User blog:MockingJester/A paradise in hell

''From the beyond, come, benign touch... Your settlements, free of misery. You walk, adorned. You braces, touched by all. Your heart, swollen with sympathy. A harbor for the lost. A shelter for the forgotten. A haven for the wretched.''

''From the beyond, come, powerless touch... Your settlements, wracked by the beast. You walk, washed with ash and dust. You brace, imprinted by the dead. Mourning for the forever lost. A clamor for the shattered forgotten. A cry for the broken wretched.''

''From the beyond, come, cursed touch... Your settlements, buried by ash, buried by dust. You walk, touched by the corroding wails to his cloak. You brace, armed by the man behind the wall. Your identity burrowed behind the flesh of orchid and gray steel, for the lost. Your heart washed from humanity as the forgotten were washed from the earth. Your hand, twisted by his hand for the wretched.''

''From the beyond, come, revenant... From the beyond, you come. Your disremembered people, forever with you, forever in your mind. You sprint, a plunge to the throat of every actor in your kin's demise. You swing, a blind veil of hate burned into the armies which followed them. An oath for the lost. A curse from the forgotten. Hatred from the wretched.''

''From the beyond, halt, consumed revenant... From your blind hatred, you come with hundreds. Tailing after the beast, bloodied and broken. Begging and pleading. Your strings of vengeance, never to end. A sight of those who burned your kin, imprinted on their families. Their close ones. Their friends. Their races. Guilty. Damned. Forfeit. You abolish them tenfold. You ruin them, a hundredfold. You terminate them...a thousandfold...''

''You removed their voices, so they cry against your cruelty. You scarred their bodies, so they seek refuge from your resentment. The false human. The demon of men. The blind revenant. Alien to acquittal, anathema to amnesty.''

''An army rises out of their plight, their implores. To seek the heart shut to compassion, barred from mercy. The twisted visage of hatred swinging a blind sword. Human and demon, in dread, horrified by your apathy of nuance, never to cease.''

''They commit to this singular act, a singular ceasefire. A thousand swords to break your arm from your splintered weapon. A thousand ax to break your armor. A thousand spears to pierce your withered heart. Your death, a destructive rupture of your hate burned to those who purchased your demise, a final act of vengeance as your soul makes it's harrowing descend to the domains of hell.''

''Your guilt, overwhelming. The mirror of your act, the same they did in their first arrival. The monster you became, the hero they turned to. Penance encircle you as the souls of the departed clung to your unbarred flesh. You wish to suffer, for their sake.''

''Yet, the lord of past times refuses the worst cauldron of agony, your soul bargained to a succubus. To be her slave. Her puppet. Your eyes dull from their light, your long-perished humanity buried deep within you. Your essence, turned by your hand to move and act as a manikin, deaf to her word, yet moving to her order, listening not with your ears, but the command imprint placed at your heart's location.''

''Your mind twists every interpretation of her word to feed you pain, as you fed your splintered hate to them, dissonant with your body. A separate entity, leaving your mind to suffer in silence, alone...''

And then...

...poof...

His presence was no more. His hands, his feet, the entirety of his being, erased from hell, spirited away before anyone could measure the acknowledgment of his sudden disappearance.

His rush upward tingles with the sensation of movement underneath his bare feet. A strong upward, yet gentle carriage in the same way a mother would pick her infant to her arms.

Only, the end of his nursery oversees his hands blotted, frozen in place, as is the rest of his body. The delayed reaction manifests itself under his suffering lunges, organs he could only scarcely remember feeling. The need for air, sundered by his surrounding.

That's when his eyes adjusted. He was not frozen in place, but rather buried standing. Earth faced his feet. Faced his face, faced his hands and torso. Surrounded him.

He closed his eyes, only to re-open them with a clarity of purpose. The soil entombing him, mortal soil "I'm alive?!" His words are laced with eminent cough of dirt, prompting his hands to move anew, against the burial.

Rising through the ground in a way only a zombie could, the man makes several more cough, spewing forth even more dirt from his jaw. His eyes, downed as he was recuperating, took a clear look to his hands. A different shade, one moderately bathed in the sun "Huh? I don't remember being..."

With the grace of a seasoned man, he sprints from the forest that saw him pull himself from the earth bed, his ears catching the rhythm of a river bed. One in which he knees next to, plunging his hands within. The rushing cold is a renewed welcome to his returned nervous impulses.

In this space of instinctual gratification, he finally realized; he was alive once more. This bulb of light gave him the gift of reincarnation, whatever it was to truly be. Reincarnation as someone entirely new. He could rebuild, he could protect, he could gather once more.

Tears fall from his eyes as his old self clutches the destruction away deep within, burying it as he clutches his new beating heart.

His life begins anew as it did before. Roaming. Villages he comes across. Isolated. Alone. He speaks to the many and the few. Needs. So many needs. Needs he fulfills as he brings much of what one may seek from another. Building Bridges. Building connections.

All of them bring their hammers and their planks. Every available tool to labor over the unison of their numerable villages to one city. One place for all to live, giving and sharing what they have with what they don't have.

He comes to be revered by his pair by the countless sweat spent in their sake, anointed at the custodial guardian, wandering the plains in ways impossible for a mere man. Vestiges of experience as an old patroller come fresh in his mind, whispering to him everything about his custodial tasks.

Year by year, the city grows, making use of what first sounded like benign materials, his hand guided by the same whispers of a distant past blurred by cinders. A city isolated from much, yet surrounded by the same. - The light fades out under the sunder of the encroaching night from the outside. The homes of 'Paradhr Dhanya', the Second Blessing, however, remain unclaimed from the claws of the cold darkness, lit by ambient candles and chimneys. Acts of resolve under the twinkling snow, with one house, in particular hosting the shadows of those burrowed within.

Each one, an individual, once fallen on their luck in the isolated mountains. Carried from their exceptional solitude, physical and mental, by the custodian. Nursed by the custodian. Mended and now trained by the custodian in great numbers.

Each one of them, once alone in the howling cold of the withdrawal. Laughter and jubilee swell the table on which they are beholden to a seat, feasting on plates garnished enough for a knight to find appealing, entombed in snow white armor, helmets seated by their side. Scarfs envelop their already surrounded throats, adding a silky layer over a metallic round.

"So I told him that there was an avalanche just recently weathered. He looks at me and says 'Tsh! I know my way around rough weather!' and promptly walks off..." One of the men speaks, iterating his joke for the day under the listening guise of his compatriots and the custodian himself.

"Really? What did happen to that poor man?" The custodian man speaks under a falsely sorrowful tone, being privy to many foreign trying to cross their isolated mountains as a way of contests.

"Yes, what did happen to this overly enthusiastic young man?" asks another holding a goblet of clay-mold and snow-pigmented beverage, beholding on a sip.

"Well, get this. As I said, we were on the precipice of a fallen avalanche with the soil beyond being still prone to false foot-holding. He takes a single step towards the mountain...and promptly drops four feet down a chimney of snow".

The table erupts in laughter with many of the once-destitute now banging their fists full of silver wears on said table. Others, eating in the middle of this little encounters, try their utmost not to burst as their others would, unwilling to risk a choking hazard.

"So there I am, trying now to laugh in the irony of the moment, mostly because the poor lad was still in real danger of freezing to death. I pull on his hand, lifting the guy out the chimney of snow. Mind you, he didn't quite expect the severity of the temperature since the sun was shining at this point in time. So, drenched in snow and misty winds, I pull his shivering body of instantaneous regrets and hindsight, this time, laughing all the way back as we are right now as I carry this boy on my shoulder".

The table banging increases as the chorus of laughing. The Custodian was tempted to join in, ever entertained by the dubious people seeking to prove themselves through a mountain of avalanches. Only, he didn't.

One of his people watched him as he slowly got himself up from the table. His head full of red hair, directed at the window, is followed closely by his footsteps.

"Boss? Boss, you ok? Boss?" The voice of his underling is blotted out by the ambiance of the outside, facilitated by the Custodian's imprint on the window. Cold rushes to his palm, as well as the sound of the outside.

Whispers in his ears. The air, the snow, the night...footsteps. Loud, imposing. Pairs of three. The Custodian further approaches the window, deaf to his underlings who all stopped laughing, turned to their boss in a tide of concerned expressions.

His ear sticks to the window, prone to ignore the cold permeated to the window. Heat under footsteps. Bare feet. Untamed, feral. The whispers in his mind, alarms of ancient instincts. He knew what the footsteps are.

His head turns to his underlings, a hand risen in command " Gather everyone that still roams the outskirts! Get inside and shelter yourselves!"

They rise in unison, not a word of contest from their collective jaws now embedded inside their helmets. All of them grab their weapons and rush out the door, the Custodian walking among them with a singular sight, the entrance.

One of the bridges built over a lake of ice, now warmer than usual. Brittle with a gray falling. Ash.

The Custodian takes a stance and waits. He waits for them. Three of them, glowing in wrath in the distance, sheathed barely by the snowfall. Closing in. He can see the stones and metal of the bridge sundering behind their footsteps, scorching in their mere presence.

The blizzard no longer hides them. The people, once outside, now hide behind the Custodian's mountain men, entrenched in their homes, shivering at the sight the warden contemplates.

Three monstrosities laced at their limbs, their eyes with brimstone and darkness. Beasts of hell, no doubt. One of them sports a fur pattern reminiscent of a tiger, dressed in oriental ornaments somehow kept from burning. Or perhaps they were, and thriving off the flames.

The second one bore hooves instead of feet with horns jagged with sunder at the tips. This one was dressed in a more tribal manner, bearing a massive two-handed ax dripping with flame too concentrated to be merely flame, instead, falling as droplets of lava.

The third one, and possibly the most haunting of them, judging by the whimpers of his people. A beast of old once shackled to the gates. Three heads instead of one, each independent of the others. Three sisters, one body.

A horrid sight for sure, yet the Custodian couldn't help but notice. Most of the haunting appearance comes from the hell tide that spewed them out. The rest gave way to bountiful women, the farthest change from the whispers in his head. Their glares, their disposition, all contradicting to the warden.

Their glares, all directed at him. The sole man in the cold of the night. His returned gaze, one of confusion as the tiger woman, a jinko roaming the domains of hell, calls out to him.

"It's been a while...Ghurn..."

His heart stops. They know him, remember him...as he does. Talia, the elder. Ale'andra, the juggernaut. And Dor' Orthy, guard dog of the molten gates.

"Yes, Ghurn..." "Ghurn..." "Ghurn..."

The way they speak his name, a nascent attempt at familiarity. The whispers in his ears cease, as he was aware of his time in the underworld. The fog that buried his sight from beyond didn't matter.

"Hey now, you goin' to stand slacked jaw like that?" Ale'andra plants her massive great cleaver on the floor, seeing it sunder as the fiendish weapon makes space via its hellish aura.

The Custodian, Ghurn, does move. He turns to his door, well assured that his people were hidden. Not a single one out of their homes.

"Come..." His word to the three as he opens the door to his domain "...there is much to say".

"Ohh, a change of tone we're havin'?" Ale'andra is quick to pick on the subtle change of his behavior, a carefree man no longer.

"It's a good thing you remember us" "You know your place" "In! In!"

"Ladies" Talia spreads her hand to the two others "Let us not embroil hostilities".

"Who's being hostile? We're just commenting on his recognition".

"Yea! We're just talking!" "Just talking!" "You're not the boss of us, to begin with!"

"This is why she brought me to this place with the two of you! The fewer hostilities we have, the less of a sour resolution will befall this encounter! Now, let me speak!"

The two others groan in reluctant acceptance of her proverbial position, at least united for this single reason for their presence. Talia the Elder turns back to Ghurn, a less-than-hostile voice in her tone "Yes. Speaking indoor might do good for the cause that brings us here".

Dor' Orthy rushes straight for the man's domain, followed in quick succession by Ale'andra's bull rush. Of course, Talia walks in with a gentle pace, a measure of balance for the two's aggressive manners.

Closing the door behind him, Ghurn finds himself watching the hell bull and hound feasting on the rest of his subordinates' table. Talia indulges in the same 'cuisine' though at a slower pace "I must admit, I have not expected you to pick up on culinary work. That is a very exquisite dish you have prepared despite the simplicity of the ingredients".

"Tiger girl is right! That's some good grub you've got going here! A shame you never presented that back then!"

Dor' Orthy's three heads were filled with turkey meat, all too busy munching down and pouring gravy to utter a word.

Ghurn takes his seat, quiet as a tomb, at the furthest, watching them eat the remnants of his subordinates' food. His hands clasp to the middle, the bell of silence only ever disturbed by his otherworldly guests.

"Hey, gals! Y'all gotta try these sweet things!" Ale'andra lifts a plate clearly holding a cake devised from the howling of the kitchen.

Dor' Orthy claims one as well as Talia, each of them bursting in Jubilee as their tongues meltdown in the tide of chocolate and fondue that adorn the soft desserts.

They start eating it with more vigor, all under Ghurn's quiet gaze, faltered into itself. His eyes, his expression, the sweat from his face, all faltering in a quiet cacophony. One that remains hidden from his guests, their presence, the genesis of his realization. His time on earth, so sweet, so fruitful, like a honeymoon, bound to end. One he was expecting, waiting for.

Every day counted as a blessing, throughout the hundred years he spent here, kept at his prime by the vestige of his ancient might. Every day spent as a man with unbound kindness and compassion, seeking out the most wretched, the rejected, the broken. To gather them under his fold, his wing. Make them what the world denied them.

A hundred years spent crafting this small paradise for the repudiated among the harsh winds, the cold. He was not done...he was not. They were not ready yet. He needed to inscribe his teaching, his ways. And yet, there they were, happily eating away at his table. A few years! A few years is all he needed--

"Hey, who even made this stuff anyway? It's delicious!" The bovine asks, fondling several plates of the same chocolate sweet.

Ghurn looks to her, his tempest tranquility shattered by her question "They did....it was one of the first I introduced to them as to give them a sense of pleasure...wretched as they believed to be, I sought to teach them that their hands could create just as much as the world that rejected them..."

The jinko stops her feast, his words ringing on her mind while the two others kept going, enthralled by the taste of the bounty laying before them. Her piercing gaze shaded in an intense opposition to her charcoal pigment is clouded in judgment, in pondering.

"I see..." her words come out as whispers, wholly filtered to Ghurn's side amidst Ale'andra and Dor' Orthy loudly eating their share "So I presume you know why we are present in this moment?"

"I do..." Ghurn turns his heavy sight at Talia, who reciprocated the glance "...to drag me back to that place..."

"Well, not exactly--but you seem rather distraught by it. Surely you must have known that your time on earth was to be borrowed". Her words resonate with his thinking. She wasn't wrong. From the moment his hand crawled out of the shivering soil coated in snow, he knew his time among his kind would by but a temporary one.

"I do. The moment the twinkling sky was at the focal point of my sundered sight. I know what my fate is. I just need a bit more time..."

"Time?" Talia turns her stare away from Ghurn, ignoring still her companions who slowly unravel to their dialogue, the hearing of his imminent return 'home' another bounty to watch for.

Her eye turns to the outside, the vision of his people wiggling about in the front of her thoughts "For them?"

"Yes".

"The tone of your voice gives no deception. It was mentioned that you were to come back willingly, if possible. If it means waiting a few more years..."

Ghurn's heart drums more slowly, drenched in relief. He was to have his time. He was, at least, going to--

The hell-drenched minotaur slams her fur hands on the table, cracking it halfway through its true length, spurning Ghurn and Talia, the latter gazing strongly at her companion as she worried about her sudden interjection in this parole.

"So, you want more time in the snowy valleys? Fair enough, not everyone can acclimate to the ponds of hell. Tell you what, you take as much time as you want..." A cheeky smile adorns her face, though the molten jinko saw a hint of cheeky malice hidden beneath.

"...we'll just stick around for the while. You know, sleep in the cold air...digest a bit of earth grub..."

"Ale'andra, I do not think this veiled warning is needed at this moment, this man knows well how easily we have found him---"

"Relax" the bovine turns to her disagreeing companion, a hand risen in her direction as she keeps her gaze fixed on the still apprehensive Ghurn, taken by her sudden interjection strongly enough for his instincts to compel him up "There's no treat around here, is there? I'm just saying, we all need a bit of vacation from the hot steams below. A little variation of 'food', if you catch my drift..."

"Yea! She's quite right, I must say!" "Indeed so! We're just here to watch him!" "Just watch!" Dor' Orthy sought to put her hand in this hat, an act further putting the reasonable tiger from hell as disbelief.

"It's not like he could run anyway!" "Since we followed him all the way from below!" "And even if he does...well, there is quite a bounty of body-able men here anyway!"

Ghurn's eyes widen as their words were turned from him "Please, I do not intend on fleeting the scene! I just need a few years to make them ready! They need not be involved in this!"

"Ohh, it's alright, it's not like we going for all of them. Perhaps, one for each year...~ Ale'andra take the parole once more, her voice laced with a 'hunger' wholly unknown to Ghurn, another side that came with their metamorphosis. An expression alien to him, one blurred as nothing more than a threat.

"No! Please!"

"There is no need for this, Ale'andra! Stand down! We've come to an agreement--

"Agreement? Sure, but what about the interlude between now and then? Would you patiently wait while your cycles come and go? I know I wouldn't, not with this wealth of men to 'entertain' us while time passes by. And such fresh ones too~

"No! Leave them!" Ghurn shouts, the imagery of his mind vivid. The fog within, beginning to thin out painful remnants.

Dor' Orthy's three heads are flustered, mimicking desire laced in a semblance of truth yet mistaken for visceral hunger by Ghurn who's teeth begin to clacker "They have nothing to do with me! Your business is with me!"

Ale'andra giggles, her nostrils turned to the exit door, permeated with cold and unfamiliarity. While there was a certain 'taste' she had about this place unclaimed by other men and monsters alike, her speech, but a series of teases. The same she entertains herself within a gloomy place.

The same one causing Dor 'Orthy's 'hunger' to turn to hilarity, all of ever eluded Ghurn, whose mind began to sink in dark places. Despair and powerlessness, just like the first time. His hands shake subtly.

Images returned in full force. The imagery of his ancient life, wreathed in flames. His hands, holding one of his own, once sworn to be protected by him...de̤̬̥̤͔͙a̭ͅd͖. Dead like the rest surrounding him. Surrounded moreover by broken buildings, places of joy from a world that forgot them.

Tears fall on the side of his face as one of his hands clobber the surface of the table, catching the attention of all three "No..no..."

Talia, wary of the atmosphere's inferred change.

"Ohh, looks like he's grown some backbone in this winter, hasn't he?" "Oh yes, he did. Speaking in tones instead of moving like a muppet" "Much more entertaining than passivity. A fun to 'play' with". Dor' Orthy crosses her arms, turned to the trembling Ghurn, his eyes overshadowed.

Ale'andra wanders close, her arm wrapped around him. A cheeky smile adorns her bovine expression as she lowers her head near his "Hmm, hmm, so tense...I didn't think a little tease could bring out this much. Weird time to bring that attitude, don't you think? Especially for a benign gag. Come on, loosen up a bit!"

A joke?

A joke.

A joke...

A j̟o͓̬̩ͅke̥̞̠̝͎...this is a joke to them. The dead at his hands, the wailing from his throat, the uncaring march of primeval beasts counting their benign fortunes. All of this...a̖̹̪̖̮̦ ̟jo͉̝͉̳̟̼k͚̹̺̠̮ͅe̦̜̪̟̲̥͚!̗̮͔̜̲!̟͎!̯!̣̥̱͎!̹̳͖̼̻͎̫

"A joke...haha..." Ghurn finally lets loose, his hands clenched no more, his back, now made softer.

"Yea, a joke. A gag. A funny telling. I mean, it's not like Talia would let us go through with it anyway, so..."

She grins as she continues, moving her arm to shake him up a bit "To be fair, I didn't expect such a reaction from you of all people. Grown a bit soft, have we? Good...she's going to love that"

"Yea...a joke. I see now...hahaha...it's funny...what you find funny..." Ghurn turns to her, slowly creeping his face toward her, still veiled by the shadows of the chimney fires.

Ale'andra laughs as well, though Talia, watching the scene all this time...her eyes grow fierce, directed at the two, at Ghurn. Her tail begins to waver. Danger in the air. Her ears, sharpened, uplifted by the outer atmosphere. A glaucous firmament. Her stance lowers by instinct, moving on its own. A warning, from the bottom of her tone.

"Ale'andra!"

"Huh--Guh!!!" The hell minotaur's throat, compressed, choking. Ghurn's hand moved at a flash, lifting the mighty beast and her gigantic cleaver. His scowl, a different one. One of broken past.

A tyrant.

A psychopath...

A r̘̫͓͚̻e̮̱͎̜͕̘̞ṿ͇̪͚̻͎͉en̠͈̦a̭̩͉̦n̫͈̞̳̞̳ͅt͇͙̭̣...

Quick on her hands, Ale'andra clenches a fist, intending on blowing his head unconscious. Instead, her body is violently tossed against the wall, splintering it apart as the whole entrance erupts in jagged wood and brimstone.

Talia and Dor' Orthy watch in fright as their bovine companion bounces off the tranquil snow like a pebble on a river bed before finally crashing on a tree, causing it to collapse on others.

"What-- --the-- --hell!" Dor' Orthy turns to Ghurn, presented with but a fraction of a second to see the man they pushed. His eyes, empty and corrupted. Violet in origin, blinded by resentment. And even they become hidden under the veil of darkness that begins to coat his face as his body flickers with empyrean flames of a gold start to a tainted purple.

And then...his hand. His fist. Wrapped in cold metal. Directed at the left head. Too stunned to fathom a man raising his hands against a hellhound, Dor' Orthy is violently struck, sending her flying through a window as her three heads collide with one another, also sent against another tree.

Metal rushes to Ghurn. His other hand. His legs. His torso. His head, all covering it. Save for his face, ever hidden by the darkest shadow.

I ̦̺̱̤̻͚͈b̩̦̯̣e͍̰̞͓g̻̜̞̼,̬ ̜̱͇̙͓̗s̩̝̦o̙̮͚̠͕ ͈̼̜̜y̭̩͈̮̘̺o̠͕u̥̣ͅ ̱̣̹̮̪̖̗l͙ḁ̝̠̮̥̝u̱͖̳͙̼̱͙g̫̰̳̹h͎̤̮..͎̗.͇̝̯̘͓ ̲ ̞̫͖͕̻I ̳̳͙͉̗ͅͅp̳̣lea͈d̻̹e̻̤͕͓̙͙̣d͚̠̱̪͙̟,̟͉̜̳̖͔ ̳̥̞̣̺s̻̥o̤ y̼̺̞͍ou͚ ͉̺͍̩̱̝l̮̥͇̭̝a̦͓̯ͅu̖̪͇̗̤̝g̳͚̠̦͇̦h̬͕̠̣ed͙̫̯̜̪.̥̰̩̪.͙͍͔̮.̣̝̥̜̪̗͕ ̫̪͔̟̯ ͚̖̪̰̥̻̼S̫͙̯̥o ̟̳̖͖̞n͔̥̱̰̤o͕͔̳̪̻w ͓I̮̖ ̪̗̟͈̺͎̺s̱̜͉̝̩͚ee̦̪̝͎̗,͈͔͇͉͚ ̹͎̻̬̘͕̫t̬̮ha̬̜t̻͖̜͇ ̣͍̹̭͔y̞͓̫̦̙̩o͇u̼̙͇͈͚̮ w̙̘̳̼i͈̗̞̯̼̻̘l͙l ̫̺̹̣͍a͓l͈̪w̺̲̹̩̼̲a̤̫̰̺̺͙y̜̤̲͚̩̯s̱̗̞̙͉̗̫ ̯̖͙̙͉l͖̟̤a̬̗ͅu̫̦̩̺̱̭g̯̹̜h...

A͓͔̞͙̮̭̹s̖̬̥̜̖̱̜ ̘̗̰͔y̭̜̞͔o͇̲̫u̦̞͚͎͖ ͍̜̣̰a͔l̙͎͇̳̠ͅw͉̹̤̫ͅa̖̼̬̣ys͖̮̮̹̻ ̰̮̞l̩̲͈̱̻̼ͅa͕̖̼̬u̮͉g̪̦h̺͕ḛ̩̹̭̠̙̘d̹̹̪̝̼̞.

Talia couldn't believe it. They pushed him, despite her warnings. An amicable agreement, now stained in bile. Even then she sought another path "Please, listen! I know that we can still come to an agree--

Her arms cross before her as she feels one of them being dug within. Ghurn's metallic fingers sought a way in, a way denied to him by her backsteps [He's strong...it's as she said]

Her arms rise and fall to the ground, dragging his entire arm with him. Her elegant prompts her to falter further, nearby avoiding the rupture of air as his hand violently slams against the wooden floor. Not seeking to lose this opportunity, her hind legs bounce off the wall behind her, allowing her to spring straight back at him, a foot in the lead.

It hits, pushing his head backward, followed immediately by his body as he is sent crashing on the last window, smashing it to pieces. Talia's gaze is one of regret, the field of dialogue now overtaken by the acts of violence.

Her new shape having long brought out news sentiments, new emotions while also purging many of the older habits. Violence, malice, sadism. All of it, now reflected in what Ghurn returned to. Old vestiges, with the source of his first madness campaign now seared in her mind.

Yet she saw his eyes before the darkness came to claim them. Empty, cold, absent. They could not hope to speak in such a manner. Daggers staring back at Ale'andra and Dor' Orthy as he violently flung them out.

Alas, it was to be the least of her problem. Rushing forth, she sees her kick only had half the yield she hoped for. His resilience, greater than she had expected. His tumbling fall is cut short as his hands and feet swamp with the momentum devised by her own kick, allowing him a footing on the shivering stone.

He lifts his arms from the snow, his newly anointed scarf drenched in a purple tide flapping against the wind. Talia watched him do so. It was exactly as her boss said: His helmet, his scarf, his armor, the dark veil consuming his visage.

The Blind Revenant. A terrifying shroud now walking in the nascent world, brought about by his repressed remnants of past life. A nightmare for the re-surfaced monsters that would come about his path.

Talia closes her eyes, reluctantly arming herself for battle. A regretful outcome, depicted by her expressive lamentation. A horrid sight for Ghurn as his cold metallic gauntlet cruelly points solely at her.

T̤͓̲̖͚h͍͚̺͚̹̭at̰̪͚̳̞ ͓s̳to̘̝̙̘l̰̜͚̻̭͇e̙̰̰n ̘̘͇̠̰e̦̮͕͖͔̘͇x̪p̰̝͚̹r͇͎̪̹ͅe̬̦s̰s̩̠̳i͎̲͎̗̲̮̗o͕̜͓̺̼̻̳n,̺̠ I͔̘̩̪̟ͅ ͇͚̥̜̯s̻̦̣͔ẖ̺͕͎͎a̲̫̙̲l̲̭̲̖͖͉͕l̖͓ r̝͖͚̪i̱̬̝͉͍̤p̣̙͇ i͕t͖̜̟ ͈̟o̱̣͖̜f͎̺̣f̼̞͔ ̯y̯͇͙̫̘̯̺o̞̫͍͕u͕̩̰r̦̩͍̝̺̳ͅ h͓͔i͈̜ḏ̹͕̗̩̼ͅe

A burst of snow erupts from behind him, showering the revenant in melting water, an act that is but the opening to retribution in the shape of a gigantic cleaver slamming down on him "Rip what now?!" Ale'andra's voice booms fiercely, her sclera turned to dark as her sun gaze increased in focus.

With the instincts of old life now rushing in his body, Ghurn has his hands clamp up on both sides of the cleaver. A joust of strenuous effort form both sides as the hell minotaur struggle to bring her monstrous blade down on the man.

"God damn--!! Who the hell let him re-surface with all his powers?!" she bellows, scrubbing the handle of her cleaver to induce greater power in the blade. Their trembling, unending, slowly going for the bovine as the weapon is sliding down, though at a snail's pace.

"Why did you torment him, to begin with?! Your act became the cataclysm to this disaster--

"You think I don't know that?!" the bovine retorts, her voice, no longer so much outrage, but one bitten with hindsight "I didn't think it would search that deeply in him!"

"You threatened to 'entertain' yourself with his people! He doesn't know that we're changed..."

"Tsk! Fine! Fine, we'll pull that act he's putting back in himself before a talk! I just thought that...aw damn it all! He's not budging!"

Feeling his hands fail him, Ghurn opted for his arms grinding against the blade, the weight of her unyielding blow locking his feet in place. Despite that, however, the meager terrain she purchased came to a halt.

"Hey!" "Ale'!" "Move out the way!"

A piercing tone divided in three comes crashing down on Ale'andra's position. A hefty juke sees the bovine from hell make a backstep, blinded to the tumultuous snow, melted and dissolved.

Ale'andra entry, a massively imposing one. One that plights Ghurn through the soil, cracking stone soil. An array of crunches and sundering rock spatters Ale'andra, her six eyes entirely uncaring of the collateral result from her bench-press from hell. Fissures erupt from the downward spiral, elongated by Ghurn's apparent lack of grievous injury from a blow that would have seen a lesser man collapsing to a blood mist.

His hands against hers in a struggle. Her legs pressing on his knees, keeping him midway through the earth, trembling in a constant joust. Her sudden apparition arms her with a definite blow to the revenant, his greaves pressed inward by a margin. Yet, her visages cast a look of dissatisfaction, affront, and vehement strife.

"He's not yielding!" "Damn it, stop wiggling so much!" "This outta wear you down!"

Ale'andra's eyes flicker in three shades of red and orange, the colors mixed across her body in runic fashions. They gestate quickly, mounting a testament to any detractors about the advantages of three heads over one.

"Hellfire!" "Molten magma!" "And brimstone!"

"ALL DEDICATED TO YOUR DEMISE!!" "ALL DEDICATED TO YOUR DEMISE!!" "ALL DEDICATED TO YOUR DEMISE!!"

A fire burning in three, potent enough to joust against the earth's core three times over. All of it, dedicated to sundering Ghurn's struggling self. The left head burns through her fiery gaze, mimicking the ray of the sun, to burn the air around her prey. The middle head hurls out gallons of magma, molten from hell, nurtured from her belly as a resident. From maw and orbits, it seeps out as dark as the night, splashing over the man. The last one, gouts of searing brimstone, an unnatural mix of boulder and fire, detonating alongside its hellish kind.

Ghurn's present is utterly robbed by the overwhelming imposition of the tide battering and lashing at him, a hell's light bright enough to bring false dawn to the surroundings.

Talia and Ale'andra slowly approach the cascade of violence brought upon their quarry, the latter impressed by her domination, a grin running across her flaming breath "Holy hell, you're juking him hard, sister!"

"It would seem so..." comments Talia, approaching as well "A fine balance between ferocity and--Dor' Orthy, get away--

"He's not..." "...yielding..." "How? Why?!"

The commitment of the Cerberus relative to her attack hold strong, as it would be expected from her kind. Alas, it proved to be faltering despite its initial boom. Violet streams began to erupt from the land surrounding, dancing over the fissures of her jump.

Ale'andra could see it, and so could Talia, but Dor' Orthy sought to overwhelm him, having poured a sizable amount of power to her raw spell.

T̪̫̰̺̬̜o͈̤̱̦͓ ̦͖̺m̭̟̠y̯͎ ̩̟ṣ͉ḭ̦̱͎̥̬̳d̝̱̱̱̮̹e͍͍̞ͅ,͓̬̳͔̼̻ ̝̗c͖̥om͈̤e̙͇̰,̪̻̯̠͇ ̖Z̬̪̼͎a̖̬̥l͎̭͉a͓kaͅ.̟̼̯.̘̥.̮͉̝̭͚͓͚ ͈͇̣ ̰̹̪̳̟̼ͅT͕̫̲̺̙o̙͓̱ t͉͖͚̖̗̜h̭̹͉̱͔̭ḛ̱͚̣̻̩̩ ̪b̗̘͈͖̳͎ea͓͓͇͎s̭t̜̣̱̳̰'͉̤͖̟s̭̟̣̘̦̫ ̟̻̰̬h̬iḓ̙͖͎e̯̣̻, ͕̲p̹̳̥͍ie̙r̭̳c̳̱̖̜̟e̟͉͕̯̳,̯̖̫͕͈̮ ̤̤̲͇͓Z͚͎̯̭͖̫͚a̝̫̺̫͔̘̜l̤̟̹̥̠̤͔a̟̩͙͉̺̘ka̖̯.̝͖̲͖̻̺.̯.

Talia's momentum comes as instinctual, her claws poised as an open palm in front of her, and an upside down for the other. Fire rushes to her side, shaping as an ethereal beast, a vestige of her old form, one now secluded in the deepest ramparts of her soul.

The beast, a tiger of black fur and crimson stripes, sets its massive eyes at her master's companion, its flight instincts set ablaze. Two sets of gallops, one leap towards the three-headed hellhound, its jaw open to cup her between its flaming fangs with an immediate spring backward, much to her protest.

"Hey! The hell are you doing?!!!" "Hey! The hell are you doing?!!!" "Hey! The hell are you doing?!!!"

Her eyes snap back to where Ghurn's body should lay, his armor carbonized. Instead, a sickly swath is cut through her work, discarding her hellfire short under a shriek of eldritch power coursing through the spot.

A foot out of the dying flames. Another following suit. A gray hide of metal. A sword in hand, the Zalaka. The splinter sword. Its metal, ever displaced to thorn-like shapes for a second or two before receding back to their place. A constant movement, empowered by his grip.

Talia's ethereal shape returns to her with Dor' Orthy by its side, opening wide to drop her back on her feet. Ale'andra rallies as well, the three side by side "So, what do we do now? That shank he's got ain't good news".

"I know..."

"Must have killed thousands with that thing, according to her..."

"I know".

"Took about a thousand swords to break it--

"I know!" Talia briefly yells, somewhat exasperated by the hell bovine's obvious remarks before calming her spirits "I know...I'll take his attention. He will draw the dead man's blade to his side..."

At those words, Talia's ethereal tiger lowers its back, poised for a bounce, its ephemeral eyes leering down the Zalaka with great wariness. Still, its fleeting shape was the utmost defense to bring against Ghurn.

One it decides to capitalize as it springs its hind legs in an arc jump, fangs aimed at the revenant before then. Talia braces herself, as do her companions to leap left and right.

Ghurn lifts his blade in the direction of its teeth, in a manner of intercepting the hell beast. It nears him, its fangs closing in on the Zalaka blade. Talia lunges forward, her monstrous tuning shaping her as a blur under her tremendous speed, timing her strike with her phantom apparition.

But then...

A̞̼̫̣̝̬̩ ͖͍̗̝̘th̯o̻̤u͖͈s̝̖a̳̱̥̰̺n̳̻̬̘̩̟̜d͇̫̥̭̞̜̗ ̭v̥͎̻͔̞ͅo̠͈͇͈ͅi̤̦̻͙̝̼c͖͕͔es̮͙̼̩̬ ̮s͎̤̹̰̯̜i̥̝͇̙l̫̬͍̤͓̖e̤͚̩n̼ce͓͇ḓ.̝̫͉̙̬͖.̘̗.̰͈T͔͍̜̝̝͖ẖ͔̯̱̯e̪̭ͅ ̫̞͓̤͚̜̻l͙i̖gh͔̣͙̫̞̥̬t͉̼l͚̟e̳̣̮s̖̞̬̫̖̩s͎̙̳̱͙̠̗ ̩p̲̹̭̟h͙̫̱͉ar̲̟͓͎o͉̠̖s͚̫̼̤̝͍!̣̤̳͉̪

His blade lights up in shrieks and anguish, its dark light blinding the spirit beast from its quarry, causing it to falter and fall forward just over Ghurn, collapsed against many trees. Its form in unsurprisingly devoid of damage, yet the light was of malevolent blindness.

Talia's eyes widen in stark shock, her momentum locking her in her sprint. Her immediate thought, to falter direction as her instincts screamed out to her. Ghurn could see her, his hidden eyes locked on her, his Zalaka now shrieking directly at her.

"Shit!" Tally, get out!" screams out Ale'andra, forsaking her flanking route to try going straight for the man. A harsh beat in her heart echoes in her, a knell to the late action that she was bound under. She would not be able to interject his killing spell. She would not...

Talia sees it as well, her eyes closing, sundering a resignation sprint. In a half second, however before her closed irises, something presented itself to her.

His weapon, ready to kill. The spell, fully contained. Yet, he did not move in that split second. At any time he could have downed it as the description mentioned. To lower his Zalaka in a downward slash motion, prompting the blade to discharge its captive power in a searing manner, making little of anything it touched. But he did not, instead, keeping it pointed at the heavens.

For that split second...

A delay that robs him of his killing time as Ale'andra's cleaver swings directly at his side, another split second devoted to his potential downfall, one he would not miss. His splintered sword comes at his side, still fueled with the wrathful spell imbued on it, directly counteracting Ale'andra.

Even as her companion flew off via the spell-bound sword, she remained incredulous. Her eyes glazed over the fact that he had her. Had he struck---"Why didn't he, though..."

Her thoughts are dismissed by the sight of her bovine companion clawing herself with her cleaver through the snow in an attempt to lessen the distance of her blowback. The illusion of a quick takedown fully lost to the tide of battle, they draw from vestiges of what they once were, their hellish flames festering around the landscape. None of them has any illusion of their acts, their killswitch returned at the front.

Ghurn could see it, the miserable look on their faces. A...human misery, slowly eating through him as they would keep the struggle going. The landscape shudders from every blow, whether given or intercepted by blade or arm. Splintered trees, melted ice and snow, charred trees.

Talia's thoughts would return again, and again. Too many times the blind revenant had a foot on either one of them, poised for the killing strike. All of these, null by another's intervention. The more they fought, the more she could see the hesitation at the opportunity to bring his hate down.

His rattling hands, as if contesting his thought process. His quivering legs, as if seeking to betray his act. His faltering presence, as if robbed of this hate.

And then...

The landscape burned, charred tree simmering with flames of the unnatural world. Snow devolved to water, shallow under their feet. The sky turned pungent with smoke, the reflection of the three hell beasts ripe with wounds too shallow to count as grievous despite their opponents. Every blow he has struck turned late.

Ghurn stood at the other side, his armor battered and broken, mired by countless hits and slashes. His faceless head ever coveted by the dark lowers. His body shudders, his grip falters, and his eyes, for the first time since their internment in the darkening of his entire head, radiate.

The hell denizens look at him with a bit of a shock, Dor' Orthy looking to string her confusion when the man had already begun to indirectly satiate her quarry, his voice booming with trouble.

W̪̙̫͇̙̟h̝̗͕̣y͙͉̣̰͉̰?̳͇͖̖̠̭͕ W͉͔̘̙h̪̪̥y͚ ̭̫͍̩̠̞̺d͚͍̰o yo̘̙u̻ ͔c̲̺͙̭̭̖r͙͎͙̯y?̹̣͎̖

Ghurn's free hand shivers, gesticulating among the shallow waters.

"Crying?" Ale'andra raises an eyebrow, confounded by his words, only to be fed with much more then she bargained for.

M̟̣̫̜̺e͖̖̜͇?̗͔̠ ̰̪H͎̫͙̺a͇v̝͈͙̩̝̪ͅe ̭̝͎͍͉̬̯I̦͚̘̯̦͍̞ ̝m͎͔a͍̤d̩͙ͅe̫̮͉͖̘̩͚ ̲y̭̳ọ͓͔͇̲̜u̙ ̼̠̪͚̳cr̗̳̥̣̮y̪̲̖?̫͎

His hand swathes across his front, yet it shrivels in abject rejection.

Bu̲͎̖͉̞̜t͖̲.͕̱̱͎̺̰.͙͍̰͇̩̫.͇h̩̠̩̙̝̥o̫̩w̮̥̰?͍̜͉̳̥̰ ̜̬W̖̦̩͖͕hy͍͓̳̦?̤ ̳̖̝̮̳͕̗W͖h̩̭̪a̫ṯ͙̣͚̞̥͇ ͈̦̦h̩͎̗͇̫ͅav͚̟̦͈͙͍̘e̱̝̥̠̦̝ͅ ͖̣̞I̙͕̪ ͍ͅd̘ọ̲̱ne̦͇ ̮̙̟̰̟̪t̟̗̙̮͇̫͍o͕̭͔̭͔ ̜̫͖ṣh̝͎͙̞e̤͍͍̰̠̬ͅd yo͕̙̟̞̝u̪͔̖̮̳͚r̹̱ ̖̞̩̲t̼̰̼͔̤̩e̳a̰̝͇͖r͎͇s͙̲̻̖̖? ̹̙̼͕Wh͕̘̜͕̰a̺͙̩͚͖̭t̮ ̭ạ̩͉c̼̞̺̟̳̬͎t͚̖̝͔͈͕͔ ̼̪͔d̗͉̱i͇͓̮̲̥d͈͕̟ I̦--

His eyes lift to the three, widen in an epiphany before narrowing in outrage.

W̙̝h̠̳̳a̺̰̮̻t̺̞̹͕̱?̖̩͔͔ ͇̪̥̻̻̜N͎o̹̺͓!͎ ͚̳T͉͔̙̙̩he̪̗͈̘̠ͅy̖̩̩̺ a̭̤͚͔r̭̞͙̮̤̳͈e̱̯̣̤ ̜̖̼͔̰b̜͎ͅe̪͉̗̜͖ͅa̰̯͙s̥͇t̮̙͈͈̖s̳͔̦̼̖͇ͅ!̻̘ ̗̥̠̣̫̪Th̫e̺͕̦̫͚̳̜y̙͖̦͖̹ ̥͈̩̩̞͈ͅa̤re̘ ͎͙͍͈̥͈de̟̤ͅa̭͔̩͚t̝̖̼͈̼h̳̤̟͎̱̞! ̞̬̻̬ͅMo̝̹̟ck̯e̪̮͖̜̮ry!̠̱͙̖̼̝ ̯̩W̲̦͚̪̗h͖̥͓̥y w̼͇̦̭͖o̹̝̳u̻̝ͅl̳͉̘d̟͓̠̦͖̝̹ ̘͚̗̺̣ͅy̙̥̗̦o͖̬̘͚̲u ̰͔̭̝c̞̗͕r͍̙̬̞ͅy̩̺̮̣̳̗̲ ̺̯̝̼f̖̲̘͙̜̱o̬̘̪͖̝̦r͖ ̗̩̪

t̗̪ḥ͓̱͍e̫̘̗̣͇i̘͕r͉̙̜ ̙͉s̹̣̻͍a̤͚͖͙̞k̥̳̥e͈?̹̬̠̰͎̳ͅ

And then he looked again. Noticed their likeness to human women despite their extra appendages. Everything they said and acted, returned to his mind. Talia, on the other side, watched with a greater understanding of the event passing through their eyes. She dared a step forward, a closer look to this...speech.

Her hellish eyes revealed the depth of his pleads and justification unending. For, in the blurry image of the shallow waters, laid spirits. Spirits of men, women and, children. Her ears allowed her to feed in the empathy of her new body, ushering in their whimpers and lamentation. As did Dor' Orthy. As did Ale'andra, the latter wide in the revelation "So, even they whimper at his actions...does that mean we win?"

"I would not call it a victory, but merely the epiphany of a man who never was meant to be a destroyer..." Talia speaks, watching as the spirits who downed in their lament continued to plead the man they once loved, even unto death.

"Damn..." "This is pretty surreal..." "Well, we might as well..." Dor' Orthy left her sentence unfinished. The thought of claiming him as he was, unthinkable, boiling the blood within her veins as a response.

The spirits they see now had their hands tethered on Ghurn's mirrored reflection, their heads lowered. Everything they said brought the man from his empowered self down to the guilt-ridden soul who once entered the underworld.

No.͘.̶.n̶o͏!̛ Do n͡o͞t͜ a͞s̶s͟um͠e̕ I sou͠gh͝t͘ ̛thi͡s̴.͡..I̕ ̕n͞e̢ver ̡w̵a̴nt̕ed th͜e͠ d̛ead...I ͢nȩv̀er...̛t͡h̛is ̡is̡n'͞t ́th͝e ̴end I yeárned f̨or҉.̵.̧.I ͜never wànt͜ed̶ t͏hįs͘.̵.̶.̸

They gather around the disheartened man, burying him in their embraces, begging for the violence to stop. Their heads, hands collided over him. The darkness around his face withers, and falters. The grip on his weapon also shakes and looses, causing the blade to fall on the rubble beside him as Ghurn fell on his knees with a crunching of metal.

Th̡e ͟bloo͞d̡ ̀o͘ǹ ͘my h̡and̶s!҉ T́h̡e͜ ͞de͏a̛d̶ ͏u͡nder my͜ ͟fe͠et!͢ T͞h̶ey͜ ͏me͢r̕e͞ly͟ s͞o͢ug̶h͜t̛ t̵o p͞r͏o̸tec͢t̶! ̨B͝ut ̷this..͡.! Th͜ìs͝..̷.!̨ ͘I͘ nev͜er̶ ̡w͢a̶nte̷d́ án̶yt͢h҉i̛ng ҉o̕f͠ ͡thi̷s!!̸!!

Two strings fall from his eyes, scorching the dark veil in a way that it leaves it unable to cling on his face. It shrieks and compresses before pooling off his face, pours on the water as the strings that cut through them manifest as tears. Pure tears of a man who never was meant to be a tyrant, a destroyer, a killer. The souls that gathered around him cried with him, their sadness at witnessing their once-hero turning anew to the monster proving greater than even their deaths.

His hand coils around his chest where his heart is, his eyes on a never-ending shedding "They just needed more time...I just wanted more time..."

His grief renders his deaf to the splashes of footsteps. Blind to the disappearance of his kind returned to the deepest confines of his bosom. Inert to the touch of his shoulder by a hand of fur "Then they shall..." Talia kneeled close to the grieving man, only to utter her sentence.

Then, Ale'andra passed near as well, still coming to terms with the visual effects of grief, the sort that can drive a good man to hate "Once we come back...once everything is said and done...I would like to give you a proper apology..."

They walk away as Dor' Orthy approached the man "Take all the time you need..." "If this is your intention after all..." "Then we'll come back only when you are done here..."

The three denizens of hell walk away, leaving the man and his soft tears alone...

Alone, ignorant to his new people approaching, having heard of their champion's cries of despair. His nine promised, with their weapons, unsheathed in the way. As the flames began to recede and the night takes over, Ghurn's sobbing slowed to a crawl, the image of his kind assembled in a wary manner around him now dubiously clear to his eyes...

Years pass, one granted five returned passages. Their promise, given in whole. Ghurn's mind counts the days, the weeks. From the months to the end of the year.

His people grew. They grew strong. They grew wise. Alert, yet open. Compassionate, yet prone to defend themselves. Everything prepared to avoid the horrors of the past, from him and them. Their deaths and his harrowing descent to madness.

His Zalaka forever splintered from itself, now re-forged to nine states of self. Nine swords, nine hands, those who followed tutelage from Ghurn himself now carry one for themselves and their fellow. Each one, unique to its owner, beholden to no one else, unless the wielder's word allowed it.

One last night, one final supper. The rejected gather at their tutor's table, as does the whole of the village in a massive inn for the relatively shallow number of inhabitants. Dishes, meals, desserts, drinks, everything is served in great quantity. His nine hallowed sit closest to him, laughing and sharing among themselves and their people.

And then...

"Boss..." One of Ghurn's hallowed turns to him as his eyes slowly crept up the window, where a faint light is present afar. A light making a rather obnoxious showboating despite the shivering winds of snow between him and the light.

"So...it's time..." another asks, feeling the ambiance of the room die as more and more take notice of Ghurn's increasingly melancholic expression. Their heads collectively lower, slowly letting the realization of those words soak deep in their hearts. The fathers, turning their heads away, unable to let their emotions of farewell flow. The mothers, confounded by their rising sobbing, place a hand on their mouth, barely able to cover their wail. The children, the most vocal in their saddened demeanor, bursting in a blind gush of tears and cries, rushed in by their mothers who promptly cradle them with comfort.

Ghurn's hallowed, their lament shaped as wishful delusion, take a hand on their hilts. Perhaps they could cut away those things, drive them away. At least for now. Anything, anything to keep their Custodian at their sides. Surely he had earned his reprieve, why would they claim him still?

A single hand rises at their side, Ghurn's voice hollow with resignation "It's alright...this...this is why I molded you the way you now are..."

Biting their very instincts to pull their new blades, Ghurn's hallowed retain their arcane weapons from the outside, their faces chided with a teeth's grinding, watching their once-provider and sheltering lord make his way to the door.

The very last time they would see him. His battered armor, gushing with burnt spots and lacerated corners, fail to dampen the nobility he exudes to those who followed him for so long.

His helmet, broken beyond belief, yet ever as his side, now sees itself looping to one of his hallowed, the latter catching it with resigned care. They knew the signification for one to part with their head protection. Be they a warrior, a knight, a prince or a lord, to remove one's helmet...

"My lord..." One of his hallowed whispers, knowing that Ghurn truly was intent on going back to perdition, back to the spot that claims him anew. His voice is drenched in unkept misery, the room filled with the lamentation of his people.

Ghurn stops at the door, the precipice. His head lowers, anchored by the bounds tethering him to them. His second chance. His blossomed time on earth. He turns to them, a smile to his face. A quickly diminishing one "Thank you...all of you...for the second chance. Perhaps now...they rest as well..."

His men, his hallowed, all of them turn to the side, the sight of their lord marching alone unbearable. The children cry anew, their tine hands desperately seeking to clutch Ghurn's torn scarf, kept at bay by their own parents. The door closes, forever shutting his sight down from their eyes...

Ghurn walks by the tempest, the dying will of his heart ironically sheltering him from the cold. Towards the light, he does so, his pace looks less and less of that a living creature. His melancholy makes it sluggish, zombie-like.

His dull irises make visual contact with the three. Talia, Ale'andra, Dor' Orthy. The minotaur waves at him while the hellhound grins with all three heads. The tiger from the same underworld merely stares at him.

"Hey there! Took long enough, don't you think?" Ale'andra's boastful voice falters as Ghurn simply passes through them, his pace no longer of the one who once fought them. It was...lifeless.

He walks away, directly to the infernal contraption that brought them to the living world, a pair of shackles in hands. He barely opens them. They roar in impossible tones, identifying him as an escapee, wriggling in anticipation to shackle him.

His hands move to bind themselves under it. As he does, so do appear iron balls, wrapped in hellish runes. Present, and hidden. Tethered to his ankles.

The trio watches him with a fair bit fo surprise, Dor 'Orthy being the first to follow closely "Hey!" "How you doing, sunshine?" "You seem ready enough!"

No words from the dead man who just keeps on walking closer. The three-headed hellhound stops, her eyebrows risen "Huh?" "What the?" "The hell's his problem?"

Never the less, the trio do begin to follow his march to the infernal pentagram with Ale'andra now taking a hastened pace to reach the two, a hand high and a face filled with a grin "Well, I don't know about any of you, but I think a midnight spent dunking in warm flames is a good alternative to this isle of shivers".

"Hell!" "Yea!" "Girl!" Dor' Orthy nods with a fierce tone. The bovine then sneaks up on Ghurn, a small elbow bump on his side "Come on! Surely you could use some heatin' as well, am I right?" Her laughter is lonely, Ghurn sparring but a glance at her. An empty one. One that prompts her to stop "Hum...ok...well, you'll never guess who's been waiting for you all this time! Come on, guess! I'll indulge you!"

His stare remains vain, compounded by the dull colors of his armor. The only thing betraying his silence was the unending grinding of the iron balls dragging behind his ankles.

Ale'andra's infernal ears slowly fall flabby at his inherent lack of an answer...and expression, for that matter "Oh, come on! Not one guess? Here, I'll give a clue! She is a wine amateur. I'm talking 'It is no mere pour and drink! You are supposed to savor it! De déguster!' kind of deal. Surely you would know of all people, huh?"

"..." Ghurn's hollow glare diverts from Ale'andra, faltering to the immediate ground before him. His pace was naught but a zombie's limp at this point as he lacked the will to properly pace, his psyche, withered...

"Really?! You're going silent on us like that?!" Ale'andra's arms broadcast their outrage at each side of her head.

"I do not think he is much respective to our presence at the moment, Ale'" Talia has her claw on the minotaur's shoulder.

"I know but--

"Give it time. Attempting anything this moment will not yield any fruit" The jinko shakes her head, her knot of flame dangling seamlessly behind her. Ale'andra sighs, her pace re-invigorated by her companion's.

Soon, they step in the inner circle, the glyphs reacting to their footprints. It's fiendish light hums in an increasing pitch as the gleam follows suit in greater shades of red. Soon enough, they vanish...

They vanish in a fashion similar to a contraption made to lift components upward and downward, this platform of red light lowering the four away. Branches begin to manifest along the down path. Branches decorated in autumn leaves, dancing in the warmth of the underworld, illuminating as the contraption of light and flame reaches their levels.

A stark difference to the previous time Ghurn descended, for he did so without the footnote to stand on, instead, pummeling to the bottom in a direct manner while wreathed in empyrean flames. Instead, he was slowly descended in what basically turned to a tunneling garden. A garden of autumn inspiration with tiny creatures dancing, dotting about, seeking to catch his attention...

...and failing.

Talia looks to the man who's slag eyes had turned to his shackles, never removed from them. In honesty, all three did, with Dor' Orthy leaning one of her head to Ale'andra about his statue pose. She takes a step toward the man, an uneasy smile painted across her coal pigment "You have been staring at your shackles for an uncertain time. Are they discomforting to you? Could I loosen them up a little bit?"

Ghurn remains unmoved, unable to acknowledge her question as anything more than passing wind. "Surely not, I suppose. Well, are you thirsty? With the ambient warmth coursing through this tunnel, I'm certain that you might seek a beverage".

Nothing. Her ears, much like her initial attempt at a mood's lift, fall on absent omens. Her voice shriveled to that of a whisper "Very well then..."

"Oh come on!" "You're seriously going to remain mute like that!?" "It's not like we dragged you midway to begin with!" Dor' Orthy takes a stomp to her foot, somewhat peeved by Ghurn's unnerving silence.

"Yea, we're not bad people! Why you giving us the tomb treatment anyway?! Especially Talia?! She's given nothing but understanding to a man that shouldn't be living to begin with!"

"Ale'...it's fine--

"The hell it is!" The hell minotaur snap "You saw what we saw! How he was with them in his hundred-year escapade! This total shift to that man that could take a heap of dung and somehow shape it to a freaking sparkling diamond in a mud town full of rejects! Why the hell do we get this shriveled muppet barely able to breathe in comparison?! You think she'd jump in jubilee seeing his like this?!"

"Ale'..." Talia slowly approaches her outraging comrade,  a clad hug without "It's alright...we've spirited a man with the hopes of staying at his people's side. His heart is in utter distraught..."

"I know...I know! But, with how we handled his 'return', with these new bodies we've been blessed with, hell, even before that! You'd think he would remember, at least something..." Ale'andra turns from her companion to fixate the man once more. His hollow stare persisting, ambient.

"Let us just meet miss Laveux, perhaps she'll..." Talia turns to the man as well, his head permanently fixated on his shackles whilst the Minotaur since then disengaged from her embrace.

"Yea...yea..." Her eyes turn to the descending floor where the narrow tunnel from which they left now broadcasted an entire hellscape. Demons, imps, devils, the general of hell's residents, all populating the place. From the fiery molds puncturing the soil to the molten lake at the background, everything seemed made for the express misery of those condemned to this lowly place.

Dor' Orthy, Ale'andra, and Talia all march ahead followed by Ghurn, still entombed in his broken armor. They walk over the beginning of a bridge, half-built, half-cared. The denizens, aside from the human prisoners, notice the group. Some merely wave at them, grinning at what looks like a captured escapee. Others, more curious, fly or otherwise climb to meet the group, only to be met with resignation as they learn of the man walking behind them.

A castle slowly emerges from the background. Their pace, slow as it was with Ghurn dragging iron balls to his ankles, did allow them to reach its extremities. A different shape to that of the entirety of hell itself, the mark of a wealthy patron dwelling within. Ivory walls gilded at the tips and edges. Shimmering graphics depicting banners and sigils. A garden surrounded by jagged walls of lavish designs, to goad would-be intruders while denying them the bounty beyond.

They walk across a bridge guarded by twin gargoyles, shed from their previous shapes to women clad in armor in equilibrium from the aesthetic to the functionality. Their giant spears effortlessly removed from the path ahead as they recognize the three walking ahead, the one walking behind. Whispers from a sister to another about his return.

Eventually, through the marble floor and tapestries, over the stairs, they stand behind a massive door, one almost as high as a gate to a kingdom. The three stand before it, their eyes turned from it to Ghurn. His face is veiled by the light of the outside brimstone, yet they can see him. Hollow.

"Should we really?" Asks Ale'andra, still wary of her mistress' reaction.

"Well..." "She did order us to bring him back" Dor' Orthy shrugs, her third head puzzled as well as to whether handing him is wise.

"Yea, but not like this! I mean, look at him!" Ale'andra raises her tone again "It's like the first time his sins literally dragged him down here! Does she really think THIS is going to help her in her endeavor?!" Her hand is blatantly broadcast on the shackled man, never moved from his vision at his chained hands "I mean, we all got a stake in this fateful meeting and I don't think THIS is going to cut it!"

"The way his second home has been turned says otherwise" interjects Talia, her eye still on the man behind. An eye seeking to understand his thoughts, barred from anyone throughout his time among them.

Her hand presses on the rune etched on the door. A solitary press shoves the gates open under the cacophony of their unprepared state. Beyond them, a woman. By the window. Besides her lays an uncharacteristically pristine glass shimmering with a golden liquid. A bottle responsible for the rich-looking swelling is also present, coated in a crimson filament that is the glass exterior, unable to conceal the golden radiance of the alcohol.

Turning to the one who opened the door, it became rather obvious that she was of the demon family. A succubus. Blond hair sliced to a short style with the sides at their longest joined to a reversed 'V' at the middle of her back. Her eyes shine in the same blond colors, while her horns make a contrarian appearance in the black. A splendid contrast.

"Ohh, my friends, Bienvenue! Welcome!" she speaks as a faint trail of smoke flows out of her glossy lips. An artisan's cigar, judging by the package standing beside the bottle of wine with a vanilla twist to it rather than the usual.

Dressed in a mix of regal comeuppance with her top spouting the dignities of elites and seductress in her bottom consisting of a short skirt bound by legging the color of her top, the woman, merged in pure white and blond at the sidelines, deliberately makes her way to her subordinates, a joyous expression on her visage touched by a mole under the left side of her lips.

"My lady" Talia is embraced by her boss while Ale'andra and Dor' Orthy approach as well, though much less reserved in their expression "Mais, qu'est ce que sont ces visages de moue? Why are you all in frowns?"

"Dor' Orthy shakes her three heads "It's a bust, boss!" "A frank waste of time, really!" Her third head remains quiet, shaking all the more.

"Honestly, we didn't know whether to come back with him..." states the bovine, leaning on the side with a hand resting under her head.

"Une perte de temps? Wasted? But you did bring him to me as I can feel..." Veronica's golden irises leer from her morose minions to the sole figure standing outside her gates, locked in a fixation with his shackles.

Ghurn. Her prisoner. Her trophy, in times past. Shriveled. Hollow. Empty. She starts walking his way, her footsteps in echo symphony even amidst the tumult of the underworld. His body does not react to her imminent approach.

Close.

Closer.

Closer still.

Still devoid of a response, even as her perfume creeps to his nostrils. Her mighty, yet glamorous presence deflects the ominous light at home in the depths of hell, meld with her artisan's outfit. Scrutinizing him from so close, Veronica can see her subordinates' reservations, revealed by the light she shines on his front, his face his eyes. No light flows in them. No expression swells in his face.

"We're sorry, my lady..."

"It's alright..." Veronica's lips whispers, her vibrant eyes lingering on Ghurn's dead stare "...I understand".

Her hand comes to meet his clenched wrist, sliding over the searing cuffs made from metal that bind his hands downward. Her displeasure with them is manifest in the key that falls from under her wrist. It softly clicks within the keyhole, followed shortly by the hefty dent of the floor suffering under the cuffs' fall.

One of her hands goes for his cheek, gently laying on the surface. A yearning for warmth, or touch more likely. A touch from a man unseen for a hundred and five years.

As expected, Ghurn does not react, at the subordinates' dismay, who had hope for anything from the man. Veronica in particular subtly shakes her head, her hand falling from his cheek to his hand.

Burying it in his palm, she turns to the window from a walkable distance, her voice chiming in with a hopeful tone "Viens...I wish to show you something..."

His zombie-like stupor slowly ever follows, pulled forward by her hand as they wander near the outside window, near the couch positioned for a watch.

The black-horned succubus conveniently takes her seat at the middle, watching the man brought to her, seeing whether he would at the very least follow suit. Her hopeful thought is rewarded with but more empty stares.

Once more, her hand reaches his, overlapped by her other "Proche de moi, si possible..." Methodically leading the man to sit, Veronica adjusts her seat as to be as close as possible.

The way she went about, the deliberate manner in her actions surely had some effect, for her eyes are met with his, hollow as they remained. Indirect. Veronica etches a faint smile, manifesting a shrub of gild around her fingers and the glass of wine, thereby levitating it to her unfazed.

Shen connects the tip of the glass to her lips, vehemently emptying the leftover wine from within before putting it away, her whole now directed at Ghurn who's stare turned from her to the table where a scarf laid perfectly folded.

Veronica's sharp eyes can devise his intentional stare, taking hold of it "You remember this, right? Hmm, hmm, ne bouge pas...stand still..."

Her feet get a sudden case of revulsion of the floor, promptly hovering over via her black wings. Surprisingly agile for these, she quickly finds herself behind the man, her silky fingers wrapping even more silky wool crafted as a scarf around his neck, besieged by broken pieces of armor.

Her voice rings behind him "At some point, while in my servitude, I had learned how you were always adorned with one. I thought to make one once for you. I think you can imagine how surprisingly hard it can be to make these, what with the number of times I've poked myself with the needles..."

The scarf lays across his stomach, perfectly attached and rolled around his neck. His hands slowly creep to it, touching it. His eyes briefly shine, spurned by the familiar warmth sheltering his throat and neck. His fingers run across it, feeling the textile maintaining the foundation of its composition with certain irregularities over.

A note of light sparks in his mind this time, a memory long repressed goaded by the brighter times of his first life and second. Both stretching to the fog of darkness that was his time in hell to uncover things he was largely unaware on account of his self-inflicted suffering...

"You've worked on this...again...and again..." he whispers, at the surprise of the three subordinates who took to gather to a couch not far from their boss, filling their lips with golden wine.

"C'est exact...it became kind of the norm every time one of them would carry you back to me" Veronica sat at his blind side, making herself wholly visible.

Ghurn's fingers clutch on the scarf. As if kindred fairies sought to free their fellow, trapped by a jar, his joyous memories kept on pulling more, ripping away at the darkness of perception he had in this place, unearthing another revelation "Because of me...as I walked beyond the confines of your mansion...to meet torture and torment at the flesh..."

"C'était....comment dire, un catharsis. You kept muttering about...what was it? Damoiselles?"

"Purgation" The hell jinko utters bluntly.

"Retribution perhaps? I don't know, it was barely audible" thinks the hell Minotaur.

"Suffering " "Retribution" "Penance. Definitively penance" The three-headed hellhound is in thought, though the third head seems to carry the agreement of her two others.

"Penance. So often I would wake to check on you, just to see the window afflicted by a scrap of the scarf I made. People would often tell my subordinates that you would speak about making penance on yourself. I think you were trying to reach the deepest circle of hell, the circle of treachery" Veronica speaks with a hint of melancholy, her voice clearly having an effect on Ghurn as he turns to meet her eyes, the barest of guilt surfacing in his irises.

"Yes...penance. The same that brought me here in the first instance. Their voices, screaming, begging, pleading...to my indifference as I sent them all to an early grave. Men, women, children, or beast kind. All were the same to me as those who killed my people..."

His hands creep to his head, the vast emptiness of his irises replaced by the torment. The regrets. Everything that bound him to the planes of hell. Trembling, mournful is his voice "...but even they sought an end to this madness of mine! They cried for every life I took! My mind, a chorus of woes from which their voices could not reach me, afflicted by the very freak I had become. The false man..."

His hands begin to dig deep in his skin, only, their self-destructive attempt is halted by Veronica's hands, felt with much more clarity than his time here would have once allowed.

"...and yet, even when you took hold of me as a trophy, it didn't feel like I was given my due..." His eyes now are washed upon their joined hands.

"That's right...well, not at first. Des débuts assez different". An uneasy laugh peers from Veronica "The first times I had custody of you, well...I actually did want someone to break. Someone who would become my personal toy, my pleasure. But then..."

Her hands get somewhat tighter around Ghurn's, her breath deep in inhalation "Then I saw you. These thoughts you've had over the growing days...you were already shattered. Brisé...broken. By your own guilt. I got curious, for a scarce few were like that in their damnation to this place of ours...most of them clamor their innocence or begged for a second chance. But you...you seemed, waiting for punishment. Any kind..."

"So it was, that I sought out the nuance in your arrival here. It would seem that this violence, this hate, nothing more than a man who cried the entirely of his tears and had a hole in his heart. You were a builder before becoming a killer and the former had broken free from the latter. A builder...a laborer..."

Veronica gets herself up, her hands still clinging to his "Viens..." Ghurn's hands follow suit, as does his body. All the way to the window, where a bridge stands half-built, half-constructed. Her eyes are fixated on it, its unfinished state "Que vois-tu?"

Ghurn takes seconds, his eyes absorbing every nook and cranny of the bridge of polished stone. A very beautiful stone crafted, yet left ugly by its sorry condition "A bridge, left undone by wavering hands".

"Yes...wavering hands. Men who feel no yearning to better themselves, stuck in the narrow perception of their belly buttons..." The succubus turns to the armored man "Dois-moi...tell me, do you know why I've made sure that they would let you fulfill yourself with those in the living world?"

Ghurn's eyes gain another note of light as this question peers through as a revelation, much to the grins of Ale'andra and Dor' Orthy, trying their earnest not to yell 'We told you!' straight at the man's face. His voice, again, seeps out as but a whisper "You told them to? Then you must have known, how much they meant to me".

"Oui...j'ai vue. I saw how much you poured yourself in their well-being. Another set of settlements rejected by the world thought to amount to nothing. I saw how they were back then. And then, you came. Saw the peerless diamonds among this rough land of snow and cold. Molded them as you did before..."

The demon's look turns in resignation "No matter what I had tried, no matter how long I took, I could not bring this devotion from you. Perhaps because of my first nights treating you as naught more than a toy. Or perhaps because of your overwhelming guilt bidding you to a catatonic state. But then, this mote of light from an unknown source had taken you from me. They went after you but saw this devotion burning as strong as a furnace in your eyes. So I waited. And waited..."

"And waited..." Ghurn finishes, a heavy sigh denouncing the slow remission of his self. Through this deliberate dialogue of patience, somehow bringing his very former self. Before the catastrophe. Before his sorrow had attracted he who waited behind the wall. Before his cruelty, yet added by his second coming to the material plane.

"Oui...oui! Waited for so long!" Veronica's hands fiercely take Ghurn's, prompting the man to turn to her as she spills her need and want. Her yearning and desire "This man you demonstrated! This man standing before me! The architect! The builder! The soft-hearted being with the soul to change the roughest of beings to sparkling diamonds! It's what I wanted! What we wanted! My subordinates! Can you feel it!?"

She turns to the mentioned, who, indulging in her wine, looked to be stern in their satisfaction. A false image to Ghurn's all too empathic eyes who could scrutinize the surface and dwell deeper. Deeper into their exhausted psyches. Similar exhaustion to a maiden who would wait for her fated one, only to see the years pass. A hollow pleasure of the wine that failed to hide said exhaustion from their eyes "They're tired of the pain and torture and everything in between that's occurred for the past centuries! As I am! The gargoyles standing guards outside my palace, they're tired as well!"

His eyes return to the window, to the barely cobbled bridge manifested by careless hands, or hands that couldn't put their hearts in the co-joined craft. Gargoyles, ever vigilant in their watch, yet their auras, withered and corroded as the rest. A filthy slag cloud on each of them manifested to his eyes.

"We want to love! We want to desire! We want to care for and be cared for! But the men here, tortured for eons have lost their wills, walking as nothing more but aimless dolls, with no heart to warm. Some remain in a vegetative state, unwilling to bear any emotion. None of them would ever let us approach them with any other motive than personal gratification, as we did time and time before..."

Ghurn walks to the window himself, his hands pressed on the downward frame. It would seem that hell, or at least this personal segment, was itself tired of the onslaught of grudges and vindication. The hell beasts turned to beautiful women, now bear the hearts of such gentle ladies, in their way. Gentle hearts utterly scorned and avoided by the other half of this underworld's population; the men.

Veronica slowly approaches him from the side, a heavy sigh from her lips "I know you preferred to remain with your own. I know no manner would have made my claim anywhere acceptable--

"It's alright..." He whispers, the picture ripe in his mind. Despite their tears, despite their laments, they know he would not remain close to them forever. His people would become happy once more, praying to the helmet he left in their custody. To carry on his practice, his thoughts, his everything. They knew he had prepared them to go forth, no longer guided by his hand.

Here, it was another place of misery with people no longer bearing the malice to keep the jagged wheels going. "It's alright. I trained them to live on. They will be happy again. This is but another place where I may sweep the wounds of the past, as I was through my redemptive march to the living world".

"Then..." Veronica's voice tones in uncertainty, her newest attributes spilling the thoughts of jubilee as she subconsciously anticipated his answer.

"I will help. I will heal. I will mend and cure. I will make a paradise in hell if that is what you ask of me".

Veronica's voice turns from doubt to joy. From joy to jubilation. From jubilation to clamor. She jump, unable to contain her joy. Jumps in the arms of Ghurn, who just turned to face her, expecting but a regal agreement.

Instead, he barely caught the woman in his arms, unprepared for her own arms joined to the back of his neck.

More unprepared for the rush of heat that began coalescing in a red shade across her cheeks.

Even more unprepared for the unnatural softness of her voluptuous body somehow permeating through his hardened if shattered and punctured armor laced with burnt spots, agitating his senses in a way he was unfamiliar with.

And especially unprepared for her lips joining his in a fierce kiss. His immediate instincts compel him to pull away, thinking it all to be a symptom of a succubus just overjoyed at the hearing of his agreement to aid them.

Her eyes line with his, a carnivalesque lust fanned by brighter flames of love compelling Veronica to double down on her thorough kiss, this time, with no chance to merely pull away from the man.

Passionate, yet as gentle as the petal of flowers. Her lips seamlessly mix with her breath, feeding him the aftertaste of her golden wine. A rich mix of vanilla and softness. So enthralled in it she is, that the same breath coalesces around, visible as if they were near a window assailed by winter.

Ghurn was confused. Confused at how right it felt, his memories feeding him the parts of the past he had suppressed in his guilt. Her mentioned toying and gratification, an ephemeral time, followed by countless attempts at 'gaining' his sanity back. The scarf that adorns his neck, one in many careful touches made by the wine enthusiast. From trying to share the priceless artifacts of her wine cellar to the introduction of more carefully picked culinary, hundreds, if not thousands of these small steps were now re-introduced in his mind, purified from the deep-seated hate that once had him dive in the bowels of hell.

Centuries before the great metamorphosis...

Their lips separate from one another, Veronica panting in ravenous satisfaction whereas Ghurn was in confusion. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this. And to feel it so much more strongly than my deepest dreams of this moment...mon amour éternel, my eternal love~

"W-what? What was..." His confusion is palpable. Though it does not grow to a state of rejection, for his heart was sated by this as well, aided by the sincerity of her act. An act subtly blossoming to an honest desire from himself.

Her hands recede to his chest, her expression no more of an elegant 'dame' but that of an inexperienced maiden anticipating her first night in her beloved's arms as she becomes a woman forever more. Unabated joy adorns her face, eyes full of fireworks solely directed at Ghurn, the latter subconsciously keeping his arms laced around her waist ~Will you promise to be gentle? I've never made love before. I-It's a new experience for me to be the focus of a man before--

A dry slap turns everyone's heads toward the source. It would seem Ale'andra had just enough of seeing this lovey-dovey side of her boss, prompted to put a sordid end to it through a hefty thump on the round table. Or so it would seem before her voice spoke in envy "Hold on now! Boss, you're seriously not--

"How dare--! Vraiment Tu me fais ça maintenant?!" Veronica's hands displace from Ghurn's broken chest plate, now truly governed by the confusion of what laid before him.

From his side, furiously marches the woman who turned from any semblance of any governorship, the attitude tainted by the scores of red strings running across her face as a bright blush over her pale cheeks. Obviously to take to derision, was it not for her booming voice scoring her affront via her foreign tongue "Le Nombre d'années à attendre l'homme qui me serait retourné et tu décide de me faire l'attitude juste là?! Cela ne pouvait pas attendre, pas même une seule minute?!"

"No, it couldn't! He needs to start working on the others right away! You're not the only one with a stroking need for emotional connection, you know!"

"Vraiment?! Qu'est-ce que c'est riche de ta part! Contrairement à vous, j'ai du me 'distraire' par mes propres moyens!"

"Yea? Well, while you were doing 'that', I was busy getting my face kicked in by the same man because SOMEONE couldn't properly seal his magic powers away!"

And thus, the succubus continuously bickers with the Minotaur, both parties sending forth objects flying in the heat of their debate, all in the ever confounded eyes of the man present. Insults and swears, crimson cheeks and flustered expressions. Everything is a crescendo of confusion.

"You look lost over the theatrics" comments Talia who made her way to the man's side, looking afflicted as well. Dor' Orthy did the same, though with a much quieter degree, her simultaneous heads devoid of vision as she seeks to keep herself under most of the control.

"I'm mostly confused..." Ghurn comments back, his arms crossed over the seemingly childish dispute he was witness to.

"To what subject?"

"This, principally" A gestured hand rises toward Veronica's fencer stance behind a silver rapier, solely pointed at her subordinate, coated with a demon aura. Ale'andra, on her side, now bore her cleaver dripping in a purple miasma.

The Minotaur speaks in pants, still reeling from the teaser of her boss' fiery desire manifested with her ancient prisoner "Our husbands first!"

"Not over my cravings!" Her voice is dipped on edge, having but taken a proverbial sip of reciprocated love, her body craving for much more.

Ghurn turns to Talia as a clash of orange and blue resonates both in sight and audition at the middle of the living room,  "I mean, I don't really see the issue..."

"You don't?" Talia leers at his obvious ignorance "Are you really not seeing it? One would think an empathic man such as you were before and are now would feel it".

Ghurn raises an eyebrow multicolored by the collision of the contrast of weapons "I mean, didn't she basically used to have her way with me? Back then? I don't--

"Ahh, there's the problem, Custodian. That was but a display of a deal she proudly boasted. To violate a tyrant that inflicted untold suffering in his life. Just a physical thirst that is typical of our boss' species. But now..."

The jinko's breath becomes hotter, fanning steam with every exhalation. Her charcoal cheeks burn with passion under flustered eyes, one of her muffs pressed against her breast while her other clenches from but the soft press. Her head tilts forward, yielding to her newly acquired sensations, her voice quivering in-between "Love...ahh...ahh...We crave love...ahh...To have a man covet us...ah...desire us...To be pushed down by a beloved's arms...hungry for us, unable to withhold their lust...their love..."

Her words were already bouncing his fresh memories to Veronica's appetite. Ohh how it spurned his taste, leaving him vulnerable to his bodily functions, compounded further by his mind's acceptance, yet hindered by his broken armor, mostly hiding the 'visible' marks of her speech. Every word she utters in her state serves only to make his wear ever more irrelevant "Leaving no gap between our bodies, our hearts...as we scream their name continuously under the passion...ahh...gripping to them as a plead for more pleasure. To share a sloppy kiss in the mix of emotions in the midst of our embrace..."

Talia lifts her head, ever so reddish, but devoid of shame in her truest wish as she turns to the man who would return the one she seeks so vehemently from the abyss he once faced "This...this is what we want. The thoughts and attempts our boss had put to you with the hopes of what you became in this moment. We want a man who will want us as wives, as women. My companion wants your labor on her chosen, my lady wants you to lay with her, make love to her. What she did with your catatonic body in your absent mind is but irrelevant compared to the thought of someone loving her in both body and spiritual manners, and frankly..."

Tali groans, her body twitching in wave after wave of pre-emptive pleasure, her thoughts filled with her at the center of her supposed beloved's world "...I feel the same. I do hope you would be kind to begin healing our selected few first. This would be the simple debt we acquired for your extra time on the living world".

Ghurn breathes deeply, regaining a sort of control over his grumbling emotions never felt before, over someone he never thought would be the source. He loves her. A love that mostly groomed over her failed attempts to 'recover' his spirits. He now understood the conflict before him, one that is not masquerading as vicious combat, however. With a smile, he looks at her "Of course. I'd be glad to help experience the heart of a wife".

"That's good to hear, Custodian. Though I will suggest, maybe you should part from the broken plates that litter your body" Talia smirks as she runs a finger across his ragged and battered armor, accidentally chipping a piece off "As I remember, the bed is no place for apparels of war. At least no beds of ours..."

"Well, I guess I'll be on my way then" Ghurn walks around the feud, surprisingly featuring little collateral damage with both Veronica and Ale'andra's weapons bearing the standard aura of demon silver. As he reaches the door to make a right, Talia tailed him with a hand on his shoulder, her other pointed to the left.

"That's her room..." His voice runs a parallel to a raising eyebrow.

"Obviously, Custodian. As I expect, humans couples share a bed, do they not? Why would it be different for any of us?". A faint smile comes on her face

"Old habits" Ghurn takes a steady pace to Veronica's personal chambers barred by another massive set of doors. Unexpectedly, as he presses his hand on their surface, they yield and prove to push easily, welcoming him to the inner folds. His foot also trips over the casual concession of the gates where in the past, he would be faced with immovable obstacles.

The first thing to sing a different tune is the bed. Double in size, adorned with curtains of silk across its four faces whereas it's small and rich appearance denied a second body sleeping on it.

The cupboards, the second addition. Food and drinks of all sort fill the space. Nourishment resonating with his mind. Things he ate, things he dranks, now available to him.

Finally, space. Her wardrobe, filled to the brim with her apparels, now featuring a hollow space rendering the closet half as loaded as before, as well as male mannequins wearing bits of cloth from the living world. A closet to his name and life-size dolls in his stature.

"She wasn't kidding..." Ghurn walks inside, impressed by these changes "It's like she walked to a memory lane to my past. Well, she did, but still..." He unfastens the brackets to his chest plate, letting the front and back fall.

An uncharacteristic bell rings to his ears as the pieces resonate on the floor, his vision flooded by the ambiance of a gray soothe. His eyes, transported to another land. Ghurn felt his spirits lifting, temporary leaving his body behind staying immobile, as time's clock stopped for this moment, the second lapsed to eternity.

A warm sensation washes over his back followed by a soft orange glow behind him. Ghurn could feel his soul getting lighter with every non-second passing. His soul, shaped as his person gleaming in a gray aura, made to the likeness of this plane he walks on.

The reason walks pass him. A lost soul, deeply embedded in his body...once. And a second. And a third. And so many more. Men. Women. Children. Elderly. He could recognize each of them as they walked past his vision.

He stretches his arm to one of them, feeling them literally depart from his body. The individual, a man with a wife on his side, their child on his other. He turns to his once-guardian, the man who mourned their loss for an untold time. He smiles at Ghurn "Thank you...for everything. We will remember your kind hand through the echo of time..."

They walk away from Ghurn, more and more stopping to take his hand, tearfully thanking him as they depart from him. Walking to a statue of a woman. A woman adorned with a simple greek robe reaching her ankles. Her arms were double to that of a human, each holding their own fabrication. The top left featured an olive branch held gracefully forward, as his her right top arm, painting a sigil of a mix.

Light showering in its golden radiance, seamlessly shape-shifting to a liquid fall of darkness, gently pooling as if it was water. The dark side made a place for its eternal partner of light, seemingly conscious of who they welcome.

The third arm held a ceramic vase of ancient times. Pouring an unknown liquid within instead of alcohol. A divinity, judging by the glow from within, radiating through the silver depicting of the vase decorating it as an individual is decorated with metallic filaments on their clothing.

The only hidden arm was the fourth one, kneeling behind the statue's back. Absolved from sight.

The statue, carrying all of her items, still had her arms gestured forward as a mother awaiting her child running to her. Ghurn couldn't help but feel enthralled by it as his people literally walked to it, touched by the statue's arms. Their bodies shifted to particles of light, to be carried off to another plane beyond.

All of this happened in the eternity of the second, the man, mesmerized by the statue's beauty. Her nails painted in a soothing purple that reached for the fingers' edge. Her arms, welcoming golden silk dancing around it, sentient, perhaps.

A feeling nascent in Ghurn's chest surfaces, the golden light of her ribbon the same as the one mote of light that once appeared on his bed. A revelation leaving the man unable to stand on his feet, lowering him to his knees in a prayer of clamor. Boundless adoration from his voice "Thank you! Thank you so much! I didn't--I didn't know that you would offer me absolution! Whoever you are, whatever you are, I--

"Be on your feet so that our eyes may meet. I would not have my Virtra set themselves apart from me" A soothing voice calls to his ears. A voice that is inhumanly sweet to Ghurn. A voice calling him to dare gaze upon the speaker.

His mind compels him to do so as if he knew of the being beckoning to him. More than strangers, it spurns him as a queen would to her knight, a duty acted out of fealty for those he loved more than mere rank.

He takes to his feet, his head slowly rising from the bottomless ground in this plane of existence. One that would clamor in its divinity as Ghurn finally meets the eyes of the speaker.

The statue, a pale comparison to what it mimics. A woman, bathed in silk, light, and dark. Light on her ribbons, dark on her fingers, the two in a symphony. Her horns are shaped as a gilded nimbus, being neither holy nor demonic. Something beyond as the two forces live in harmony within the woman.

A goddess with her symbols hovering near her as her hands now coupled around Ghurn's solitary palm. Her voice rings strongly, his very soul feeling...empowered. Beholden to her words.

"Once you were a builder, promising to shelter those who were rejected from the world, turning their harsh land to a haven".

"Then, you became a killer, a destroyer, with hated promises to those who tore them from you. A kind man turned to the very thing he sought to shelter his kind from". The goddess' visage turns to a frown, her silver hair gleaming in response as her hidden arm shakes with much fury. Ghurn shared in that sentiment. The worst stain of his life.

"Then, you became a hollow man, an empty man, conflicted and confronted by your sins, your nightmares. Unwilling to accept grace from anyone, you turned on yourself, inflicting on your soul untold suffering in the bowels of the underworld..." Her expression grows harrowing, if not outright sorrowful, her hands tracing through the man's palm, feeling every scrap of mindless pain he afflicted himself with. Be it by burns, punctures, slashes, bites or otherwise, it coincided well with Veronica's words about him seeking the depth of suffering if only to mimic that of those he damned.

"I witnessed your broken state, once a garrison of humanity, made vulnerable by lamentation. Rotted by his touch. The one who hides behind the wall. An unfulfilled lost before I could covet you under my wings. Absolution, I imprinted upon thee, to see thou risen from those who only begun to understand your kind, unable to bring you back to your pre-self. To see thou regain this love..."

"Now, hear me..." Her upward hands so long coalesced around Ghurn's begin to gleam in gray light, echoed throughout his body in fiery orange. A divine orange fueling his very essence. Marks following the tide of power gestating at his core. His eyes begin to glow in response despite his confused state, a short interim overwhelmed by his acceptance.

"This is my decree...These are my orders...As the first of my reclaimed, heed my word" Her hands depart from his, leaving the power ingested to gestate within. It materializes pieces of armor shuddering on his head, his neck, his chest, his arms, his legs, his feet. Every note of flesh on his soul form in entombed in armor. A revered armor from a distant past filled to the brim with power. A power gladly transcribed to him as his soul became something grander than himself. A true servant to an ancient divinity.

"Hate no more...but love. Destroy no longer...but protect. Cast no more stone...but build. Rejet none...but shelter those that would seek it. This hell you stand in, it offends me. In my name, mold it to a paradise for those stranded. As you have done. As you will do once more..."

Ghurn's hand clenched throughout her speech, radiating with might unheard of before. The task he was given would become much easier with divine strength. It felt such as home within him as he feels with the deity standing before him. With a hand reaching for his back, he brings his fist in her sight, an ancient salute echoed in his mind, whispers of another servant as well as her name "Yes ma'am...Dichotomia, my patron..."

The four-armed deity reaches for the man's cheek, his encasing helmet faded where her fingers touch "Then go, my Virtra. The aristocrat awaits marital vows~ Her fingers recede from his cheek, only to gently poke his forehead, sending him back to hell.

The time around him resumed, no longer yielding to the of what would become his patron. His new armor, forged by a goddess, rescinds its present to be called whenever he wills.

"Marital vows? What did she--oh..." Ghurn looks behind him presented to an ardent sight. Veronica leaning on the door frame, dressed in nothing more than the top of a snow-white pajama and black underwear. The two clothing pieces molded to her body, further exacerbating her forms, the things that excite scores of men.

In her hands, a bottle of golden wine accompanied by two glass as well as a  melting smile. She moves from the frame, swaying her hips while walking toward her ex-slave, making sure to accentuate the movement. Ghurn's eyes are hypnotized, burning the image of a lady deeply in his mind.

He bows as her arms rise on each side of her, holding both the bottle of wine and glasses. A heartwarming sight for the man who sees upon himself to meet her halfway through the room. He braces as her body flickers to a manner seeking to be lifted.

~Mon amour~ she jumps to the man, her arms intertwined behind his neck, fully giving in to his newfound strength carrying her like a feather, giggling all the way to the makeshift gentle spin he motions. Her feet flow tenderly in the air, entirely carried in his arms in the midst of a man-made carousel.

Her voice, once so stern in her mannerism, now shamelessly giggles Her eyes convey her affection, shining amidst the barely lit room. They are supported by her lips that join Ghurn's in yet another kiss. One of blooming devotion unlike the fiery passion of the previous. His spin stops as her demonic softness now occupied his thoughts. Their eyes deliberately forsake the background, the significant other at their focal point.

Minutes string past them before their lips separate, leaving their co-joined feelings intact. Ghurn's hands went to reach under her feet to carry her like a princess. Her expression concisely conveys a mote of surprise, soon turned to a heartfelt comfort. Her head gently leans to his shoulder all the way to the side of the bed where he sits, with her still on his lap.

She sighs in contentment with the revelation of their position by the light of the window, the sole space lit in the room. An eye opens in his direction, grateful for the mere moment of heartstrings moving in ways she never expected "It's a shame she left before I could thank her, though no words could express what I feel in this moment~

He raises an eyebrow "So you were aware? I only found out after meeting her as my patron"

"Oui..." Veronica's hand lays on his chest, the bottle of wine burrowed in the sheets of the bed "Sa voix...her voice gave me the promise of your return after she spirited you away, seeking to do what I couldn't hope to".

"I see" Ghurn take two fingers to her chin to considerately shift her face to his, his stare, oath-driven "Then I shall do everything to make you happy and bring the same to those present. To right the wrongs in this section".

Her parted lips approach anew, invigorated by her new feelings ~You already are. This closeness is all we want, and I'm already fulfilled...~ Again, another kiss, a tempo he was to expect from now on.

This time, however, Veronica shifts her weigh forward, deliberately pushing the man on the bed with her toppling over him in a straddling motion. Her eyes turn to a cheerful expression, burning away the all-too-many malice that once tainted her visage in instances past.

One of her hands seeks his own to lace around, their fingers joined in an aspect of romance. Her second picks up his idle hand to place it on the corresponding hip side before planting her own back on his chest.

~...but, the mere coitus is no longer going to be enough for me, mon amour~ she speaks, her tail tugging on her underwear as she leans downward.

Her eyes flash, prompting the silk veil around the bed to close, further giving light to the only window open outside ~My heart aches to love and be loved in a physical manner. Will you indulge me, mon tendre genre?~

His hand's grip tightens as his other tenderly caresses her waist. Ghurn can feel her craving for genuine feedback. Caresses, whispers and everything in between. No mindless thrusts, but a delicate movement. Soft pushes thoroughly savoring her. His expression, his benefaction to the act would all be sought-after. Returning to his mindless idleness was no longer an option...

...nor was it one he wanted anymore "Yes. I would love to discover whether your body is as sweet as your lips". His cheeks burn brightly, almost rivaling the ambient light.

Her smile turns from dutiful to a luscious one, waiting to softly whisper his name in a pure voice of delight. Unable to wait anymore, her tail makes a clean cut across her underwear, dropping the fabric. Her eyes close, entirely focused on ridding her impendent husband of his bothersome trousers, allowing his 'tower' to reach up to her belly button.

A brief shock comes to her, one warmly welcomed as she positions herself over it, her gentle hand holding it straight ~It never was this 'eager' in our prior privacy, fufu. Let's make a good first impression, shall we?~ - Slowly, the custodian's work began. Rock by rock, shaped by his hand, joined by others, such as the first three men he was to instill a sense of purpose whilst healing the wounds of the past. His words carried powerful promises of a fulfilled afterlife if they would but open their hearts to those who once tormented them, the sincerity of the thought displayed by their innumerable regrets.

Talia merely cupped her future beloved's hands, scarred by the mistakes of times past with an oath to be what she couldn't be in the anterior: a watchful tiger with boundless advice to aid him where his life had failed.

Dor' Orthy intertwined her arms around her selected one, no longer bound to the erratic violence of the older times with a promise she couldn't utter in human tongues; three guardian heads to shelter his hands so that he no longer shed blood in radical self-defense.

Ale'andra...lunged as her man, overjoyed with the prospect of one willing to embrace her. Surprisingly, her oath was the simplest, well in the range of a Minotaur: her lap. More precisely, an ear to listen. A presence to witness. Her complete disposition.

Obviously, with results like this, Ghurn, who had resumed the physical shaping of the hellscape, was continuously tapped on the shoulder by another monster with flabby ears and a regretful gaze, their expression pleading for their sought-after beloved to be restored, both physically and mentally.

As the rhythm of his work increase, so did those who now carried the experience of their lives in the living world, united by Ghurn's vision of a paradise in hell, that of an ancient servant of an even older divinity. His building time, having reached his peak, now began to dwindle by the available hands on board. Time spent in the company of his dearest and those who serve in her name... --- Time in hell moves under the same clock of time as does the planes beyond and the living world, meaning that for a particular individual to step forth in an isolated corner of the world, far from known civilization, the set time for a gathering is a basic one. Dressed in a casual outfit of crimson colors to match her variant pigment. Pieces of armor adorn her set, though watered down from a war suit.

From the plethora of horns crowned on her head to her pink irises radiating the heritage of ancient demons, the woman continues forward, bearing the marks of a truly ancient creature. She walks, unaffected by the shivering blizzard. But then again, neither are the consorts awaiting her.

One bears the oriental craftsmanship of Zipangu culture, the other wears the style of an occidental guard. From the flowing hair of the tiger to the short cut of the Minotaur, both stand to greet the isolated walker.

"Hey, what's up? Been a while". Ale'andra's welcome is quick and temporal, her arms crossed under her downcast look.

"I concur" speaks the red pigmented woman "It has indeed been a certain time since our meeting. I suppose she sent you here for my escort?"

"That is correct" nods Talia, gesturing to the pentagram, notably different from the usual mark of hell's descent. Five edges of the stars, five thing bars lodged within, waiting on the users' whim "Lady 'Laveux' has been expecting you for a while now. I'm actually surprised you have traveled this far to get a rift from us. Would the heart of Makai not have been a suitable place for a teleport?"

The red demon shrugs off "Force of habit, really. Teleportation to a place as harsh as hell needs a proper atmosphere, though I feel as if this place has changed as well".

Ale'andra and Talia step in, awaiting their guest as she walks in a sultry manner, a design taken to her kind, at the heart of the pentagram. The rods at the edge hum in unison, sending forth a beam upward. The slope that was the transportation downward is no longer. Dethroned by a more ephemeral power disintegrates the soil under their feet, leaving them to stand on a floor of light, mapped in the shape of hexagons. Walkable hexagons.

The demon taps on this 'floor' as they descend further, no longer of the living world "I do not recall the transition this smooth..." She taps again, seeing her high-heel briefly surrounded by specs of particles of the same color as the mobile platform, surging from a heightened orange resonating at her slightly stronger tap.

"Well, it's no longer the same backwater turf. In fact, it's been revamped for quite a while, ex-lord!" Grins Ale'andra as her eyes turn back to her arms, with a blanket wrapped over them.

The ex-lord of the beast smirks in her direction "I kind of noticed, my dear. Between my underling sending me an invite and your cooing over your newborn, it's not hard to decipher~ She scoots over to the bovine, beaming over the babbling calf who's just opened her eyes ~So cute, what's her name?~

"Tina! Tina Boreal!" The bovine boasts proudly as the infant showers the ambient space with giggles and tiny arms reaching for her mother over hearing her name being spoken.

"Ohh, a tiny name for a tiny little calf. My little imp's finally got a playmate next time I come around, hmm?"

"An unfortunate decision that you have not brought your offspring, madam. As you will see soon enough..." The descent is smooth and seamless, finally pulled from the earth's flesh to another land. A land the ex-lord couldn't bear to recognize.

Talia takes a proud stance at the marvel presenting itself to their recurring, the latter absolutely mesmerized by the sight "...hell has become a paradise".

"I can't--what is--what is this place?! Surely this isn't the hell I once oversaw!" She runs to the edge of the hard light platform, the very thing fabricating railing out of further solidified light and silver foci.

"But it is! Custody of our venerated Custodian!" another voice emanates from one of the hundreds of focal points etched and built over a gigantic bridge shining in ivory colors and silver lines.

They land on a designated circle, the hard light dissipated under their feet in a gentle dance of particles. Veronica walks to the trio,  a pair of filled glasses containing her much golden wine sparkling. "Ma chère, ma chère...enjoying the landscape?"

"Is this what you meant by a 'change of scenery?" The ex-lord looks around her while the blond-haired succubus turns to her companions "Consider the rest of the week as off-shore, 'mes dames', this tourist guide is mine to carry".

"Hah! You don't have to tell us twice!" grins Ale'andra as she turns to her calf, cooing all the more "Now, now, let us do something about that rumbling tummy. Daddy said he had something special today in store~ Her jump is...unnatural. High and far, effortlessly reaching the very edge of the bridge to land on yet another, on her way home.

Talia bows "Of course, I would expect nothing less, ma'am". She turns from the two, her expression shifted to that of a mother "My little cubs are waiting, probably still sleeping on their daddy" She rushes forward, disappearing from sight.

The ex-lord watched her do so, the light of surprise waning as she went to clutch her own stomach, once sheltering a life. "Judging by your three acolytes' disposition, I take it you have a lot to show me..." She takes a glass filled with the rich alcohol, sampling it.

"So many things to show you..." Her ancient subordinate speaks as their pace ignites at their feet. --- "This Custodian is responsible for everything I see..." The ex-lord comments, still unable to believe what she sees. A landscape worthy of rivaling the untouched beauty of nature.

"He did..." Speaks Veronica. Her palm surges upward to where the ceiling should be, once lumps of earth mired by the everlasting screams of the suffering, now give sight to a sea of stars. Literally "The sky...well, we never had a sky before. No cosmic light would ever reach us. But then, he looked to the height and lamented how we couldn't gaze at the stars. The nature of this place meant that we would live in the night, so he offered us a night among the cosmos. Its soft darkness carrying the innumerable stars in its blanket as they would the living world. The moon bears the duty of day in its white clarity and a cool blue in the night. From time to time, we would get glimpses of a celestial body affiliated with rings. He told me they were assemblies of stone co-joined in a circling motion".

The pure white of the moon shines a bountiful day in the underworld's segment in the stead of the sun that does the same in the living world. Dimly, subtle, dancing across the waterfalls. Waterfalls?

Veronica looks at her. The pink radiance of her mistress unmistakenly showering the dethroned vestige of lava "He looked at the pools of lava and thought fit to replace them. Bringing a cherished someone to enact a covenant with, they willingly aided in his rejection of the millennia-old ponds..."

"Many sinners had fallen in them. I remember how we laughed at their suffering, whereas now, I can no longer think of inflicting this sort of untold anguish to anyone now. Might be this new body we've assumed".

The succubus chuckles "You share the same thought as our Custodian did, as he said they 'no longer had a purpose'. Willed a hole in the underworld where the Ignis and their covenanters spilled the ever pouring heat. As for the water, well, he had to cross back to the living world and enlist many Undine back to our fold. The new strength bestowed by his patron aided him in keeping them unharmed by the hellish heat ambient still in our place as they summoned geysers from the top..."

"He sounds like someone with a lot on his to-do list".

"He did. I should know". Veronica shoots a glance at the ex-lord, pungent with particular guilt fairly common among the demonkind.

The former lord, fully ingrained in her new thoughts and feelings, connects the dots permeating her underling's "No way...you actually went to claim such a man?!" A massive grin etches on her face, magnetized close to Veronica "How underhanded of you to cast your seduction on a weary warrior like that. I wonder whether our new lord's metamorphosis actually did change anything in you~

"Bien...what can I say?" Her consort shrugs in a sip "He came to me for rest. He came to me for comfort. His labor took much from him. My instincts whispered in the night, compelling me to claim him every visit. Seeing how they bore fruits, I can't exactly expunge them, can I?" Veronica twirls her half-filled glass, her other hand gently coiling on her stomach. Her eyes closed, as if in the abstract sequence of a memory. A fond one, manifested by her faint smile.

"Obviously not".

They turn back to the bridge they stand on, their walk having cut most of the distance to her palace. Their paces encounter many others with mundane thoughts. Mostly children running along the rails, born from the creatures of the underworld, washed from the malice that once came with their upcoming. They giggle close to the rails, their parents never a foot far.

Veronica speaks of the immense crowd strung all over it as they soon cross the gates to her palace "This place...the foundation of everything we worked for. A focus from which to reach every parcel of our circle. It's our eighth miracle, so to say".

"Judging by the feelings radiating every brick, I can tell". She takes a sip, soon feeling the weightlessness of her glass.

"Eh oui! Every stone cast is a stone hurled to the past. Speaking of stone..." Veronica waves to the two gargoyles adorned with a sparkling amulet, reflecting the more virulent effect of the sunlight on their very selves.

Sitting on their pedestals in a carefree manner, the twins wave back as the demons walk pass them, with one of the stone women taken to grab a snack. The gates open to their unrelenting pace passing through to the halls. Through to the door at the palace's exit. The rabble outside gradually falls on deaf ears, replaced by another, more local source.

Veronica and her matron pass through a few undisclosed rooms. One, in particular, was opened by a slight. Babbles filled the frame, to the ancient lord's surprise. Her widen, her mother instincts crystal haywire with jubilee, turned to her old second-in-command "Fruits? Oh, Veronica, you cheeky, cheeky little imp. Fancy wordplay you still utilize for little ones~

"Bien...what can I say? Succubi were always were sly type" Her hand gradually opens up to a room painted in a soft yellow. A large window panned out to the other side of the room, allowing even a crawling individual to gaze at the new sky. Maternal supply is well folded on the right side of the place, available and plentiful.

Two cribs of polished marble stand near the window, one of the babbling coming from one of them. The other? An infant at the heart of the room, resting on her tiny belly. Her hands' toll away in a play with a tiny sphere, perfectly fit for her minuscule hands.

Each time her hands poked the gelatine substance, it would respond with an echo of her touch in an array of colors at its surface, making the little one laugh in childish joy.

Her forked tail begins to swath, an indication of a parent nearby. As her eyes rose from her toy, so did her voice "Mommy!"

Tiny feet strive to lift the little one, aided in a great deal by her still growing wings, flapping in a discordant fashion. Before then, her overgrown joy pushes her, albeit a bit clumsily, to run for her mother.

The same mother who's heart sink every time her firstborn calls her out. Dropping on her knees, the succubus spreads her hand solely at her offspring ~Mon petit nourisson~. The child falls on her mother's arms, giggling evermore, caressed by voice and fingers, resting her twin tails on Veronica's boundless bosom.

The ancient lord approaches, a heartfelt simper at the sight of the child gripping her mother's finger with her own set. With one of her priceless pearl in her arms, she turns to her boss "Vanessa,  look who's here today. She's here to visit our little family~

"Hi" Her tiny hand wavers once or twice, grinning all the more under the red hands' fondling of her cheeks.

"And this adorable little imp is your first?"

"Oh que oui! My dearest blessed me with a sister for Vanessa here. Theressa~ Veronica gently sets her firstborn on the floor, the latter attached to her mother's leg by a small grip all the way to the second crib, where an even smaller infant lies. Still sleeping, at a year of age. A contrast to her older sister just reaching her third year, brimming with energy.

"Oh wow...I never thought this place would ever become a family house".

"Yea, neither did I. But then again, neither did I expect a revenant to discard his blindfold..." Veronica reaches for her sleeping second, slowly adapting the toddler to her arms. Being a year old, she thought it fitting for this one to have her long blond hair braided by the side of the back. She whimpers softly, re-adjusting to the embrace. Veronica turns to the door, her children near her. Vanessa skips along, knowing full well the destination they now walked.

However, her words had set a bit of trouble within the ex-lord "Revenant? Blindfold? A blind--!! No..." She rushes forward, an old thought bursting out of the confines of her mind. Out the door, to the right path, running.

Veronica giggles at her matron's reaction, her own thought sharing the epiphany, devoid of the shock. She kneels down to Vanessa "Oh, look. The lady went to see daddy. How about accompanying her?"

"I can? Yay!" The toddler gets a boost of anticipation...and a bit of her mother's spell for a temporary dexterity. With that, she runs, leaving Veronica to walk along with Theressa still dozing the day away.

The ex-lord, far ahead in her course, looked at the walls. Full of pictures, family pictures. A man, her underling, a child.

A man, her underling, her other child.

Her first child, in a stand-alone frame.

Her second child, resting on a bed of feathers.

The family, united in the largest of them all, the man's face shrouded by the shadow of the outer light.

And then, the final frame, the first picture. Veronica in a bride's dress joining her hand with the man's in a groom's suit, both hands entombed with a silver ring. Their faces, unapologetically happy. His face, unshrouded by the dark. His eyes, orange. The only difference to the mental picture of her mind.

"The blind revenant..." She runs past the back door, presented with a humble mausoleum-like building featuring trees of olive branches. A small garden is in her way, built around with a path for her to cross. Passing beyond, stairs polished with gray marble constructs. Each stair bears an ornate vase, large enough for one to prefer carrying it with two hands. They shine within, contained with a light. The last step reveals the statuesque of a woman four arms. One carrying an olive branch, one bearing the vases she might have seen, one manifesting a sigil lost to time and...the hidden one.

Looking at the back, she may have seen a dagger pressed by the fingers. But it was not as an assassin. Her fingers coiled around the blade, keeping the shaft untouched. It was clear that this dagger was a shameful secret that this statue would loathe to use, though it did not paint her visage, instead, giving the expression of a welcoming healer to her folds. A bright smile and the unnatural eyes, shining, beaming on the ex-lord stepping over the last stair.

She opens the door, revealing a small room presenting more doors. Many more doors. All closed. Then again, her target was at the heart of the room, his face turned from her. Busy, tolling with simple machinations. Groceries of a man who've just returned from the place they call 'Royal Makai' on the behalf of his wife.

"Ghurn..." she whispers, her voice laid bare for the man to slowly turn. Every inch of his rotation gave more inscription to his appearance. An unremarkable set of brown hair, cut short. A caucasian pigment. A small cut on his left chin. An inert scarf adorned on his neck.

His turn ceases, plenty visible to the one who once condemned him. Yet his visage was not of anger, not of outrage, nor even resentment. His powerful, orange eyes, instead conveyed understanding, a loose end about to be knotted.

She was confounded. The Custodian they spoke of, the one who split the earth to gift them with the cosmic sky and the fertile waters, the one who threw the anchor of the past in the abyss of time...

...the one who gave her husband the will to live, to love, and to yearn, is the same individual who once sown misery on an incomprehensible scale. The blind revenant turned to the Custodian of dreams.

Their staring is abruptly ended by a childish joy calling out to her father ~Daddy! Eheh, daddy!~

His stern understanding is swiftly cut to that of a longing parent, his bags left to the floor as he opens his palms, waiting "Faster than last time, are you? Did mommy put a running spell on my little peach?"

She jumps to his arms, exalted in the joy of a hug, her tail swathing with wanton abandon. The ex-lord looks at his eyes, enthralled in fathership. The man that once walked in shackles, waiting for his damnation, died long ago. Veronica made sure of that in their renewed first night

The same Veronica walking past her matron, a smirk on her face "Indeed, Me' Lani. A hundred and five years in the making. Une longue épopée..."

Me' Lani stands quaking, her initial shock evolved to a sense of gratitude. She kneels before the man, her eyes shed in graceful tears as her mind replays the latest events of her life, from the fateful meeting of her faithful to the birth of her own offspring.

Her visage does not detach from the sight of Ghurn, the subject of her happy weeping "Thank you...". A voice that conveys the incomprehension of a tortured man by her word gifting her with a rose rather than a thorn. And yet, here they were, a lord and revenant no more, but parents knitting their last loose end.

Still holding his Vanessa on one arm, the man, letting the meaning of her word sink deep, he walks to her, a hand reaching out for her "Bah, don't mention it. How about a more formal gathering?"