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Chel opened her mouth to tell Finn something, but was interrupted part way through by a crack in the ground. "That's weird-" The crack began widening, spreading, branching. Chel had seen enough movies to know where this was going.

What was different was that instead of falling down into the abyss of the tower and inevitably being crushed by boulders and everyone dying, Chel's feet began to levitate. Gently at first, then with increasing speed she was pulled upwards to stairs. She barely remembered the stairs, each one crumbling as she ran- she barely remembered anything of that moment, running fully on adrenaline and a desire not to die. There was no Evan, no Jack, No Finn- only herself.

Seven doors, colors she knew well by now. Everyone was rushing and rumbling into their own doors. "Jack? Evan!" she tried calling, under the slim chance they might hear her. "Finn??" With the noise in the room, her voice probably didn't carry more than a foot, but she still tried.

Pure white, the color of ivory keys on a new piano. Her eyes were drawn to a single door, one that sang of new beginnings, a redo. Not game over, but restarting from a checkpoint.

There was hardly a feeling in her body as she melded with the white mist, fading through the door to another time. Her hand curled around fire, gripping the very essence of the flame. Her vision blurred, and the altar was gone.

---

A battlefield, not unlike the many she'd been on before. The sun was setting over the sea of red, giving the pools of blood a shiny orange tiny, the sun's radiance reflecting in the emptiness.

A guttural cry escaped from Chel, a sharp pain in her stomach. Bodies littered the ground around her. Green hair. A broad sword with teeth and angry red runes. Purple ribbons. Blue scarf. Bodies, blood, body parts, visceral reminders of each and every one of her failures.

Not just hunters, but halloween too. Shun did nothing to prevent her death. Edel lay on the floor, her crystal body shattered into a thousand pieces.

A ghost, standing above her body, plunged another bullet into her stomach.

This wasn't a new beginning, it was a very sharp ending. "Goodnight, Pinky," the ghost whispered, bending down to kiss her. The ghost curled into a misty vapor, and everything went dark.

---

Years later, they still spoke of her. Slowly at first, then very fiercely, a crisp crescendo in prowess.. The fiery pink passionate goddess- no, ancient. Ancient they called her. They hardly remembered the girl underneath the temple statues and talismans. Chel wasn't regarded for her bravery, her heroism.

They called her the Lost. She wasn't a benevolent spirit, but neither was she a malevolent one. She was merely that which existed; the lack of direction. Some prayed to her in times of need, others prayed she might disappear. There was a duality in her spirit, but as far as ancients went she was hardly one regarded with somber respect.

The Lost wandered, aimlessly. Forever. She doomed others to her fate, she led others down the wrong path. Some thanked her for the trip, others were too crippled and broken to say anything.

As time went on, she wasn't even prayed to anymore. Just as none worship time itself, nobody worshipped her. She was the Lost, she was a directionless concept itself.

---

Air filled her lungs and she returned to the world. She hardly felt empowered, she felt even more desolate. Her friends' deaths weighed upon her, but her legacy ... her legacy was horrible. She left nothing but a blemsih on the world. The fact that she imparted sorrow and a duality of lost behaviors troubled her greatly.

Regardless of Chel's alliance to her friends with Penumbra, she was also loyal to Deus. Chel was loyal to multiple things, but her loyalty to the hunters of Deus Ex- not the CAUSE that Deux Ex stood for, but the people- burned brightly. There was no one cause that burned within her more brightly than another, and Chel realized that meant she was aligned to no know. Yet her skin cracked and oozed with a grey taint, her body a swirling mist of hazing sunset golden grey and blue. A mirror was mounted on her arm, Tenebrae far outshining any essence of Chel, the insanity having ripped across her consciousness and devoured anything that remained.

With her current state it was hard to tell where Chel began and where her insanity ended. Which shined brighter, the bright benevolent runes of her bow and arrow, or the virulent, ugly blue that blazed across her eyes. She was no longer Chel. She was lost.

Quote:

Ancient of The Lost
Loyal to Self

Pachua - Blue Door/ Loyal to Self/ Loyal to Self/ Ancient of Sacrifice


Pachua - Blue Door/ Loyal to Self/ Loyal to Self/ Ancient of Sacrifice

Darkness

The heavy dark

The heavy velvet darkness… broken

Broken by stairs that meandered, evenly, carefully measured ‘up’.

They led, only upward, because behind them it started to crumble like ashes and bad dreams. It was slow at first, as though it hesitated, uncertain of its own decision and then, crumbling and falling away with more conviction.

He moved up the stars with a bobbing walk, natural to him though it might have looked more curious to anyone who could have seen him, at least anyone who wasn’t human. The small gestures were entirely to encompass the rise and fall of the wings that were carefully folded over his shoulders, and the long trailing tail feathers, lightly iridescent like a peacock.


Doors, there were doors that seemed to whisper to him, seven doors like seven sins, seven virtues, seventh son. If he had any desire to turn back, it was gone, eaten away by the hungry dark and leaving only emptiness that even wings could not turn into freedom.

He moved between them, cautious, watchful but one, one spoke to him it called to him, He wasn’t sure that he wanted to be a hero, he didn’t think he fit as one, he was too uncertain, too, small too, ordinary too easy to forget.

But he wanted, so desperately to protect, just … to protect, it was an urge that seemed to border on instinct, perhaps it was. It was something that seemed as natural as breathing. Perhaps that was why his family had always expected certain things of him.
Yet, till he had returned here, he had been afraid, he was afraid, afraid to stop being for what had seemed like… no reason, no cause at all.

Now though, now he had, friends. Acquaintances perhaps in more cases than not, that was true, he hadn’t known Amrita before he’d offered up his own core to save her. But he didn’t regret what he had done. He’d been terrified, hands shaking like leaves, heart hammering like it was a drum beat that sought to define the world.

But he’d done it…

He’d done it, and he’d do it again not so that he could be a hero… but so they could be.

Protection, the door seemed to promise that, the blue soothing like water, blue like the mottling on his scales, blue like ghost lights in the eyes of the dead.

The door opened and he slipped within.


There was an altar; there was always an altar, perhaps protection always started at such places, even if they were informal, because someone would be hurt, in small ways, in grand ways… in ways where blood was spilt.

A strange emblem burned there on the altar rather than a fire, it called to him, black like the dagger that had, at least in dreams pierced his core and affixed him to a path he might never turn from again. Blue like the door, like the water into which the dead were surrendered in spirit if not in body.

It called to him, like obsidian.

He reached out to grasp it but his hands were steady this time, he thought briefly, a hummingbird of a thought, that perhaps, just perhaps his parents would have been proud of him in that moment, but it was gone, a brief flash of color and pride chased away as the sigil grasped his consciousness.

The world shifted, it tilted on its axis like a sudden shift of wind when you had to find a new updraft, or beat at the air hard, swallowing up distance into the heavens.
The shadow hung in the air above them, as had happened in dreams it consumed those who touched the crown that spun slowly over its head, so many had vanished with the hope that numbers might overwhelm its ability to lash out and consume them.

Others lay bleeding and broken in the field, man and monsters side by side in a heartbeat of a truce that might not last even to the end of this creature, this horrific remnant that threatened them all, but they could pray.

Perhaps it was those desperate whispers that gave him the will to try, hadn’t they once worshiped some of his own as a god? Had they not done what they could to give hope and fear in equal measure? Life and Death between they and the Jaguars in a faith lost to the ravages of time.

He saw it, a predators gaze finding a sliver of hope in the darkness, hope for them… he knew that. He knew with the rising staccato of his heart as he watched it move that this was the alter on which he would lay down his life, but he must succeed, or his would not be the last blood spilled over the stones today.

There is nobility in sacrifice; they had told him that when he was a fledgling, how angry he had been at the words, how easy it was for them to say such things when it was not them who moved, willingly towards a very definite end.
But perhaps they were right…

Perhaps there was a noble sacrifice, a noble savagery, and a natural order to the world.

He walked forward at first, his legs seemed uncertain if they could bear the weight of him, unsure if they would carry him forward to his destination, so his wings would have to do. His pace quickened, slowly, then with growing certainty like an echo of the steps that he had climbed a lifetime ago.

His wings beat at the air, the tips slapping into the mud and the gore and staining them like war paint, he leapt, and for a terrible moment it seemed he might fall again, but the wind took him, caught him up and carried him as though in that moment it understood what he must do as well as he did.

He plunged into the heart of the beast, not so beautiful as Icarus, more like Talus, who was killed by Daedalus, for this was no sun to melt the wax that pinned his feathers together. He fell, twisting and turning like a star, he seemed to fall forever, and perhaps it was like flying in a way, the decent seemed so slow, it seemed that it might never end.

The creature rose up, it reached up like earth and gravity and jolted him free of that dream of eternity. The world was pain, so much pain, and that was all that rose to catch him, he was dying, but he was not yet dead when they found him in the remains, the dissipating shadow and taint that mottled his skin and stole what of his breath remained.
He reached for them, and they reached back… and yet, he was already gone, all that remained were feathers drifting on the wind.

They kept those traces of him, they raised a statue of him, a great serpent coiled about a stone, wings spread out to shelter those who gathered beneath from the weather, they wore the feathers in their hair and as ornaments, tiny tributes, and with each tiny piece of him that they carried, that they passed on, that they cherished something grew.

A seed at first, a life inside the husk of a life that had been, an idea that was learning how to breathe, how to be. People feared the day they might be the one asked to sacrifice themselves, other cherished the thought that it could happen. They told stories in the dark, the learned to make smaller sacrifices, little exchanges at first, and slowly, greater ones. They defended, and gave up their lives to do so, they were not without fear, nor were those that they saved… but they believed in what they did.

His legacy, took root in the hearts of hunters and hunted alike, and he called them to him, casting out those who were too selfish, to greedy to bend, condemning them to break.

He was a god….

No, he was ancient, timeless, and forged of legacy and blood stained stones.

Protection, the word whispered through the back of his mind, but he had a shape of his own now, he was… Sacrifice, for all the fear and love that it required.

All Evan could see in the moment Chel left his side was bright, rich red, the color of freshly spilled blood. Too apoplectic to put her betrayal into words, he was struck mute and left on his own to find his equilibrium. If she hadn't wanted to lose him, she shouldn't have thrown him away. It was his own fault, as usual, for letting her get too close, for losing his focus, for forgetting where his priorities lay.

Fortunately, Evan wasn't given much time to dwell on it as the room started crumbling around them, revealing a staircase up that was the only way out. He was able to shove his useless emotions aside for as long as it took for him to reach the end of it, a brief moment of respite before the doors at the top yanked them out of him again.

He wanted so many things--he wanted the the freedom of fury, he wanted to destroy, to do violence, wanton and indiscriminate, to everything that wasn't remotely of this world. He wanted to be able to take pride in himself rather than find fault in every magnified flaw. He wanted to have it in him to create and not destroy. He wanted to be able to look himself in the eye and he wanted to be able to embrace his grief and he wanted to be able to protect those dwindling few who truly deserved it.

More than all of that--more than anything--Evan wanted vengeance. He wanted to inflict hurt like he had been hurt. He wanted to exact payment in blood and screams. He wanted to soothe betrayal with other peoples' pain and collect it in a vial or a glass or a jar and get drunk on the power and the righteousness and the justice. The black door lured him in with promises of the opportunity to have and do all of that, and he wouldn't have resisted even if he'd been able to. The emblem on the altar behind the door seemed to flicker with power and potential. He reached for it, his arms outstretched--

His hands were empty as he reached for Chel, Gir vanishing with a pained shriek as their shield broke under her attack. The pain was sudden and intense as he found himself impaled on her weapon, the sharp point of it parting defenseless flesh and bone like they were water; effortless, they flowed around it. More than the physical shock was the emotional. They had been friends once, and sometimes more than that, and he knew she had her problems on the island, he knew--but he never thought she hated them, hated him so much that she would throw her lot in with the monsters at her back.

The physical pain he could deal with, but the look of disdain on her face, of the triumph in the faces of all of the monsters--that hurt. Chel withdrew her weapon and let him fall, watching with a sneer on her face as he fought desperate for air, for life. It was the last thing he saw, and with his last breath he expelled all of the compassion he had once held for her, leaving nothing but hate and a desperate need for vengeance.

Time passed, and Evan's body rotted, but the bright spark of feeling he had died with lingered on. It fed on the ambient fear of the guilty who waited for someone to forcibly demand their penance with one eye over their shoulders. It grew in the jangling nerves of anyone who lied, stole, or cheated and worried about getting caught. It thrived on the terror of those who had done wrong and were getting their just rewards for it.

Eventually, it was reborn in the decayed shell of Evan's body, wearing his flesh as a reminder of those who had brought it to this state. It would hunt down the guilty and make them confess to their wrongdoings and it and it alone would be judge, jury, and executioner. People would learn to be decent again not because it was the right thing to do, but because the alternative was a slow and painful death less for their own individual infractions and more to make a point to everyone else. Traitors would die especially slowly.

In a few generations, it wouldn't even be needed anymore, humanity having been cowed into fearful submission. Maybe then it could finally rest.

That was all Evan wanted, in the long run. He couldn't replace the people he had lost, but maybe if he killed enough of the things that had taken his loved ones from him, he could ensure that no one else would have to suffer for their existence. Yes, being an instrument of vengeance would suit him nicely, and Deus, whose goals were aligned with his own, would help him in his quest.

((Evan; Black door of Revenge; Ancient of Retribution; Loyal to Deus Ex; Unlocked Memories))

She was always so clever about finding the meaning in everything. She told him that they were going up, for him, into the darkness, for her. He didn't reply, because he knew he would disagree. He'd never let her be in the darkness again, as long as he was allowed to stay by her side. So instead he smiled, and turned his head to steal more of a kiss than she'd offered, always selfish about her affection. He just wanted to hear her voice, even if he didn't always understand or agree with what she was saying. He just needed to hear her voice.

Then it stopped, as they reached the top, and he felt the immediate loss cripple him. He turned, and called out her name, but there was nowhere for him to return to search for her, and no way left to go but forward.

A choice of doors stood ahead of him. The red one looked like the right choice, and he wondered if that was the one she would have chosen, if he could see her. In fact, he told himself that he was clearly just blinded to her presence, and she was probably just going in there anyway. So he walked towards it.

Then he heard a voice. It was vaguely familiar, the memory of it toying with him at the back of his mind. It was coming from the blue door, and it beckoned. It demanded. It claimed him.

He was in front of it before he'd realized he'd moved. Mimsy wouldn't be behind this door. But he would. He already was.

The door closed behind him.

----

The voice continued, coming from a floating emblem at the altar. It reminded him of a sword he'd seen a long time ago, but never touched. No, he hadn't been allowed to do that then. Perhaps now -

----

He'd done it. He'd finally done it! Hunters, horsemen, and halloween were living in harmony, in peace. The fighting had stopped, and protective treaties had been signed. At last, the fighting could end. And he'd done this, somehow. Perhaps it was the simplicity of his words. No one could refute him when he explained, in his own, honest way, how futile the war really was. And now, Deus was finally retired, and there was a lasting, honest to God peace.

No one would ever be called a monster again.

As the time came for settling, he'd taken a seat in a council that hadn't really been his idea. An ambassador for the human race, standing side by side with the leaders of each faction, working together for the first time in history. He'd taken that seat, and grown old in that seat. He'd become nothing more than a symbol of hope, and nothing less than the tie that bound all of the worlds together.

That same tie held him bound, keeping him from living the life he'd always dreamed.

Uncountable numbers of families were born, lived full lives, and died safe and happy in their beds, because of what he'd done. But not his family. His family was all of life, and it was his job to protect it from itself. It meant sacrificing everything for his cause.

Everything.

Though thousands paid tribute, no one seemed to actually notice when he'd died. He looked no less strong on his seat, eyes open, listening to the pleas of the weary. Always listening, never speaking. But he'd left them long ago, dying old, and alone, in his chair.

As they continued to come to him, all they brought with them was left at his feet. Their hopes, their fears, their joy and pain and confusion. The factions grew restless, as old tensions returned. They begged him to step in, to remind the worlds of the bonds that held them together, but all he did was listen, for so long.

When war broke out again, he could not listen any longer.

The man who had given up his happiness for peace, and died so long ago, rose up from his chair, and spread wings that hadn't been there before. He wasn't human. He wasn't horseman. He wasn't halloween.

He was all of them. At once, he was every faction, born out of need once more. And he came down from his seat, to return his ever loyal protection to the worlds that needed him. Even though they'd taken from him the only thing he'd ever loved.

Destruction had been lost to him so, so very long ago.

Robert - Protection - Ancient of Loyalty

Ying had been hiding in the pools of the ancients, rocking herself quietly. When she flew upwards towards the top of the tower, there was a great deal of wailing and flailing because sHE DID NOT WANT THAT.

She ran up the stairs, calling her brother's name as loudly as she could. She almost teetered off the edge once, and might have fallen were it not for the friendly aid of a random horsemen.

Once at the top, many doors awaited her. Ying was, at the end of the day, very much a coward. She merely followed others to a green door, one that sang of harmony. That was, after all, what Ying longed for. She wanted Charon, Death and Medea to finally be at peace with one another. That would only happen if there was harmony. In to the green door she went.

---

Here she was regarded with warmth and love. What few friends Ying had remaining in her old age were gathered around her very humble bedside. Dear Kiwi patted her hand lightly, and she smiled warmly, happy that he had stayed with her all this time.

Ying's invention- if one could call it that- had been the creation of a system that halloween, hunters and horsemen all benefited from. It had been difficult, but most of the work had been done by countless others. She had only instructed with kindness. She was truly a servant.

When she finally passed, rumors grew, stories bled across the lands of the servant. The tale became twisted, the story changed. Some said Ying had been forced into servitude. That she had been charged against her will. The meaning behind her actions changed, became that of slavery.

She was a god, but trapped in a cage as a god she did not want to be. She had sought invention and creation, and had only created entrapment and bars for herself and others. Those who were captured cursed her name, blamed her for their misfortunes. Her system, which had created peace, was eventually overtaken by greed and misfortune.

---

Ying awoke from the dream with new fear instilled in her heart. Her hands trembled at the idea of creating a world so terrible. How could she?

...

Would she?

There was no time to debate the future, as another power claimed her for its own. A clock wound itself around her neck, long having since stopped ticking with the time.

She understood her task. Ying would serve Charon's cause.

The stairs deteriorated and turned to dust, a vivid reflection of Otto's crumbling hope. His ascent up the stairs had been slow. Painfully slow. His time in this mission had not been kind. Misfortune followed him to every corner of the Earth.
He'd fought bugs that sprayed in in sticky, hot ichor. The sun had burnt his pale skin, leaving freckles like a rash over his exposed face. He'd had a rock thrown at his head by a socially awkward Life nerd. He'd been turned from a nineteen year old to a ten year old boy, and then a twenty four year old man in the span of a few minutes. He'd cried in front of a girl he was attracted to. He'd fought with his friends, he'd fought with embarrassment and pride. He'd had a panic attack and puked in a cold, black labyrinth. He'd battled pitch black rooms and lost his courage.

The last corridor he had passed through took what was left of his strength of mind. Memories and planted thoughts, the voices of his Father's anger and of Clerise's disappointment. They reminded him, made him face what he was. What he was, was a nothing. Nothing of value. No, worse. Something that detracted value from anything around him. He used. He leeched. He clung desperately for love, attention, and pretended like he didn't care to avoid the pain of rejection. After all, everyone he loved, trusted, cared for? There was risk in them all. They would leave, or he would push them too far. They would lure him in, and then stab him in the back. They'd show him a great love, greater than anything he'd ever had, and then they would disappear.

His father's yelling still echoed in his mind as memories of that pitch black room. There were never any positives. Never any neutrals. Everything Otto said, did or didn't do or say were the worst of offences in his father's eyes. Otto's existence was a sin in his father's house. Otto recalled every encounter with vividly terrifying detail. Memories he kept deep down. In the darkness of his heart.

Darkness was Fear. Darkness was danger. Darkness was everything he could not defend against, or prepare for. The unknown, the future, all these things are dark.

Otto blinked, and he found himself at the top. Doors. Seven of them, apparently. One called to him. It resonated with his heart, or what was left of it's crumbling form. A violet door. Choices were hard. He didn't have to choose. It told him what to do, and it didn't ask anything of him. It didn't yell, even if he did as he was told, enraged that he had not done it promptly, or properly enough. It was meant for him. Handed to him.

Otto opened the door.

The altar was a beacon. Otto didn't think, he just acted. It was nice not having to think. He thought too much, too often. Over thinking, over wondering, over reasoning, but never given a conclusion. For he was always too afraid. Afraid of the chances. Things going wrong. If he chose wrong. If he did wrong, said wrong. Everything he did, he was always punished.
The beacon, the altar, asked nothing. All he had to do was reach out. No thinking, just....

Otto found that the world sort of faded away. As if his body was no longer a part of him. As if the altar pulled away all that was him, and took it out.




Otto stared out into what was once the world. The human world, Deus. Everything. It was all in shambles. Cities fell, people died. He'd made the wrong choice. He'd made a terrible deal. Whatever happened here, it was because of him

All that remained of the hunters stared down at him, pain and anger in their eyes. Their loved ones were gone. Their purpose in life, ripped away. Their war had been lost.

Otto was chained, lying uncomfortable on the burning asphalt. He was to be punished for bringing the world to ruin. He looked at his hand, held out by a Division Lead. He wasn't sure who, in his blurry haze of fading between consciousness. They all saw it, The Key. He'd kept it secret. That secret somehow destroyed this world. He'd asked for that key, willingly took it into his body. He'd weakened himself on purpose, just so he could feel special.

This was his selfish nature as a scar on his body.

The hand was cut off. Otto screamed in pain. Hunters moved in, chopping off other parts of him, piece by piece. Hours of torture, ongoing and endless. His pieces would be buried across the world, He would never be whole. Cursed to feel that pain, to have nightmares of this endlessly.

What remained of humanity would know that a boy, a single boy, singlehandedly allowed the Apocalypse to come about. All because he feared. He was afraid of the future. Afraid of the unknown. Afraid of deciding things on his own, waiting for the world to give him a sign. Afraid he'd never be important, loved, needed.

Hundreds of years would pass. Anyone who feared a choice. Anyone who worried what tomorrow held, or why they should get up each morning. Asking Why? Why this? Why that? Because the unknown was too scary. So scary, that choosing to do something one way or another was impossible. Because without a clue, or hint, of what lay behind door number one or door number two, the right choice and the wrong choice were equal.

Choice. The greatest control, the greatest fear.



Otto became something else. Something grew, pulsated deep down in his soul. A dark, powerful source. The Fear of the Choice. The Agony of Suffering.

Otto now embodied what these things meant to humanity. Every wrong choice made that tore apart the soul, brought weight upon someone's shoulders. It fed him. Made him stronger, angrier. Sadder. Despair was growing and Otto took all of it inside himself.

To look back and regret all you'd done. To have the past always haunt you. Everything life has to offer turns to despair. He was despair. He was suffering.

Otto awoke as something new, yet so terribly familiar. Chains weighed down his limbs. Purple aura leaked from his once blue eyes. Darkness followed him everywhere he went. Everything seemed heavier when one got too close.

This was his reborn self. An Ancient.

Jasper Bahzian – Black Door – Loyal to Deus Ex - Ancient of Justice




Just as he made to leave the room, it dissolved, there was only one way to go, he had to move forward, how very like life. So he moved forward, up, up into the dark, he moved up one or two steps, and heard the soft sound of things shifting behind him. The step was crumbling at the edges, crumbling like sand.

There was no going back, maybe there never was. Once you did the damage in life, no amount of ‘sorry’ could ever undo the damage you did, the damage –they- did.
His hands curled into fists as he tried to push away the thoughts that had risen to the surface. He blamed the lack of company. Where was Cami?

He worried about her; he worried for a lot of reasons, and some of them he didn’t even want to admit to himself, the thoughts took over more than he’d like to admit.

The last step, he cleared the last step and it crumbled behind him, almost even as he was standing on it. It left him stranded on this island, an island of doors. It was strange…

Red, Gold, Green, Violet, White, Blue… Black.

Blue was alluring, the word… hero, and protect seemed to whisper in his ears, it was the high road, the ‘right’ road, it was the road he should have take, but somehow he knew he wasn’t going to. He wanted to be a hero, but not…that kind of hero. He was a dark knight… not a white one. When it came down to it, he had to admit that, he didn’t want to, not really. Creation, that had its own temptations, he liked assembling things, putting them together bit by bit.

But there was one more door, one his eyes kept turning back to. What would she say, what would…Cami say? Would they be disappointed at the door that drew him? But it did draw him, it drew him, dark, like paint it black was the theme song of the hour.
He reached out, surrendering to the draw, and opened the black door.

It swung open, and there was an altar inside, Indiana Jones style… almost. Primitive temple drawn into comic books and mentioned in archaic references but there was something there too, something more. It was a curious…emblem. Not “lantern core” or any fun sort of thing that it could have been if he’d been able to impose his will on reality. If his private escapes could have been more real without needing to sign his life away to hunt monsters.

He reached out to touch that sigil, to take it in his hand, grasping destiny because it called to him, and perhaps it was time to stop running away. On some level, no matter how much he pretended there were things that would never go away. When he touched it though…everything changed.

He saw a future…that was too much like his past.

She was dead, they had turned on her too, he’d tried so hard to defend her from the other hunters who’d used her, and then tossed her aside like somehow might made right. Like somehow theirs were the only opinions that mattered and whatever they wanted to do somehow wrote out the rules for the universe.

On the island, maybe it did.

They weren’t going to leave it with her dead though, it was too risky to leave witnesses on an island, they’d have an ‘accident’… they’d slip away, maybe ‘go through a portal’ without checking first.. They’d done that before after all. It’d just be that this time, the portal and the monsters took the blame, for monsters wearing people suits.
In that moment, he respected the visible monsters more, at least there was honesty to their skin, they didn’t try very hard to puppet human behavior… but these people had.
They put on their meat-cars and they played the game…and the broke their toys.

They let him go and he staggered to her, taking her hand in his own, caramel skin against the white of his own, blood, was the great equalizer. He stood, one last blaze of glory and swung at them, lashing out with his weapon and laying open a cheek, let them explain that away, let them try and…

And they ran him through, gutted him like a fish, and all the strength went out of him as he dropped his weapon, he could hear noni screaming in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t focus on what she was saying. He was trying to hold in everything that should be staying there beneath his skin, but it was slick and heavy and he was loosing too much blood.

He cursed them, or at least he wanted to… but he died, and there was no power in that… there was only an idea left behind. A whisper of guilt… a promise of justice laughed away as red stained the soil and joined the sins and stains of those gone before.

They threw him away like garbage, and in death she lay in his arms. In rot they were together, till there was nothing left but revenge.

The husk that remained nurtured that seed, it fed it with old tears; it fed it cruel words and spiteful blows. It fed it carefully on the bitter meat of schoolyards and the confidence of children whom know they are in favor. The ones who know, they can do almost anything…and walk away. The ones that push, and push till something gives, but never once consider their part in the fall out, in the break down… in the suicide songs of the broken or what it leaves in their wake.

He… no it, dreamed of revenge, it dreamed of justice… for HER… for Cami, for all who had suffered and all who had died unjustly.
Revenge…

The word is a whisper that slides down the throat like a deep red wine. The flavor of it is heavy and carries with it the taste of blood and the sweet grapes of fruition. There is no escape from justice, there never was, and there never will be. The dark whispers it, feeds the small thoughts and the plans of those who can’t take anymore, and he answers… it answers.

He is a GOD… no… not a god, no a god implies other things, he’s something else, a whisper, a myth, a feeling of hairs that rise on the back of your neck because you know that something there in the dark is watching. That gnawing guilt that sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear till the last strains of your conscience have been slain by you…and then he comes. Then he reveals justice…and you –remember- the weight of your sins.


He is an ancient… he is Justice.