"My, my, love. Are you sure you want to leave such a cruel world behind?"
Far beyond the horizon, clouds gathered-throbbing, budding, menacing. Time was slipping through their fingers. "What can be worse than this?"
A slow, wicked smile split his fa...
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The twilight and dead night, the gloaming and soft decay only served as a reminder of what he had witnessed not so long ago. A world of wonders very, very far away. A world that made his own so painfully bleak, he became hyperaware of it. The darkness, the bleakness, the rotting. He shook his head, willing his mind to a sense of stoicism. What kind of plague was that girl, she'd spent but four days in his home and she had managed to crawl under his skin twice. Managed to...arouse him. And piss him off too. He needed to kill her soon or she might just be his undoing. Aerogmoth was tugging him, pulling back his thoughts and exposing them as if they were dry bone. The mountain's belly was the worst, thrumming with the High Arches' power, though their rulers were nowhere to be seem. Their rulers rarely made an appearance safe for their unrelenting gaze in the sky. Only one Vampyr in history had seen their faces and he was never seen again. But Dean could always feel them watching...their gazes crawling over him. Lingering like a curse.
As Dean passed under a glittering onyx archway, he pressed two fingers to his brow and bowed. The archway of Ra, their beloved god. Even though the gods had long since left them stranded here. He approached a set of stone carved doors that sensed his approach and opened, black smoke trickled out and swallowed him. Squiggly things, crawling things, slithering things jerked and twisted where he stepped. The floor slimy and wet with tentacles and half-breed creatures that hissed at his feet. Flanking the massive hall were figures so tall they rose above eighty feet. One might mistake them for statues if it wasn't for the light tilt of their heads as he passed. Each with a grimy, brown-black robe and skulls with horns for faces. Their size was terrifying, their gazes much, much worse. The grotesqueries of the hall only got worse as he passed, pale humanoid-spider creatures with twenty eyes and seven mouths, faceless monsters that screeched among one another. Long limbed tentacle things with wide black eyes and a smile that would make so many absolutely terrified. There was more in the dark that he could not see and perhaps that was the most terrifying realization of all. The cold, the darkness, not seeing things for what they truly are. The monsters that lurked between. Things that watched at the edge, things that came out to play when evil tugged at their reigns.
Dean came to a table and found every lord seated around. His confusion must have shown because Astaroth, who he had originally agreed to see, smiled at him with that hideous smile that cut his cheek bones into unnaturally sharp points. There was something wrong with his face, there was something wrong with all of them, but Astaroth in particular. His sharp, unnaturally high cheek bones, his oval, clean cut face. The way his black hair shimmered and sat in one massive sweep over his head. Dean couldn't comment, either. He used a glamour to hide his true form. They were all monsters, some just hid their nature better than others. "Glad you could join us, brother," Astaroth bellowed in that annoying, goading voice. "Care to explain what this is?" Dean said, taking a seat beside Jairus. Astaroth waved a dismissive hand. "Bring her out."
One of the pale humanoid-spider creatures clattered out, its legs, tipped with little pincers, tapping against the stone and squelching over the slimy eyeless wyrms on the floor. In its claws was a girl, no older than seventeen with bright red hair— Dean's undead heart nearly lodged itself in his throat. But then the curtain of her hair fell from her face and Dean found himself slacking back into his seat. Not Rose. Rose's hair was a touch darker, leaning to burning red orange. This girl's hair was unnatural, dyed. What an odd sensation, the feeling of the floor beneath his feet giving way, his heart—the thing he has never felt beat once—stammer. He's never felt that before, he shouldn't have felt that. The feeling made him angry, disgusted. Not Rose. "And who is this?" he bit, letting his own anger curl around his words. "A Vesen." The lords looked taken back but not surprised. Aramastus, a man who was three centuries younger than Dean, leaned over the table and said, "So?" "So?" Astaroth began "My Servitors found her at the entrance of Hel, trying to flee. She was sane, the caves did not break her mind." "And again, I ask, so?"
