Kuni Senoth eagerly tasted the air with a flickering forked tongue, blood glorious blood. This was not the hunt, no but the pull of blood in the air had not lessened. He could hear the song coming, it sang to something deep inside of him and for the first time in what felt like a long time he was connected. 

The Kuni strode forward, the intoxicating call of the song evident in his every movement. Under it's pull he leapt of the ledge without bothering to look. The call was too strong for little things like caution. He dropped his spear and pulled out his dagger, the song required satiation and so he would have a taste of the meat, as was right. 

He had been told human was delicious, now the time had come to know this for himself. Senoth picked up the nearest meat bag, it was brown, humans weren’t supposed brown but Senoth was too far gone to care. 

With his dagger firmly gripped by green fingers he thrust deeply and slowly, savoring the feeling of blade parting flesh. The human woke up with a jerk, his eyes a deathly white, the eyes of the dead some would say, his mouth opened in what should have been a scream only rather than sound, blood escaped his lips. 

Senoth bared his fangs, his breath was full of acid. Resistance the song rang, slay it, the tempo had risen and his own heart beat with it. Kill now. Senoth struck. 

When Kael woke it was with a smile on his lips, he was alive, now more than he had ever been, and his senses were tingling with a sharpness that had not been there when he went unconscious. He had been doing a lot of that lately. Wounds crisscrossed his frame, many of them bruised and reopened, a dull headache throbbed as testament to the fall he had taken, and a short blade was lodged in between his ribs and yet it all seemed trivial. He absent mindedly pulled the dagger from his side, for his mind was preoccupied with images that made the act seem trivial. Kael remembered now, he remembered getting stabbed, killing the man like reptilian with a surge of tentacles rammed into its throat and then feeding on the man. Yet it wasn’t Kael who had done that, it was his deviation, he realized and yet rather than be worried by this he simply could not seem to care. 

Good naturedly Kael looked around for his pal Gerald and found him lying on the ground in a heap. Someone might have found it difficult to wake a teenager who had braved the evil woods, survived a vengeful cloud, fallen through the ground and had been on the dinner menu of a psychotic snake man thing but not Kael. 

He simply put a finger in his mouth, got it real wet and then he put that in his dear friend’s ear and wiggled till Gerald opened his eyes and groaned softly. Gerald was slow in waking but Kael didn’t mind, his mind flit around taking in the dried husk of the man eater among other things. 

“Where… where is this?” an impressive first coherent statement in Kael’s opinion, one deserving of an answer. 

“Beneath the ground” Kael cheerfully replied. 

Gods he was in a good mood. 

Gerald seemed to take in what Kael said rather slowly, then he sat down and began to laugh. For a while Kael was unconcerned but as with time whatever made him feel like the world was made of rainbows and unicorns ebbed away, a very real fear of being trapped the pit blossomed. His mark was twisting painfully, opening up the wounds around it as it did so. Suddenly he desired to find a way up the ledge the snake man seemed to have come from and not so that he could try out what he suspected to be a thrilling leap down but to get the hell out of there. Gerald was strangely silent, and Kael no longer thought he was counting the light rays that flickered through what had to be the mouth of the trap that had nabbed them. 

Kael got up to go talk to him, but stopped short when he realized he didn’t know what to say. After studying the young, brown boy haired boy sitting on the ground, noting the little things like the way his fingers alone moved as if to some tune he alone could hear. He realized didn’t really know Gerald, sure Gerald had been there for as long as he could remember but knowing that someone was an orphan who had been lucky enough to deviate remarkably young did not count as knowing them. 

A throbbing ache tore him from his thoughts, the stab wound was still bleeding and now that he wasn’t high that seemed a serious problem. Kael sat down in the dirt with a grunt, he suddenly felt very alone and very scared. 

Kevesh Belmoth knew harm had befallen Senoth, he had known for hours, he merely had yet to act on the knowledge. Rather he lay in his nest and affected an air of nonchalance but in truth he did care. Behind the cold exterior the Kevesh was known and feared for there was a flickering flame of care, the thought befuddled him. He was a hunter, a true hunter perhaps not a master of the song but no other rider could claim to ride it like him and yet here he was caring for a disappointment, a damned Kuni of all things.

It certainly didn’t help the that boy had so much of the fire he himself had when he was younger, still it would not do for the rest of the hunt to know of his affections therefore he sealed them and waited, in time the hunt would notice the loss of a member, even one as insignificant as Senoth was and when the time came he would not hunt… no he would kill. He would slay whatever had harmed his disappointment of a son, and when the fire in him burned it would burn so cold as to freeze the world. 

When the messenger came Belmoth did not bother to feign ignorance, the time had come and he was impatient to be done with it and so he followed wordlessly. They were a way of from the pit when he first caught the scent of blood. He could hear the breath of the younger hunters quicken, undoubtedly the first whispers of the song had assailed them as they did him but unlike him they did not push past it and move on, they drowned thinking they were drinking. 

He was burning cold even as he pushed past the hunters standing at the edge. They were right to observe before attacking but he didn’t have the patience for that. With little more than a cursory glance at the two living bodies down below him he leapt down. 

One of said bodies was standing, resistance perhaps but other sat on the ground shaking slightly as he made unseemly sounds, that one would be no trouble, Belmoth could recognize a broken spirit. Thus his attention was focused on what looked to be the only foe, it smelt human and yet it didn’t look entirely like one, its skin was brown for one thing and it was rather short even for a human, a youngling perhaps.

Calmly he noted the differences and strode forward unabated. He watched as the brown human’s muscles tensed and placed himself to dodge the strike even before it came. Timing it so that the black tentacle that streamed out of the boys arm passed over his shoulder while he closed in. Taking a step forward he grabbed the now bare outstretched arm with his left arm, twisted and brought his right arm down in a blow that would leave he arm broken at the joint. His knee struck the unworthy foe in the stomach and his right arm came back to strike it in the face even as it stumbled backwards. His left freed the spear strapped behind him in a movement that left a red diagonal mark across the boy’s torso. 

His cold yet passionate eyes watched as the young thing lost its footing and fell to the ground. It was over. 

Kevesh Belmoth paused to watch the body fall, allowing in enough of the song to know that the youngling's weak, battered, immature body could not fight the poison his spear had been coated with. 

Soundlessly he moved on, his eyes took in the broken human that hadn't bothered to meet his own death on his feet. Had he not in his quiet rage have dived deeper into the song than he had done in ages, he might have seen the fear in the eyes of his prey. 

Rather the song connected him and he knew, he knew intimately the very pulse of the dead thing's heart, he knew the strength of its muscles and the lacerations and strains that dominated its body. He knew that when he struck, his spear would part flesh and the hunt would end. No, this was not a hunt, he came to kill. The song howled wildly, kill, kill now, burying his thoughts in it's fervor. He was losing himself, drowning like one of the younger hunters that looked up to him in reverence. The revelation alone was enough to silence the song, he had spent too long, come too far, he would not lose it all in a single moment. 

Belmoth stared at the human, lost in thought. 

"Senoth must be avenged..., no the hunt claims all things, the hunt claimed my Kuni and there can be no vegence for that."

Rising from his thoughts, he made to strike the youngling, only to stay his hand. 

"Too easy, there must be growth, I must stride forward"

The Kevesh realised he would not kill the broken elikivoth, he would keep him so everyday he could stare his son's killer in the face, everyday he could grow a little more and when nothing was left he would end the hunt.

Belmoth turned to appraise the one he had struck, that one would likely die, still he would let it draw breath as long as it's strength prevailed. Belmoth after all was an excellent hunter and an excellent hunter claimed all he could from a kill. 

"Take them to a holding place, the hunt has ended" there was a lie in those words the hunt was only beginning but you did not speak to one tasked to nurse the young with the calls of a hunter.

Gerald was seized with panic as he watched the serpentine killer approach him, spear poised to kill. He had thought himself beyond the fear, ready for death and yet it was there, gripping his entire body like a stern mother would a troublesome child. 

It was the hope, it was waking up to Kael's dripping finger and a body that cried murder. It brought back fear and the other emotions with crushing force. This was how it had been the last time, frail, weak and small, his life had been in the hands of another and rather than the paralyzing fear he felt now, he had been destitute. For reasons the heavens hadn't shared, his life had been spared and he knew hope, only for it to be repeatedly shoved in his face how powerless he was, how he might have been spared in that moment but death hadn't forgotten, it was coming, it was always coming. So perhaps when he had faced the storm of living death and found himself empty of emotion he shouldn't have been suprised to wake, spared a death he could not fight off, only to find death waiting for him. 

The first time it had been his elder brother who had spirited him away, just to be killed moments later. Now Kael had found shelter from the living storm only to struck down by a twisted man who bore semblance to a serpent. 

Gerald was afraid, staring into those inhuman eyes, he was somehow aware of all this and yet consumed solely by his own fear. Heavens, why did this caricature insist on tormenting him so, could it not deliver him a swift death and bring it all to an end. The thing turned away and said something in it's strange tongue. Two more of them leapt down. They strode towards Gerald, limbs far too long, steps utterly silent and they seized his arms. Gerald let them drag him away, without protest, his mind absorbed by a single thought.

"I will not die today" and somehow that thought fed the terror, until he wanted the grey back, until he wanted the emptiness.

Everything burned, the fire was in his blood and with each heartbeat it seared him with greater intensity. Kael tried to rise but rising was difficult when he didn't know which way was up. God's he didn't know which part of him were his limbs and which was his head. He just felt so heavy. 

"Poison" his tired mind croaked.

And then it was gone, all the pain, all the exhaustion, the fire, just gone. All that was left was black. He seemed to hover there in the blackness, perhaps he was weightless or maybe he was falling just without the wind or scenery to clue him in. 

"Die" a voice in his head said. 

A voice that was not his, it couldn't be his... could it.

"The body.... the body perishes... You die... you cannot die, I was promised more. You mustn't die... you must live, you must change"

"Who, who are you?"

"What are-"

"You must change, or you will die, change now, should we survive I will answer what I can, change now!"

"How do-" 

"You need an image, what do you want to be, what do you want to be capable of. You will become, I will help, I will sculpt."

"Anything?"

"Anything you have learnt, anything you know, with enough time, with enough substance, with enough Despair you will be"

"An image... "

Kael was on top of Rufus. He was being stabbed repeatedly, he was bleeding, he felt nothing. Kael watched feeling something for the first time as his tentacles tore through the man's body, and the thin white tubes made their appearance. He stared at his face, watching it take on an expression of ecstasy. One by one, he watched himself feed, first the bird and then the rabbit, finally the snake man. Whom he impaled in the throat with a tentacle, he saw the suprise in it's alien eye's, shuddered as it opened it's maw in a scream of anguish that would never be heard. 

"An image, we recquire a change"

"I want to be fast, I want to dance around my enemies, I want them to strike my shadow, I want to intangible and yet capable of tearing them apart."

His mind took him to the memory of the second snake man, the one who moved like a spectre. It took him to the image of the pale black haired kid, so cocksure whilst he teased a faster Gerald. It reminded him of Gerald leaving him behind to be beast feed. It took him to the storm, he could almost see it, catching up to him as easily as an adult would out run a child despite all it's endless determination. 

"I want to be stronger, I want to get up when I am knocked down, I want to heal anything, I want to be deathless."

He saw himself being stabbed by Rufus too absorbed to care. He saw the cat beast shrugging of hits that should have done something. He saw the living storm, indomitable, a member might be slain but the storm itself raged on. 

"I want to cut through it all" He saw his own tentacles. He remembered the feeling of power it gave as it ripped through whatever it had been tested against. He saw it cut through opposition 

"I want control over my enemies, I want all the Gerald and Carl's of the world kneeling before me" All he saw was the pale boy smiling, subtly baring his fangs, radiating with confidence and success 

"I want to survive this, I don't want to die. I don't want this poison killing me... " 

"... "

"This image will do for a first, it satisfies the our goal, it will prevent us from ending, I will refine it, strengthen it. It can be done, we can begin."

Pain, had Kael screaming into the black, he could feel his bones breaking and twisting, he could feel the fire of the poison searing his flesh, he could feel it. The change had begun.