Post by Ladon on Dec 29, 2016 1:07:50 GMT -5
Ladon placed the wooden box in the lip of a quartz tree and slowly raised the lid. The faintest trace of the heavenly scent he had smelt when the last eggs were broken still wafted gently off the eggs that remained. It twisted his stomach into knots, and it was all he could do to repress that stupid, primal urge to shatter the eggs and indulge in the ecstasy of their release.
Hollow Bait.
The humans that had let him steal these were some of the most fantastic, considerate creatures he had ever encountered; they had handed him the key to his evolution. He had experienced first hand the overwhelming desire to hunt and feed that infected him when the scent hit his nose. It had possessed his mind to such an extent was he that he had abandoned his sizeable, delicious quarry to hunt it down and only cleared once he had devoured what he thought was the source of the smell. A thousand hollows surrounded him and none turned their fangs on him, nor he on them. It was the perfect way to lure in food so single-minded, so blindly possessed, that he could devour them as they ran past him assuming he was nothing more than another hollow hunting the big prize. It was a perfect plan.
There were three small eggs of the material to work with, pearl white in complexion and made from something strange that sparkled in the moonlight. He took up a sharp piece of quartz from the desert floor and scraped it gently across the surface of the egg. He intended to peel away a small sliver of dust; more than enough for his purposes. Instead the tip dug into its shell and it shattered in his hand like it wasn’t even there, releasing a sickly sweet smell that smothered his mind in fog. That wasn’t meant to happen was all Ladon could think before he felt the stir in the other hollows.
At first there was silence. The winds of the desert seemed to fall away and everything just stopped. All the tiny spots of Reiatsu he could feel in the distance stopped as if frozen in time. Distant battles fell away and all eyes fell onto him. They were coming.
Hundreds of them.
The last ounce of self-preservation he had left inside him told him to run, flee and pick off a few as he left with the crate to try again another day. He knew it was the smart thing to do, but hunger had grabbed him by the throat and he couldn’t break free of its grasp. All he could smell was the dust and the storm of souls charging towards him, and reason was fleeting in the face of its pull.
Unlimited food. It had been the dream.
The swarm of hollows appeared on the horizon as a mass of tiny black silhouettes. The vibration of their feet pounding towards him shook through the sand beneath Ladon’s feet long before he could see the whites of their masks. It was a tidal wave of fang and claw barreling down upon him, and he didn’t want to get caught in the collision.
Ladon grabbed the box and ran towards a side of the collapsing pack. The writhing sea of beasts pounded closer and closer until finally they were on top of him. He jumped to avoid getting trampled and kicked off the back of the closest hollow, but they pressed on undeterred, the scent of the bait robbing them of their interest in attacking him. He leapt over hollow after hollow as he headed towards the thinner section near the back of the wave, landing on top of a smaller hollow and ripping it to shreds as he gorged himself.
The beasts met where the egg had been shattered, each side of the approaching legion smashing into each other as they collapsed in to try and find the meal that wasn’t there. The hollows in the rear crawled over the front column as they tripped and fell over one another, and the first column turned their fangs on them as the haze began to fade.
Once the cannibalism started it immediately infected the rest of the hollows who began ripping into one another. In the back of the pack Ladon had quietly worked his way through straggler after straggler in a fit of gluttonous glee. He had managed to escape the worst of the chaos until a small, serpent-like hollow snuck up on him and buried its fangs in his arm.
He let out a wounded yelp in shock and his grip on the box slipped. He lunged and flailed after it, trying desperately to catch it before it crashed on the desert floor.
The swarm of hollows collapsed in on itself, and with nothing else to turn to to sate the bloodlust the hollow bait had sparked, they turned on one another. His effort was in vain. The box smashed to the ground, shattering the remaining eggs. Their their rich guts spilled into the desert breeze, sending the pack of ravenous hollows into overdrive. A flash of pure fear burnt through him, but before he could act the smell hit his nose and he lost himself to an ocean of delight and gluttony.
Ladon was quickly swept up in the swarm as countless new base hollow charged to join the fray. What once was a writhing sea of hollows became a veritable ocean, all slashing and clawing in a desperate attempt to swallow their brothers whole. Then as quickly as it had formed the mass changed, the horde of hollows blending together into a uniform black mass that collapsed in on itself and then rose up into the sky as an ominous black pillar.
--
Ladon opened his eyes to clear blue waters. He was sitting on the edge of a pier, the toes of his feet dragging gently over its cold surface. It didn’t strike him as unusual that his feet had transformed from talons to the squishy pink feet of a human. It didn’t even seem strange that the light reflections that formed on the water’s surface showed his face as that of a black haired man and not a masked hollow. It was all normal. What wasn’t normal to him was the sound of nails smashing against wood approaching from behind.
He dragged his feet onto the pier and pushed up with a soft groan, turning around to come face to face with a large .. thing. It was almost human, with pink skin, hairy arms, and a man-like silhouette. It rushed towards him on all fours like an ape, nails scraping across the rickety fibers as he charged. Its face was veiled with a blank white mask devoid of detail save for a thin brown beard poking out from underneath and his jaw was hung low as if he was ready to devour him whole.
Ladon’s body snapped into action as if by habit alone, ducking under the creature’s fist and punching through its chest with a cero-wrapped fist. His hand burst out of the back of the creature’s chest in a spray of gold and cyan Reiatsu, and he kicked it off into the water below. As it sunk down into the abyss he stared at it, watching it curl up into the fetal position and then fade until only a blank mask was left to float to the surface. When he was certain the threat was gone Ladon lowered his fist and stared at it. Cyan? It didn’t seem right. He sniffed at it curiously and the stench of cigarettes and lavender filled his mind. He liked it, but he had never seen anything like it in his life.
He let the bala dissipate and then turned away from the water and to the end of the pier the creature had come from. The pier faded off into thick mist, and through it he could feel endless souls writhing. He began to walk down the pier, and as he did his mind gradually fell back into focus. The last thing he could remember was dropping the box. The rest of the eggs shattered and a dozen hollows turned on him as the smell coated him, all fangs and claws as they started to rip him to shreds. Then it all went black. What happened to him? Where was he?
As he stepped through the wall of fog the ground beneath his feet faded from wooden planks to thick mud. With every few steps his feet scuffed into another blank white mask and the feeling of conflict grew thicker, more dominating. Then with a single step the haze broke, and he found himself in a field of mud and chaos. Deep wood-lined pits filled the area, and everywhere he looked there was conflict. Countless souls were tearing at one another, and the ground was littered with an ocean of blank masks.
There were some scattered amongst the chaos who, like Ladon, had human faces instead of a blank mask. One face in particular stood out to him: The soft features of a young boy from Sinfos, the one from which he had acquired his name. He writhed under the weight of a colossal bear-like creature that was fighting to sink his jaws into the boy’s face. He remembered that one, too, as one of the first hollows he had eaten in Hueco Mundo.
He aimed his fist at the grotesque beast atop the boy and began to charge a cero inside the palm of his hand. A radiant stream of gold and blue light burst out from his fingertips as the sphere charged before bursting out like a cannon blast in a straight column that destroyed the hollow, the boy it was trying to eat, and a dozen creatures locked in battle behind it. When the attack cleared all that was left was twelve new masks floating in the mud and a thousand faces all locked on him.
Shit.
The petty, evenly matched struggles of the other beasts fell away as Ladon revealed his power. One by one the fights stopped and the sea of beasts all rose to face him, malice writ large in their energy. He raised his hand and charged a swarm of bala in his palm, aiming it at the collective like a gun in the hopes of deterring their advance.
At first it worked. they stopped, hesitant to risk being destroyed in an instant like the previous group Ladon had unleashed his fury upon. But it only took one to break their hesitation. A small creature burst forward through the front line and the rest followed, their resolve bolstered by the courage of this one being.
Ladon raised his fist and punched out a hail of Bala towards the nearest pack of creatures, sending them collapsing back with a chorus of cracked ribs and shattered masks. The smallest and fastest creatures were on him almost immediately, and he burst away from them with sonido after sonido, skating over to the opposite side of the pack as he charged another cero inside his mouth. A large creature grabbed him out of the air, a thick tentacle hooking around his leg and slamming him down into a muddy trench.
The creatures collapsed in and he let the cero fly, burning away an entire row of the beasts as more approached him from behind. His hands hooked onto something hard in the mud and he grabbed it, swinging up and driving the object, which appeared to be a broken clock handle, into the face of the first beast that grabbed him. Then one sunk its teeth into his leg and another into its arm. He kicked and squirmed but dozens more leapt onto the pile, their mass blacking out the sun and turning the world black.
”You have got to be kidding me,” His own voice echoed in his head, but the words were alien. ”Haven’t we been here before? Don’t tell me this is too much.”
His head began to ring, and flashes of long-forgotten sight burnt through his mind.
An old man buried his hand in his chest.
A woman kissed him in a tower.
A battle in a musty basement.
Drowning. Dark eyes watching from the abyss.
A hand through his chest.
Endless hunger.
Pity.
“They’re weak, scared, broken things. You know this. You’ve lived it. Get up.”
A surge of black and purple Reiryoku ripped out of the mass of bodies in the trench, infinite black spikes skewering every creature that got near as Ladon forced his way out of the trench. The mob faded into an ocean of empty masks in the mud, and as soon as the last creature fell Ladon collapsed atop the pile.
--
“WAKE UP!” The hollow’s hand smashed into Robert’s face, his fingertips ripping a deep gouge of flesh out of his cheek and the stolen mask that veiled it. He just started back at him. Cold, dead eyes in the writhing sea.
“What’s the point,” he replied limply. “It’s all over now.”
“It’s not over, you’ve just given up.” He spat back. “You aren’t even trying. Do you want to die?!”
Robert gave a meek, soulless shrug in response. “We’re dead already.”
The hollow let out a deep, guttural scream into the water, wrapped its hands tight around Robert’s throat, and squeezed til the knuckles turned white. The hollow felt tears burning in his eyes, but the waves hid them away so that only he knew.
“You were right about me the whole time, Robert. I was cowardly, I was impudent, I was jealous. I couldn’t see what I was, the mistakes I was making. But I was trying, dammit! I wanted to be more!” He squeezed harder, talons ripping into the neck of the soul that had once been so full of fire and passion that it smothered even him. It didn’t even move in response. “But you? You were more than that! You were a man I respected, full of righteous fury and fiery retribution. You were everything I wanted to be! Act, dammit! Stop me, stop him! You’re only dying because you let it happen. Hell, she only fucked Takua because you let it happe-”
Robert’s Reiatsu burst out of him like a tidal wave, boiling with wrath and contempt as it tore through the hollow. In one fluid movement he shot his hands up and ripped them off his throat, snapping them off at the elbows with a surge of Hadō before letting them go to fall uselessly to the hollow’s side. It didn’t scream or cry, it didn’t even try to fight him. It just let him do what he wanted to do, and then snapped his arms back into place and let them regenerate when he was done.
“There he is!” the hollow said with genuine awe as he turned to Kaname. “Did you see that? That heat, that fury? That was the Shinigami that broke me over his knee like a disobedient child, not the coward that stands before me.” He paused and waited, but the spirit didn’t answer him. It always had been a coward. He turned away from its blank and back to Robert. He hadn’t moved a muscle, and the fire of his reiatsu was already beginning to smoulder down into embers. Was that really all that was left of the man he knew? Seconds of intensity lost in a void of apathy.
“Do you think the Robert that shattered me for my defiance would've forgiven Tokiyo for betraying his trust? Would've hesitated when fighting Shun over some mewling girl that betrayed his confidence? No! That man would never abide treason, would never let someone forsake his faith, his confidence, and his love without retribution!”
He stepped forward again, this time placing his arms tenderly on Robert’s shoulders.
“Is there any of him left in there? Is there any of you left in there?”
The hollow stared long and deep into Robert’s eyes, looking for any sign of comprehension, of recognition, but he saw nothing. That brief surge of his passion had faded entirely, and it wasn’t coming back out. The revelation broke him, and he allowed himself to weep openly before Robert. He had tried so hard to best this man, and yet seeing him die before his very eyes was more painful than he ever imagined.
“I’m not dying here,” he said at last, steeling himself against the pain in his chest. “If you’re not going to fight to survive then I am.”
He hooked his claws around the hollow mask Robert had stolen from him in the Muken and pulled hard. He gave no resistance and the mask popped free, merging back into the hollow’s form as he assumed his natural, bestial state once more. He breathed deep and braced himself to what he had to do next.
“I’m sorry...” a hoarse, desperate whisper escaped him as he lunged in to tear Robert’s throat out with his teeth. His bite sunk deep, and cold hands rose to wrap around him as he did what he had to do.
It was all he had wanted from the time he was born, but in all the evenings he had imagined it it never once went like this. This was no victory in this, no conquest or joy. Just a sad, broken man that could’ve been so much more, and a rivalry that would never see its just conclusion.
--
Ladon’s eyes opened to behold the moon of Las Noches and the black sky that framed it. He remembered everything. Tokiyo, Evelynn, Shun, the Seireitei. Robert Mühle. An entire lifetime bled through his mind and he felt it all as real as his own, but he couldn’t understand what any of it meant.
Who was he? What was he? Ladon?
or Robert?
Hollow Bait.
The humans that had let him steal these were some of the most fantastic, considerate creatures he had ever encountered; they had handed him the key to his evolution. He had experienced first hand the overwhelming desire to hunt and feed that infected him when the scent hit his nose. It had possessed his mind to such an extent was he that he had abandoned his sizeable, delicious quarry to hunt it down and only cleared once he had devoured what he thought was the source of the smell. A thousand hollows surrounded him and none turned their fangs on him, nor he on them. It was the perfect way to lure in food so single-minded, so blindly possessed, that he could devour them as they ran past him assuming he was nothing more than another hollow hunting the big prize. It was a perfect plan.
There were three small eggs of the material to work with, pearl white in complexion and made from something strange that sparkled in the moonlight. He took up a sharp piece of quartz from the desert floor and scraped it gently across the surface of the egg. He intended to peel away a small sliver of dust; more than enough for his purposes. Instead the tip dug into its shell and it shattered in his hand like it wasn’t even there, releasing a sickly sweet smell that smothered his mind in fog. That wasn’t meant to happen was all Ladon could think before he felt the stir in the other hollows.
At first there was silence. The winds of the desert seemed to fall away and everything just stopped. All the tiny spots of Reiatsu he could feel in the distance stopped as if frozen in time. Distant battles fell away and all eyes fell onto him. They were coming.
Hundreds of them.
The last ounce of self-preservation he had left inside him told him to run, flee and pick off a few as he left with the crate to try again another day. He knew it was the smart thing to do, but hunger had grabbed him by the throat and he couldn’t break free of its grasp. All he could smell was the dust and the storm of souls charging towards him, and reason was fleeting in the face of its pull.
Unlimited food. It had been the dream.
The swarm of hollows appeared on the horizon as a mass of tiny black silhouettes. The vibration of their feet pounding towards him shook through the sand beneath Ladon’s feet long before he could see the whites of their masks. It was a tidal wave of fang and claw barreling down upon him, and he didn’t want to get caught in the collision.
Ladon grabbed the box and ran towards a side of the collapsing pack. The writhing sea of beasts pounded closer and closer until finally they were on top of him. He jumped to avoid getting trampled and kicked off the back of the closest hollow, but they pressed on undeterred, the scent of the bait robbing them of their interest in attacking him. He leapt over hollow after hollow as he headed towards the thinner section near the back of the wave, landing on top of a smaller hollow and ripping it to shreds as he gorged himself.
The beasts met where the egg had been shattered, each side of the approaching legion smashing into each other as they collapsed in to try and find the meal that wasn’t there. The hollows in the rear crawled over the front column as they tripped and fell over one another, and the first column turned their fangs on them as the haze began to fade.
Once the cannibalism started it immediately infected the rest of the hollows who began ripping into one another. In the back of the pack Ladon had quietly worked his way through straggler after straggler in a fit of gluttonous glee. He had managed to escape the worst of the chaos until a small, serpent-like hollow snuck up on him and buried its fangs in his arm.
He let out a wounded yelp in shock and his grip on the box slipped. He lunged and flailed after it, trying desperately to catch it before it crashed on the desert floor.
The swarm of hollows collapsed in on itself, and with nothing else to turn to to sate the bloodlust the hollow bait had sparked, they turned on one another. His effort was in vain. The box smashed to the ground, shattering the remaining eggs. Their their rich guts spilled into the desert breeze, sending the pack of ravenous hollows into overdrive. A flash of pure fear burnt through him, but before he could act the smell hit his nose and he lost himself to an ocean of delight and gluttony.
Ladon was quickly swept up in the swarm as countless new base hollow charged to join the fray. What once was a writhing sea of hollows became a veritable ocean, all slashing and clawing in a desperate attempt to swallow their brothers whole. Then as quickly as it had formed the mass changed, the horde of hollows blending together into a uniform black mass that collapsed in on itself and then rose up into the sky as an ominous black pillar.
--
Ladon opened his eyes to clear blue waters. He was sitting on the edge of a pier, the toes of his feet dragging gently over its cold surface. It didn’t strike him as unusual that his feet had transformed from talons to the squishy pink feet of a human. It didn’t even seem strange that the light reflections that formed on the water’s surface showed his face as that of a black haired man and not a masked hollow. It was all normal. What wasn’t normal to him was the sound of nails smashing against wood approaching from behind.
He dragged his feet onto the pier and pushed up with a soft groan, turning around to come face to face with a large .. thing. It was almost human, with pink skin, hairy arms, and a man-like silhouette. It rushed towards him on all fours like an ape, nails scraping across the rickety fibers as he charged. Its face was veiled with a blank white mask devoid of detail save for a thin brown beard poking out from underneath and his jaw was hung low as if he was ready to devour him whole.
Ladon’s body snapped into action as if by habit alone, ducking under the creature’s fist and punching through its chest with a cero-wrapped fist. His hand burst out of the back of the creature’s chest in a spray of gold and cyan Reiatsu, and he kicked it off into the water below. As it sunk down into the abyss he stared at it, watching it curl up into the fetal position and then fade until only a blank mask was left to float to the surface. When he was certain the threat was gone Ladon lowered his fist and stared at it. Cyan? It didn’t seem right. He sniffed at it curiously and the stench of cigarettes and lavender filled his mind. He liked it, but he had never seen anything like it in his life.
He let the bala dissipate and then turned away from the water and to the end of the pier the creature had come from. The pier faded off into thick mist, and through it he could feel endless souls writhing. He began to walk down the pier, and as he did his mind gradually fell back into focus. The last thing he could remember was dropping the box. The rest of the eggs shattered and a dozen hollows turned on him as the smell coated him, all fangs and claws as they started to rip him to shreds. Then it all went black. What happened to him? Where was he?
As he stepped through the wall of fog the ground beneath his feet faded from wooden planks to thick mud. With every few steps his feet scuffed into another blank white mask and the feeling of conflict grew thicker, more dominating. Then with a single step the haze broke, and he found himself in a field of mud and chaos. Deep wood-lined pits filled the area, and everywhere he looked there was conflict. Countless souls were tearing at one another, and the ground was littered with an ocean of blank masks.
There were some scattered amongst the chaos who, like Ladon, had human faces instead of a blank mask. One face in particular stood out to him: The soft features of a young boy from Sinfos, the one from which he had acquired his name. He writhed under the weight of a colossal bear-like creature that was fighting to sink his jaws into the boy’s face. He remembered that one, too, as one of the first hollows he had eaten in Hueco Mundo.
He aimed his fist at the grotesque beast atop the boy and began to charge a cero inside the palm of his hand. A radiant stream of gold and blue light burst out from his fingertips as the sphere charged before bursting out like a cannon blast in a straight column that destroyed the hollow, the boy it was trying to eat, and a dozen creatures locked in battle behind it. When the attack cleared all that was left was twelve new masks floating in the mud and a thousand faces all locked on him.
Shit.
The petty, evenly matched struggles of the other beasts fell away as Ladon revealed his power. One by one the fights stopped and the sea of beasts all rose to face him, malice writ large in their energy. He raised his hand and charged a swarm of bala in his palm, aiming it at the collective like a gun in the hopes of deterring their advance.
At first it worked. they stopped, hesitant to risk being destroyed in an instant like the previous group Ladon had unleashed his fury upon. But it only took one to break their hesitation. A small creature burst forward through the front line and the rest followed, their resolve bolstered by the courage of this one being.
Ladon raised his fist and punched out a hail of Bala towards the nearest pack of creatures, sending them collapsing back with a chorus of cracked ribs and shattered masks. The smallest and fastest creatures were on him almost immediately, and he burst away from them with sonido after sonido, skating over to the opposite side of the pack as he charged another cero inside his mouth. A large creature grabbed him out of the air, a thick tentacle hooking around his leg and slamming him down into a muddy trench.
The creatures collapsed in and he let the cero fly, burning away an entire row of the beasts as more approached him from behind. His hands hooked onto something hard in the mud and he grabbed it, swinging up and driving the object, which appeared to be a broken clock handle, into the face of the first beast that grabbed him. Then one sunk its teeth into his leg and another into its arm. He kicked and squirmed but dozens more leapt onto the pile, their mass blacking out the sun and turning the world black.
”You have got to be kidding me,” His own voice echoed in his head, but the words were alien. ”Haven’t we been here before? Don’t tell me this is too much.”
His head began to ring, and flashes of long-forgotten sight burnt through his mind.
An old man buried his hand in his chest.
A woman kissed him in a tower.
A battle in a musty basement.
Drowning. Dark eyes watching from the abyss.
A hand through his chest.
Endless hunger.
Pity.
“They’re weak, scared, broken things. You know this. You’ve lived it. Get up.”
A surge of black and purple Reiryoku ripped out of the mass of bodies in the trench, infinite black spikes skewering every creature that got near as Ladon forced his way out of the trench. The mob faded into an ocean of empty masks in the mud, and as soon as the last creature fell Ladon collapsed atop the pile.
--
“WAKE UP!” The hollow’s hand smashed into Robert’s face, his fingertips ripping a deep gouge of flesh out of his cheek and the stolen mask that veiled it. He just started back at him. Cold, dead eyes in the writhing sea.
“What’s the point,” he replied limply. “It’s all over now.”
“It’s not over, you’ve just given up.” He spat back. “You aren’t even trying. Do you want to die?!”
Robert gave a meek, soulless shrug in response. “We’re dead already.”
The hollow let out a deep, guttural scream into the water, wrapped its hands tight around Robert’s throat, and squeezed til the knuckles turned white. The hollow felt tears burning in his eyes, but the waves hid them away so that only he knew.
“You were right about me the whole time, Robert. I was cowardly, I was impudent, I was jealous. I couldn’t see what I was, the mistakes I was making. But I was trying, dammit! I wanted to be more!” He squeezed harder, talons ripping into the neck of the soul that had once been so full of fire and passion that it smothered even him. It didn’t even move in response. “But you? You were more than that! You were a man I respected, full of righteous fury and fiery retribution. You were everything I wanted to be! Act, dammit! Stop me, stop him! You’re only dying because you let it happen. Hell, she only fucked Takua because you let it happe-”
Robert’s Reiatsu burst out of him like a tidal wave, boiling with wrath and contempt as it tore through the hollow. In one fluid movement he shot his hands up and ripped them off his throat, snapping them off at the elbows with a surge of Hadō before letting them go to fall uselessly to the hollow’s side. It didn’t scream or cry, it didn’t even try to fight him. It just let him do what he wanted to do, and then snapped his arms back into place and let them regenerate when he was done.
“There he is!” the hollow said with genuine awe as he turned to Kaname. “Did you see that? That heat, that fury? That was the Shinigami that broke me over his knee like a disobedient child, not the coward that stands before me.” He paused and waited, but the spirit didn’t answer him. It always had been a coward. He turned away from its blank and back to Robert. He hadn’t moved a muscle, and the fire of his reiatsu was already beginning to smoulder down into embers. Was that really all that was left of the man he knew? Seconds of intensity lost in a void of apathy.
“Do you think the Robert that shattered me for my defiance would've forgiven Tokiyo for betraying his trust? Would've hesitated when fighting Shun over some mewling girl that betrayed his confidence? No! That man would never abide treason, would never let someone forsake his faith, his confidence, and his love without retribution!”
He stepped forward again, this time placing his arms tenderly on Robert’s shoulders.
“Is there any of him left in there? Is there any of you left in there?”
The hollow stared long and deep into Robert’s eyes, looking for any sign of comprehension, of recognition, but he saw nothing. That brief surge of his passion had faded entirely, and it wasn’t coming back out. The revelation broke him, and he allowed himself to weep openly before Robert. He had tried so hard to best this man, and yet seeing him die before his very eyes was more painful than he ever imagined.
“I’m not dying here,” he said at last, steeling himself against the pain in his chest. “If you’re not going to fight to survive then I am.”
He hooked his claws around the hollow mask Robert had stolen from him in the Muken and pulled hard. He gave no resistance and the mask popped free, merging back into the hollow’s form as he assumed his natural, bestial state once more. He breathed deep and braced himself to what he had to do next.
“I’m sorry...” a hoarse, desperate whisper escaped him as he lunged in to tear Robert’s throat out with his teeth. His bite sunk deep, and cold hands rose to wrap around him as he did what he had to do.
It was all he had wanted from the time he was born, but in all the evenings he had imagined it it never once went like this. This was no victory in this, no conquest or joy. Just a sad, broken man that could’ve been so much more, and a rivalry that would never see its just conclusion.
--
Ladon’s eyes opened to behold the moon of Las Noches and the black sky that framed it. He remembered everything. Tokiyo, Evelynn, Shun, the Seireitei. Robert Mühle. An entire lifetime bled through his mind and he felt it all as real as his own, but he couldn’t understand what any of it meant.
Who was he? What was he? Ladon?
or Robert?
-----
2990 Words this thread
39 GP
2990 Words this thread
39 GP