The way to a man's heart

~Chapter 3~

Van Kolte looks straight into the rager's dead eyes and stretches out his other hand and into it flies a silver disk with a serrated edge as sharp as a razor, bearing the Kolte sigil in the center and covered with the same black, clotted blood that covered his great sword. He turns and lifts the rager into the path of yet another one of the serrated disks he had thrown as if using a shield. The shuriken plunges deep into the ragers back, as animalistic claws slice the flesh on its face. Its screeches silencing the crickets and all else that dwells in the surrounding forest.

"Simply put. You, are dog food!" He shouts, now in his beastly voice as his mouth opens wider than any human can manage. Kolte bites into the face of the rager, tearing through flesh and crunching the bones of its skull. The rager kicked its legs as its body squirmed while Van Kolte's silver fangs shredded its head, violently ripping off pieces of its skull, chunk by bloody chunk, slowly and agonizingly decapitating the rager. Its legs stop kicking and the now headless body drops to the ground onto its knees and like an erupting volcano, it sprays black blood into the air in all directions, making Van Kolte look like a worker on an oil rig. The bright crimson in his eyes starts to dim while his teeth turn from their animalistic silver state, back to looking normal and pearly white. Though his smile remains.

Van Kolte then looks straight up into the dark, menacing sky and takes in a deep breath through his nose, pulling the flames towards him. He exhales slowly through his mouth as the flames push away, and the blood that covered him head to toe simmers on his face and armor before flying off him, blown away like ashes in the wind. Van Kolte slowly brings his head back down and snaps his eyes open. His eyes now looking like those of a normal man, back to looking as blue as sapphires. Van looks over to the last of the ragers that he had pinned to the tree earlier on, helpless and painfully squirming against the trunk of the rough, barked tree. A trail of black blood flowed from the wrists of the rager until collecting in a puddle about five meters in front of it. Van Kolte turns his full attention to this rager, while his smile fades from his lips as he begins a slow steady walk towards it. Starring at it without blinking as he gets closer and closer, with his blue eyes meeting the black of the rager's eyes and staring into the abyss that is its soul, he walks and begins a prayer.

"Ye of retched flesh, spawn of the dark void. Ye without a soul, who walketh amongst the living to quench thy lust for death and suffering, shall be banished to the firing pits of hell that thou hath escaped, for by the flames you were caged, and by the flames, you shall return…" He says to the rager in a calm voice.

He stops at the puddle of rager blood on the ground and looks down at it, seeing a perfect reflection of himself with the full moon lurking in the background, as if peeking over his shoulder. Van Kolte's sapphire blue eyes gleam in its light, staring at the moon as if admiring a lover.

"C-cur-curse you, v-vermin!" the rager shouts in a weak, stammering voice with its head hanging low though staring back into the eyes of Van Kolte.

Kolte then raises his right hand to his face as the leather gloves start stretching and expanding until finally, a beastly claw burst out of the glove. The claw having pitch black fur with large veins visible under the skin, along with long muscular fingers holding diamond dense, and razor-sharp silver claws glistening in the moonlight.

"…Amen."

He whispers as he bends over and strikes a rock in the ground next to the puddle, sending sparks flying into the air and igniting the rager blood. Like oil, the blood burns and carries the flame towards the source of the blood trail as the gold and blue of the fire reflects in the rager's eyes, watching the coming of its doom.

"Sssckrrreeeeeeeeeeeeaaaah!" It screeches as the flames reach its feet and legs, igniting its entire body, setting it ablaze, and engulfing it in bright Orcish green flames. The smell of roasted sewerage meat fills the air as Van Kolte looks on, never blinking as the flesh of the rager darkens as it is scorched by fire, nor when its screeches got louder and louder. Its eyeballs soon explode in their sockets as the flesh begins to melt off the rager's bones, while its lower jaw drops to the ground, now smoothened and charred by the flames, stopping the rager's painful screeches. The rager burns until all that remains as proof of its existence is a charred, jaw-less skeleton with teeth like a piranha pinned to an old tree; which soon blows away like ash in the wind as its screech echoes and fades away, silenced for eternity.

Van Kolte looks to the sky and releases a quiet sigh. As he looks back down, he turns to the burning cabin as his eyes widen with shock and disbelief. He inflames his nostrils and takes a few sniffs of the air. A sudden draft of wind carries smoke towards Van Kolte, filling his lungs with thick black smoke and a scent that brings him down to his knees with his eyes wet with tears of guilt and despair. While on his knees, he fills his hands with sand from the ground and looks down at them as the sand slips between his fingers, falling back onto the ground like sand through an hourglass.

Looking like gold dust in the light of the flames close by, the sand escapes Van Kolte's palms as his eyes no longer able to hold back his despair, release the tears from behind them, which flow down his face and then dropping into the sand in his palms making it look like he was holding a dessert oasis.

"Forgive me, for I have failed you." He says in a humbled voice as he looks up from his hands and into the raging flames consuming the log cabin, with the blazing inferno roaring heat onto his face, drying the tears running down to his chin and lighting up the night sky filling it with a thick cloud of black smoke rising ever so higher with each passing second. The crackling of the flames echoes in the silent night with the smell of burning oak and pine filling the cold air, along with the cause of Van Kolte's despair, picked up by his enhanced senses of smell and hearing. The smell of scorched, burning flesh enters his lungs and the sound of its sizzling echoes in his ears as he lets out a trembling roar of his own, shouting at the raging flames. His roar ends with a howl, a howl like that of a great dire wolf at the struck of midnight in the presence of a mesmerizing full moon. All while grinding his teeth and now clenching the soil in his hands as hard as he could, as if to grind it even finer than it already was.

"Forgive me!" He cries out into the flames once more.

A soft voice reaches his ears, "Though I walk through the valley," it says in a suffering voice as if from one drowning, drowning at peace. Van Kolte looks to the source of the voice to find the young boy he'd almost forgotten about, whose cries had led him to this cabin on the side of the woodland road now lighting up the dark wood like a giant bonfire. Kolte lets out a loud sigh of relief and jumps up from his knees and begins to run to the boy's side.

"Hold on child, I'm here!" He yells as he leaves a trail of dust behind him, with every step he takes leaving a mark on the stone ground, cracking and fracturing under his boot like an earthquake leaving its mark in one's mind. The suffering boy continues.

"…of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil…" Now in a choking voice and the words struggling to leave him as he bleeds to death, lying on his back with his head turned to the side staring right into the flames which were consuming what was once his home. The boy's eyes, as red as the blood flowing from his neck, release tears that flow straight into the ground with his arm stretched out towards the inferno as if reaching for a loved one's hand."…For you are with me…" He whispers with blood dripping from his mouth and nose, choking on his words as he drowns in his own blood. His arm drops and his hand grabs onto the ground removing a handful of sand, clenching it tightly in his blood-soaked palm, struggling to breathe, struggling to stay alive.

Van Kolte arrives leaving a long skid mark on the dusty roadside and finally stops beside the boy. He looks down at him with tears leaving his eyes and drops to his knees once again, cradling the boy's head and resting it on his lap. Kolte holds the boy's hand firmly, and in a soft voice.

"I'm here, I'm here." He says to him.

The boy looks up at Van Kolte and manages a smile, staring at the insignia on Van Kolte's chest, the sigil of the Kolte family, glowing as the flames reflect their light off the smoothness of its silver. He then looks up at his would-be rescuer, deep into his blue eyes as he utters a single word.

"…Amen." He says in a fading voice as his eyes slowly close and the hand clenching the sand opens, letting the sand fall out between his fingers with some of it blowing off his hand, carried away by the current of the wind, along with the echo of the sound of his last breath.