[[(660 words) (2/3)
-- Paladin takes the full kick to the chest and causes a hairline fracture on the keel of his sternum
-- Paladin uses his blood boiling back and aims to stab Varath in the heart
(again posting here because it disappears below, and GODDAMN this was so hard to write :( I want to cry)
]]
If only he knew how right he was. Mercy had poisoned his soul, turned him into an honorable monster of morality and emotion. The demon inside, a balm for his pain, had been shoved down and disallowed from partaking in his life from then on, and what had he accomplished? His legacy lay in ruins, murdered by his own hooves, and red leaked from his past more tangible than even the tint of his matted hair. Absolution was a tower more miles away than he could count, and he knew that he would die before he ever ascended those righteous steps. For his entire life, he had toiled, his singular goal to right the wrongs of his past, and like all truths, half lay in shadow, only revealed in the final chapter. The warrior had dreamed of meeting his final days worthy of heaven, but the dream was a fantasy. Hell was where he had been born and where he was doomed to return.
Varath even fought like the fire-haired demons of Dorngarrow, and blood seeped from the wound on his shoulder as he jumped forward, hearing the protests of old, arthritic bones. Weak, perhaps, and old, but Paladin had been fighting all his long years and his son’s elder by a long shot. The roar of egotistical cries fueled the old warrior’s muscles, and a black smirk curled his lips, yanking his head around and feeling the satisfying tug of wet flesh tearing beneath the point of his sword. The sound of the visceral crunch shuddered against his ears soothingly, and the sharp tang of metal filled his nose and palate. Delicious. A pleasured owl escaped the demon who shook his ribs like bars of a prison, grimy, oily fingers gripping and crying out for the fight, feeding on pain.
Blood jerked from the tainted tip of his horn, scattering across the midnight sky, and Paladin turned, preparing to attack again when a whirl wind of hooves hit him square in the chest. His tan hooves slid against the ground from the force, and he heard a sickening crunch as something snapped inside, and breath came sipped through narrow aperture, lungs screaming for air. Paladin tumbled backward, trying to get control of his forelegs despite the cramping cries of his chest, and the stallion, winced as arthritic hocks were forced to bear his weight. Not a student of anatomy, the warrior did not know what was broken, but he recognized the pain. Agony. The white, searing starbursts of pain exploded across his vision with every attempt to move forward, and he gasped, hating the pain that followed every inhale.
What was left inside of him anymore? Crimson eyes, washed with pain and wild hatred stared at his son, disgust and cruelty swelling in his heart at the thought that this whelp was of his blood. “What man?” he hissed, taking steady steps forward with corners of his eyes crinkled in effort. “All I feel for you is revulsion, and all I need is what remains: the will to bring you down.” Harsh words from father to son, signs of abuse long suffered along this line. Few escaped the wrath of Riekahn, and even those who tried eventually fell back into the same cycle of death, rage and destruction. Paladin was no saint. He was no champion for equality. In the final moments of living, every gilded façade of his life came crashing down, tumbling to the ocean of regrets.
The stallion narrowed his eyes, unleashing a torrent of his magic on his son, releasing pain and rage in a single burst of blood boiling agony. With a distraction hopefully caused by this swing of power, he stepped forward on a weakened chest, not going anywhere fast any time soon. Paladin jerked his neck around, crying out as the muscles from his chest clenched but trajectory of his horn still aimed to pierce the heart of his first born son.
|
.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
