The lovely, pale skin of Commander Samantha slipped from sight, the cold, dawnless black of Lea Monde swallowing her whole. One red rose blossomed on her breast, the inked lines of a tattoo, and another --still blooming-- blood crimson rose colored her stomach. At it's center glittered the blade of a short dagger, stabbed nearly to the hilt in her gut. The man she loved and whom she had believed loved her, the man she trusted completely and never once doubted, had stuck it there. Already mostly dead, Samantha fell from the dome of the Great Cathedral in a graceful arc, like a flower petal sinking with the rain towards the hard stone ground so far below.
Ashley saw her, in that single second she dropped past the Atrium's window. He'd been about to climb the stairs leading up from that chamber of secret sacrifices. Black dust drifted from her body, the disintegration process already begun. Likely, only the dagger that killed her would hit the flagstones below.
Such was the fate of every Blade Guildenstern led into the Dark maelstrom at the heart of Lea Monde.
Even after the Commander's corpse past his line of vision, Ashley was still completely aware of her. When the Dark first touched both their souls, an uncanny connection between their senses opened. Whether it was simply that they had a "like rhythm", or some other unexplained cause that created the bridge spanning their minds, Ashley didn't know. However it happened, it gave him the power to see through her eyes and hear with her ears. That link to Samantha's mind, and the similar one leading to Callo Merlose, provided handy insight into the movements of the enemy's top ranks.
Her body dissolving and her soul starting to slip away, one last thought ran through Samantha's mind and across the bridge to Ashley's, where it rang clearly. It wasn't a shriek of rage against the betrayal that made her a sacrifice for another man's gain, nor was it a wail of regret over her own death. It was fear--- fear of the bleak, blood-drenched future her lover was chaining himself to in his desire for the power of an ultimate dictator.
Save him! she cried to Ashley. Her enemy. Her lover's enemy. Their only possible savior.
Ashley intended to do so.
He'd already accepted the duty of stopping Guildenstern from Sydney, the blonde prophet's life bleeding through his fingers from the gaping swath where the Blood Sin's inked lines once twined. Shouldering both pleas, Ashley stepped out into night air saturated with the rain and the Dark, all of Lea Monde stretching out below him.
He walked into it calm. Any anger he may have felt at Sydney and the way the other man had provoked him, manipulated him, had evaporated long ago. All of the eavesdropping on pasts, the prophesying, the warped truths, even his charismatic façade as the Mullenkamp Cult's leader; all of it was part of a meticulously tailored plan to save the ones he loved. But that plan hadn't worked. So he placed that burden on Ashley's shoulders, trusting the Riskbreaker as his chosen successor.
It had been a conceited and entirely inconsiderate thing for Sydney to do. Never mind that Ashley wanted nothing to do with the Dark, the now-mortal Sydney had taunted him with the "hunt", playing on the Riskbreaker's fidelity to a mission and buried need to save his family in order to grind him into the desired form. Despite that callous disregard, Sydney's hidden hopes and desires were something Ashley could understand.
Where "law" forms solid pillars that regulate and stabilize mankind, "emotion" creates the crossbeams that link the pillars together into the latticework called "society". It was "emotion" -- love for one's parents, affection for one's children, passion for one's spouse, trust of one's friends, even the strange "best enemy" respect for one's eternal opponent-- that held the human world together. So Ashley believed. In a world without those soft "emotions" it would be impossible to value human life. Solemn laws and strict punishments alone lead only to cowering fear and stacks of corpses. Guildenstern was looking to create just such a world, binding the admittedly weakened pillars of law into one hard column and placing himself at the very top.
Crouching on the rain-drenched Cathedral roof, the man who would be a god completely ignored Ashley's entrance. His back to the Riskbreaker, Ashley got a clear look at the stolen Blood Sin tacked onto Guildenstern's bare back. No, not "tacked". The black-inked swath of skin had melded completely onto his back, now as much a part of him as it had been of Sydney.
Amidst the oppressive, evil-tinged, power-drenched air, Ashley yelled;
"Guildenstern!!"
The man who'd unhesitatingly consigned his lover's soul to an eternity of half-living hell lazily spun around. The eyes that looked upon Ashley with black glee were nothing but cloudy whites.
"Come, Riskbreaker…"
Elation danced in those foggy orbs, latching onto Ashley's eyes with a mad intensity.
"Your death will be my rebirth!"
With that announcement, the huge mass of Dark the ritual sacrifice of Samantha had called to the top of the dome suddenly began to condense into Guildenstern's right hand. Power flowed into the small area at the pinnacle of Lea Monde, almost as if it were soaking in from the entirety of the broken city below. The air became so thick with the heady force of its presence that goose bumps started crawling up Ashley's arms.
Lightening brightness flared and Ashley instinctively protected his sight from the eye burning glare with an upraised arm. When his vision finally cleared, the being that stood in front of him was not the Guildenstern who had been there only seconds before. While there were similarities, the Guildenstern he looked at now was, on some fundamental level, wrong.
Purple bolts of pure energy slithered across skin dyed midnight black. It was not a simple case of his skin changing color. Muscle, blood, bone, organs-- every last cell in Guildenstern's body was drenched in the Dark, it's color staining his skin from the inside out.
His right hand held a gargantuan sword; a melding of three blades made into the shape of the Blood Sin. A few moments before, it had been atop the Cathedral's roof as a simple decoration in the shape of the Iocus priesthood's symbol, the Holy Win. But Guildenstern had changed it, vaporizing the mundane metal and then instantly recondensing it with ample amounts of Dark mixed in. The result-- a super-dense, super-tensile alloy called Damascus.
Flipping the giant weapon about like it was no more than a willow switch, the man-turned-god laughed once, a harsh burst of sound that rolled out with a palpable wave of force.
"Come help me celebrate my ascension!"
Guildenstern lifted his rood-blade high and the sword immediately doubled in size, white light gushing from the tip then instantly freezing, an icicle of power. The next second it had whipped around him completely and smashed into Ashley's defenses with frightening strength.
The Riskbreaker's eyes registered one strike, but the rest of him felt at least three. Had he been even the slightest nanosecond slow with his counter, his fate likely would have been similar to Rosencrantz's.
Faster than a surprise attack, strong enough to slice six unprepared Ashleys in half, Guildenstern was simply probing at his opponent's defenses. A thought and he was behind the other man, the rood-blade flicking out and slicing through both magical and physical shields like neither was there. Left behind was a not-shallow gash across Ashley's well-toned abdomen.
Ashley slapped a 'heal' on the wound before he could lose too much blood. The cantrip summoning the power had barely left his mouth when Guildenstern's words echoed through not only his ears, but every nerve in his body.
"Well parried, Riskbreaker. You truly are the greatest bloodhound --blood-drenched, hell hound-- that the VKP has ever turned out. But you cannot destroy me. Lea Monde is mine. I am a GOD!"
"……Oh I'll kill you, Guildenstern. You belong in this world no longer."
As a Riskbreaker, Ashley had made it his mission to eliminate Guildenstern. Not for Parliament or Valendia would he destroy the power-mad creature of the Dark that the Crimson Blade Commander had become, but for all the people the world over, so that they could continue to live peacefully, as people. Shouldering the hope of humanity, Ashley brought to bear a power that transcended mortality.
In the skies above Lea Monde, two different "Darks" began to intertwine----.