Benedict stumbled backward, his aristocratic composure crumbling.
The silk napkin pressed to his nose did nothing to filter out the stench of death that now permeated every breath.
His eyes darted between the painted canvas and the horrific reality it had somehow birthed.
"This... this is madness," he whispered, his Victorian accent trembling with revulsion. "The Seat do not stand with indiscriminate murder. We are better than the very monsters we fight against."
The Painter's white hair shifted slightly as he tilted his head, considering Benedict's words with the detached interest of a scientist observing an insect.
The sound that escaped the Painter's lips was barely human. A cold, mirthless laugh that seemed to leech warmth from the very air.
"Good and evil," the Painter mused, his brush still dripping with crimson paint. "There is no good or evil, Benedict. There are only those strong enough to seize power, and those too weak to prevent it from being taken."
Benedict's hand moved to his waistcoat, fingers closing around the familiar silk of his napkin. As he drew it forth, tendrils of black smoke began to trail from its edges like liquid shadow given form.
His aristocratic features hardened into a mask of determination and disgust.
"Then you've chosen your side," Benedict snarled.
He lunged forward with inhuman speed, his form blurring until it seemed he hadn't moved at all…..simply materialized in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
The napkin in his hand writhed with dark energy, smoke coiling around his arm like a serpent preparing to strike.
The Painter was waiting.
The collision was brutal in its simplicity.
The Painter's hand closed around Benedict's throat with casual precision, cutting off his charge mid-momentum.
For a moment, they hung suspended in the air; predator and prey eyes locked on each other. One was in terror, the other amused.
Then the Painter drove Benedict downward.
The impact shattered the street like glass.
Concrete and asphalt exploded outward as Benedict's body carved a crater ten feet across into the earth.
Dust and debris rained down around them, settling over them like rain in spring. A single drop of blood escaped Benedict's lips, dark against his pale skin.
"Don't go fighting your elders now," the Painter chuckled, brushing dust from his black robes as he stepped out of the crater with fluid grace. "It's unbecoming of a gentleman."
Benedict lay sprawled at the bottom of the pit, but he wasn't done yet.
He began to chant silently and quickly, the air around him getting hotter by the second. His silk napkin ignited with black flames that spread to his clothing and skin, wrapping around him.
Within seconds, the entire crater blazed with eldritch fire that began to climb toward the street above.The Painter paused in his departure, sighing with the weary patience of someone dealing with a particularly troublesome child.
"What a pain in the ass," he muttered, not bothering to turn around.
"DON'T YOU DARE TURN YOUR BACK ON ME!" Benedict's voice erupted from the flames like the roar of a dying god.
His form burst upward from the crater, wreathed in black fire that turned the air to plasma. He moved like a supernova given human shape.
The Painter blinked.
In that infinitesimal span between one moment and the next, reality twisted.
Time stretched like taffy, each second an eternity of suspended motion.
Benedict hung frozen in mid-air, his flaming form captured in crystalline clarity as the Painter materialized directly in front of him.
"You're a waste of that artifact," the Painter said, his voice carrying the finality of a judge pronouncing sentence. His crimson eyes held no malice, no anger…..only a cold indifference.
A single finger extended from beneath the black robes, touching Benedict's forehead with delicate precision.
The effect was immediate and horrifying.
Benedict's flesh began to unravel starting from the point of contact and spreading outward like ripples in a pond.
His scream cut through the air; not of pain, but of the terror of feeling oneself cease to exist one atom at a time.
The Painter stood alone in the crater-scarred street. He retrieved his brush from where it had fallen, examining the bristles with the care of a craftsman inspecting his tools. In the distance, something howled; whether in mourning for the fallen or anticipation of the hunt to come, only the darkness knew.
"Now….I have an academy to visit. "The painter whispered to himself as he began to walk away.