Dormant

7

Even though the picture of Strife up above is absolutely beautiful, I couldn't find a way to get his tattoo to be visible.... I can see it but you guys can't really.

But Strife was hard! The only way the artist (Joe Mad) ever drew him that I know of was with a mask; every other one I found had this impression that Strife has this tiny little, girly pointed nose. His mask has a hook nose so I was like 'weeeeelllllllll, he must have one too.'

Sorry if this late guys!
Or if you don't like Strife's nose!

..... I think it fits him perfectly. Arrogant jackass XD

Now can these broken wings free me,
About a light-year from reality,
If you want to fall in a dream,
You could put the weight right onto me,
Here we are,
Running circles, around around around around,
When nothing's right,
just close your eyes,
Close your eyes and you're gone.

-Beck, Dreams

7

Smoke and blood filled the air with a pungent smell, causing a queasy feeling to grow in his stomach. It stained everything; the ground was colored a deep red and the smoke made the visibility shorter than only a few feet in front of him. He had seen blood before, he had seen severed limbs before, he had seen broken and beaten souls that begged for forgiveness before. He had seen things that had scarred even Death.

But killing his own race took a toll on him more than he had ever thought that it could.

Standing before Absalom, the leader and First Born of the Nephilim, Death felt more courage with the bone white mask on his face, hiding his features from the Nephilim that he had once trusted everything too, even down to his very soul. He knew for a fact that the only thing visible on his countenance was his eyes; the vivid orange color radiating from the pale contrast of the skull. And time didn't stop like everyone always said it would when something this important happened. The fighting continued, Nephilim died, the blood was spilled, the world turned. But, as everything continued, nothing moved between the two. They were too scared too. There was a good twelve foot radius of opened space around Absalom and Death besides from the occasional dead body that was flung into their space. Otherwise, anything that stepped between them would have been destroyed. It wouldn't have mattered what side they were fighting on either.

It was just him and Absalom.

But then it wasn't, the scene evaporating into fog and ash to turn into flailing limbs. The large shadow of Absalom stretched, flinging out into a completely different form. Long, whip-like limbs swung around him, smashing into the ground and just appearing through the fog randomly, not allowing Death to count how many were there. He took a step back right before one of the limbs crash down into the ground before him. Sand and ash were both flung up into the air, blinding him, and he was completely unprepared for when he was struck in the side. A jarring pain flashed up through his side, pulling mostly at his shoulder. He yelped and found himself failing to cartwheel out of danger like he could normally. His shoulder just hurt too much. Crashing into the ground, he tried to ignore the pain long enough to turn to look at the beast that all he could see of was limbs.

More of the limbs seemed to appear from the shadows, swirling from the smoke into shapes and forms of the flailing limbs. When another collided into him, flinging him up into the air before he was struck once more, he recognized where he had seen them before. The ash. His breath was knocked clean out of him as he landed roughly upon his back. Pain splintered through most of his body at this point and he marveled at how real that this dream was -did all humans dream like this?