22.08 DeMacabre

~~Please read this important announcement about the end of the Kingdoms of Evil and what comes after~~

Milielan squinted against the pain raging around his brain. That incessant noise from the boys pressed upon his anger and fear like an implement of torture. Feerborg was talking, again. He was always talking. Wheedling and whining and babbling, undoing all the careful manipulation Milielan had worked on Feerix. It was maddening.

“The boy,” he grated, “must be stopped.”

“Father, I disagree,” said Bloodbyrn, far too directly.

“You disagree? And you tell me so?” Milielan let himself plead, “My daughter, do you not see what he is doing to you? Where is your customary hauteur? Where is your subtly and cruelty?” He would kill the boy before Feerborg could corrupt Bloodbyrn further.

“Father?”

First Feerborg, then Feerix, then DeSangaise, then Guerron DeDïabaisse, then Teirchoke, then Wrothred, and then everything that walked or flew or crawled in Skrea. If it would bring safety to Basorrie’s memory, Milielan would sterilize the world.

“Yes, my daughter?”

“Perhaps it is the time for more directness, father,” Bloodbyrn pressed. “The Ultimate Fiend is mistaken about much, it is true, but father, he has made me see things,” God of Blood help them, her eyes were wide and joyous “…things I had never imagined.”

Milielan wept inwardly as his daughter looked into a rosy, love-filled future. A future that would surely destroy her. As it had destroyed her mother. As it had destroyed him. “No.”

She looked up at him, “father?”

“No,” he repeated. “I will not let them trick you, as I was tricked. I will not let you ruin yourself as I ruined myself. Bloodbyrn, daughter, vessel of half my blood.” He reached out, took her by the shoulders, squeezed as if he could drive his convictions through her skin on the tips of his fingernails. “You will not fall in love, daughter.”