Crowley collapses to his knees, his face slack with shock. At this moment, a group of humans, a group of backup, descend on the pair.
Horn clashes swords with the first human, turning her sorrow into rage, but her movements are crazed and unplanned.
The young soldier struggles to keep up, as another human attacks from the side. Horn blocks both, but her movements are sloppy, her rage targeted to the two men, and nothing else.
A third from the group of five, a girl, goes tentatively around Horn and then thrusts her sword into Horn's back, an inch left from her spine and a little ways above her waist.
It's all over so fast.
Horn gasps, eyes widening.
She coughs, and shining red droplets sparkle in the air.
Crowley, previously dazed, cries out in anguish as the second of his two women is fatally wounded.
Horn falls, blood staining her white dress, blond curls bouncing slightly as she hits the ground.
These humans have much weaker demons, and the curse is slow.
Horn convulses, and Crowley rushes to her side, still in shock.
The once-powerful noble now looks like a young child as he cradles Horn's body, her blood staining his clothes and the curse eating away at her flesh.
"Horn..." He cries, voice hoarse and unbelieving.
The shivering blond tilts her head back, managing to give Crowley one final, sad smile before evaporating.
Crowley collapses into deeper despair. He clutched her empty dress like a lifeline, broad shoulders shaking.
Crowley barely feels the impact as three swords impale him at once.
One of the swords cuts through the tie on the end of his braid, and the black hair unravels, swinging in the air.
His blood runs in rivers, into the grass, soaking the soil along with the blood of Chess and Horn.
Crowley's mind is flooded with faces, faces of children, faces of everyone he has sent to their deaths and every child that went limp under his fangs.
Is this how they felt? When they knew they were going to perish?
So filled with despair, pain, and desperation? Unable to fight back?
Crowley clutches the dress tighter in his hands.
'I... I was treating those children... Their lives... As a game... Thinking that there's always more.... Always a replacement, almost as if they never died in the first place, just put on a different face...'
'But... No one could replace Chess and Horn individually. No one could replace... Those children... Individually....'
'They were all... different... All.... Worth saving.... Like... Chess.... And.... Horn....'
The weight of what Crowley had done, the weight of the lives he had taken, crushed Crowley, slamming into him.
He began to cry more tears, more human-like, weakness-showing tears, but the man didn't care anymore. His despair crushed him into the ground and dragged a weight down on his soul.
For the first time, Crowley felt as if a human would.
Even as his figure collapsed on himself, even as his cloak fluttered down, empty, even as the pinkish light shone down on the small amount of his ashes that flew away in the wind, his anguish was almost a tangible thing hanging in the air.
And thus, three more vampires faded to dust.