Chapter 103 A Nightmare (2/2)

Block his throat and choke him.

Bring him to me so I can feed.

Rassa watched all this occur around him in the darkness of the cave, moving with his shadows and sinking his fangs into unwilling necks to drink and drink and drink. He let his Gluttony rule him. His rage crashing through his being like river rapids.

He grinned just like he had on that battlefield. The shadows and the Mist revelling in the chaos with him. This is what he was, this is what he was born to be. It felt so right, so pure and unrestrained that he could not help the joyful laugh that burst forth from his lips.

He spread his arms, the shadows exploding outwards like spikes and skewering his enemies where they stood. His shoulders shook with his chuckle and the shadows receded, wrapping around him like satin cloth as he surveyed the destruction around him. The bodies and the blood, the true form of his gluttonous path.

”R-Rassa”.

Rassa froze. The voice all too familiar. The shadows screamed at him not to turn back, as if they knew. As if they were aware of what it would do to him. But Rassa couldn't stop himself, he turned anyway.

There, skewered to the wall of the mines, was his father. Blood leaked from his wounds, and he coughed, blood gushing forth from his mouth.

”Rassa...why?”

The question, the confusion, the fear. All lay within Phillip's gaze as he took in the true form of his son, and the look floored Rassa.

What had he done?

”Father?”

The small voice that escaped Rassa was nothing like the gluttonous monster that had revelled in darkness moments before. It resembled a small child, terrified beyond his wits. Rassa stumbled forward towards his father.

”Father...no”.

As Rassa took in the wholly dead eyes of his father, he caught glimpses of others on either side of Rassa, or the bodies on the floor and the pinned to rooves and walls.

His mother. Jane, Falla, Dig, all his friends, the knights he'd slaughtered in Cordon, the villagers, Aegin and Ebony...

Rassa dropped to his knees.

”No”. His long claw-like nails scraped at the skin of his face, the cuts quickly mending back together as if to tell him, ”This is what you are, you cannot run from it”.

Rassa screamed.