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A tunnel stretched out as far as the eye could see, or so it seemed. The scent of damp earth was strong, overpowering the smell of soot from guttering torches that lined the walls at regular intervals. The sound of dripping water was magnified, near deafening in the dark and the shadows between torches seemed to move, alive with the presence of something elusive, watching.
From the endless night stepped a small boy, no more than five years in age. A chestnut fringe shook between verdant green eyes and the child pressed a finger to his lips. “Shh,” the sound was barely audible, “or he’ll hear you.” He stepped close and caught Ghet’s hand with tiny fingers, fear evident in his eyes, “you don’t want him to hear.”
The child jumped like a startled deer, peering over his shoulder into one of the voids between light. “The others will protect you,” he whispered, “but you have to find them first. It's just… hard to tell them apart.”
Ghet's own avatar, the shape her soul wore in this place, moulded itself to what it found. In the world, she stood pretty in a favoured blue dress. In the maze in which Y'Roden was hidden, she wore black, her swords at her back, her clothes and her hair severe. This was how she felt strongest.
She bent to the boy, her heart aching, studiously ignoring the sense of presence she felt bearing down on her. She held his hand firmly, reached out to touch her hair. She remembered what she'd seen in Tenobrous, what she'd seen in the Pit. She loved this little tortured innocent, but she also knew, the seed of what the man was and had been was right here inside the boy. "I know, honey," she whispered gently. "I know how hard it is to tell the difference."
She stood, still holding his hand, and looked around her. She was watched, she felt it on her skin. Torches. Darkness. He knew she hated being underground. She'd always been the light, the torch he'd only needed in the darkest places. Well, there was nowhere darker than this. She smiled, and she glowed, with the flame-red fire of her soul. It wasn't that she wasn't afraid, she was. This was the home of what she feared most, as well as the man she had to save. It was just worth it.
She knew it didn't really matter which way she went. This place was real, but not physical. Movement was metaphorical. That sounded like a reality she wouldn't be able to hang on to much longer. She watched the boy at her side. Lure. Innocent, beautiful, loving... monster, rapist, killer. All facets of the same thing. "Let's go then." Still holding his little hand, she set off down the tunnel.
The boy grew with every step they took, his expression growing more haunted as his body filled out, evolving into a youth of about fifteen years. “She whispers in my head,” his voice was low, cracking with puberty, “every night… in dreams. I’ve seen my future… you cannot save me, not from her.”
Fingers squeezed around Ghet’s, and as they stepped into a darker pool, he was suddenly torn from her grip, disappearing into the void.
The visage changed, revealing a dark chamber that the redhead was quite familiar with. Only… the blood on the rack was fresh, and the youth had grown into a young man of twenty. There was fear in emerald eyes, but the expression on the half-elf’s beautiful face was implacable, stubborn, long locks of chestnut hair sticking to his sweat slick face as he kept a defiant stance towards the pale skinned Demoness.
On the floor, shaking and terrified was a young human girl, her red hair a stark contrast against the backdrop. Naked and defenceless, she wept in fear, the words falling from her lips pure gibberish.
“Kill her,” the order was clear, demanding, insistent.
Waves of chestnut hair tumbled down the young Elf’s back as he shook his head, denying her. “I will not. I won’t kill for you… not again.” He made a violent attempt to shrug off the two male Demons that gripped his arms, holding him prisoner between them.
A taloned fingertip scraped under his chin, drawing a line of blood as Samara leaned in close, a forked tongue flickering through the blood. “Oh? Then you enjoy what the guards do to you when you refuse? I know they certainly do.” She gestured to one of them, and he grabbed the youth by the hair at the crown of his head, dragging backwards and bending him over the rack. “You will kill for me, or it will be your screams creating music instead, your body that is invaded and used for pleasure, then broken. Make your choice.”
The chestnut haired elf said nothing, face pressed in a congealed pool of his own blood, emerald eyes focused on the girl. He fought at first, then went still, refusing to feed the Demon’s need for fear and pain, holding stubbornly silent.
Dissatisfied with her prey’s reaction, Samara grabbed the girl by the hair and hauled her up off the floor. “When will you learn?” she snarled, “They die anyway, whether by your hand, or by mine. By yours at least, would have been far more pleasurable for her.”
“NO!” Adrenaline surged, and the Elf threw himself backwards, setting his tormentor off balance, fighting free and lunging forward… seconds to late.
Samara let the wounded girl fall forwards into Y’Roden’s arms, her blood smearing down the front of his chest in crimson streaks. It was a wound he couldn’t heal, but one that would slowly, inevitably, kill her. He slumped to the floor, the redhead cradled in his arms, weeping openly in frustration and guilt.
The Demoness straightened and dismissed the guards; “snap her neck, if you have any compassion. Otherwise… you are free to keep her company as she dies.”
A second version of the young man appeared at Ghet’s side, watching the scene with her, just as helpless to stop it from occurring… as it did, over and over again… here in the depths of Ro’s mind.
“Do you know which he chooses?” he asked, “Do you ever wonder if souls follow one another through time? If maybe… they remember.”
Ghet pushed tears from her eyes and looked up at the youth, eyeing his hair. Wrong. Pretty, but wrong. "He has to kill her," she said quietly. "It's not his fault, but he'll never believe it. And yes, I think they do, for good or ill. Y'Roden... I can save you from her. I will. It's just a matter of time." She turned her eyes back, determined to watch, waiting for the familiar muted crack of bone. The hair hypotised her: Y'Roden's, the girl's. "Let her go, darling. Please." She knew it was selfish. She didn't want to see him suffer, see what she'd always intuited, why she'd never touched him in certain ways.
The youth at Ghet’s side tore his gaze away from the scene in front of them and looked at her profile for a moment, but said nothing. The other version of himself choked out a sob, his bloodied fingers stroking the girl’s hair. She was in pain… he knew she was, but the moment he killed her, he would be alone again.
Delicate fingers twitched around his arm, the look in her eyes too much for him to take. The Elf cupped the human’s face and gently kissed her. “It’s alright,” he whispered softly, “I’ll make it go away… everything will be ok… I’m so sorry…” He was not as well muscled as he would be, not nearly as heavy, but the young Y’Roden was beginning to come into his strength, and the redhead’s neck snapped easily with a sharp, brutal twist.
He sat there, rocking, holding her to his chest for a long while, the light in his eyes deadening. After awhile, he took a sharp piece of metal and cut a lock of her hair, curling it into a tight spiral and tucking it away beneath the table.
“It’s too late,” Ghet’s companion said softly, “it all began here. It will all end here.”
The light faded, plunging them into the dark, the only light radiating from Ghet’s soul.
“Beware the Demon Elf.”
Green, sickly light sprang out of nowhere, the stench of death thick, gagging, the ground viscus with blood. Beneath their feet lay twisted, broken bodies, a grotesque landscape that stretched into the horizon. The eyes of the Elf that turned to Ghet were laced with Crimson, haunted with darkness… and cold.
“I destroy everything I touch… turn back now. I cannot guarantee your safety past this point.”
Ghet stood straighter, and the light in her increased. Hope. Fear showed in her face, but she didn't flinch. "I know. I'm not going back. I'm not leaving him here, and I'm not leaving you here, either." There were contradictions in herself, things she still didn't want to face about how she felt. It was never just Ro. She was life surrounded in death, fire in darkness, beauty in horror, and pleasure in the heart of pain. "You can hurt me, you can even kill me, but you can't destroy me. And I'll keep coming for you."
“You think you can succeed where everyone else has failed?” The Demon-Elf asked, “Why? Why are you any different from… say… her.” His booted foot toed at a dead female, flipping over the bloody, ravaged carcass. The heart had been torn from the body, the torso eviscerated, but the face was perfectly recognizable.
“What makes you so different from Arianne Badb Catha? She loved him and he tore her apart as surely as he had done it physically. He killed her in more than the usual sense of the word, death of the body is one thing, breaking the spirit… now that is much worse.”
Ghet laughed, a short sound, off-key. "Everything makes me different from her. From Silverthorn. I'm just like her," she indicated the corpse, "except that Ro won't let you kill me. You know that. You pushed it as far as you could with me. But you've never quite won, and that's what makes me different from everybody. I'm still alive. Hells, you've squeezed out thousands of lives beneath your hands, you know what makes me different. You raped my soul, and I'm still here. What can be worse than what you've already done? If you kill me, the pain ends, the nightmares stop, for me. Not for you." She took a step forward. She knew what might happen, and she was as prepared as she could be. "And if you kill me, you'll be stuck in here forever. I'm the only one who can bring him out. He loves me, and he couldn't bear to be responsible for me being hurt, again. I love him, enough to die to do this." She moved closer again, her head going down, the light of her soul flickering. The deepest, darkest, sickest secret she held. "And I love you, too."
There was a soft, wuffling snort of surprise, then silence. It hung there, heavy in the dark for a moment as the Demon curled his fingers in Ghet’s hair, slowly twining through deep red locks as he leaned in close. He sniffed, inhaling the scent of Ginseng, his head a bare inch from hers, mouth close to her ear.
“I love you too.”
His hand pulled free and he lumbered back a step, breathing heavily, chest heaving as sweat broke out across his skin. Blood trickled from his temple where a bone white protrusion had burst through. The change rippled through him in a domino effect, a rapid succession of exploding spikes and hardening exoskeleton… and he screamed. The air wavered, shuddered, then exploded into a million shards, sending them both tumbling into the abyss.
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