Insanity Manifest (Ry-san)

Dante ran. And ran. And ran. Rain fell down in thick sheets, and the blood covering his body just wouldn’t seem to wash away. His white hoodie was nearly crimson, and his manacles were slick with the red liquid. Sloshing through the muddy road, the fleeing young man fell to his knees and allowed the sickness of his thoughts to come forth in a retching torrent. His stomach emptied (again), he struggled to his feet and resumed trudging through the thick mud of the road. He tasted bile and started to reach up to wipe his mouth, but stopped, noting his blood-soaked arm. Instead, he forced his mind to go blank, trying to forget what had happened.

Actually, he couldn’t really remember what had happened. Brief images flashed through his head, images of blood and slashing and death and flames. Faces frozen in ice. Dismembered limbs. Soundless screams. Bits and pieces bounced around his head, and he didn’t want them. He didn’t want to know what had happened. He clamped his hands against the sides of his head and squeezed his eyes shut, as it doing so could possibly help. Of course, despite not having the whole picture, Dante knew what had happened. It was Him. He didn’t know why or how, but he knew that it had been Him.

Dante hated Him. He hated Him, and himself because of Him. He couldn’t begin to count the number of times he had contemplated ending his own life simply to rid himself and the world of His wretched existence. Yet he couldn’t. He didn’t want to give up on life or himself, despite all of his hatred for the thing inside him. He wanted to live! He couldn’t give up. Not yet. But even still, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to be rid of the thing or how to fight him, so he did the only thing left. He ran.

The mud road Dante traversed was easily ten feet wide, and shoulder-height grass spread out from it on either side in opposing viridian seas. The sky was blanketed in black clouds, sheets of gray rain pelting the lone man relentlessly. Dark outlines of trees stood on the horizon, and Dante made that his goal. Maybe if he could make it there, he could be safe from his thoughts and the murderous ghosts that surely chased him.

“You!”

Maybe not.

Raina reached in her pocket again, feeling the rough paper packet, several pages long, stuffed into an envelope. It had been delivered only hours ago. It was an execution order. In about seven pages of lawyer-ese it said she was to use any means necessary to execute the individual, or individuals, responsible for the massacre of a nearby town.

She stood in the town square, quelling the beast inside her, feeling it pace within the cage of her body, smelling the carnage around her. The smell wasn't just blood, though there was enough of that, but it was that smell of true slaughter, a mix of raw hamburger and outhouse that turned your stomach, or just flat did it for you, depending on your particular ilk. The human in her was disgusted by the scene, the beast however...

She left the cleanup to the people who got paid for it. She'd seen all she needed to see here, and caught the trail of someone leaving the scene hours before. It was easy to follow. They made no attempt to hide their trail, and the smell of blood and thicker things clung to it's scent. It wasn't afraid... Not of being followed anyway. She dodged and weaved along the trail of her prey like a ghost, keeping off the road her quarry seemed to favor. This posed an interesting question. What manner of monster slaughters so many people, then staggers away like a bewildered child?

Looks like I may soon get my answer... She slowed to stalk along beside the road alongside a lone figure, wreaking of blood and fresh death. No sense in drawing things out... "You!" As the figure turned, she leaped over the drainage ditch and onto the road with catlike grace. Her hand was already buried inside her coat, ready for one of her guns. She stood in a well of calm, even as the beast paced within her, willing her to make her move. "My name is Raina Lunawyn, licensed Executioner. For the murders you committed only hours ago, I have your papers." Why did she warn him?

The rain and not-so-distant thunder drowned out most of her words, but Dante caught all of the important ones.

Executioner. Murders. Commited.

“NO!”

Dante clamped his left hand over the same side of his face in anguish and instinctively brought his right snapping up, the chain at the end of it lengthening and shifting. The Executioner fired off a bullet as she whipped her hand out of her jacket, deflecting the incoming blade. The wide, jagged blade spun through the air, imbedding itself by Dante’s foot. Yanking the blade from the ground, the wanted man turned and sprinted away from the woman as quickly as he could. Bullets chased him, and he knew that he could never outrun her like this. Dante spun about on a heel, gesturing with one hand and shouting out. It practically exploded out of thin air, the rain drops freezing and fusing together, an opaque wall of ice that spanned the entirety of the road and even reached out into the grassy field on either side.

Dante’s momentum carried him back around, and he kept on running.

What the hell? Raina did not skid to a halt before the wall, but rather shifted her hands. Her fingers grew hard, gargoyle-like talons and dug them into the ice, vaulting over the wall, and landing at a run on the other side. Why do they always have to run first? First they run, then they try to bargain with you, or worse yet, give you some sob story. Then, they try to sucker punch you. I guess Aurora was right. She closed on him quickly. People are painfully predictable...

She dodged off the road, melting into the undergrowth. Then, she Ran in earnest. In the wilderness, lycanthropes don't run. They Run. It is an exhilaration unlike anything else. The forest seemed to melt before her, like water for a fish, and she would not tire. She gave herself to the movement and knew when she passed her prey. She ran ahead of him and errupted onto the road before him. The Executioner landed in a wide, two-handed shooting stance, her gun levelled for a perfect chest shot, firing twice even as his eyes widened at her surprise appearance.

Dante dug a foot into the mud and threw himself to the side, the bullets grazing his side beneath his out-thrown arm. He looked on the woman as he spun about. He couldn’t escape, and therefore, only had one option left to him. He wouldn’t beg or plead or bargain. They never listened and it never worked. Besides, how could he possible excuse himself? But guilty or not, he wouldn’t give in. Fear and desperation slowly faded away, replaced by a simmer anger tinged with a persisting frustration. His blades flew out once more, not in blind desperation, but in focused fury. A knife came to the executioner’s free hand as she crouched under the blades and knocked them awry, darting forward in their absence.

Gritting his teeth, Dante held his hands out, palms facing each other and fingers widespread. Chanting softly, he moved them in opposite circles to each other, a thin sheet of ice forming in the air between them. The ice thickened as it formed a large disk, the edges sharpening into serrated teeth. Growling, he spun a quick circle and heaved his hands out, the disk flying out from between them and spiraling towards the sprinting woman.

Raina ran straight toward the spiraling plate of ice, slipping the knife in her left hand back into it's wrist sheath as she hit the ground. She slid through the mud under it, firing a shot into the crystalline projectile as she passed beneath. The ice shattered in a flurry of tiny shards as she slid to her feet, firing another shot at him as she extended her left hand. Bleed..., she thought. Sensing the small grazes in his flank begin to flow faster, she fired again. Bleed for me...

Warmth spread through Dante’s left leg as he just barely dodged another bullet, but the young man ignored it. He snapped his arms back, the chains attached to the manacles around his wrists retracting speedily, their links flying over the crouched woman in a rapidly closing “X”. Already aware of the danger hurling towards her back, the executioner leapt up from her crouch, her back arching over the retracting chains, the blades at their ends just barely missing her twisting form. Tsking in dissatisfaction, Dante watched as the blades flew past him on either side to land in the mud. He quickly snapped the blades back up into his hands, and, desperate to put a bit more distance between himself on the recovering executioner, hopped back.

Or tried to, at least. He was almost as surprised that his leg has failed to support him as he was to see the massive amounts of blood pouring from it. That’s not normal! Unnerved at his sudden predicament, the young man quickly clamped both hands over his injuries. Ice spread out from his open palms, thickening and covering the wounds to cease the flow of blood. That done, he looked up . . . just in time to catch a boot to the face, his golden-rimmed glasses flying away into the rainy evening.

He wants space... He must think it'll be to his advantage. She dashed in at superhuman speed, connecting with him as he looked up from his wounds. He sprawled on the ground, then looked up with a fierce panic she could not comprehend compared to the beast she was supposedly hunting. His face without the glasses looked even more vunerable and young. Unable to mesh this youth with the evidence that was all to apparently hanging in the air around him, like a cloud of death, she did something very uncharacteristic. With the beast railing inside her, she offered him mercy.

"I don't know why I believe this, but you are not entirely the person I seek. Your smell is even slightly different..." She leaned down slightly closer to him, and he lashed out with the blades at his wrists. She caught the chains in her hand with one fierce thought: BLEED FOR ME! The graze in his side ripped exposing glimpses of rib, the wound in his leg opening like a mouth, pulling from the ice until it gaped from hip to knee, a wash of blood sliding to the wet earth. "I would much rather know how someone like you has come to be in such a situation, and help you, if possible. But, if you remove my other options, I will simply kill you. I do not love mysteries enough to risk my own life for this one." She kneeled beside his prostrate form. "What is your name?"

Darkness flooded the edges of Dante’s sight, mingling with the loss of his glasses and the rain falling in his eyes to further blur his vision. A fresh wave of blood spurted from his side, accompanied by stabbing agony.

“What is your name?” The voice, though firm and strict, conveyed and hint of compassion and sympathy. Coupled with everything that had happened to him this day, all Dante wanted to do was give himself over to that voice; to give up and explain everything. Maybe she really would help him.

MORON!

What? Fear washed over Dante as that ever familiar and dreaded voice ringed through his head.

She’s an EXECUTIONER. She’s here to KILL YOU. As is she would really help you. Idiot. I can’t believe you’re this stupid.

Shut up, devil! I won’t listen to you. But the doubt was there. She was an executioner, and had already tried to kill him, more blood pouring from his side as if to accent this point. But he also believed in her offer of help. If she had wanted to, she could have already have killed him several times.

Gods, your stupidity never ceases to amaze me! Even if she hasn’t killed you yet, it doesn’t mean she won’t. She’s merely waiting to get you to drop your guard so that killing you will be all the sweeter.

No! That’s what YOU would do!

The voice laughed inside Dante’s head.

True enough! But do you really think she’s any different? Are you truly that naive? She WILL kill you, have no doubt!

No-!

GIVE UP.


“What is your name?!”

Black flooded Dante’s eyes and spread up from the roots of his hair. His blue irises faded to a piercing yellow.

“My . . . name?” Ice exploded from the young man’s hands, racing up the chains to engulf the woman’s hand and forearm. “I don’t need something as stupid,” his arm whipped around as he rolled his body, pulling Raina off her feet and slamming her in the mud, “as a name!” He stood up, pulling his hat and headband off as he did so. Ice spread out from his other hand, recovering the gaping wound in his side.

A crazy grin spread over Kain’s face.

“Just consider me your own personal Death.”

What in the name of... Raina rolled away and to her feet. "Who are you, and what have you done with the boy?" She could feel the beast welling up inside her, like a great cat rushing the bars of its cage, sensing the challengers malicious intent. She clenched her fist, flexing her forearm until the muscles corded under her skin, breaking their prison of ice. "You are not him. Your smell is different. You've possessed him."

She raised her voice, appealing to the personality who seemed ready to speak to her only a moment before. "Boy! I know you are still there." The beast of yellow eyes, lashed out again, not in panic or self-defense as the boy had, but in a single-minded malice. This smell she knew. Insanity manifest, one who would kill not for food, or safety, or even sport, but simply to kill, to maim, to destroy for destruction's own sake. This was a mind that could not be spoken to, never reasoned with, for it was beyond all thought of morality, compassion, or honor. Worse, it considered such things weakness. So, as she dodged clear of the blades, weaving as they followed her, dancing with the chains and blades in a tango of death, she appealled to the other mind. "Send the monster back to the dark corners of your mind, boy. You are strong enough to do that! Cage the beast, and let me help you, or push him back enough to ask for your death."

A wicked laugh screeched through the air, Kain whipping his blades back to his hands.

“Useless! Useless, useless, useless!” The monster spun a blade above his head and hurled it at the executioner, the woman jumping to the side as the sword plunged into the muddy ground. “He can’t hear you, woman!” Kain laughed again, spinning the other sword at his side. “It’s only me now! Now die in the chill of winter’s permafrost!” A flash of blue ran down the chain, flooding the sword embedded in the ground next to Raisha.

Ice exploded from the half-buried blade, spreading across the ground in all directions. The high grass flanking the now frozen road began too to freeze, ice spreading up from their roots. Laughing hysterically, Kain pulled on the chain, heaving himself into the air as it shrunk, drawing closer to the executioner. The possessed man lashed the spinning blade at his side out at the woman.

“Run, if you can, woman!”