The Second Carpenter

LIX

LIX_I_Beautiful­_Scars

Galah'aasu was not overwhelmed enough by her newfound human imperfections as to take a questionably long time staring at an empty sky in the middle of a dying crowd just to get over a sense of guilt which was incidentally also caused, at least partly, by her newfound human imperfections; or was it?

As soon as she realized she was needed - which she should have already known, but still did not take her too long - Galah'aasu, who was both physically and mentally incapable of fighting, again, due to her newfound human imperfections, risked her life to carry wounded men from the middle of the ever-enclosing circle of the battlefield to the tent to young Hipniya to work her science on. The barrier which held back vampire and demon and Paragan alike had been up for a while. Now they were fighting those left inside. Too many. Gareil noticed quite early on the danger Galah'aasu was putting herself in, roaming the battlefield to help, without any intention of fighting to defend herself if need be. He had no intention of stopping her. Unlike a mother's selfish overprotective approach that prevents the child from risking himself into progress by selfishly limiting him to ease her own mind, Gareil cared more for her lover's true calling than his own want of her remaining beside him.

Or maybe he just did not have the mental capacity to worry about an entire army in general and her girlfriend in particular at the same time. I do not know.

"Violet!" Gareil yelled, "Did you make sure that the majority of the enemy forces were outside the circle before summoning the barrier?"

"No, but I should have."

"What?!"

"Look, I've been in a lot of secret operations and less collectively tactical types of combat, but this is my first time fighting a full-blown war. I understand that I might have made a mistake, but I was fighting at near-sonic speed. You can't expect my decisions to have one hundred percent success rate when I have literal nanoseconds to make them."

Galah'aasu was no longer invincible. She did get scratched repeatedly, but she still managed to carry . . . it, to the tent. A mutilated Paragan. Hipniya, dear Hipniya, overwhelmed by her sense of equal love toward the entirety of creation, completely endorsed the sentiment of altruism toward a fallen enemy, not knowing that the creature in the tent was from a world for the avoidance of which her Goddess had drowned an entire continent to avoid the inevitable; for the creation of a possibility to come afterwards, whether knowingly or otherwise.

As they mutually worked on healing it, it gained power of a new world and a reaffirmation of its loyalty to the horde. Accelerated by its own advanced biology, its healing process was quick, after which it left the tent and charged toward Gareil in a fraction of a second.

A vision of a decision that would be made to give her a vision showed Galah'aasu the prospect of her lover being crushed by her stupidity, and that was the moment that she made the decision.

Arguably sadly, in his blissful ignorance, Gareil had no knowledge of this upcoming transition. Seeing things from his perspective, Galah'aasu came out of the tent following the Paragan that for some reason had raged out of the tent instead of into it, and she momentarily looked on in a dramatically pathetic state. Her eyes in disbelief and incapacity of the downfall of the ethical values that had driven her to her previous decision, her once vampirically invincible skin gloriously wounded and soiled by blood, dirt, and tears. My perfect darkness. There it was, newfound balance, remnant of the epitome of unconditional chaos which had survived through even such fundamental transition. My vampire, my woman, my girl, my darkness. My perfect darkness.

Forgive me, my love; I have to save you. Galah'aasu charged forward. With inhuman speed. With white hair. With wounds gone.

My perfect darkness?