Editing Character:Vengeance of the Righteous (section)

=History=
*Tepet Dreus laid his hand on his innards and tried desperately to shove them back into place long enough to make one final stab at the hulking man's back. The Anathema had laid waste to more men than he had ever seen dead at one time, and still he killed dozens of Stair-trained legionaires with every few moments. Luckily, Dreus thought, he leaves his back unguarded as he mows through my men. Finally managing to clutch enough of his intestines into himself that he can move relatively unimpeded (if in unimaginable pain), he raises his black jade daiklaive, and with a scream of agony-born defiance, he charged the Bull of the North.

The Bull, without so much as disrupting his rythym of attacking, chopped him in half on a backswing and continued to cleave through Tepet legions as if they were naught but air.


And now we see the young Dreus, intestines spilled over a wide area, life's blood steaming with the smell of spilled offal, his legs at least six feet from his waist. The light in his eyes starts to fade, only for his face to change to an expression of puzzlement, for he hears a whisper over the din of battle and other deaths. A whisper that promises power and retribution, if he accepts service.It promises him that he would be able to kill any army as quickly as the Bull, maybe even faster. All he has to do is accept, and he will be saved.


The young Dreus quickly thinks over the offer. With the last of his life's energies, he lifts his head slightly and releases it, a slight nod his final word...

-Years and miles later-

The man in the black and screaming armor raised his bloody daiklaive and brought it crashing down on yet another Immaculate monk, the monk's corpus split in two. His face, beautiful as it is, is fixed in a expression of utter boredom. Finally, only one more monk stands between him and the barn where his target is hid. The monk assumes a graceful one-legged stance and motions the man to come forward. "I will not let you hurt these people, Anathema!"

The man in black swipes his sword so fast you could barely see it, severing the monk's head and sending it flying away. The body, neck stump spewing blood into the air that invariably blows at the man in black's face, remains fixed in its perfectly balanced stance.

The man in black merely stands there for a few moments, until the monk's corpse stops spraying him with blood and finally collapses. The man pulls his hair out of his eyes and grips his daiklaive harder. The blood coats his profile for a few moments, before seeming to dry up and disappear.

Finally, he steps forward and enters the barn quietly. Nothing is heard for a few moments, then three screams split the air. The first two are the usual ones he is normally faced with, but the last hangs in the air for a few moments, it being the cry of a newborn.

Silence hangs over the barn for a minutes, then finally the man in black exits, tears of blood running down his angered face. Once he gets outside, he falls to his knees and looks up at the Sun. "I'm a fool, and for that, there can be no recompense. But I swear this oath, bound by whatever scripts hold you in the sky. I will follow the orders of the Mask of Winters no more, from this day forward, all of my power and prowess is devoted to preserving the things that I may not have." Reaching his left hand up to his daiklaive, he gently runs it down the naked edge for a moment, before making a fist in front of him, his blood dripping to the slowly blackening ground. "May this oath become as binding as the fates of the Neverborn."

Slowly, he stands and starts walking. After about ten minutes of walking, as he's a speck on the horizon, the young family exits the barn, the mother clutching the newborn to her chest. "Who was that man?" the father whispered. Speechless, the two of them watch him disappear into the oncoming night. Neither of them noticed the blackened earth not far in front of them, so none can say exactly when the corpse white rose bush bloomed there, but for years afterward, the roses bloomed every night, their fragrance only subtly tinged with the sickness of decay...