I see now where your confusion lies,” the [Hollow King] said with a shake of its head. “Allow me to clarify the situation. I never once promised to stop the ritual. My only promise was that I would set things right, and set things right I shall.”
The [Hollow King] strolled over to the nearest wall of the large domed room. Gently, it brushed the back of its hand against the marble the way one might brush a lover’s cheek.
“Do you know how old this room is?” the [Hollow King] asked. “Most assume the Torr Royale is at most one or two millennia old — a reasonable assumption, considering the depictions of the [Solarian Courts]’ history carved into its exterior — but the fools who believe that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
The [Hollow King] turned to regard the nameless man. “Sixteen thousand years, little P#!$!%(@.”
For some reason, the nameless man couldn’t understand the [Hollow King]’s last word. He clearly heard each individual sound, but he couldn’t make sense of the thing as a whole.
“For sixteen millennia this tower has stood, and for sixteen millennia this edifice of living stone has slowly shifted its facade to reflect the slowly shifting identity of this land’s people. Do you know why?
“I’ll give you a hint. The tower’s very name reveals its nature. Torr Royale, a name half ancient and half modern, and bound by neither.
“Have you figured it out yet? No? Well then, I’ll give you another hint. I’ve told you that this building is sixteen thousand years old. Tell me, what else happened sixteen thousand years ago? Do you know?”
The [Hollow King] turned its mismatched eyes toward the [Couronne Solaire]. With slow, reverent steps, it approached, a hideous smile widening betwixt its jaws with every click of its heels against the marble floor.
Click. Click. Click.
“So you don’t know? I can’t say I’m surprised that an unrefined miscreant such as yourself never thought to better yourself through education.”
Click. Click. Click.
“I repeat: Sixteen thousand years, little P^%#%*(&. We live in the year 15926. This tower rose in the age of the first gods, and that is no coincidence.”
Click. Click. Click.
The [Hollow King] ceased its march an arm’s length away from the pedestal. It stood between the nameless man and the [Couronne Solaire], casting a shadow over the man as the crown outlined the creature in a golden corona of light.
By this point, the flood of spirits pouring in from every direction had slowed, but dozens more were still being pulled into the crown’s vortex with every passing second.
“Sixteen thousand years ago in the year zero,” the [Hollow King] went on, walking a slow semicircle around the crown, “my ancestor, the first [King] of the [Solarian Courts], a mere mortal fated to die, ascended beyond his lot in life! He became the first and greatest of the gods to ever exist!”
The [Hollow King] raised its arms wide, basking in the glow of its imminent victory.
“This is where He ascended! Upon this very floor stood the mortal whose name would become Sol! With some minor aid from his sister, he built this tower to be the site of his ascension! So great was his achievement that his tower, the Torr Royale, became a living edifice of stone whose form to this very day shifts to reflect the faith upon which his godhood was achieved!”
“Do you now understand, little P(#@#*$^? The Torr Royale is a forge! This room, a bellows! Divinity, the fuel! The crown, a crucible! These spirits, the flux! And I? I am the mortal iron that shall be refined into indomitable steel!
“I shall become a GOD!”
The nameless man stared in horror. “You’re… mad…” The words escaped the his lips before he knew he was speaking.
He expected his words to rouse the [Hollow King]’s ire, but contrary to expectations, the thing’s smile only grew wider.
“Oh?” it asked. “Why, pray tell, do you think me mad?”
The question was obviously a trap, but the nameless man knew this might be his last chance to convince the [Hollow King] to stop.
“Your ritual… It won’t work… It can’t work…”
He barely managed a whisper, and even that much required him to gasp for breath between every few words.
“This ritual… is a lie.”
How did the nameless man know the ritual to be a lie? Because if what the [Hollow King] claimed were true, Gregory would have known about this chamber and its purpose.
By and large, ancient histories were prone to exaggeration and invention. If a six thousand year old former [Champion of Sol] were ignorant about a ritual this monumental, there was a high chance that the ritual — whatever its purpose — had been created sometime in the last six thousand years, and its origins had been fabricated sometime since.
Sure, it was possible that Gregory had simply never been told about the ritual — perhaps because he’d never been crowned [King] — but that chance was relatively low. Besides, there was a far more fundamental reason why the ritual could never work in the way the [Hollow King] believed it would.
“Stolen strength… It destroys you… from the inside out…” The nameless man forced the words out his lips with the very last of his waning strength.
Images flashed through his mind from a life not his own. He’d seen [Priests of Sol] with broken minds and shattered hearts — the inevitable result of shackled divinity escaping its chains. If the [Hollow King] was determined to capture and enslave not just divinity, but the very spirits and souls of once living people, the result could only be orders of magnitude more catastrophic.
“Stolen strength?” The [Hollow King] asked, an edge of danger creeping into its jovial tone. “You’re correct on only one count, little P@^$##*#. The crime is correct, but you have mistaken the criminal for the victim.
“My strength was stolen — stolen by you. Now, justice shall be done. Now, you are destroyed, and I…”
The [Hollow King] took in a deep breath, bracing itself for what it would do next.
It reached out with both hands and grasped the [Couronne Solaire], removing the crown from its pedestal. The floor shuddered, the air grew chill, and the azure flames illuminating the room spluttered and died. The vortex above the crown at first expanded and then collapsed in on itself, crumpling like paper as it was drawn into and absorbed by the crown in its entirety.
The [Hollow King] took in a sharp breath. Its fingers in contact with the crown began smoking. The surface of the crown itself bulged and stretched erratically as the spirits inside were struggling to break free, but the [Hollow King] was undeterred.
Trembling with anticipation, the monster raised the crown high above its head.
“I am made whole.”
It placed the crown upon its head, and the chaos was immediate.
Bands of blinding light erupted from the crown in every direction, carving deep gouges throughout the room. One caught the nameless man in his legs, severing and cauterizing them both beneath the knee.
He screamed. The pain was nearly enough to knock him unconscious, but he hung on. Luckily, the barrage of light was over after only that single volley, and it hadn’t hit him anywhere vital.
The man blinked away his tears of pain and forced his eyes back toward the too-bright center of the room.
The [Hollow King]… it had become something else. It had once been a thing in the shape of a man, but now… Now it was something entirely other.
A heroic frame over eight feet tall, perfectly sculpted muscles shining with internal light, golden hair without apparent beginning or end flowing all around its head like a band of rivers…
A smile with too many teeth, lips pulled wider than should be possible, skin so uniform in color the creature appeared flat, plates of golden armor melded directly into its flesh like the scales of a malformed fish, two vertical golden eyes on either side its head, the silhouette of a skin-covered crown enfleshed directly upon its brow, membranous insectile wings whose every cell held the face of a spirit with eyes sewn shut and mouth pinned into a twitching smile…
It was magnificent beyond compare, and it was misshapen beyond recognition. Upon its form the Perfect and the Abhorrent intermingled so intimately as to become one and the same.
The nameless man’s mind nearly broke at the sight of it. He tried to scream, but he hadn’t the air.
“Finally!” the golden monster bellowed, its voice like a dozen people all screaming at once. The smile-holding pins jutting from its wings pulled and shifted as it spoke, forcing the attached faces to mouth along with the monster’s words.
It breathed deep, subtly draining its surroundings of color as its own luster grew. Its already wide grin grew even wider, expanding beyond the boundaries of its head.
“This feels better than even I expected, and my power only grows by the second.”
It raised a hand high above its head and clenched it into a fist, reveling in its newfound strength.
It chuckled darkly to itself, the sound of it disconcertingly slimy and lascivious. It lowered its fist and began to approach the nameless man with slow, regal steps.
Its next words came like thunder.
“IN MOMENTS, I WILL BE A GOD! I WILL BE THE ONLY GOD!” it boomed. The tips of its smile continued to stretch and curve up into a ‘U’ shape twice the width of its head.
“EVERY MORTAL WILL BOW BEFORE ME, AS IS THEIR PLACE, AND I WILL STAND ABOVE THEM ALL, AS IS MINE!”
“TODAY MARKS THE BEGINNING OF A NEW YEAR ZERO, AND THIS NEW AGE SHALL BEAR MY NAME, FOR IT BELONGS TO ME, AND TO ME ALONE!”
The monster ceased its march three paces from the nameless man’s prone form. It raised its arms wide, posing like a [Priest] gesturing for its congregation to stand, or perhaps a deity commanding the earth itself to rise.
The tips of the abomination’s expanding smile finally met and merged high above its head. Its mouth now formed a grinning oval, a gruesome halo of teeth and lips joined to the creature at its jaw.
“WELCOME WORLD, TO THE AGE OF—!”
Before the creature could speak its name, it coughed, and out of its mouth came a heterogeneous mixture of red, black, and gold blood. The semi-coagulated fluid splattered all over the floor and the nameless man.
The creature blinked its vertical eyes in surprise. Tentatively, it parted its ring of lips to speak again.
“Welcome world, to the age of—KEUGH!”
Again, foul effluvia splattered everywhere, and the creature bent over as if struck.
It quickly recovered, clenching its teeth and bracing itself to speak again.
“The Age of—!”
PLEUSCHE!
The thing’s head exploded in size. Like a loaf of scored sourdough in the oven, its head expanded and split in an ‘X’ pattern, briefly doubling in size and revealing its internal viscera before the monster grabbed its own head with two hands and squished it back down to size.
Slowly, it removed its palms from over its eyes, and it looked down at its now-bloody hands.
“Where’s the rest of it?” it asked quietly. The words came out calm, but the nameless man could tell that the creature was simmering with anger.
“Where’s the rest of it?” it hissed again, and the nameless man belatedly realized the thing was talking to him.
“The… rest?” he asked, still having trouble finding the breath to speak.
“WHERE’S THE REST OF ME?” it screamed, grabbing the nameless man by the collar and pulling him up to the level of its eyes. “WHERE’S THE REST OF MY POWER? WHERE’S THE REST OF MY HEART? WHERE IS MY NAME? WHERE? WHERE?!? WHERE!?!?!?”
With its free hand, it punched the wall next to the nameless man’s head.
“WHERE-IS-IT-WHERE-IS-IT-WHERE-IS-IT!?! WHY CAN’T I SPEAK MY NAME? WHY DO I STILL HUNGER? WHY DO I FEEL SO… So… so…”
“Hollow?” The nameless man finished the creature’s question without thinking, but as soon as the word left his mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake.
The creature snarled, and its boiling rage manifested into a swarm of boiling eyes that formed, bubbled, and popped all over the left side of its face. It screamed and threw the nameless man toward the center of the room, sending him crashing into the stone pedestal.
The nameless man hit the pedestal back-first, and he felt something crack between his shoulder blades. Everything below his neck went numb and yet burned with pain, and he vomited up more blood than he thought he had left.
The monster was back upon him in an instant, looming over him with an eerie calm settling over its inhuman features.
It was in that moment that the nameless man realized why he’d never been able to think of the [Hollow King] as anything other than a monster.
Staring into the thing’s innumerable gilded eyes, he realized that the creature before him had never been [King] Richard Kingsblood V. That man had died the day the gods disappeared. The abomination before him now was nothing more than a rot-pitted corpse covered in a shroud of gold.
“Give me the rest! GIVE ME THE REST! Give me the rest or I’ll kill them all!”
“I… did…”
“LIAR!” What little semblance the creature had to a Human disappeared as its flesh twisted and contorted in a thousand different directions.
The nameless man briefly considered what he could say to convince the creature he was telling the truth, but he soon realized the feat would be impossible. Unless the creature felt completely satisfied with its stolen power, it would assume the nameless man was holding out on it, but no amount of power could ever sate it.
The creature was empty on a fundamental level. It was for that reason the creature could entrap the spirits of others using onomancy, but it was also for that very same reason the creature could never be fulfilled.
“I’ve… given you… everything…”
“LIAR! LIAR! LIAR-LIAR-LIARLIARLIARLIAAAAAAR!”
It screamed so loudly that the air pressure threw the back of the nameless man’s skull into the pedestal.
Having vented a portion of its rage, the creature calmed itself enough to reassert its form. It morphed back into the halo-mouthed thing it’d been before it’s eyes began boiling, and with a flick of it’s wrist it conjured a greatsword of pure goldsteel.
“Let us see how you tell lies without a neck.”
The creature raised its arms to strike at the nameless man’s exposed neck, and the man could do naught but close his eyes and await his end.
He knew there were no gods left to hear him, but still he prayed. It was a prayer not of words but of pure emotion, a desperate plea that someone out there would come and save everyone he’d failed.
He heard no answer to his prayer, but only the sounds of his approaching doom.
The whistle of a blade through air.
The squelch of parting of flesh.
The snap of bone.
The wet burble of a head sliding from its neck and falling to the ground…