Predator's Prayer: For Whom the Bell Tolls

[Slayer of the Rot]

The firebolt screamed past his head like a dragon's brutal sigh. He could smell the stink of burning hair as he turned his head to look over his shoulder at the elf that had launched it at him from its flute sword. Smoke still curled from the blade, coiling serpentine around the peaks of its ears. Dan scowled and swung his sword-mace underhanded in a rising arc in his direction as he continued to sprint towards their leader. The bladesinger had a second to smile arrogantly before the soil at his feet erupted in razor sharp stone spikes and skewered him in two dozen places. The Saraelian himself almost found himself lapsing into careless, sneering confidence before he noticed the frigid crystals growing under his running feet. He flicked his fingers off the hilt of his freshly summoned kodachi just as the ice sprang in full, trying to capture and hold him. The ground churned and twisted though, shattering and breaking the ice, yet allowing him traction. It paid to have a blood bond with stone and dirt.

Magic stirred from the ring embedded in his chest, and the kodachi's blade grew. He swept the fresh prevalida through another elf's neck as he passed it, flicking the blood off with a flourish that looked like nothing more than an after thought. It had been more than a decade since he'd fought Bladesingers, and then, they'd nearly killed him. He'd been human then, though. Plus, he had the experience now to know that only an idiot would let them harmonize - which they already were beginning to do. He'd killed two, but the eight left were still more than enough.

Dan raised his sword mace high and brought the tip down on the ground hard. A column of stone burst upwards and he slammed his feet down in a halt, swiping the mace across the stone all in one fluid motion. He shaped the broken rocks into crude knives mid-flight, meant to rip the head Bladesinger to pieces. The elf barely flinched; it brought its twin drum-maces together in a thunder clap that shook the knives to dust and rattled the Saraelian's bones. The elf's didn't even change expression as - without missing a beat - he continued to pound the percussive weapons together in a steady melody that the other weapons were quickly joining.

For an absurd, and enormously infuriating moment, Dan felt like a beast caught in the hunt, being volleyed back and forth between the hunters, frantically seeking an exit in the narrowing field. Violent fury erupted within him, like a match touched to pitch, and an enraged bellow ripped out of his lungs, made all the more impressive as he unconsciously shook the earth under their feet. A smile carved itself across his face when he realized the abrupt cacophony had widened the gap to their impending harmonization. He spun around and ripped a massive stone from the ground and launched it at one of the closest of the bladesingers. The elf stepped forward and blasted it to pieces with a flourish of his hornblade. Growling, Dan sliced his nodachi through the air in a circular motion, and the pebbles shot back into one central point - the elf's head. He heard a rewarding, wet crunch as he turned away.

"This is fun. I haven't gotten to kill elves since Xem'zund's big party. Why don't we do this more often?" The mention of the Forgotten One did nothing to shake the Bladesingers; they simply kept swinging and pounding their weapons. Dan pointed the nodachi at the leader of the merry band, and if any of them blinked, they'd have missed the mystifying second the sword changed to a darker, strangely shaped, flat tipped blade. Squeezing the new trigger, he emptied every chamber in the gunblade at the bladesinger with the drum-maces. The bullets hit, but didn't - there was the briefest of moments when the living color left the elf - the gold in his hair, the pink of his skin - and he went icy blue, tendrils of mist twisting from the body like smoke, before he appeared just a few inches to the left.

"Mother fuckin'-" The elf had slipped into the astral plane for just the briefest of moments between beats. He may as well have been spitting at the bastard. Clenching his sharp teeth, he flicked his wrist hard to the right, snapping the gunblade's cylinder out. The spent shells vanished and were replaced with new bullets in the span of a breath without even letting go of his sword mace.

"Too late Demon." Their voices blended together in the melody, all six, backed by and vibrating with pure song magic, waiting to be shaped on tongue. The power rose in the harmony and he recoiled as though slapped in the face; he could taste it on his tongue, as sweet and bitter as strong golden honey, burning his nose with the smell of grass, dead leaves, cold snow, warm rain. He clicked the cylinder back into the gunblade and looked around at the joined Bladesingers, really feeling like a hunted beast with no way out, now. Sapphire and ivory light flashed in their eyes and at their lips.

"Fuck me running."

[Slayer of the Rot]

The chorus rose, burning with the intensity of their joined power and the joy they felt in the chorus. It grew until it felt like his eyes would boil inside of his skull and his ears would gush with blood. It scorched at his nose like strong chemicals - was this a strategy, too? Overload his senses and make him so paralyzed with the power that he couldn't dodge the oncoming storm, so that killing the Red Beast was as simple as swatting a fly. Gritting his teeth together, he snapped his arms up at his side, curling them in to each other, pulling the earth up beside him in two rough, rectangular stone walls. He repeated the motion, pulling two more up, then turned his hands in a circle, like he was closing a jar lid. The stone at the tops of the walls flowed like clay and shut him inside of his own personal cell, surrounding himself with his own Terran magic. It was a brief and wonderful respite - the elves' powerful magic no longer ate at him, and he felt the cool earth around him, touching him like familiar, soothing hands, filling his nose with the rich, earthy scent that calmed his mind. It reminded him so much, and too much, of Claire. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the memories of her wash over him, bringing him both pain and happiness at once. He'd broght these bladesingers on himself.

Their song rang out and meshed together, like fingers wrapping around one another, joining in unison, and above the stone cell, a pulsing orb of brilliant white and blue forming, crackling with power. The grass around them began to grow dry and brown, wet and cold, the trees shivering and losing their verdant color as they pulled energy and life from them to summon up the power to, once and for all, kill one of the greatest monsters Althanas had ever seen. With each second that passed, the blinding orb grew and swelled, greedily sucking in power as the music roared to its crescendo. And when finally the song grew to its peak, the bladesingers brought the power down upon stone and flesh, ripping the little shelter into peices in an explosion of intense light that made even the elves shut their eyes. The stone utterly disintegrated, breaking into gravel, then dust, then nothing, and ripped at the soil beneath, searing it, blackening it, and making sure nothing ever grew upon the spot again; a fitting grave marker to the monster, the traitor, the abbheration.

"Miss me, chickadee?" Fingers wrapped like cast iron around the lead bladesinger's ankle. He had the moment to look at the hand, and saw gold and onyx stones sunk into the flesh before the bulging eyes met the overjoyed, mismatched gaze of the Red Beast. Dan yanked the elf out of the air, breaking the chorus, and fell upon him like a starved beast. Fingers and sharp teeth shredded and tore at skin, and the elf screamed in pain and surprise and fear, until Dan bit his throat out and swallowed it in a great greedy gulp. His fingers wriggled into flesh, thrusting down into bloody places, until he had a hold of the ribs. With a grunt and a strong tug, he snapped it open and ate from bundles of intestines to bitter liver and slick stomach flesh until he was at the heart, pumping its last beats. His teeth sheared into the thick muscle, coating his face in blood, sending it cascading down his hair and shirt. The song stopped as a bloody, dismembered arm was tossed casually into the center of the ring the bladesingers had formed. Dropping the mauled corpse, he stood, and stepped into the broken circle. They stunned by the savagery, and practically paralyzed by the wave of melodic back feed that was rippling through all of them, causing their instruments to vibrate and hum with dischordant vibrations. Smiling, he raised his hand, and the gunblade disappeared, replaced by a twitching titanium knife.

The Blade of Death did half the work for him - all he had to do was run and get to the elves. A thing possessed, its swung and snapped his arm to and fro, aiming for the heart and throat everytime and butchering anything that got in its way. Some of them managed to shake off the feedback in time to pull their own weapons up in a feeble parry that the hungry knife slapped away, so that it could bury itself deep in their necks. It pulled hungrily on their veins, gorging itself on elf blood, trying to resist being pulled from their chests or throat each time he moved onto the next. It twisted and writhed, causing sloppy work, but the weapon was as hungry and full of wrath as he was. The last of the bladesingers, shaken awake at the sight of the corpses of his friends, managed to block two of the blows, before the blade snapped aside and severed his hand at the wrist, taking his hand and weapon off. Dan sent the blade away before it could leap for the elf's neck, denying it its fill. the last one backpedalled, stumbled, and nearly fell before the slayer snatched the front of his robes and pulled him against his body, his bloody breath washing over his pale, thin face.

"Why did you fuckers attack me? Why are you trying to kill me?" The last bladesinger looked around in horror, at the splashes and spurts of blood cooling on the leaves and grass, at the burned earth, at his bitten and broken dead commander. Finally, he stared into Dan's blue and gray eyes, and drew in a deep, deep breath. The flesh at his throat glowed brightly and suddenly, mystic gold and bright arterial red, and the slayer could even see his vocal cords inside flexing in preparation. Dan shoved him back and lifted stones off the ground, molding them into thick concave disks and clapping them around his ears with his hands.

Some people called it a Trumpet Call - the ones that saw it, survived it, and went completely deaf. The bladesingers called it a Pure Note, a note sung out loud, enforced with energy from the body, without inflection or impurity, one that nothing living and mortal should ever hear in its life and walk away to speak of the majesty. It was the swan song, the last thing they ever sang in their life. The last bladesinger released it after the light surged into his lungs, burning bright beneath his skin, and the air around him shuddered, rippled, slammed into Dan and sent him tumbling backwards onto his backside, shattering the hasty insulation he'd made. The elf burst into a blinding cloud of gold and ivory and then was gone, vaporised. The note had been muffled to him, so he still couldn't say he'd ever heard it and walked away, but even dampened, he could feel the cracks in his ribs, the blood flowing out his broken nose and damaged ears. Splinters of rock peppered his fingers and palms. He groaned, and heard it distantly - he'd saved his hearing, even though he couldn't hear a damn thing too well at the moment. His ears would heal along with the rest of him. He blinked at the dark spots in his vision, and glanced at the Etherband on the back of his hand. All of the stones were black.

He wanted answers, and it looked like he was walking to Raiaera.

[Slayer of the Rot]

The man crumpled to the ground with a pitiful gasp. The sun bled out into the horizon, dying into dusk. It was little comfort that he would not be the only one to drift off into the Antifirmanent this evening. The sun would rise, renewed like a phoenix, in the morning. He would not. Slowly, Dan lowered himself to a knee to draw closer to his latest victim. Sometimes bad things happened to pilgrims as they made their journey. It was a risk the pious made when they stepped out of their temples or monasteries. The roads and the forest crawled with cut throat bandits and bloodthirsty mercenaries just as it did with starved wolves and watching snakes. But every once in a while, the worst of it all would fall upon their heads. Something with a blacker soul than a cold hearted, desperate man, and with bigger teeth than any predator skulking in the underbrush.

The pilgrim's hat flopped off his head as his long hair fell about his shoulders and the dirt. Dan had not come at him with the same savagery as he had with the Bladewalkers, but he had not made the elven man's death very comfortable. Mercy made a man sloppy. Still, it wasn't a kill he could enjoy, and the pilgrim could see the frustration written on his pale face. There was always something different about killing a man who was following orders, or wanted to see him dead, and killing the innocent. It felt a little too dramatic to say that each time he did, he felt a piece of his soul. It wasn't that at all.

He didn't enjoy it, but he was starting to feel some damned piece of him starting to like it.

Dan had never wanted to become a monster. He never wanted to be hated or beloved. He only wanted his family, but then Claire died and Meredith vanished. When he'd been younger, brasher, he'd laughed at it, but now he knew how true it really was; take away a man's child, and you give him nothing left to live for.

The pilgrim coughed, and the blood began to slow. Dan kept his cold eyes, ice and stone, settled on the dying man's own. Fingers gripped desperately at his sleeve, but there was nothing he could do, even if he wanted to try to change things and save the man. He taught himself with the sword, not the salve. He kept his expression flat, quiet, stoic as he began to work. There was little time to waste; it was too dangerous to look like Dan Lagh'ratham anymore. He placed his fingers of his face and began to break bone, reshaping his face to mimic the dying elf's. He reached over his shoulder and tugged at his hair, and it grew down to his shoulders, fading from black, to gray, to silver at his touch. Flicking the tips of his ears, they rose into thin peaks. The bulge of muscle beneath his dark clothing dropped, his body slimming, until the Cremation Suit hung loosely from his hips, ribs, and shoulders. Dan reached out, and picked up the wide, flat brimmed hat, and settled it carefully on his head.

Dan paused to wait for the pilgrim to die. Gasping shallowly, the pilgrim clutched the little yellow thane idol hanging around his neck from a crude iron chain. Blinking slowly, he stared into strange eyes set into his own face. "May...Y'edda have mercy....on your soul." A tremor ran through his body, and with a short breath, he was gone. The slayer was still for some time, before he reached for the idol, then hesitated, and raised his hand to the dead man's face, closing his eyes.

"If I still got one."

[Slayer of the Rot]

It wasn't often that he gave anyone the consideration of a burial. His wake of shredded and broken bloody corpses had given him his well known name, after all; The Red Beast. His enemies had always been left to rot wherever they fell. But the pilgrim hadn't been an enemy, only a resource, and oddly, he felt a strange twinge of guilt at the prospect of leaving the elf's stripped corpse in the road. Looking back on it, it was more likely instinct telling him it would be best to cover his tracks, but at the moment, each time he tried to step away, he found himself looking over his shoulder at the body.

He carried the dead elf over his shoulder off the road and out into the field parallel to it. The long, pale grass brushed at his legs with each step he took. Dan counted out a hundred paces and stopped, looking back to the road. Not a single soul coming from east or west, neither on foot or hoof. Turning his eyes back to the ground, he made four sweeping motions in the air, then lifted. A rectangle of soil, nearly perfect, rose up into the air. Crumbles of dirt sifted back down into the hole he'd created. With little sense of ceremony, Dan tossed the elf off his shoulder with a shrug. The corpse tumbled down into the pit, slack limbs flailing, and hit the bottom with a thud. It laid on its side, long silver hair covering its face. The elf looked almost like it was merely sleeping. Without a frown or a smile, Dan lowered the the dirt back down into the grave, and it was done. No one but the stars and Dan Lagh'ratham knew the end of the man's pilgrimage. For a fleeting moment, he felt the urge to say something, but he ignored it, leaving the wind in the tall grass to sing a sermon.

He got no further from the grave than five steps when the pain dropped him to his knees.

A wordless bellow pushed out from his lips. He grabbed at his chest; the sudden agony started at his heart, but in a few moments, it had begun to spread outward, until he could feel it in his fingernails. With every beat of his heart, it grew in ferocity, until the grass and the sky was tinged with color, pulsing neon yellow and toxic green. His head began to spin, and he clutched it with his other hand.

"What's wrong, little brother? Do you have a tummy ache?" Gritting his teeth, Dan looked up to find his near mirror image standing before him, smirking.

"Derium..." His brother's smirk shifted into a malicious smile. They were twins (when Dan was not impersonatic dead elves, that is), but Derium was the more narcissistic of the two, and it showed. He looked younger than Dan, his face free of those near-omnipresent dark circles and the emerging crow's feet in the corner of his eyes. Put side to side, they looked like prince and pauper.

"I was wondering when it would happen," Derium said casually, beginning to pace around his little brother. He sounded triumphant. "Did you really think you could betray every living thing in this world and get off, scot-free?" With a growl, Dan took a swipe at him, but his heart literally wasn't in it; another beat, and another wave of pain, and he nearly sagged face-first into the ground.

"What the fuck are you talking about? What did you do to me?!" He dug his fingers into his chest, but he was given no reprieve. The pain was so intense, that he didn't even notice that it was beginning to relax.

"I didn't do anything. You did this to yourself. You accepted it. Remember." Dan struggled through the pain, feeling the anger pushing him to his feet. He hated Derium's cryptic nonsense, but he still thought the words over in his head. Remember...what he'd accepted...it took him a few moments, but suddenly, it hit him like a warhammer wielded by a minotaur. Before the war, before he called himself Kross. Before he killed Cydonia, before he betrayed Skie dan Sabriel. He'd had a dream, a dream of ancient voice talking to him, wanting him. The voice of Xem'zund, and then his touch. The mark on his heart.

"You gotta be fucking shitting me."

"So eloquently said," Derium laughed, clapping his hands. "The last curse of Xem'zund. To kill his last, traitorous Death Lord. You did kill his wife, after all, one can hardly blame him. I suppose that wasn't his only motive, though he was a revenge oriented man. He probably cast that ticking time bomb on your ticker because he'd planned to kill you and take your face when he was finally laid low. But he's dead now. As a doornail, that is, or at least that's how it appears. Who knows? Maybe he's not, and the next time I see my baby brother Dak'Arsha, he'll be a big bad Forgotten One."

"Get the fuck away from me!" The voice that avalanched out of Dan Lagh'ratham's mouth was as thunderous as an earthquake. In fact, the ground shook beneath them as fury and earthen magic twisted into his voice and slammed into Derium. For once, his brother certainly shut up; in fact, his lips were pressed together so tight his face was losing color, and his eyes bulged. Gasping, Dan's head dropped like a sack of rocks. He kept drawing in labored breaths as he pushed him self back to his feet, and stood.

"Fine. I see what I get when I try to be nice." Scowling, Derium folded his arms over his chest. His entire figure touched pitch black, and the slayer could taste stale air and the bitter sweetness of black licorice. His brother's silhouette faded, and Dan was left alone in the starlit field with the buried elf and his own thoughts.