Somewhere in the Shadow world...
Grimm turned rapidly as he heard his comrade scream, “Hold it back!” The last word was cut out by an explosion that shook the Ruin lands to their rotted core.
Had he eyes, he would have glared as Fayina skidded on her back in the dirt before flipping upwards and sliding to a halt on her boots next to him.
Tipping his scythe to the inferno, he thrust his skeletal chest outwards and let the echoing laughter of the crone Fates tear through the night.
Rostov stood in the light of the blood red moon. With hands stitched to the very bone she gripped her sickle and stalked back and forth. In a necromancer’s dark howl she cried out, “Face your fate!”
They crossed arms as brothers of the dark circlet one last time before he vanished in a pool of shadows. The demon of misery, Korok, went after him.
Standing in the flames, the beast of Hell threw his white mane back and howled out “Rostov!” The demon king, Sartok, dove at her with his wings of molten sun.
The woman thrust herself backwards roughly, gliding like a lightening shadow through the broken hallways of the Ruins as Sartok leapt from wall to wall after her, leaving fierce bouts of fire in the faces of stone angels from where his hands had touched.
Again, he screamed after her as she tilted her head back to watch herself fly through the air, belly up, “Rostov....! Fayina!”
Lips tight, Fayina kicked upwards and pinned Sartok against the cracking ceiling. His back hit and dragged with her as they sped onwards. From the corner of her eye she could see Grimm hook his scythe into the other, throwing him downwards.
Sartok grinned wildly, blue eyes sparking. “Fayina!”
Church bells rang loudly as Rostov kicked away, spiraling downwards with her sickle whipping upwards like the tongue of Cerberus itself, “Die now!”
The demon king gripped the chains tightly, expression reserved and mildly amused as blood seeped from his hand. “Fayina, why are you trying to hurt me? We used to be ever so close...”
Snarling in an Archaic tongue, Rostov ripped the chains up and slammed them on the ground.
Sartok watched this silently, smile broadening as they circled each other.
Fayina flicked her eyes up briefly as Korok came flying through the air and snapped him from the air with the chains of Hades.
As Grimm swept up behind Sartok, the demon king gave her a nasty look, “I will be right back, my dear.” He turned and caressed Death with a light flick as hot as a supernova and followed after patiently as Grimm leapt backwards.
The two vanished down into the cataclysm as Korok twisted in the chains to look at her.
“Gods, yes...I love this! Pull them tighter!” Blood and spittle ran from the corner of his deranged grin as she angrily ripped her weapon from around him.
“Shut...up.”
Korok swayed to a standing position, laughing hysterically as the inferno raged behind them, “So you can talk! Fayina!” He rolled the ‘R’ as though it were a delicious treat as he rasped, “Rostov...let me kill you...”
In the distance, Grimm spread his great black cloak like giant wings. Soon the demon king and Death were enveloped in the native shadows in nothing short of pure hatred and mutual respect.
Her accent heaved out lightly, tickling the air with the icy cold voice of a Black lander, “Listen to me, boy. You want to kill me, than you must fight like a man.” Through her short, disheveled black hair he could see the lips tightening even more and remembered....
Remembered the delicious arousal he had felt when listening to his little friends talk about her years ago before he had decided he wanted to kill them all.
If Rostov glares at you, it’s nothing unusual. It’s when she’s smiling that you should be scared.
Gasping in ecstasy, he reentered reality to see throngs of power sparking outwards from Rostov. “Oh, Fayina...”
Korok moaned as she drew him off his feet and sent a fist into his gut. Hanging there, disemboweled, he smiled blissfully. Pulling away, her eyes were white with rage, she threw him towards the Heavens and sent a hooked chain into either shoulder blade, wrenching raw muscle out as he embraced the ground.
“Fayina, yes,” he gasped out as she dug her boot into his back.
Play time was done now.
Twisting his side around he hurled a fist into her thigh, knocking her into the fire. Laughing wildly, Korok reached down and felt himself in a high state of pleasure as he listened to her burn without screams.
His laughter grew near hysterical as she swept an arm and cleared the fire.
She stepped towards him as a black hurricane, eyes, body and soul on fire. “I thought you were going to kill me, boy.”
Korok raised an arm up and caught her sickles around it, never ceasing to laugh to the pain he had caused. The game had just begun for them.
For an eterne’ all was moving too fast for any eye across the universe too see. Fists were blurs, metal was but a silver streak as they raged across the land of the scholars. They raged as only twins could; night vs. twilight, blood vs. bone and it all came rolling out.
He let out a shriek as she crushed him against the wall, shoulder to his throat, sickle to his lung. “Agh!”
Rostov held her arm out straight, feeling his molten gold blood flow onto her white hand without feeling anything else. A soft groan came from his mouth, in it were words.
“What.” She demanded it as she leaned into his face.
Rolling his eyes open as pure white, he quietly gasped out, “I love you...”
Rostov grunted in disgust and pushed away from the wall, turning in time to see Grimm flying towards them. Her eyes shot open as everything went into slow motion for her...and only her.
Sartok flew up after him, body basked in sparkling gray blood. His smile was one of pure satisfaction as he called, “He’s yours, Korok.”
“No,” she screamed over the fire, whipping around and grasping at only cloth as Korok dashed by her. “Grimm!”
The skeletal deity tilted his face towards her slowly as Korok laughed once again , unsheathing a large sword from his tattered belt.
“Grimm! GRIMM!”
She saw him silently fold his arms in the stance of the Desert kings, each folded across the other in the shape of an ‘X’. The sign of the dark circlet.
Three mouths screamed as the sword tore through his rib cage. Two in victory, and one as it was forced to turn it’s back on all of this silently.
His scythe flew from his limp hand, spiraling through the air while the demon king smiled in flames at all of this, the beast still laughing as the body slid to the ground.
Rostov reached up silently and caught Shadow Stalker, back turned to them. Her respect was gone. She kneeled down, tracing her charred fingertips over his chest. Her eyes melted looking down at him, “Darien...”
He forced a smile for her, his beautiful face flickering in the moonlight in place of the bones he cloaked it with. “Tis very cliché...but I love you...”
“Don't say that,” she cursed, lifting his head from the cold ground. The dust blew in her eyes as she looked down into his. “If you say that, I'll never forgive you.”
“I hadn't know you had forgiven me for our first kiss...”
Fayina bit back her tears, looking down to him with eyes that could only be tender for him. “Rest easy...I'll be along soon.”
He grasped her hand, brushing his frigid lips against her pale flesh as his body began to return to dust. “I'll be waiting, sweetling.”
She kissed his cheek as it turned to sand, silencing the pain in her heart as his body filled the great pendulum in the sky. Shutting her eyes, she rose with Shadow Stalker in her left and Requiem in her right, eyes hard again as the demon stalked towards her, tossing his head like a bull.
“You see, Fayina,” Korok laughed maniacally, “even Death can’t stop us. You see!?”
Sartok’s smile faded into a frown slowly. “That’s enough. This fight is mine.”
His laughter increased as the wind lightly picked up. “You’re weak, brother! I had to finish poor old Grimm off for you, so why don’t you just rest those pretty, golden feathers and leave all the blood to me?!”
The demon king turned icy. He folded his arms as Korok whipped back around, hungrily stalking towards Fayina. “Rostov, it’s time for us to finish, my pet!”
Cold silence.
Sartok furrowed his brow as his brother walked towards her, arms open as though he couldn’t believe her showing her back to him. “...Very well, brother. Go on and finish...”
The statement almost made him smile in amusement. Almost.
“Fayina, darling, are you mad at me,” Korok pressed, laughing incredulously, “mad because I played too rough with sad ole’ Grimm?!”
Korok approached with a smile at how his words were being taken, “Fayina!” He screamed it every time a church bell would ring on it’s own rotted tower. “Fayina! Fayina! FAYINA!!”
Finally, she seemed to hear him. This time, Sartok smiled.
If looks could kill... As the church bells went insane, as shadows laughed, as blood boiled, such a look came to be.
As Rostov turned, she stood before the blood red moon as blood coagulated on the ground to spell
Face Your Fate.
Opening her mouth made her eyes, that only could have been born when night met netherworld, widen eerily.
And as her mouth opened, she let out the echoing laugh of the now insane harpies that ripped themselves from the ground to taste the blood...
Korok tried to laugh, but the only thing left in his throat was a dry noise. A noise he couldn’t remember making since his bare back had last touched his crib.
“But I’m not supposed to be afraid-”
Sartok shut his eyes until he had firmly turned his back as Korok began to call to him pathetically.
“Brother! BROTHER?!?”
The demon king watched a large tree burn as though it were the most interesting thing that whole day.
Swearing, Korok wiped the snot from his nose and kept backing away as a laughing Rostov walked patiently after him. “SARTOK,” he roared as her hand closed around his throat.
Shaking his head, Sartok quietly murmured, “Sorry. I don’t feel like talking right now.”
He struggled viciously, screams echoing over the entire Shadow world as Rostov, Fayina wasn’t there anymore, dragged him on the end of her scythe towards the ocean. He struggled as the raging seas turned black as night and ripped their mighty selves open as though some evil god had cut them open.
And than he was crying. Sobbing like a child as she held him over the open maelstrom, gasping how sorry he was, gasping for mercy.
But he should have listened; Fayina wasn’t there anymore.
Once more, Sartok shut his eyes as his brother’s screams grew faint. “It was your fight...”
“Sorry to keep you,” Rostov said softly as the sea crushed Korok’s screams into it’s angry breast, “You’re up next.”
Sartok bid farewell to the burning tree and turned to face her. They smiled at one another because they had been waiting for this for a long time.
“Rostov,” he said.
“Demon king.” The church bells were rocking maniacally in their stands.
“You can’t scare me.” Spoken as the essence of Death and insanity combined bore down upon him. He could see her reflection in the blood and smiled at how her hair looked like an alchemist’s ink seeping into water.
“Cold, clever boy,” she chirped as she hooked her boot into his back and sent him toppling into the debris.
He glared coldly up at her as she walked calmly down on top of the shattered remains of people’s lives. Even through his icy heart he felt a little queasy when he found himself laying next to Grimm’s skull.
“What is ice afraid of?”
Jumping to his feet, he dove at her. Slamming his fist down, he felt fire leave his palm into empty air as Rostov put her boot on top of his head.
“Quick,” he got out as she plunged his face down into the ashes. From the corner of his eye, he saw her wrapping the chains of Hades around Grimm’s scythe. Metal screeched against metal, making him shudder as she pushed the blade down where her boot had been.
“Demon king,” she whispered, “I dethrone you.”
Sartok let out a roar of pain as she traced a thin line over the slot of his left wing, than the right. “ROSTOV!”
He knocked the scythe away, teeth bared in pain and anger. Blood coursed down his back and boiled with rage as it coagulated.
The ringing noise it made as it struck the cold earth signaled the beginning of the end.
Rostov grasped the chains as they flew in all directions. Ripping them across the air she caught him through the midsection as he charged.
Engulfed in chains, the demon king drew his sword...
Only to realize he was wrong. As he went to loathingly thrust steel into a woman he had known all his life, he met fire.
The gasp he gave was that of a child touching fire for the first time. Because the demon king, whom ruled over all eight circles of Hell as though devil may cry meant nothing to his ears, was born cold...
In the desert lands, all babes were born with fire. Whether it would be tainted by darkness or stay pure was up to Fate, but a babe without fire was...unholy.
And this unholy child now faced something even more unholy as he looked upward in terror at the white hot surface of a woman glowing hotter than a supernova.
“Fire,” it would haunt him eternally, “can always make the ice go away.”
His wings flew upward as the entire world of shadows turned as white as the burning black lander and with it came one last terrified cry as it all came rolling out.
Rostov looked down at Sartok, the demon king, one last time before her boots carried her up through the ditches, through what remained of the witches and back into the light of that blood red moon.
Her scythe kept her up long enough to get to Grimm.
He laid in a large pile of bones, his cloak waving like a war flag in the breeze.
Fayina grasped it and pulled the hood over her face. For a long time, as she perched upon his bones she stared off into the light of a million fires blazing over once peaceful worlds.
Slamming her scythe into a firm position, she listened to the cries of innocents across the universe ringing out in vain and than smiled one last time.
As the cataclysm of the apocalypse descended onto the world of gray, Fayina stood, bore her chest outward, and let the echoing laugh of the Grim Reaper and the Fates ring across the land, shaking the leaves and stones until everything finally turned black....
And the laugh of insanity, insanity herself, rang across the lands until the last breath was taken and it all fell into darkness.
