Doom kept walking, his pace unhurried. Marik glanced back, saw the distance closing with terrifying inevitability, and panicked. He tripped over a rut in the ground, sprawling into the mud. He scrambled to get up, slipping in his fear. Doom was upon him. Marik rolled onto his back, holding up his crackling gloves in a final, desperate defence. "[VOLTAIC CAGE]!" A weak web of electricity snapped around Doom's legs. It stung, it buzzed, it made his muscles twitch, but it was nothing more than an irritant to his void-tempered flesh and the Ossuary Blade's hunger. Doom reached down, his taloned hand closing around Marik's wrist. There was a sickening CRUNCH as bones gave way. Marik screamed, the lightning in that glove dying instantly.
Doom leaned down, his face inches from Marik's terrified one. With his other hand, he grasped the other wrist. Another CRUNCH. The second glove sputtered out. Marik's weapons were gone. He was utterly helpless. Doom straightened up, looking back at Garret. He held Marik's broken wrists, lifting the Storm Lord partly off the ground. Marik hung there, sobbing, begging. Doom held him there for a long moment, letting Garret absorb the complete helplessness of his comrade.
Then, with a final, contemptuous glance at Garret, Doom plunged the Ossuary Blade into Marik's stomach.
It wasn't a killing blow. It was a deep, grievous wound. The harvest began, but slowly, agonizingly. Marik's screams became choked gurgles as he felt his vitality being drained, his body beginning to wither from the inside out. Doom held him impaled on the blade, letting the process be drawn out, letting Garret witness every second of the slow, vampiric consumption. Finally, when the last spark of life was gone, Doom let the desiccated corpse slide off the blade into the mud.
```
HARVEST: [MARIK - TIER 3 STORM LORD]
✦━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━✦
BIO-TITHERIUM EXTRACTION: [LIGHTNING-AFFINITY ESSENCE / CRACKLING NERVOUS TISSUE]
YIELD: HIGH (28%)
HP: 62% -> 75%
VOID ENERGY: -55% -> -48%
PURIFYING LIGHT CONTAMINATION: NEARLY PURGED (SUPPRESSION -5%)
```
He turned. Only one remained. Elara.
She stood alone, her staff held before her like a twig against a hurricane. She was trembling violently, tears cutting clean paths through the grime on her cheeks. Her eyes were huge, fixed on the ashes of her friends. 'Now the fire-weaver,' Ainar's voice was a silken threat. 'She has spirit. Break it. Not just her body. Her. Let the earth-shaker see what his defiance has wrought upon his woman.' Doom started towards her. This time, his movement was not a walk but a deliberate, unhurried advance. The air around him seemed to thicken, charged with a chilling promise that had nothing to do with battle.
Elara raised her staff. "[FORCE BOLT]!" The invisible hammer of air struck him in the chest. [HP: 75% -> 73%]. He absorbed the impact with a grunt, barely slowing. She tried again, "[PYRE'S EMBRACE]!" Waves of heat washed over him. His skin reddened, steam rose, but he pushed through, the stolen essence fuelling him. He was within arm's reach. Elara tried to swing her staff like a club in a final, desperate arc. Doom didn't even bother to block it with his body. Instead, in a motion of utter, contemptuous efficiency, he drove the Ossuary Blade point-first into the earth beside him. The matte black metal sank deep into the soil with a low, resonant THUMP that vibrated through the ground, Kael's skull pommel glaring at the sky. Now unburdened, his hand shot out, snatching the descending staff from her grip an inch from his face.
With his other hand now free, he took the staff in both hands. He didn't snap it across his knee. He brought it down over his raised thigh, a clean, brutal break that echoed through the clearing with a dry, final CRACK. He tossed the two useless pieces aside into the mud, where they landed beside the silently judging skull of his planted sword.
His gaze, cold and appraising, swept over her. Not as a warrior, but as a predator surveying its next meal. He didn't grab to throw or strike. His hand closed on the collar of her robes with a terrible, deliberate slowness. Then he pulled, not with a jerk, but with a steady, inexorable force that spoke of absolute certainty.
RIP.
The sound of tough fabric yielding was obscenely loud in the tense silence. The robes tore open from her throat to her navel, parting like a curtain to reveal the soft, worn linen of her undershirt beneath. The sudden exposure made her gasp, her arms instinctively flying up to cover herself, her eyes wide with a dawning horror that was far more intimate than the fear of death. Doom didn't allow the modesty. His other hand moved, a blur of motion. He didn't strike her face; he simply batted her arms aside with contemptuous ease, exposing her completely. Before the cry could fully leave her lips, his hand was back, fingers tangling in the neckline of her thin undershirt. With another brutal, tearing pull, he shredded the last layer.
RIP.
The linen gave way with a soft, sighing tear. And then she was bare from the waist up, her pale skin gleaming in the chaotic light of the camp, suddenly horribly vulnerable. The cool night air washed over her exposed breasts, making her nipples pebble involuntarily, a traitorous physiological response that only deepened her shame. A high, thin whimper escaped her, her hands fluttering uselessly, wanting to cover herself but frozen by the terrifying intensity of his gaze.
"NO! ELARA! LOOK AT ME! FIGHT ME!" Garret roared from the mud, his voice a raw, grinding thing, shattered by an anguish that transcended his own mutilation. He tried to drag his stone-bound body towards them, a pathetic, heart-rending effort that tore furrows in the earth, his stump leaking the last of his gritty lifeblood. He was utterly, completely powerless. Doom ignored him. His obsidian eyes were fixed on Elara. He took in the rapid, panicked rise and fall of her chest, the way her skin flushed with a mixture of terror and the cold. There was no lust in his gaze, only a cold, possessive curiosity, as if examining a new and interesting tool before breaking it.
He took a single step forward, closing the last inch of distance. Elara instinctively stumbled back, but her boot caught on a rut in the churned earth. With a sharp cry, she lost her balance, arms swinging wildly. Doom made no move to catch her. He simply watched, a silent, scarred monolith, as she fell backwards. She landed hard on the ground, the impact driving the air from her lungs in a pained gasp. The cold, wet mud soaked instantly through the remains of her robes, a shocking, filthy chill against her back. Before she could even process the fall, his shadow fell over her, blocking out the bruised purple sky. He loomed, immense and terrible, a predator standing over downed prey.
He moved, with that terrifying, fluid grace. He didn't pounce, he descended. He knelt over her, one powerful knee pressing down on the tattered remains of her robes, pinning her thighs to the cold, churned earth. She fought, a final, desperate surge of spirit, scratching, biting, her fists pounding uselessly against the scarred granite of his chest and arms. It was like striking a mountain. He captured her both of her wrists easily in one large hand, his grip an unbreakable manacle of flesh and bone. He forced them above her head, pressing them down into the cold, clinging mud, rendering her completely exposed and helpless beneath him. Her back arched off the ground in a futile struggle, a curve of pale vulnerability against the dark earth.
His free hand began to roam.
It was a slow, terrifying exploration. His calloused, blood-stained fingers, still warm from recent slaughter, traced the frantic pulse hammering in her throat. They slid down, over the delicate line of her collarbone, leaving a faint smear of grime. He cupped one breast, his hand enveloping it completely, the rough skin a shocking contrast to her softness. His thumb rubbed slowly, deliberately, over the taut peak of her nipple, a mockery of caress. Elara whimpered, a broken sound, her struggles weakening into terrified, involuntary shudders that wracked her entire frame. Her eyes, wide and glistening with unshed tears, were locked on his, filled with a horror that was no longer about death, but about this violation, this absolute, degrading ownership.
'Yes, my blade...' Ainar's voice was a silken whisper in his mind, a chilling counterpoint to the warm, trembling flesh beneath his hand. 'Map the territory of her fear. Let your touch be a lesson she feels in her bones. Show her the difference between a warrior's rage and a god's possession.' He leaned closer, his face inches from hers. She could smell the ozone and iron on him, the scent of her dead friends. His voice, when it came, was a low, grating rasp that vibrated through her very bones.
"Your fire is gone," he stated, his thumb still moving in that slow, cruel circle. "Only fear remains. Good." The words were a verdict, a final pronouncement on her spirit. But his examination was not over. His glacial gaze dropped from her terrified eyes to her other breast, left untouched and taut with cold and dread. He watched the frantic flutter of her heart beneath the pale skin for a moment, a scientist observing a specimen's death throes.
Then he lowered his head.
Elara squeezed her eyes shut, a fresh wave of tremors wracking her body, expecting a brutal bite, a tearing pain. 'Not yet,' Ainar crooned, her voice a phantom caress. 'First, the claim. The seal. Make her skin remember the heat of your breath before the cold of your teeth. Let the anticipation be its own torture.'
But what came was worse in its intimate perversion. His tongue, rough and shockingly warm, swept over the peak of her other nipple in a long, wet, deliberate stroke. She gasped, a strangled, horrified sound. It was not a caress. It was a brand. A claiming. The sensation was utterly alien, a vile mockery of pleasure that made her stomach lurch. He lingered there, his hot breath ghosting over her damp skin, his thumb on her other breast never ceasing its slow, maddening rotation.
Then his lips closed around the sensitized peak.
He didn't suckle. He held it, a soft, wet pressure that was terrifying in its promise. Elara held her breath, her entire world narrowed to that point of terrifying contact. She could feel the faint scrape of his teeth beneath his lips. 'Now,' Ainar's voice hissed, sharp and commanding, laced with dark anticipation. 'Not to maim. To mark. To teach her flesh who it belongs to. Do it as I taught you. With precision. With purpose.'
The pressure changed. It became deliberate, focused.
He bit down.
It wasn't a savage tear meant to maim, but a sharp, precise, and punishing clamp of his teeth. A calculated infusion of pain designed to dominate, to illustrate his absolute control over her body and its responses. A choked scream was torn from Elara's throat, a mix of shock, pain, and utter, degrading violation. A single, traitorous tear finally escaped, tracing a hot path through the grime on her temple. He released the bite, the imprint of his teeth a stark, red bloom on her pale skin. He lifted his head, his expression unchanged, as if he had just tasted a piece of fruit and found it acceptable. His thumb continued its slow, rhythmic torture on her other breast, a constant, maddening counterpoint to the throbbing pain he had just inflicted.
This... this intimate, coldly administered violation... was what finally atomized Garret.
This was what broke Garret.
Witnessing Elara's spirit not just broken, but systematically extinguished and replaced with humiliated terror, seeing her body, a thing he had perhaps secretly cherished, exposed and violated while he lay helpless, his family slaughtered around him, it didn't just break his heart, it atomized the last vestiges of his humanity. The grief, the rage, the impotent fury curdled into something else. Something deeper and darker than the earth he commanded, born from a despair so profound it could only manifest as utter annihilation.