A deep, rumbling voice pulls him from his grief.
"Grieve not. You will soon be joining him." The words lack comfort, the words a threat.
It infuriates him to his core. The voice on his shoulder needs not to speak, Lloyd makes the choice himself.
He gives in.
The familiar comfort of metallic indigo floods his system, this time condensed in his chest, spreading outwards like a beautiful infection. This time, Lloyd doesn't just give in. He welcomes the dark power, he accepts it into his soul, his very being. It's overwhelming, in the most sickly-sweet way imaginable.
The only way to describe how he felt, in that very moment, was powerful.
His body lurches around, arms flexing, to face the overlord. Compared to the omnipotent power before him, towering over Lloyd and the body of his father, Lloyd felt small.
No matter.
He charges for the embodiment of evil, hesitation be damned. His power shoots out his palms like fire, spreading like gas, burning and corrupting anything it touched.
Oddly enough, the power had a scent to it. Flowery, and metallic. Almost like a corpse's perfume.
He nears the large crystal, the very one the overlord emerged from. From his peripheral, he sees a figure in the crystal, resembling the shadowed figure the Overlord had been previously reduced to.
"Lloyd!" Harumi's voice calls to him, sounding hasty, trusting, and warning. As he turns to her, a sword whisks past his inhuman form and lodges into the figure of the crystal. "Use the sword!"
He wastes a sparing glance at her, before gripping the handle of the sword with one hand a pulling, dislodging the sword from the now unrecognizable figure and clutching it like a last hope.
It wasn't.
Lloyd charges again, in a blur. His powers become uncontrollable, his movements rash and unpredictable. He swipes wildly with the sword, shooting bursts of dark power whenever he deemed necessary: constantly.
He flashes in and out of a corrupted daze.
One second, the overlord's skin is under his nails and he's shredding, the next, his enemy is rearing up on his hind legs. A powerful force pushes past him, attacking the overlord's exposed stomach. A blood-curdling scream nearly shocks Lloyd from his power craze. Nearly.
The next moment, he and his father are delivering a combined finishing blow to the embodiment of evil.
He explodes in a flurry of lightless dust, his form disbanding. The Overlords' power fades from the land under their feet, threatening to topple the floating island to the ground.
Lloyd hears Harumi shriek, as she's hurled sideways into a cluster of magenta. Before he can stop himself, he's grabbing her, toppling to the nearest roof.
They land, fairly safely, all things considered. The boy's flaxen hair returns, his Oni form finally fading.
He lays there for however long, Harumi beside him.
They do nothing but breathe. The events play over in his mind, over and over until he finally understands what he did.
Lloyd had saved his enemy's life.
Harumi seems to have the same revelation. Her breath quiets, as she prepares to question him.
"Why did you help me?"
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FanfictionLloyd couldn't bare to turn around and face them. He knew that if he looked while he did it, he'd never be able to live with himself. On the other hand, he almost wanted to look. To see the despair and loss of trust in their eyes as he betrayed them...
