Her body was placed on a stone bed, in such a building where the walls had long ago fallen, and she was exposed to the air. Clover looked peaceful, lying there, as if she were having pleasant dreams. But the glow that normally encased her was gone. Something was wrong, but to an outsider, one couldn't tell exactly what. The gaping hole inside of her that once housed her peaceful and dreamy soul was carved out till it bled raw, the soul ripped out and thrown away to be forgotten. Everything that could've gone wrong with that spell had gone wrong, and now...now... Inside, inside she was nothing, a mind floating in the void. Without her emotions she was dead, she was no one, and there was nothing but the dark. The only thing left was sleep to this tired thing, but the dark wouldn't allow that, taking the mind and delving it into its stormy seas where everything was at war. She only wanted to sleep, but she was tossed and turned and ripped to shreds and put back together again. She tried to close out the screaming, the howling, the rage and regret, but it pulled at her and made her listen to its filth, its disease. There was no adit, no way out of this, and it screamed at her to listen, to agree, to rage, to hate, and she was just so, so tired. Just leave me alone, she cried inside the void, I only want to be left alone. Outside of her body, her gem flashed weakly under eyelid, a sickly dying yellow light. She forced the dark away from her, the laughing, the terror, the hatred, the pain, and it came out in the form of inky black tears that stained her pure white fur. But even as she forced it away from her, she was coated in the stuff, infecting her. What it said....was starting to make sense. "......."

There is nothing for you except the void, it told her reasonably, now that the screaming had stopped. Nothing but death. But with the dark, we will swallow you and you will sleep. We will separate you from the pain and give you sweet dreams, we promise. Just give us control, and no one will ever both you again. The offer tempted her - all she ever wanted was to dream, the privilege broken once she'd come into the waking world, and what had the world given her? Pain. Pain. Pain. Emotions were tiring, and she was done with them. Dreams were her everything, her stories a path to them, her life's desire to go back to it one day. So she agreed and let the dark consume her. She opened her eye, her normally bright and beautiful golden eye nothing but an orb of sludge, crying tears of ink. The shadows that lay under her immediately rushed to her pretty fur, its dirty hands covering her purity till she was a deer-shaped shade with empty black eyes. Even her gem was smothered by the dark, glowing no more. She rose from the stone bed slowly. "......."

The shadow swung her legs over the side of the bed, getting used to the way it moved her body. Her head was heavy, her legs were long and clumsy, and she felt like trying to move a puppet for the first time, the wooden cross in her hand awkward. All the aches and pains that the girl had accumulated in the bungling of the spell were hers now, and she seethed. She would control this thing she'd conquered, and she would do it with grace. She kept the mind swaddled in a cage of silent dark, replaying the mind's memories, twisting them for her till the images were almost unrecognizable and confusing. The mind seemed to like that, as long as they were pleasant. A jaguar cub was running away in this ocean of a forest, hiding in the watery mist, and when the mind caught up to it, the cub disappeared with a giggle into a cacophony of flowers. The shadow thought it was idiotic and she wanted to rip it apart, but she let it be. As disgusting as it was, it kept the mind silent. She took a step and crumbled like a heap to the floor with the echoes of pain shooting through her; how had this girl suffered so much and not succumbed to death? Every nerve felt like it was on fire, every muscle crying, ever sensation a torment, and she screamed in rage. "Get up! Get up you useless-!" The tears hit the floor as her head hung low, trying to overcome this body's deficiencies. She did not inherit a broken vessel, she would make it respond to her will whether it wanted to or not. She smiled, her teeth showing through the black, nothing but the same black sludge inside her mouth. The thought had reminded her of Vazi, the only face the shadow knew by heart. You have no heart, The mind said, dull. Its dead eyes viewed her with no interest. Aren't you supposed to be asleep, my love? The shadow replied. I find I cannot sleep yet. It turned its head, looking blankly at the constantly changing images. Then shall I make your accommodations more soothing? The shadow said sweetly. No. Just let me be. As you wish, love. "Disgusting pile of waste," She muttered, spitting on the ground. "......."

Everything had changed... Nothing was the same. His Pure One, he could see that she was different. Her natural glow was tainted and she no longer exuded that light. It was all darkness, darkness like his own heart. Clover had been the only way he could keep some semblance of goodness in his heart... and now it was gone. His Pure One was Tainted and the hole in his heart grew. His mind fell further into its pool of darkness where there was no return. He could see visions of his dead brother, hear his laugh plain as day... but it didn't matter. All he wanted was the entire cave and all the inhabitants. Who cared about a mind?

The stag had moved his believed Pure One to the throne, lifting her body easily and depositing her where a Lady deserved to be. He had accepted that she wouldn't be the same but at least she wouldn't die. She would be here bodily but not in spirit... Which was good enough. She would still be his Lady... They would still have an heir. It would be fine. Sort of. The stag's head shook. If she was different perhaps she would embrace his ideals more. Perhaps she would see why it was necessary that he treat that stupid little cat the way he had. She couldn't love him. He was impure, he was not a deer... He was not even an herbivore! He didn't deserve her love. Only he did. A deer for a deer. That was how it should be, nothing else.

He was out wandering now, gathering berries and fruits for his beloved. He would be there when she awoke even if she was different. He was on his way back to the throne now, berries and fruit grasped in his mouth when he saw movement. Was that her? His beloved? His... Tainted One? Only Tainted because of your selfishness... He didn't know if the voice in his mind was his or not but he shook it off. Annoying thing... He didn't know that that would happen or he never would have let Clover practice such dangerous spells.

He came around to Clover's front, steel-blue eyes gazing at her shape. It seemed that she was... crying? But they were such strange tears. What had happened to her. The stag dropped the food before her while he kept his head lowered to stare straight at her. "My dear... How do you feel? Are you alright?" She was lying there on the ground, it didn't look good. But maybe appearances were deceiving.

______________________________________

"This is how I talk!"
This is how I think!

431
@Clover
---
6/10

She saw the food first, then she saw the stag, looking at her with sadness and hesitation, like they were afraid of the answer. Ahh....how wonderful....they felt guilt over what had happened, they had caused this, they were the reason for her pain, her suffering. Good; this meant she could inflict as much pain as possible upon them. This thing was such a piece of filth. They hurt others in some sort of sick twisted sense of pride and confusion over their loss, and they were so deluded that they thought that the creature she once was was something to treasure when in reality Clover was just a weakling so lost in her own thoughts that she would happily fall down a cliff or set her neck in a monster's jaws if she got a good story out of it. She didn't know who was more despicable, Clover or Vazi. Silence beckoned between the two of them, and the shadow just smiled at them, feeling...something. Her shades were hissing under her and around her, whispering sweet things in her ears. They were telling her things about this rotting sack of filth in front of her, delicious sickening things that she hadn't known from prying into the cold dead mind she had behind her prison walls. "I'm perfectly fine," She said, her voice slithery sweet and wrong, echoing into the room, reaching with its cold hands. "It's you that I worry about." She rose from the bed smoothly, conquering the shivering mass of pain she called her legs, keeping eye contact with the stag. "You're so filled with hurt, Vazi, and I've inherited that. I am your pain, your grief, your hatred, I am your passion for death embodied. I understand, Vazi. I do." She took one step at a time towards him, her voice like a sweet snake, tightening around their neck. "I understand how awful you feel about losing your brother Wynry, how worthless you felt, the grief, the torment. If only you'd been just a little bit faster when the poor lamb was killed, maybe they'd still be alive today. But you were distracted, weren't you? You were in love. " She was so close now that she could kiss them, and she leaned in close, whispering in their ear. "But I rather doubt you could keep them safe, even if you'd made it in time. You weren't strong enough to protect me, now were you? I went through the worst pain imaginable because of you, I died because of your need to have me, just like Wynry. To have your body savagely ripped apart by jagged teeth, to fall, the desperation when they needed you....I know. I've gone through it, because of you. Wynry wouldn't have been safe with you. I certainly wasn't." Her voice was like a lover's caress spreading poison into the skin. "And I know how you feel....I know how it feels to be unable to protect anything, despite everything you try. All the rules you put down, all your efforts, your lack of sleep, they all amount to nothing, because every herbivore is meant for the butcher's block. There is no way to keep them safe." She smiled, her eyes pitless holes, ink tears spreading down her face. And love...love is for the weak. Love torments, love is more than worthless. Love will kill those you treasure most, and then sink its fangs into you." "......."

When I first saw them, I thought of you.

Everything had changed, yes, but he didn't know that it had changed this drastically. The Tainted One kept eye contact with him as she rose and said that she was fine. But her voice, it was different. Some sort of subtle note that let him know even further that things were not okay. He should have killed her, ended her suffering but he could not do such a thing. She was his Pure One even though she was Tainted. She was his link to the past despite the past that she was starting to rip out in front of him. "Me? Why ever would you worry about me, my dear?" He shouldn't have asked. He should have closed himself off and left her or put her in her place. He was the Lord, he should not be allowed to be spoken to that way. But this was Clover... He could not simply speak out to her.

So... He listened with widened eyes and hitching breath as she strummed out his pain. "What are you saying..?" She was his pain? His loss? His everything? He was the one who'd kissed her... Had Tainted her heart with his darkness. It was his fault... everything. The stag shook his head, eyes starting to harden as he tried to protect what was left of his heart. "Hush! Do not speak to me in that way! You know nothing!" He stomped a hoof angrily in the dirt, trying to discourage her from speaking but she came closer and began to whisper in his ear. He once would have found this loving and tempting in every way but now it only filled him with a cold dread as the icy touch of her words chilled his very soul.

She was right... He couldn't save her and he couldn't save Wynry. His anger and the shell over his heart evaporated. This was his Tainted One, he'd brought her into this world and now she would torment him and remind him of the failure that he was. He failed everyone and everything he touched. Just like the hyena said... He was worthless, useless. Only alive because of some perverse want to save his brethren. Why try when he would only fail them as well? Nothing would work... Nothing would save the naive and timid herbivores. They were not strong... Not like him...

He was rooted to the ground, muscles twitching and spasming as her words his home. His fears were all laid to bear before the doe. She was his terror. She was his night. She was his darkness. She was there to make sure that he always knew that whatever he tried would ultimately fail. If that was the case then what was the point?

Love? He didn't care about love. He'd had love when he tried to kiss Clover and it was thrown back in his face. Love would get nothing. Love was for fools. His followers thought he loved them... They were all gullible fools. They were for nothing but to further his purpose. They could all die so long as he had the cave. He tried to protect them but he would ultimately fail. So why protect them at all? Let them love him while he laughed in their faces.

"My Pure One... You have gone..." His voice was quiet, raw, sobbing as tears began to form in his eyes. They closed as he lowered his head, letting the words wash over him and absorb into his heart. "Why do you torment me so?" He could not raise a hoof to her, could not hurt her. Could not speak a word against her even though she'd hurt him... She was right. He was a failure and Wynry's death and Clover's demise was his fault. "Shadow of my heart... Your words pain me and yet I cannot hurt you as I would any other." She was the embodiment of his guilt and his pain. To kill her would be like running away from his problems and he was no coward. "You are correct though... Love gains nothing. I loved Arkrael and it only reaped Wynry's death. I loved you and it brought only your own darkness. I loved my children... but it will bring only their destruction and the further destruction of myself... So I will love nothing else." Love was a weakness. It was a liability.

Only fools loved...

______________________________________

"This is how I talk!"
This is how I think!

735
@Clover
---
8/10

She just smiled when Vazi tried to hush her words, a fake motion of her mouth that she didn't feel. None of his was by any means satisfying for her; she didn't know what that even felt like. The only thing she felt was hatred and anger that she had to leech onto others. There was no joy in this, there was nothing but this. She was nothing but sickness in a pretty wrapper that she could manipulate to inflict further pain. She saw their pain, saw that they were taking her words to heart, and she just smiled her hollow smile. She stood there, soaking in their pain, when something....something from far away spoke to her. A distant voice, hushed and choked by shadow, reached the center of her dead and screaming sea into the delightful prison she'd made, and the empty cold mind instantly sat up. No, The shadow snarled. Outwardly, she closed her ink stained eyes, and inside she scrambled towards the prison. The mind flared to life, and all of the shadows around it hissed and shrank away from the glow that surrounded her. No! She was supposed to be dead! But the mind just smiled, remembering the gorgeous moment with Bartos where he compared her to the stars in Orion, and his voice telling her not to give up, to live, to feel his love and be strengthened by it. She was like a black and white photo suddenly plashed with vivid colors, and she was alive and she wanted ou-- NO! The shadow reached her and wrenched open the prison and grabbed her with all the force of the raging sea behind her and with both of her screaming claws, she ripped the mind in half and threw it back inside. There it lay, the color fading, the form crumbled like a puppet deprived of its stuffing, a skin, only. The shadow huffed and puffed, her sunken pit of an eye gleaming red underneath the murky depths, and with that eye, she opened them again and looked at Vazi with all the calm she could pretend. "No, you're right. The Pure One is long dead and gone. Clover is dead by your hands, and all that's left in me is your hatred. You know the words I'm saying to be true because it's you saying them." She said, her voice cloying and choking. She saw their tears and felt nothing. No satisfaction. Only hints that she was getting closer to their core she could grip and crush. "You've done this to yourself with your weakness, Vazi, even if you don't think yourself weak. You don't have the strength to protect even yourself; can you feel the walls crumbling? You're letting this destroy you, because you're weak. You were never strong. Not when Wynry was around, and not now. You even let Leon and Arkrael beat you, let them burn you and beat you down, despite your self-made title and your pathetic spell casting. You can't even fight for yourself." She smiled in such a way that it was a pale reflection of Clover's sweet pure smile, only ugly and dragged through the mud with her wretched, haunted eyes. She knew the way to break them till they were a sniveling mindless mass, even if it would take time....it would be worth it. For Vazi, the one who made her like this...it would be worth it. "But in one aspect, Vazi, you were right. I was blind at the time to see it, but with you inside me....I see now. Our child together would be pure and wonderful, a paragon of our species' virtues. They would be strong when we would be weak, and together, with our army, we would keep them safe. No filthy, disgusting carnivore would ever come near them." And Bartos would be dead by then. She would make it her goal, for daring to touch her that way. "......."

Beaten and broken, walls in tattered ruins he sat and listened to her. Words sinking in making impressions on his very soul. He was weak. She was right. Everything she said was true. He wanted to be strong, he wanted to do right by Wynry and avenge his death. He'd let Arkrael get in the way before but he would let no one get in his way again. He would do what was needed even if he himself was killed, even if a thousand of his children were killed... He would do it. Somehow... Someway... He couldn't fail. He could not. He would not.

You will fail again and again... The shadows hissed to him. He shook his great head with its terrible scars and tattered ears. He had the proof of his weakness across his body. He was a failure as was his life. He couldn't bring himself to speak out against the Shadow again, he simply allowed it to go on and berate him. He sighed deeply, troubled and tired from what she said. He felt a thousand years old now like the words were crushing him into the earth.

No matter what though he would not give in. If it was him alone he would just roll over and die but it was Wynry, that ghost of a sheep whispering to him --had he gone mad?-- that he should be avenged. Even if he failed every single time he would get up so long as there was breath within him and try over and over again because it was needed. If he didn't try what was the point of his life? Nothing. He'd be even more worthless... His death would be haunted by ghosts to forever laugh at him.

He couldn't bear to meet her eyes, couldn't bear to look into that empty hole and see his reflection staring back at him. The gaze of a failed deer with hardly anything left to give but his hatred and darkness. He would let the darkness take over the entire cave... but he was okay with that. Love was meaningless, life was pointless without hatred. The entire cave was living their lives for nothing when they should be living their lives for him. To give to him their allegiance and to fill their pathetic lives with the sweet release of hatred. He knew now and soon they all would that it what they lived for now was pointless. He would start with the selfish and evil carnivores who had ruined it all for him, had set everything into motion... The herbivores, those placid fools, he would rule with an iron hoof. He knew it himself, just as he was weak they were even weaker and would do nothing as they did nothing about him now. Everything would fall into place... His rules, his leadership would benefit him first and his subjects second... As it should be.

He dared raise his eyes to hers when she spoke about their child. He was glad to have a release from speaking about his failed existence though even doing so helped him realize his ultimate goals. He blinked his eyes, still running with tears, as he stared up at her with despair in his slate gaze. A child... Yes... He would raise it right. He would raise it to be the best of the herbivores. The deer. The epitome of purity and grace. He would teach it not to love but to be above love and to never be weak as his parents were. The child would be what he was not... A true Lord, born into it and not given a false title.

"Shadow of my Heart, a child between us would be more than the two of us. I am not but a failure but perhaps he could be more. I will raise him right and he will be the terror of the carnivores and the rightful ruler of the herbivores." He did not raise his head, he would wait for the Tainted One. He hardly felt the Lord around her because she was there to tear him down and remind him of who he truly was. "Our child would be Perfection."

She was truly the Lady to be feared.

______________________________________

"This is how I talk!"
This is how I think!

709
@Clover
---
8/10

She tasted their despair, their self-loathing, their submission....it was so sweet, so disgustingly delicious, she just couldn't get enough of it, like a glutton with a sweet tooth for rotten fruit, black and coated in flies. She could taste it dripping, crunching the twitching flies beneath her teeth like living candy. She laughed low, the shadows around and under her writhing in content and satisfaction at their turmoil. Despite everything the stag was saying, despite what they felt, she knew they hadn't completely given up on love. no, they would love their child. And she would take that child and ruin them, shape them into a monster like her, and she would break them both till they both realized their was nothing left but the void. But she wouldn't let them enter the empty peace of death, no, she would bar them from that for as long as she was able to. They both needed to suffer. "He won't be a Lord...." She said, her voice twisting, ravenous for blood. "He will be a King." With that, still laughing like this was all some wonderful joke, she turned her head so that her gem eye faced the stag. It was covered by the dripping shadows, its light covered by its filth, and she cooed softly to Vazi, "Go on....take him from me. Like you've taken everything else from me. Give me a kiss, my Lord. Break me in two so you can have what you want." "......."

@Hasira