HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 100*

Chapter One Hundred

There was Darkness.

Echo was no longer by my side, no longer lying against me, covered in love with his legs through mine. Even though I couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't smell or touch or taste, I knew that I was floating down, down, down with roiling waves of buzzing evil and anguish and hate circling me like vultures waiting to swoop down. 

I felt like I was drowning in the dark.

I felt like I couldn't breathe, like I was suffocating, and it hurt... it hurt so bad I wanted to scream, to cry, because even without my normal state of thought, I knew it was because of my dad. I knew it was about him, centered around him--all that he had ever experienced. I wanted to let the evil swallow me whole... I wanted to drown in the inky, sticky black of my own feelings, to bathe in it and let it fuel me so it could turn red with the same blood coursing through me.

I felt it filling me, pouring across me, swallowing any and all pinpricks of goodness and light and innocence that might have been lurking just under the surface... and I was content to let it. 

I was loathe to admit it, but I was sick of being good all the time. It didn't matter if I let hate swallow me, right? It didn't matter... because justice was justice, no matter how it was served. So, I let myself sink, down into the black, but just before I faded... just before I accepted it, fully and completely, I went blind. 

The dark scattered and instead I was floating in space with stars and glitter all around, a three hundred and sixty degree view in every direction from eyes without a body, seeing everything and nothing all at once. Golden coils wrapped around me, all warm fur and scales that curled as if I were something that needed to be sheltered and protected. I could feel him, could feel his gaze even before a fearsome face with eyes of gemlike blue descended upon my consciousness.

"Mercy," Huang rumbled, calm but firm, leaving little room for argument; the command pulsed through me and his eyes were cruel and sharp, but also somehow warm and desperate. Aching, pulsing, boiling anger rose up from me in a thought tainted black with fury.

'And what if I don't want to show him mercy?'

Huang's pupils expanded and he drew his massive head back, staring at me.

More black thoughts bubbled up.

'I want to hurt him. I want to rip his stomach apart the same way he did to Pop. I want--"

The dragon snapped his massive golden head forward, mouth yawning wide, and roared so loudly in the face of my consciousness that it deafened everything, shooting into me and striking terror into my core. I could only tremble as the horrible sound echoed into the infinite bubble where I was trapped. Suddenly, the fact that he was wrapped around me was terrifying.

"ENOUGH! IT'S NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT!" the golden dragon bellowed. "IT'S ABOUT WHAT YOUR ACTIONS WILL DO TO EVERYONE AROUND YOU! IF YOU THINK YOUR FATHER, FOR ALL HIS SUFFERING, WOULD EVER APPROVE OF YOUR INTENTIONS THEN YOU ARE WRONG! HE WILL LOOK AT YOU DIFFERENTLY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE! HE WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU IF YOU RESORT TO KILLING YOUR SIRE! NEVER! AND YOU WILL REGRET IT YOURSELF IN YOUR LATER YEARS! WORST OF ALL, DOING SO WILL FOREVER RUIN YOUR HALF BROTHER AND INCITE WITHIN HIM A GRIEF THAT WILL EVENTUALLY LEAD HIM TO TAKE HIS OWN LIFE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES, JUST TO MAKE AMENDS FOR THE PAIN HIS FATHER CAUSED YOUR FAMILY! I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS PATH, HORST!"