"I thought the same, at first. Lily Ivory is just another. Gather the souls, become a Deathscythe and continue research on the war and both sides with the power to protect myself from them all. I would merely watch as both sides destroyed each other, and then I would swoop down and take what knowledge they'd gathered. The knowledge of golems, what it is that births the Sway of Magic in young witches, makes them mad..."
"But rather than discard me or strike me as others have, you 'put up with me', as the saying goes. You showed me a patience I hadn't yet known, and as time passed, my resolve to use you lessened. I would instead work with you... protect you, as your partner. You were something I never could and still cannot understand. You wield great powers but fight to hide them rather than embrace them, live as a woman with no Sway. You've a passion for the past, of ones happier than your own, a rich culture that intrigues me. You're strange, Lily Ivory, with your idioms, and stranger still for becoming friends with me... even feeling the way you do - or perhaps in past tense now - for me."
"I woke up one morning, long ago, and realized that I adored the passion, the culture, the strangeness, the idioms and the stubbornness. When I transformed, when I pulled magic from my soul, it was to guard you rather than use you. Lenneth stopped crossing my mind completely as it had day after day. Instead it was you, a fact that perplexed and angered me at first. But, it grew into something I accepted."
The Shadow clutched his stomach as he laughed, his face bright red for once, flushed with the pleasure of the truth. "Ha ha ha ha! Lezard Valeth had fallen in love again, in another doomed world! And so I hid and I hid and I hid. A man with bloodied hands in the name of one failed love can't possibly start over again!"
Lezard stepped around to leave the scene, but was met with one of the Bone Warriors raising his blade and pressing it to his throat. The man sighed and shrugged with a devil-may-care manner. "You presume love pains me, that I'm weak."
"You ARE weak." The Shadow then began to thin, cheek bones sinking inward and his frame shrinking. He began to look malnourished, then almost deathly starved. The cloak, the fine clothes began to darken, build dust and tatter. The Shadow looked so much older now, haggard.
"You are vulnerable without your magic. It has left you susceptible to pain. To fear. You would once laugh in the face of gods themselves, at Hel herself, but you fear the end of the war. You fear the pain of the calamity claiming you. You fear the pain of Lily Ivory turning her back on you when she finds out just what you've done. You had always said you needed her... but the word 'need' can change in so many ways. Funny, how that works."
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"But rather than discard me or strike me as others have, you 'put up with me', as the saying goes. You showed me a patience I hadn't yet known, and as time passed, my resolve to use you lessened. I would instead work with you... protect you, as your partner. You were something I never could and still cannot understand. You wield great powers but fight to hide them rather than embrace them, live as a woman with no Sway. You've a passion for the past, of ones happier than your own, a rich culture that intrigues me. You're strange, Lily Ivory, with your idioms, and stranger still for becoming friends with me... even feeling the way you do - or perhaps in past tense now - for me."
"I woke up one morning, long ago, and realized that I adored the passion, the culture, the strangeness, the idioms and the stubbornness. When I transformed, when I pulled magic from my soul, it was to guard you rather than use you. Lenneth stopped crossing my mind completely as it had day after day. Instead it was you, a fact that perplexed and angered me at first. But, it grew into something I accepted."
The Shadow clutched his stomach as he laughed, his face bright red for once, flushed with the pleasure of the truth. "Ha ha ha ha! Lezard Valeth had fallen in love again, in another doomed world! And so I hid and I hid and I hid. A man with bloodied hands in the name of one failed love can't possibly start over again!"
Lezard stepped around to leave the scene, but was met with one of the Bone Warriors raising his blade and pressing it to his throat. The man sighed and shrugged with a devil-may-care manner. "You presume love pains me, that I'm weak."
"You ARE weak." The Shadow then began to thin, cheek bones sinking inward and his frame shrinking. He began to look malnourished, then almost deathly starved. The cloak, the fine clothes began to darken, build dust and tatter. The Shadow looked so much older now, haggard.
"You are vulnerable without your magic. It has left you susceptible to pain. To fear. You would once laugh in the face of gods themselves, at Hel herself, but you fear the end of the war. You fear the pain of the calamity claiming you. You fear the pain of Lily Ivory turning her back on you when she finds out just what you've done. You had always said you needed her... but the word 'need' can change in so many ways. Funny, how that works."