"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 devils court yard was hellishly blackened beneath the piercing, frightful gaze of Sin. The knower, ever the quiet beast, occasionally moved its pale milky eye from one corner of Attahelm to the other. Rose still could not shake the horrible, cold feeling that Sin was watching her and always had been. She wondered if the knower was true to its name. In the dark, over the charred trees, the courtyard lay. Stealthily in the dark haunts, Rhazien and Rose snuck around the perimeter and trudged up a mound to give themselves a better view. They lay in the dirty on their bellies, obscuring themselves with the dead bramble. All while the winds blew.
Rose coughed quietly.
"The wind is—" "Poisonous I know." She squinted up the brown-tinged fog. "I'm going to die anyway." Rhazien's face set. "You speak so lightly of death as though he were a friend." Just then, she caught a glimpse of a sea of shadows and inclined her head towards them. "I speak lightly of him because I have met him." Oh death had made himself a fine throne in a dead city made from old vines and thorns. King of death and bone, Rose thought as the Flesh eater king himself stepped out of the swath of shadows like a new found God. The dark seemed to grow darker, the trees seemed to bend in the pendulous, pungent air. He stood— "Why is he naked." Rose whispered, shocked and flushed. "Vampyrs don't train in full battle armor, we don't actually need it. Mortal weapons can't kill us."
Rose glanced at the double-bladed battle axe he held in his hand, the weapon so large she wondered how he could manage to hold it. He can hold it, stupid, he's a Vampyr. The Flesh eater king had the build of a god. Pounds of raw muscle, blue black veins pulsing from his arms and neck. The wax shells of his gleaming, slick chest and stomach seemed to contract with each powerful step. He was carved from beings not of this world, he was a portrait of sin. He was sin. He was a force of lust and pleasure, born to seduce and destroy. That pulsing ache to feel him beckoned along with the chilling desire to gut him with a grin. How can you want to fuck and kill someone at the same time, literally. Dean stopped abruptly in the middle of the courtyard, the predatory shift of his head as it angled to the side made Rose's stomach water. And the slow flare of his nostrils, the wet curl of his lip.
"We need to go," Rhazien said, startled. His gaze fixed on Dean. "Why?" "He's going to scent you." Dean let his head twist back towards the ring with a hard role of his shoulders. "It's fine, see. He turned around." Rhazien still didn't let his muscles relax. From the sodden earth, the mounds around Dean churned and lifted from the ground, morphing into Vampyrs with no armor either. Their skin was brown from the soil, rich and textured like mahogany statues. They were huge, standing at ten feet tall. "Gladiatei giants," Rhazien said softly. "They're an extremely rare breed of monsters that are made from the soil. Hel is a living organism, you see. You must have noticed the castle play tricks on you." "One time I came out of the bath and my room was upside down." Rhazien breathed a laugh. "The castle is quite fond of you. But yes, Hel isn't just a place, it's a thing. The Gladiatei giants are like its children. They die and return to the soil to be remade."
