Beast of the Damned #2

*Chapter Thirty-Six*

~ Tristan ~

I've always known I'm a monster, a beast set apart from the rest. I'm a monster of war, a monster of destruction, a monster whose singular purpose is to spill enough blood to fill the crimson sea. I've done my job well, bathing this world in the red of the innocent, the guilty, and the in-between. Millenniums of trials and tribulations, bones and pyres, and it all comes down to a silence that's shattering scream demands resurrection when there is none to be found. The beating in my chest has fallen still, my heart a useless vessel that houses no purpose other than the one currently covering me.

The freeing splats and sprays from my sword fall upon deafened ears, my body reacting on ingrained mechanical instinct. Spreading through me is a void. A cavernous, empty born plague that ravages my concept of existence. Without Kinley, all I am is a monster without reason.

I knock back the nine angels taking their turns trying to best me, sending out a pulse wave of energy. A headless Dagen has left me for his brethren to pursue the eerie on a Pegasus. Plumes of glitter and ash turn into a dense smog that chokes the senses. The eerie is decimating everything in her wake, a divine punisher of emerald fire who must be stopped.

Nauseatingly sweet yet delectable silver blood mixes with the bitter and rotten taste of the vampirie who've already met their end by the angels' light. Gridlocked in battle, I helplessly watch the celestial trapped inside Kinley being ripped from her. Kinley's feet slip off the ledge of the fortress. Roarra reaches for Kinley, but it is of no use. The spell that bound them together has been severed, a fatal wound that can't be mended. Roarra gets sucked backward, returning to her kingdom in the clouds as a silent-hearted Kinley...

Falls...

Falls....

Falls...

A pelt of a mange-riddled yagkain wraps itself around Kinley mid-air. The two strike the ground. Ruby red trickles out from underneath the massive wad of fur and claws rife with labored breathing. The yagkain's lofty frame gives one last heave before life slips through its open jowls.

A stirring, anguish-filled howl rips through the trudges of war from the yagkain's fellow packmate. It grates through every nerve ending, awakening me to the fact all this hellhound is doing is mirroring the harrowing sorrow of my own morning soul as Neziri lifts the dead demon hound's arm off Kinley.

Ivory skin once flushed with soft peach tones and warmth is now cold and gray. The foul and candied mixture of conflict coating my mouth gives way to smoldering spice. Kinley's sea-green eyes are open, absent the glimmer of light Roarra's presence gifted while her cinnamon honey-blood seeps out from the gash in her forearm decorated with satanic markings.

My kneecaps hit the ground, sword clanking beside me as the weight of my valderan armor cracks the stone floor of the angel's sanctuary. I've seen valleys of corpses, mountains piled high of thoracic spines and feathers, and the soil so saturated it oozes red as if the earth itself was bleeding. I've fought through it all, stood through it all. Kinley got her wish. I'm on my knees.

Nakasha's short swords and Talrek's weapons swoosh and slice beside me. Gurgled moans of blood sputtering and shining light exploding become meaningless. I can feel them closing in, the straining of Nakasha and Talrek's efforts to battle the overwhelming number of celestials that keep multiplying. I'm lost to the battle...to the war, stuck staring at gray flesh.

She did it. She banished Roarra. Her gift of life. Her second chance.

Wrapped in her new heavenly sown flesh, Roarra descends in a ray of light. The hit she delivers to Neziri sends Kinley's sister crashing into the keep. Roarra kneels beside the heap of lifeless bones she once called home, Kinley's soul locked into the deep recesses of her frozen immortal flesh.