Chapter 18 Finale

                                        

                                              
My body shuddered as I sucked in a painful breath. My vision had hazed from its golden glow to red. Everywhere I looked, everything I looked at, it was all painted with a fog of carmine. My pulse was erratic but strong, throbbing through me as the damage I had done to the body I wore locked my muscles in a rigid tableau of pain. I would have screamed if I could have, the very air squeezed from my lungs as I bowed, spine creaking with the effort of the movement.
                              
Through the haze of red and my blood screaming with Hunger, I couldn't see the world proper. There were no companions, no mortal enemies. There was just the pain and the Hunger, the body I wore demanding to Feed and recover, but the pain of our shattered soul pulled me onwards. But although there was no room for the awareness of enemies to my starved insanity, there were those that would rend my flesh for the crimes I had committed against them. Most of them were too weak to hunt me down; all but one was unwilling to bring themselves to my level, to discard not just the shell of their humanity but to abandon it completely, accepting that it would never return. To become the murder calling in their Hunger. But the one that was coming after me would be a glorious foe indeed.
                              
As the pain bled out of my system, the strength of pure Hunger filling me up again, the red never faded. The body I wore shuddered, naked skin scraping against the rocks and dirt of the mountain path I had collapsed upon. The taste of blood and dust filled my nose, the scraps of fabric shielding my body stained with the death of many, my skin still darkened by the blood I had never washed away. The land where I had fallen was dead, desiccated as if my simple presence had leeched the life from the ground. I was the Hunger, the Brute of our soul's insanity filling me up and washing the pain and weakness of a moment ago away completely. As the ecstasy of power flooded into me from my missing half I did scream, a primal roar that shattered against the rocks around me and tore at the air. As I took another step towards the half of my soul that had been sundered, I could feel the echo of the space between we shrink. Had I the strength of a belly full of blood and the rage and motivation of pain, I would have Run like I had before. But until I could strip the lives away that I needed, I was forced to move almost mortal slow.
                              
The air was thinner and acrid, the heat of the sun and the cool of the altitude never touching me, no matter their extremes. I could feel something trying to break free, an insidious weakness germinating and screaming in an entirely different manner. The weak, pathetic human I had been sobbed and moaned at what we were becoming and I ruthlessly suppressed that virus of mortality. There could be nothing between us, my missing half edging ever closer, making the gaping holes where it belonged ache all the more fiercely for how close we were. Our survival depended on my ability to get this body closer to where he was, where my other half was trying to come to me. As I descended the mountain, the slow pace ate at my control, wearing away any restraint I may have had and silencing the weakest part of my lingering humanity until it was nothing more than an echoing whimper inside. The only thing holding me back from violence and slaughter was the weakness of the body I wore. Every step was shaking, the muscles still torn and repairing from the strain of my Run before. I didn’t even have a clue for how long I was unconscious for, having the truly peaceful sleep of the dead.
                              
There was an effect of this pervading weakness that I did not understand. My vision was fogged out with red, perception barely keen enough to pierce through it and see where my feet landed, keeping me from finding the edge of a chasm, the fall enough to kill me in my current state. But there was more to my inability to see than just the Hunger. I was seeing through his eyes as well, the touch of my own body strange and distant, still veiled from me but ever closer. But it was enough to rouse the Hunger to a new frenzy, the demand in both of our separate bodies too powerful to ignore as it demanded reunion. Until the pieces of our soul were in the proper place, there would be no mercy, no surcease from the pain. My feet shuffled into a painful jog, faster than a human would manage to run for long but nothing more than an easy lope to one like I was. But now I could smell the screaming blood of my next meal; the wailing of a small child with a smaller pain, calling forth the heavier, more satisfying adults for me to hunt at once. Shortly away was a small mountain settlement, even more sparse than the town I had turned into graveyard already, but enough to strengthen me for the next leg of my journey.