Gaining Souls
Dysterium – Xythe Twistvoid

III. Assistance

Time let three days and nights pass since their visit to their mistress. In those three rotations they did not progress any further with their clue and had grown from withered to decaying.

They had settled in a small graveyard a good distance away from the Queen of Nightmare's castle, blurry images serving as memories to exactly how they had arrived there.

The cemetery felt out of place to the three. Atzdra and the other Finites did not die then why would a graveyard exist where Finites roam? It was a strange place, but the siblings thought no more of this and instead mused in the irony of it all. How fitting it was for them to come to a graveyard for their weary flesh, more than willing to cradle them as the venom devoured their life, spirit and being.

Then they thought, no more will they stand on their tired feet, searching for a cure they now deemed non-existent, cursing their clue-giver for such a hazy hint. Vampire, what did the word mean to their ailment? It rang no bells nor perk their gossiper ears. They have not heard of it and so it will do them no more good than their limbs.

The siblings have given up, all of them, too drained to pursue a dream that had flown into infinity, only to come crashing back down onto the earth, broken. No more, they thought as they, siblings by their yearning, huddled against a cold, anonymous marble tomb, waiting for time to devour them and for the ever-faithful promise of death's welcoming embrace.

And sooner than they had anticipated, one of the Lords of Death came. He was no unfamiliarity with his rancid flesh, having seen him take souls as they fed on the fears of the feverish and dying. He had the most distorted of faces comparable to thick greenish brown slime skin with eyes that saw illness for what it was not, everlastingly skewing counterclockwise. He breathed toxic life with a jagged for nose and spoke diseased words with serrated mouth. He heard screams of agony through a punched-through hole for ears and the thin, skeletal body he carried was framed by long dead and deformed coils he called his hair.

He was none other than the Persona of Malady, Lord of Agony, the Ender of the Diseased, the One of True Corruption, Desthaga.

The three of them could only watch in suppressed cowardice, huddling against each other against a tombstone. It was the start of the dusk to their eternal night yet they did not wish for it to come so quickly.

They closed their eyes in forced acceptance, all three of them. But it didn't come.

When they had realized this, the three opened their eyes once more, only to find Desthaga watching them with a smile as equally twisted as the inky curtain that surrounded him. He was thinking, it was obvious enough, though of what his thoughts consisted of was a shroud.

"You are the ones…" the Lord spoke in his heaving, gasping voice clearly denoting his difficulty in speaking. "I smelled the noxious… scent of decay in this graveyard… This is forbidden ground if you were ignorant enough not to know. "

"We will be no more if you take us…" Krievardus moaned, the pain racking his body so distinctly showing in his once gleaming pale eyes. His breathing came in shallow gasps and a grip that clutched his chest tighter when he spoke.

"Take you?" Desthaga laughed, wheezing and amused, "No, I will not. What would I take? You forget, you don't have souls…" the Lord of Malady grinned toothlessly exposing the void between those zigzagged lips. "You will merely cease to exist."

The revelation of their true fate hung in the air as dead as a criminal swinging from his noose. Death had been a comfort, a tranquil and restful finality, but now even this, their only solace, snatched away from their begging hands.

As he heard this, Dicroixz gave out a shaky, shallow exhale. He closed his eyes despairingly, defeated once more, though this time he did not exactly mind. He resigned to his destiny. What was left of him to say? What was left of their field-less battle when there was no where to fight in the first place. He tried and struggled for bargains; in the end it brought him nowhere and in the end he was to be nothing. Nothing.

Ceirele looked at the Lord in utter disbelief before letting out a stentorian wail that could have rivaled a harpy's cry. Amidst her shock and sorrow, "No" was the only word that she could speak without choking on her frantic tears; gone, all of it, gone. She shook her head madly, seeing her brother and felt his numbing pain. She embraced Dicroixz, sobbing into his tattered rags as if her weeping and hold were able to stop his passing.

Krievardus also seemed to have not believed it at first but as he heard his sister scream, he too gave a long frustrated cry. Was there nothing, truly nothing left for them?! He stood up and glared at Sickness. "You jest!" he said, shaking his head also as he pointed a finger futilely at Desthaga, "You jest!" he let out a frustrated yell, falling back down onto the earth scooting near his eldest brother and wrapping his arms around him. He couldn't and wouldn't let him and his siblings go like this, not without a promise of redemption, a pact of rebirth like all of the other souls. He too, howled helplessly into his brother's dying shell.

As they did so in their chaos of misfortune, one question screamed in their minds, asking them, commanding them for the obvious answer. Now was it truly worth it?

The Lord of Agony watched them, his observant eyes fixed on them even as it spun around his viscous face. Every Death was merciful and Desthaga of the Diseased was no exemption. Perhaps he was the most merciful of his siblings as he ended the long and tormenting pain of those who suffered illnesses. He often took pity in them, as he too suffered as they and knew how it felt. He was more than glad to take the humans from their mortal aches and these, creatures… Nightmares, the Lord realized, had not been exempted from his sympathetic pathos.

Fate did not have to be so cruel. "There is a way to save you…"

Krievardus and Ceirele both looked up and Dicroixz narrowly opened his tired eyes. Their eyes shone with sudden hope and glossy ebony tears that had stopped running down all their putrefied faces.

"What way?" Ceirele asked with her voice caught in a hiccup from the aftermath of tears. She could not believe it at first as logic grasped her mind. What way? There was no other conclusion to their commencement, it was impossible now. But she wanted to believe, anything but non-existence.

"Come with me." Desthaga said, turning his back to them and walked, his eyes spinning around his face in anticipation. His idea was unheard of, but it might just succeed.

Kirevardus and Ceirele looked to each other, speaking with no words. They had always been like twins in the way they were connected, how both knew what the other thought in a simple glance at the eyes. Yet this time, the thought that was written in their red orbs ran more lucidly as ever.

Let us follow.

In unison they placed their arms beneath their eldest brother's shoulder, lifting him up to his weary feet. The venomous substance in their bodies that was the disease eating up his flesh, leaving with almost nothing but perishing black sinew. He was almost weightless and it did not make them any happier despite the fact that he was easier to carry.

"Hold on, Dicroixz." Ceirele said as she held the hand of the arm that was slung over her shoulder. She placed a soft kiss on his temple, a gesture she learned from watching mortal women before they put their children to sleep and often did to her brothers as comfort. She knew it would always make them feel slightly better and this time was no exemption; Dicroixz' smile told her that.