Epilogue

"Do you understand now, Orochimaru? The will you inherit? The responsibility?" Lilith asked, crossing the room.

Corvus said nothing, and stood up. "I'm sure he'd be delighted to see me, mother. I'm sure I'm not the Orochimaru he'd have wanted. I'm afraid his heir is Corvus, thief and murderer."

Lilith opened a chest at the back wall, and drew from within it a canvas bundle. "And my husband is The White Serpent, terrorist and monster. It doesn't matter what you do, people will think what they want to."

She unwrapped the Heavenly Sword of gathering Clouds, and offered it to her son. "He would've wanted you to have this." She said solemnly. "A father's sword, passed down to his boy. "

Corvus hesitated. "I'm no warrior. I doubt I'd do it justice."

"Just take it, trust me."

With both hands, Corvus lifted the sword, the weapon almost reacting to his touch. It took on a mercuric consistency as it reassembled itself into something new entirely. In seconds, Corvus held a set of paired hook swords, perfectly weighted and shining as if freshly polished despite its subterranean rest.

Corvus took a step back, and rolled the blades in his hands. "Hmm." He grunted, tying them into his belt. "Thank you, mother. We should probably get going before nightfall, come on."

Lilith sat beside Dolorem's coffin. "Go ahead, Orochimaru, I'll be with you in a moment."

Corvus' footsteps faded back up the passage, and Lilith found herself alone, and in silence. She laid a hand on Dolorem's coffin. "He's just like you, darling. Our boy."

She got up and followed Corvus out of the passage, leaving the mausoleum silent once again. In a small act of cosmic mercy, Lilith would never find out that Dolorem's body lay desecrated in the coffin, savagely ripped asunder and left back, save for the spinal cord and some of the brain, which was taken.

Dolorem's body, even severed from his mortal soul, would be denied its rest.

70 years later…

The laboratory had been stripped of any valuable salvage by the raiders six years ago. The original owner died two decades ago. That day the roof had caved in, the subterranean structure now little more than a hollow. It had once produced Marionettes, amalgams of the dead and machines, for a war long since won.

A single marionette lay somewhat intact, but inert. It lacked a left arm, and right leg from the knee down, but was still otherwise functional. Its expressionless, empty face was turned skyward, into the descending torrent from the heavens. Beneath the thunder-roll and churning black of the clouds, droplets of rain filled an empty eye-socket, overflowing and giving the machine's face tears to cry.

Beneath the thunder-roll, a single, ice-blue eye flickered to life.