Domino Effect

Chapter 01: all the pointless violence, silent tombs
Chapter 02: take a look at the beautiful river of blood

Lora is the one he eviscerates first.

He'd always feared the process prescribed (certainly not proscribed) by the Jin who'd journaled it purely because of the pointless violence of it all. If he truly did love her that much, and their bond truly was that strong, he wasn't sure they would have minded a passive, holistic melding of the minds, the bodies and the souls.

It'd almost seem...natural.

What followed thereafter certainly wasn't natural to any but Lora's Paragon. One after another, endless dominoes falling, he gutted Indoline soldiers, felt the rip and tear of human flesh.

They screamed, destroyed, sundered.

He'd never feel this much vindication desecrating his own.

He killed for Blades. He killed for others. He killed to free them from masters they'd never asked for, masters whose impending enslavement they weren't even alive to protest.

He did it for them. He did it for her. He did not do it for himself.

He did not enjoy this. He knew it would not help him see her again.

He knows that there is nothing he can do. He knows that in time he will fall just as they do.

He times himself by how swiftly he can dispatch with them. He watches the blood trickle in the same rivuleted rhythm as always.

It is beautiful, this inevitable pattern.