Golden feathers filled the forest.

Wings aloft, a maiden clad in white stroked a hawk’s crown in the periphery of his vision.

This majestic sight bordered a barren blackened circle of the earth.

The lance pulsed at the center, its crimson eye beaming bright.

Two cocoons festered beside it.

The flow of Ash about them occasionally exposed the silhouette of the creatures gestating within.

Rapture undauntedly approached this barren soil.

His every step aroused the Tyrfing’s notice.

He stopped about a third of the way in, and did not venture further.

The Princess turned her eye on him.

The leaves to her side withered from their branches.

She looked down to find that the soil had also died.

“How is it?” She asked.

“Almost done,” Said the man, “Once those cocoons hatch, it will have completed its evolution. Then we can leave.”

The Princess acknowledged his words in silence.

Her gaze drifted, slowly it came to land upon the man’s arm.

He, Rapture, hadn’t quite realised that her hawks were always watching, they saw the subtle signs he tried to hide.

The cocoons pulsed, and then he knew that the time had come.

He advanced, then grasped the Tyrfing’s form.

Right now, its own evolution was complete, only the cocoons remained, and they were now finished consuming Ash.

He plucked the weapon from the soil, and then the world welcomed its gleeful scream.

Power, vast and terrible, roared into life.

The Princess felt it on her skin, her gaze came to rest upon her companion’s back.

Rapture held the weapon high, and then he lowered it after a time.

The shadow of the boy she had met in Venus formed and faded at his side, it was all in her mind.

The Rapture standing before her now was a man no weaker than her own guardians growing up and she knew at this moment that the proverbial baton had been passed into the hands of a new generation.

She no longer relied on her elders, but she did rely on him.

He turned to face her then, slowly taking stock of the changes to his Tyrfing.

The lance’s eye had become far less wild, in fact it beamed now with something he could almost think was wisdom.

The body of the weapon itself was sleeker and less flesh-like.

The pole wasn’t perfectly cylindrical, rather it was like a spear length shaft formed from a series of thirty centimeter long cuboids in a line.

Each cuboid’s four lengthwise sides seemed to shrink inward towards the center of the mass, as though they’d been stretched.

This gave each of the joining points between the cuboids a rather spike-like look.

Along the body were as many as two separate perfectly cylindrical points each covered in tiny rough bumps.

These were the grip points, and they’d formed because the weapon had learned its master’s habits.

The base of the lance ended in a box shape, dark silver in color, and from the away side emerged tendrils of flesh that vaguely resembled a horse tail.

The blade itself was also dark silver and seemed to be formed both long and thin.

Lucretia took stock of the weapon, its shape, its power, and the synergy it had with the man who wielded it.

Rapture’s aura now did not lose out to any other man she’d ever known, indeed it had doubled outright from the moment he gripped that Lance.

Their two auras blended slowly together, both were merged until the Princess could no longer tell where one began and the other one ended.

Then, at last, the weapon collapsed into a compact form that was no longer than a human arm.

He held it aloft and looked at it with a blank stare.

After that, he was satisfied;; for years now he sought power, now he finally had it.

He raised his attention to the Princess.

Her footsteps told of an unwavering approach.

He stood still as she reached out.

Her fingers nearly brushed the collapsed body of the weapon, but then they extended in a sudden motion to grip his wrist.

The man’s pupils half shrank, but then he sighed.

He resigned himself as she lifted his sleeve.

What she saw there was a horrible thing.

Cracks, like shattering glass, adorned skin that was blackened to a pitch.

That is to say, a genuine black, the like born from disease or taint rather than one’s heritage.

She said nothing at first, but he was waiting, patiently and silently, to hear what she would say.

Slowly then she stroked his skin, soft and gentle were the tips of her fingers.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” She asked.

The man stared back at her in silence.

He spied the hawk fluttering their wings upon her shoulders and knew it was no wonder she found out.

Her eyes were all around them, there was nothing he could hide.

He shook his head, that’s all he did, yet said nothing.

She let go of his arm, yet as he rubbed his wrist he saw a melancholy in her eyes.

“I’m sick of this,” She told him, “I’m sick of only reacting. Master Cerus, the people of Venus, my home and now you. I’m sick of being helpless to do anything but watch…I am sick of always being a reactionary, I’m sick of being stuck on the defense against our enemy.” The young man heard her every word.

She placed her palm upon his cheek, gently, lovingly, that was something new coming from her.

He closed his eyes, and placed his hand over her’s.

He must have started her with that act, because she let him go after that.

He opened his eyes to see her back turned to him.

The hawks flew over, their shape shifting bodies formed a long cloak of golden feathers around her.

She turned to see him again through the corner of her eye, then grasped her hood as it formed and lifted it high.

“Let’s go and rescue my nephew.” She said, “And then…after that,”

Her teeth tightened behind her cheeks, her eyelids fell just a tiny little bit, “who knows.”

The young man stood in silence.

The forest whistled, as if it had been battered by a mighty gale.

The woods began to rapidly wither as the cocoons behind him expanded, contracted and expanded again

They grew and grew ever bigger, and then the silhouettes stirred.

The beast clawed their way out from within.