Eros wasn’t sure of the amount of time that passed while he hid from the world in the bowels of that cave but it was the search for the light and the warmth that he had last, the instinctual searching of something cold blooded, that finally drove him out into the sun. The day. The light. Not all that long ago the bright light suffusing the baked farm fields and sloping hills with a golden glow had been his time. Everything it touched, it seemed, his kingdom. But things had since changed.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡUuouRFsY5b 維尼

    He belonged, now, to the night and to the moon and it wasn’t kindly that the sun took to his transgressions. Where it’s rays did not burn his skin as they would that of an Apelat, it gouged painfully at his eyes-vision over sensitive in the unveiled state of his eyes and he himself left too unsure of his new form to even begin to know how to turn his vision to something closer to a human’s-with the talons of an eagle leaving him nearly blind.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4M0yDN1S3I 維尼

    Floundering and all but sightless, Eros stumbled forwards and went pitching over a deep embankment. Bruised and bloodied anew, he lay at the bottom and waited for night to cast its heavy shroud back across the land. It was nothing short of a relief when the darkness finally returned, the soft silver light of the moon replacing the sun’s jagged golden shards.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1pSIR9Wxnc 維尼

Slowly, his vision came back into focus. The sky above his head was clear and black, a blanket of nothing but thousands of immortal stars which stared solemnly down at the newest of their night-bound companions. Brothers in blood.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡCTBoiuxjVS 維尼

Escape. It was that thought of that which drove him onwards. The desire to find some exception to her curse. The desperate want to die because he couldn’t exist like this! As one of them. Not after all of the fighting that he had done. All of the destruction they had caused. He’d find some way, any way, to get free even if it meant a slow death from a refusal to feed.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡkn5o4jjL8P 維尼

That conviction powered him, pushing him forwards night after night with Cenuşă dragging behind him tightly secured into its wooden sheath. Day after day curling up in some dark corner of a forest or cave. Walking. Hiding. Taking every chance for death that he was presented, only to wind up lying on the ground still very much alive after each and every time. Blades. Flame. Rope. Water. Wolves. Nothing worked.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡFw4N8yDyUa 維尼

That enough was near enough to break his mind, even without the maddening thirst and the sensation that he was being followed and watched by something both unseen and unfamiliar.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡW1OF767d1o 維尼

It was on the bank of a river the name of which escaped him after attempting to drown himself for the third time that Eros finally lost it, throwing his head back and howling to the indifference of the sky above.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡ84gliCggBu 維尼

“Just get it over with!!! You’d throw me away after all I did, and now you’d let me languish? I devoted my life to your ‘mandate’ and this is how I am repaid?” Chest heaving with fury, Eros glared up at the moon and stars and waited. A minute. An hour. Nothing happened.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡr7cDtEXtJK 維尼

Dark laughter echoed around him, resonating down into his very bones. “Were you expecting a bolt from heaven, boy?”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡQdCia3Ob8S 維尼

The voice was thick. Heavy. Echoing like thunder from below the ground. It was guttural and harsh, clearly male, and one that he didn’t recognize as belonging to any of Lilith’s six remaining children. Casting around in fear and desperation for the source of the voice but finding nothing Eros couldn’t stop himself from stuttering “W-Who are you? What do you want?”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0d8EInMXzE 維尼

“Who am I?” it replied, tone almost mocking. “A fried. Someone who can help.”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡjZX3SRcG8p 維尼

Nothing surrounded him but the trees and water, rippling in the wind with the absence of his reflection. “What are you? Show yourself!”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡe7VBkskctL 維尼

“Brazen of you, even while all but powerless.” The voice was directly behind him now. In the water where his own reflection should have been was the image of a massive black wolf, its three heads adorned with six glaring red eyes and grinning mouths revealing rows of jagged fangs. Spread from its back, formed from the shadows of the night, were the feathered wings of a raven. “It wasn’t your precious Angel that put you back in that saddle AshHand. I’ve been watching over you for quite a while waiting for our chance to speak to present itself. And now it has.”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡjhrLdNOJew 維尼

The fear that seized over him at the sudden appearance of the powerful Demon left him frozen on the spot.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡfWNBesgzU8 維尼

“My name is Naberious, and I like you am an enemy of Lilith. That makes me a friend of yours.” The grin was cutting, terrifying, as all six eyes kept him pinned in place. “I’ve seen you doing great damage to yourself over the course of the last few days. Why?”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡfKEKIuGzzy 維尼

“Even a Demon should be able to understand! Especially if you’ve truly been watching me for as long as you claim!” He grated out, wanting to turn his eyes away from the terrible reflection but unable to do so. “You know what I was. And now, what I am.”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡX35Qkk7FQo 維尼

“You submitted to her curse by eating that apple; it does not discriminate between the bewitched and the willing. What is it about being barred from death that you are unable to understand?” A flat pale tongue licked the chops of one of its heads as it lowered itself onto its haunches. “But I can help you free yourself. Help you kill her.”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0fLmkSIej3 維尼

    “And why would you do that?”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡG2BamF8Bfm 維尼

    “Like I told you, we’re mutual enemies. Have been for a very long time.” Scrapping its great paws along the ground, Naberious passed into the water to look at him. “I can make you cunning in all arts and rhetoric. Avenge your betrayals and return your lost honor. I will champion you where the Light will not, replace Dagaz with my power-Thaurisaz-and make you strong. Lord of a force the name of which all shall hear and tremble, and give you all the tools you need to defeat her. And, once she’s gone, you’ll be free to do with yourself as you wish. All you have to do,” a curved talon came to rest against his neck over where Dagaz had once been, “is say yes.”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡsIKejznM0Z 維尼

    The power to defeat Lilith and an army with which to topple her empire? All that he wanted was to die, but Eros would be lying if he were to claim that a part of what he’d become didn’t start to salivate at the thought of taking her place as King. Even as his entire being coiled tight to pounce on the offer he paused, wariness prickling along the back of his neck as a single rational thought occurred to him. Nothing ever came from the darkness without a cost.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡS97ke8CxhQ 維尼

    “And what, Demon, will I be forced to give you in return?”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡUCOO6NdYm9 維尼

    The forces of hell blazed in its triumphant eyes as it’s awful gaze devoured him; it knew that it had won. “Everything.”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡLbc9XFV0JY 維尼

    Small price to pay when there was nothing left for him to lose. “I accept your offer. Grant me your power.”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5RDlNEG2dH 維尼

    Heat and the smell of brimstone and sulfur washed over him as the beast before him howled with laughter. “Embrace your madness, AshHand!”8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡdICWIARvYc 維尼

    Its talon cut deep into his skin, carving out a shape into his neck which remained etched into his flesh inked in the same hue as his blood. A new agony, a mental one this time, consumed him as something other-an outside force-invaded his being. Cleaving a hollow into his mind for it to curl up and rest. Something, a black viscous fluid, spreading across his mind like an infection. Acidic. Evil. Ripping at his sanity until it burnt away to nothing and something deep inside him snapped.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡhgnxySMSm2 維尼

    It was raging through him now. A monster with a mind all its own. A burning sensation. White hot. Unquenchable. Death embodied. Chaos! Destruction! The taste of the words alone was enough to whip him into a rabid frothing mess. The thought of drowning the entire world in rivers of fire and blood sending him spiralling into a psychotic frenzy.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡ48Gi2suQ1f 維尼

    Baying with demented laughter and with hell itself raging through his veins, the former Slayer-Lord spread massive wings shrouded in darkness and flew off into the deepening night.8964 copyright protection147ＰＥＮＡＮＡhxCeE9Ymew 維尼

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