Music
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Foul Prince, even as you sway across the skies, I dance with the stars…
The sky winked yellow. The screams of the burning echoed across Haense, the demon army of the Carrion Prince besieging the grand city.
And as your stolen purses and crowns glint, I fall.
The Prince walked towards him. Remon readied his blade, swung - and his steel was met with fiery anger, sending him spinning down the mountainside. But he kept his footing, and his blade.
I pray to you, O’ Third-Eye. To your gaze.
He grasped his sword tighter, and went for the personal guard of the Demon. One strike took one in the neck, killing it. Another approached him, and his blade glided through the beasts arm, then into his chest. Remon laughed for glory..
That it should watch, as I live, fight, slaughter, and die…
A mace, then, caught him in his copper legs, and then in his ribs. He coughed blood and collapsed.
…For there is no better death than the known one.
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The GODs hands are dirtied. Blood drips from the heavens into the waiting maws of man.
Bells rang. Unfamiliar tongues cried out, as masses of warriors began to pour down the mountainside. Remon and Usamea ran for cover underneath the mountain, but Alucard remained outside, calling out in meek greeting, even as the storm clouds gathered..
Lo! As we are the will of the GOD in all things, we are absolved, no matter the sin.
The sky flashed red. A bolt of hellish red lightning left Alucard a smoking stain upon the rock.
Our existence is foretold, our work divine.
Remon and Usamea, on the verge of being cornered, dashed out into the forest. Usamea only took a few steps before the lightning took her too, melting her flesh and scattering her ashes.
What are you, base Prophet? You open your mouth, speak the word of the GOD, and out spews blood.
Remon huddled underneath a tree, unable to understand, to comprehend. How could it all end so quickly? So mercilessly? Even as he gazed up to the skies, saw the ire of the Karkosan Demons reach him, he was uncomprehending. Even as his blood boiled out of his body, as his skull imploded, as he was reduced to smoke and scraps of rattling armor, he could not understand..
He could never understand.
In life, we die. In death, we live. We are the anger of the GOD.
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But I have struggled for so long, and my sword has claimed so many a being, that I separate the sword from the arm. To kill with it is to displace the violence. The cutting, the hewing, all of it is done by something else, someone else's creation. When I punch someone with my fists, beat them into a bloody pulp, it feels as if someone else is doing the swinging. The world has grown so blurry, An-Gho, and I feel so out of place, so foreign, so very fundamentally wrong that the act of murder has become separate from the soul. The extinguishing of the mortal coil of another is merely the trimming, the cleaning of my own. The screaming is my screaming, the blood my blood. There are no souls but mine.
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Remon stood, absentmindedly staring at the bubbling lava to his left.
"I was planning to slit my throat tonight, but I may embed myself within the Ibleesian cults.. they've a va-"
"Stop." The An-Gho cut over him.
"Stop fighting."
"Accept it. Accept yourself, Remon. Look at me."
Remon did not move.
"I said, look at me."
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Remon stumbled into the sunrise. The sun ate at his spectral flesh.
I love you.
The warmth caressed him. Remon looked to his fingers, saw them fading..
I feel that if you die, I may lose faith in love.
Remon fell to his knees, the glorious sunlight eating away at him. Still, he crawled along the mountain.
Stop.
He stopped, looked at the distance, and realized the impossibility.
Oh well. At least I'll die with a good view.
He looked over the ocean below, a vanishing ghost, and pondered. He thought of Luthriel, of Alucard, of the An-Gho.
I am sorry. I should have committed more to this struggle against the World, but.. how could I? It's too beautiful.
With that last thought, Remon died.
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