made[my_own]p r e t t y' 'h.a.t.e//MACHINE// Alue

How long has it been since eternity started? Hours? Days? Weeks? Time didn't mean anything to him anymore: it all slushed by with the slow, crushing speed of a dark hand pushing him down into the abyss. All he saw was red. Red, on red, on red: red dripping from his side, festered with black as pestilence began to rot inside of his ribcage. Red: where his gums bled. Red: teeth marks on his paw oozing a white, itchy puss. Was this how death began? Was this the end of him? He knew only darkness, and the red: the red halo of his memories, clutching everything close to his skull. It was a play behind his fluttering eyelid. It was a magnificent symphony of destruction that played in his heart, colored his dreams in a wonderful shade of red. Always red. This bitter shade of blood. He remembered the taste of it on his tongue, the sweetness of the flesh torn between his fangs.

Red: the color swam before his eye, a fever that ripped through his body with the aching tenderness of the fallen. It wrapped it's sweet fingers around his throat, roared into his ears, covered his body with a rampant sweat that tickled and itched. The leopard was delirious among his miniature throne of broken soul stones. He was restless, and disturbed, itching and thrashing, seeing demons and angels alike flashing before his eyes: calling out a nameless sound that must've been his name. He felt flames flickering around his paws, sinking into his flesh, calling out that wordless croon, over and over with wretched, antagonizing sweetness. It was the sound of the devil, the sound of the darkness before it all became silent.

The nameless one was trapped, his claws flexing in the darkness, his body heaving from one nightmare to the next, caught in a cycle of sin he could not escape. The soul stones, their glow long gone, were flung from one little corner of his nest to the next, crackling against the metal of the sewer walls. The nameless one did not make a sound: there was no sound to make. Even in death his jaws would seize in silence, his eye widened to black, imperturbable plates. What was death to him when he knew the exacting terror of the infinite dark? He chuckled, the first sound in a decade, an eon stretched out over years, as his voice trickled through the narrow tunnels.

The fever was reaching the ultimate pitch, burning him up like a sinful conflagration, as if fire would purify all that was wrong with him. Tossing his head to the side, he stumbled to his feet, claws clutching at the ground, heaving his weight like a hammer against the metallic walls. He knew death, and he knew when it came to stalk his door.

Another chuckle, another slithering sound of darkness vibrant and flashing in his one dark eye. Even the glistening glow of his soul stone could not take away from the eternity that screamed out from his eye. His soul was on fire -- and he walked with that flame, carrying it with him as he slushed through the tunnels nearly sightless, nearly deaf. {Will you die so quickly, my love?} She whispered so tenderly in his ear. He could feel her breath on his cheek, the touch of her claws against the throbbing socket that remained empty of orb, and full of his stone. His own power flexed, but it was nothing he could control. She purred - and he felt her so close to his body, her warmth fanning the flames of his delusions.

The nameless one, the shameless, faceless, homeless one, trudged on through the muck and the grime, heedless of the tracks he left in his wake, of the filth he traversed. He was made of the darkest of things: he was the aching embodiment of sludge, of the murky waters in which he walked. Was it any wonder he festered? Any wonder the infection spread like lightning through the tar of his blackened soul? His mouth moved, that terrible thing, a curving black blade cracking open in a grin, blood gushing forward from the flesh of his gums. The General had been dying, too. What a surprise, to kill what was already going to die. The beast was swaying in silence, blood dripping like tears from his mouth, a rictus shriek curled up in his face as he emerged from the underworld, birthed like a scourge on the living world.

Each step was a sickness gathered underneath his flesh, leaving behind muck and grime with each foot print. He could not tell what time of day it was: the world was pitched in red. All this red -- and it was when the hunger struck. So fierce, and insurmountable. A hunger that raged as vibrantly as the fever, frying the rest of his broken, burnt synapses with the vengeance of the dead or dying. Why did he not remain below? Why did he not remain in silence to die? He was just as bad as the rest, kicking up a fuss as the world tried to crush him beneath it's weary hand.

The weapon had been tossed aside, and it's mistress had run toward her love. He was left alone in the dark to die with nothing but the discolored red and the hazy murmur of a ghost to keep him company. {Did you think she would save you?} she murmured, her chuckling warmth only igniting the fury of his sickness. The abyss had consumed him once, and now, now it spoke to him in a voice he could not tune out. Her voice was a siren's song, so gentle and lovely, quivering with the vicious violence of the whip. {No one can save you}

He remembered her claws as they dug out his eye, of the soulless look in her eye as she did so. He would have died for her then, and he would die for her now. Not even the Goddess had been able to replace her existence in his head, and now, so close to death's door, feeling the fluttering wings of Death's entrance, he could not deny it much longer.

The snow leopard needed to be ruled, and in being let loose on the world without purpose, without action, he was a withering thing, losing all of it's sharp-edged glory. He did not even know when he had stopped walking, or when he had leaned so heavily against the banister of a store-front. He did not remember leaving the sewers. He did not remember when he last felt alive. He coughed, blood spilling out of his mouth in a tidal wave. {Tsk, tsk} she clucked.

He did not remember reaching out, his claws grabbing onto the closest cat passing by. Male, female, old, young -- all it blurred as the red poured down over his skull and washed the world in the color of blood lust. He hungered. He festered.

{No one will save you now, my pet}

But he reached out anyway. Goddess.

{You are mine}

word count || 1187

tags || Alue Velkss

OOC || Taking place a few days after he killed Nero (General of Naxorus and Nayva's father).