26.0

"As cruel as 'love' is, I've often thought it strange that it came from the Seraphim," purred a velvet voice almost inaudibly.

Zyrdicia started at the musical sound of the words, spoken by a Sephiroth's tongue. She had thought she was alone. She spent a lot of time alone now. Her servants came and went as business required, but none of them were allowed to stay. She'd even sent Magnus away. She needed to experience the grief she felt by herself. It was horribly familiar to her. It was nearly the same misery she experienced after slaying Azriok for the first time, many years ago.

The pain of letting go wasn't as sharp as she had expected it would be. Instead, it was dull and crushing, like suffocating slowly beneath a massive boulder. A piece of her soul was dying--one of the last remnants of her humanity. The death of the spawn she had carried just a few weeks left her feeling as though a close friend had died--a sensation she repeatedly reminded herself was irrational. It hadn't had a soul yet. And it was always destined to die eventually. Dirk's rage upon waking up caused her grief to expand exponentially and devour her. She didn't blame him for being angry. It was what she'd always known was inevitable. She put him in a coma and arranged the invasion of his castle by a foreign army. Even in her certainty that it had to end horribly, though, she had always nurtured a faint hope that he would be so relieved to have her back in his life, carrying his child, that it would somehow work out like the fairy tale in the Old Priests prophecy. Nurturing hope had been a terrible mistake. She should have left him in the coma, fled Karteia, and disappeared from that world forever. At least then she wouldn't have seen the hatred in his eyes. She hated herself for the weakness love caused. She wanted desperately to just stop caring about any of it.

The depression she had experienced in Karteia, when Dirk was in a coma, had been nothing compared to this. This darkness robbed her of any desire to function. She couldn't even bring herself to care about her recent discovery of the hiding place of the Old Priests. Nor could she care that Azriok planned to invade this world in a couple of months with a demon army. None of it seemed to matter. If she could just bring herself to exist just a little while longer, the world would end. Then at least her suffering would be over.

She turned and gazed with listless eyes at the intruder. She recognized Andireon, the same meddling Sephiroth who had shot her with a magic arrow from Cupid's stolen bow. She winced at the sight of him and sighed, "Go away. I'm not in the mood for your philosophizing about love. Today I might kill you for it, just to see if I can feel something."

She cringed at the flat, lifeless sound of her own voice. There was no threat in it. Andireon would hear that. She couldn't remember any time in her life that the prospect of killing hadn't held at least a little thrill for her. Now not even that seemed to matter. Like everything else, it was just a great waste of time. It didn't change anything.

He replied in a gentle whisper, "It wasn't my choice to inflict this on you. I was merely following orders."

"Of course you were. Get out. Or I'll send you out of this world forever."

"I can help you rid yourself of Cupid's arrow."

"How?"

"By pushing the envelope of the immortality you earned when you escaped Death. But you must be very sure you want it. The pain will be intense."

She sneered, "I survived a Hellcoil and having Azriok's soul fused to mine. How much worse could it be than that?"

"You will beg me to stop before it's over."

"Will I survive it?"

"Of course."

Desperate to be free of the arrow's curse and the crushing anguish that seemed rooted in every breath she took, she said, "I'm willing to do anything to be rid of it. I don't fucking care how much it hurts. If you succeed in ridding me of it, I promise I'll let you stay in this world as long as you want."

The dark angel smiled slowly. He reached out a hand to her and said, "Let us begin."

26.0.1

Deep beneath the Old Temple in Lyr, a howl of agony echoed within a cavernous, underground chamber.

Zyrdicia knelt on the granite floor of an empty black room that had once housed sarcophagi of the dead High Priests in the Temple Catacombs. She had long ago repurposed the room as a place to hide when she wanted no one to be able to find her. She wished now that someone might hear her screaming.

Her chest felt as though it were being filled with magma, and it was burning its way through her from the inside. She was drenched in her own blood. Pints of it had pooled on the floor beneath her. But the blood loss did nothing to drag her toward unconsciousness. The searing pain anchored her consciousness inside her body relentlessly, and there was no way to use any mental trick to transform it into pleasure. She was being tortured by Seraphim magic.

"I can't do this," she croaked, tasting blood in her mouth. She pleaded, "Please! No more!" Next to her lay the feathered shaft of Cupid's arrow, broken off from the rest of the magical missile still lodged deep in her heart. The arrow was now half its former length, and only about six inches of the golden missile remained inside her.

Andireon's cold body was behind her. He cradled her in his icy arms. He crooned in Tenaebran in a soft whisper, "Just a little more, precious. Your pain cleanses Cupid's magic."

As he spoke, a sense of profound, magical calm spread over her. She knew this calm. Azriok had used it when she was a child throwing a temper tantrum. The pain did not recede, but her desire to resist it flagged. She relaxed and slumped forward against the hard arm that held her.

For nearly an hour Andireon had been steadily working to dislodge the accursed arrow from her heart. The damned thing's barbs made it impossible to pull out, so he was pushing it through her heart, out her back.

As she felt the searing pressure in her chest rise up again, her breath caught in her throat with a gurgling sound. Andireon's grip on her tightened, and he gave the remnant of the enchanted arrow protruding from her breast a powerful shove, driving it deeper into her body. She whimpered as it ripped all the way through her heart.

She was still for a moment, then she reached around painfully, feeling behind her shoulder. She nearly feinted with relief when her fingers touched the razor-sharp tip, protruding just below her shoulder blade. The fire immediately began to recede inside her chest. Delerious and exhausted, she was grateful to Andireon now. She knew her body would mend itself. But her psyche had taken all the suffering it could handle from the arrow's magic.

The angel purred, "Yes, precious. You are almost free." His arm tightened once more, and with a final shove at her breast, he forced the head of arrow all the way through her back. Now that the arrow's head was out of her heart, she scarcely noticed it ripping through her shoulder. But she was finding it harder and harder to breathe.

A gasping sound escaped that sounded like a tearless sob. She knew the spell from Cupid's arrow was broken. She would have wept for joy if she were able. For the first time in the better part of a year, Zyrdicia was free of the Seraphim curse. But she had let a Sephiroth shred her heart to win that freedom.

26.0.2

In the semi-conscious state brought on by blood loss, Zyrdicia sensed Andireon's body's closeness. She was lying on her stomach now, with her eyes closed. She swallowed, finding her mouth and throat dry. The magical pain receded, but her body felt like it belonged to someone else. She twitched a finger. It stuck to the wet, sticky stone floor on which she lay. Even that small movement seemed to take several minutes to accomplish.

"Magnificent, princess!" Andireon whispered approvingly from the shadows.

Her hand touched the broken arrow shaft still lying next to her. She slowly closed her fingers around the broken missile. With great effort, she opened her eyes.

The blood-stained arrow tip was the first thing she saw. Undamaged, despite his success in removing it from her body, its design was oddly beautiful. It contained two impossibly thin blades of golden metal, each flanged with undulating decorative curls -- the barbs she had felt when she tried to pull it out.

She was unable to draw enough breath to reply. She coughed and then winced at the painful sensation in her chest. She again tasted her own blood in her mouth. The floor felt very cold. She sensed a chill creeping over her. She dreaded the inevitable need for her body to shiver. Movement was going to hurt - a lot.

Andireon's chilling fingers fell on her shoulders, and she flinched. She had no strength to push him away. His hands closed around her and lifted her gently from the floor and pulled her toward him. He cradled her gently against his unnaturally cold body.

She watched as one of his sharp, black finger nails dragged across his own neck and black fluid oozed to the surface of the pale, icy skin. The wound was only a few inches from her lips.

His eyes glittered in the darkness, regarding her. She noticed for the first time that there were flecks of purple within the black depths of his eyes. She might have shuddered, had she had the energy. Instead, she simply stared feebly, unable to move, and entranced by the familiarity of the color.

He whispered, "It will revive you. But the choice is yours. I cannot force it upon you."

Confused and ready to retreat again into the nothingness of unconsciousness, she had no mental strength to resist or question. She touched her mouth to the cold, black fluid oozing from the wound at his neck. It was not blood. It was magic--black magic in a concentrated, unadulterated form too pure for this world.

There was nothing alien about its taste. It was as though she was imbibing her own magic. The strength of it immediately sped her body's already accelerated healing process. As she drank, she felt the quickening of blood hunger. But it was not the blood hunger she experienced from human mayhem-it was subtler than that. It was a hunger for Sephiroth magic rooted so deeply in her soul that she was surprised she hadn't hunted them, like she once had Seraphim.

Beneath her, she felt Andireon shake with laughter. He pushed her gently away from his throat, his lips still curled in amusement. "Sleep now," he crooned softly in Tenaebran, still chuckling at some private joke.

Exhausted, she let his magic carry her into unconsciousness. Too weary to care whether he intended to harm her, she fell into a deep, magical sleep.