Chapter 51: The Wake of Battle
While Arthur had been locked in his desperate battle with a single Nightreaver, Aziel had dispatched his two opponents with casual efficiency. By the time Arthur’s primal scream had faded into the night air, Aziel was already crouched over the carcasses of his fallen adversaries, the blade of his spear in hand as he methodically carved chunks of meat from their bodies.
Blood-dark ichor stained his fingers and forearms, yet he worked with the practiced precision of someone accustomed to field dressing much stranger game. He hummed softly to himself, apparently untroubled by the grisly task or the minor scratches that marked his otherwise unblemished skin—the only evidence that he had been in combat at all.
Arthur remained seated atop the mutilated corpse of his Nightreaver, staring blankly upward at the star-strewn sky. His chest still heaved with exertion, blood trickling from the numerous wounds that decorated his body like macabre ornaments. The deepest slash across his thigh had begun to throb with a dull, persistent ache that promised greater pain to come.
As he gazed into the void above, the whispers started again—soft at first, then growing more insistent.
Let us help you. Let us in. Let us save you.
The dead roses surrounding him swayed gently despite the absence of wind, their withered petals turning toward him like faces seeking the sun. Their honeyed voices wove through his consciousness, promises of relief and power intertwining into a seductive melody.
Arthur knew what they offered—corruption disguised as salvation. Yet he found himself almost tempted to listen, if only to escape the hollow emptiness that had settled into his chest after the rage had burned itself out. But he couldn’t even if he wanted to, because despite there words even the roses didn’t want him.
Instead, he lowered his gaze to the ruined creature beneath him. The Nightreaver’s compound eyes were now clouded and lifeless, but Arthur could still see in them the reflection of desperate terror it had shown in its final moments—the primal, universal will to survive that transcended species and realms.
He searched within himself for some flicker of remorse, some shadow of guilt for the brutality he had unleashed. He waited for the horror he should feel at what he had become in those frenzied moments of violence.