Staggering through the deepening darkness, pursued by the predators which called this place their home, who's skill at the hunt was such that they were never seen more then as a flash of fleeting moonlight refracting from an eye, and by the instinctual prickling of hair along the backs of both Behemoth's and Zecora's necks, the two unlikely allies were relieved to see the low, curved shape of her home rise up out of the shadows.

By the time they'd reached her cottage, he had paled significantly, and was sweating profusely. His vision had blurred, and it was taking more and more effort to put one hoof in front of the other. He felt a fever heat throbbing in his head.

Zecora had slathered his wounds with some pungently vile smelling paste she'd had at hoof, which had staunched the bleeding enough so that deft motions of his own had managed to seal the wounds with tight, orderly stitches of strong black thread from a spool removed from his ever present, worn saddle bags.

Unfortunately, even given the speed and skill of his work, the jungle had had more then enough time with his open wounds to work a nasty infection into The Beast. It was up for debate whether it was the sickness, or the lives he had taken just a short while ago which sapped his strength more. He had hoped to never take another life. That hope, like all others, proved only to be the first step on the road to disappointment.

As they entered, in a motion barely noticed by him, she turned and threw the heavy iron bolt securing the door before moving quickly across the room.

"Lie down and be still, you are becoming very ill."

She jabbed at a haphazard mound of pillows and rolled blankets that were shoved into the corner seemingly at random. He swooned as he sat, vision blanking for a few seconds as his beleaguered body adjusted to the change in orientation. He tried to watch as she rummaged around a collection of myriad bottles, gourds and other various storage contraptions, but his damn eye just wouldn't focus.

The smell of the place was distinctive even through his fever fugue. Damp earth, charred wood, and an intoxicating amalgamation of herbs, spices, and unguents the likes of which he'd never encountered in his many travels. The mingled scent lent to the exotic nature of his surroundings, making the whole situation even more surreal.

"Thank...'cora...just...need a minute...back on my...hooves..."

His mouth was as dry as the cold ash under the cauldron in the center of the one room abode, and his tongue had swelled to the point where speech was difficult. He wasn't sure if it was hallucination, or if he actually could feel the virus' implacable advance through him. She turned back, apparently satisfied with what she'd found. A long necked gourd, whose contents sloshed audibly as she approached, the multi colored beads decorating it rattling quietly with the motion.

It may have been the fever, but it looked as though she was trying to hide a smile behind that gourd, not quite successfully.

"Drink this, and don't dare spill a drop, if you don't, soon your heart will stop."

He obeyed her oddly rhythmic instructions, up ending the container and pouring the entirety of its contents down his slowly constricting throat.

The effect was immediate. It felt as if he'd just downed a healthy measure of battery acid. The thick, clinging liquid rolled into his gullet leaving tongue, mouth and throat feeling as if the flesh had been stripped away. His vision, faltering and fading, exploded into color as his body reacted violently, dry heaving as tears streamed down his cheeks. Vivid bursts detonated behind his eyes, almost as if paint filled balloons were popping across his vision.

"What the...what'd...you...give me..."

His voice croaked out, a harsh whisper through a raw throat, as the world twisted and spun together. The splotches of bright color spiraled into a kaleidoscope of madness. As the 'medicine', did its work, his battered frame finally gave out, and he collapsed back, thumping into the floor of Zecora's hut in a sprawling heap.

"That brew is rather potent, you should be incapacitated in but a moment, you should not worry, let it be understood, keeping you from moving is for your own good."

She returned the gourd carefully to it's home on one of the overloaded shelves, taking her time to turn back, and approaching his prone form with a faint, now clearly visible smile tugging at the corners of her dark lips. Even as his mind spun silently into madness. He watched amazed as her features shifted and melted like heated wax, running and reforming.

The scene changed, the hut and it's interior fading away like an after thought, replaced with the brilliantly bright sun of a mid spring morning, just a few short weeks after the battle of the Lunar Citadel. Through his own eye, he found himself looking at Spatha, a version only three years younger but shockingly different for such a short time. He was gangly, long limbed and narrow, before the guard training regimen Behemoth had overseen filled out his form. His eyes had the same intensity they had died with.

As he watched this youthful, energetic specter, as it spoke words he could remember but couldn't hear, it smiled. The first, last, and only time Behemoth had ever seen such open emotion displayed by the stoic, strange colt who had strode into Canterlot with nothing to his name but the sword he carried, and a desire to join the guard. He'd heard of the Changeling attack, and had set out to join the guard immediately. Set out from where, he'd never say.

the form exploded into dark, billowing smoke which shifted and formed of its own accord.

"Being the shaman of the forest can be quite lonely, it has been many moons since I've had a good boning."

She knelt over him, one fore-hoof bracing against the wall behind his head, the other reaching down and back to coax his retired stallion hood back into service. His body was frozen, he couldn't so much as twitch to dissuade her. This urgent desire had been burning in her since shortly after leaving the clearing. It was a giddy sensation, her head felt light, as if drifting on its own. It was all she could do to restrain her enthusiasm enough to keep a tremor from her voice, and her knees from knocking in anticipation.

This was not her, she didn't do this kid of thing, had never used her talents in such a base and manipulative fashion...but that fact was lost, even on herself.

"For my efforts tonight, payment is due, I will take my price straight out of you."

With no lead in other then that particularly odd and semi lyrical demand, she lowered her stripy rear down onto his still recovering from near viral death and only kind of stiff erection. She succeeded in rubbing wetness that had been building since this master plan had first entered her critically under sexed head about twenty minutes ago, across the width of his glans. She grunted in approval.

"Oh yes, this will do, hallucinating or not, you'll give quite a screw."

She powered her ample, spiral sun adorned rear down onto his cock, a somehow slightly rhyming grunt of pleasure slipping through her clenched teeth as the flare of its wide head popped between her tight lips, the first several inches disappearing within the same motion. She shivered in spite of the warm, humid air, the long absent sensation of stretching around a hard cock sending a thrill up her spine. She'd missed this feeling more then she'd known.

The smoke swirling before Behemoth's eye exploded.

The dark cloud coalesced and the shapelessness gave way to Blue Line, during his first day of training. Even then, three years ago, he'd been a beast of a stallion. He'd grown up on the shores of the sea bordering Equestria to the east, and more then two decades of hard labor in the ports and fisheries there had carved him into an imposingly powerful form to rival that of even Mac. He radiated the scent of the sea, the myriad, faint odors of coastal life and the tang of ocean salt emanated from him like a tangible force. His form melted into darkness.

"Yes, yes brute, give me more, make me drip, make me pour!"

Zecora's other fore hoof moved up to the wall over his head, both bracing her now, the full length of her well built frame stretched out above him. The humidity and her own exertions had her covered in a sheen of sweat, droplets of which flung from her on each downward thrust to splash against his chest. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut, teeth clenched and lips pulled back in a snarl of pleasure. Her incessant rhyming had finally been subverted, the only sounds escaping those clenched teeth were ragged breathing and harsh grunts.

Her brilliant mind was no longer being used, as far and completely disengaged as the stallion she was riding, just in a dramatically different direction. The forests of the Everfree, and the breadth of the world she'd seen far beyond the borders of Equestria faded. All that existed to her now was the curved wall she was braced against and the stone hard cock buried in her, it's wide head butting now against her cervix.

Quicker then even she could have predicted, the tingling and stretching gave way to clenching and shuddering. Her downward thrusts, smooth and fluid, stopped with a staccato series of jerks. Her head was thrown back, eyes screwed shut and mouth gaping. An undulating, wavering, almost unnatural whooping cry echoed out into the dripping night, frightening a plethora of multicolored avians that had roosted high above her ground hugging abode into panicked flight. They burst through the canopy, an explosion of color as vibrant as any firework, chased by the first orgasmic release these parts had heard in the better part of a year.

The fore legs which had braced against the wall over his head were now trembling. With a long, supremely contented sigh, the shaman of the Everfree finally collapsed, and she slowly sunk down onto the wide expanse of the stallion that was still stock still, completely unaware of what had just transpired. Breathing hard, she noted with a glimmer of annoyance that her normally tightly restrained and orderly mane was hanging limp and lank around her face, the trailing edge of it, longer then it seemed when up, trailed halfway down her back. She couldn't help but notice that he was still hard, her own screaming release not translating into one for The Beast.

The clinging darkness spun back together, trailing into a form he was very familiar with. Standing face to face with him, head wrapped heavily with a right eye that would never see again swathed in thick bandages, with it's chest similarly mummified, stood a picture perfect doppelganger of himself. The shadow him walked with an obvious limp, added testimony, if any was needed, to the fact that he hadn't healed from the battle of a few short weeks ago. Dusk Shield, as ageless and implacable as ever, stood at attention at Behemoth's back, his own injuries from that bloody day similarly obvious even under his full ceremonial plate armor.

He remembered this day. The air had been full of the sound of construction equipment and thick with the smell of magic as the city went about healing it's wounds. Everywhere you looked there was an army of brightly colored hard hats and neon, reflective vests. So many bodies scurrying back and forth, that from a distance their frenzied motion looked like nothing so much as a kicked over ant hill. The brick, wood and stone was healing far faster then the flesh and bone.

Shadow Behemoth strode back and forth before a twenty strong double line of candiates. The first volunteers slated to replace the shattered Lunar Guard. He remembered all of these faces, but only two of their names. Only two had made it through the following weeks and months to don their armor. Only two had proven themselves physically and mentally capable to stand a chance against the trials that were coming.

Blue Line and Spatha. The first Guards of the Second founding. Two of the finest he'd known in over a decade of doing this. And they'd both died tonight, directly or indirectly, to him.

Those two, the only to succeed from the first group, had opened the flood gates. After their hard won victory over the rigors of training, the following group of candidates was twice the size, the third even larger. Regardless of how many would try, of how many that would arrive on the still stained and cracked cobbles of the Lunar Citadel, the ninety percent attrition rate was a constant.

After three years, and over a dozen separate groups of prospective applicants, each larger then the last, the Lunar Guard could boast a single, under strength company on the day of Behemoth's retirement. Three platoons, their full number not quite reaching into the triple digits. It was a Corps drastically smaller then their compatriots in the Celestial Guard, to whose banners flocked many of those who washed out of the Lunar Guards much more intensive training.

Almost a tenth the size of their Celestial counter part, the Lunar Guard made up for their numerical deficiency with the nature of their training. A training so brutal, so unforgiving, that not all of those who failed it ever returned to civilian life. Or any life, for that matter.

The Celestial Guard, in contrast, was little more then ornamentation. It had been centuries since the last time the Guard regiments had officially gone to battle, and in the intervening generations, all but the vaguest tradition of martial skill had faded away. Now, they were window dressing, assigned to guard a being powerful enough to vaporize them with a thought...at least during the day. They were chosen for aesthetics more then ability. The first and primary purpose of those in the gold armor was to look good in it, to stand stock still and silent, intimidating and blank. Of no more real significance then a well composed piece of art, and serving much the same purpose.

This ideology had only just started to change under the youthful idealism of Shining Armor, an alteration which had swiftly earned the colt Behemoth's rare respect. However, it had yet to gain much headway against centuries of entrenched apathy.

Behemoth had chosen a different path when he'd been tasked with resurrecting the dark armored Guard upon Luna's return. Assigned this duty by superiors that didn't quite know what to do with him after his return from the Deadlands. His first founding had been decimated, killed almost to the last. With Spatha and Blue Line representing the Second, he built them in a different image. A harder image. Trained them to prevent the horrors that so few knew had transpired that day from ever happening again. Those two, the First of the Second, who he'd loved like brothers...like children. He'd watched them die tonight.

He watched their specters and his own melt and drain into two inky pools. One brightened to milky whiteness, devoid of definition or hue. The other formed a golden eye set in a backdrop of grey fog. No face formed behind those eyes. None was necessary. That single eye and it's milky blank companion told the story plain enough.

The pools changed subtly, by degrees, taking on shape and color where seconds before there had been none. Still asymmetrical and uneven, the two pools took on a faint glow, brightening to the point of incandescence, vibrant green and dark, vertical slit pupils swam up from their depths. Harsh and distant, mocking and inescapably feminine laughter drifted from the cloud. Under laid with a scratchy, echoy quality. At its sinister sound, the rest faded, leaving just those two, abnormally green eyes and the echoing laughter as all encompassing blackness sank in.

Then, the fever broke, and with it, the hallucinatory effect of the strange medicine vanished as quickly as a flicked switch. The odd, exotic conglomeration of scents that where the signature of this home were the first perceptions to flicker back into being, followed in short order by the sight of the low hanging ceiling curving away over head.

As the control of his body swam back to him, heavy and lethargic with exhaustion following the toll taken from his body by the battlefields of tonight, those both inside and outside of it, he felt a different rush, a sudden tidal wave of sensation that was very familiar, and very unexpected given the nature of tonight's events.

Lifting the leaden weight of his head, he looked down past the rise of his broad chest, and met the turquoise eyes staring steadily back at him, seemingly waiting for his return to cognition. This, in and of itself wasn't remarkable. Doctors, or, in this case, the more accurate term would be the generic 'healers', traditionally liked to be present when their patients regained consciousness.

What set this instance apart, was that traditionally, they didn't pass the time by sucking off those they were 'healing', while waiting for them to wake up. A grin formed across the dark muzzle wrapped tightly around his shaft...kind of. A genuine smile made somewhat more difficult all things considered. She rose up the length of him with a sucking pop after pulling back slowly, seemingly savoring the flavor of his granite gifted girth as her tongue lapped at its length, missing not an inch as she released it, now spit slick, into the warm forest evening.

"Ahh, I see you have awoken at last, now you and I, my troubled stallion, we will have ourselves a blast."

A quiet, niggling voice in the back of his mind told him this was wrong, that after the events of tonight, even his Princess shouldn't have been able to illicit such a vertical response from him, much less a strange hermit with a penchant for overly convoluted speech. That the injuries, both physical and psychological of this evening should've left him incapable, to say nothing of unwilling to summon this kind of hard enough to cut stone erection.

She rose up over him again, her almost hypnotically striped body stretching over his prone form once more, glistening, dewy nether lips literally dripping in anticipation, she was pleased to note that this time around she had his undivided attention, his one golden eye following her movements.

What he saw in her eyes, however, was unsettling. Her eyes were...glazed, thick and dull. Looking into them, it was clear there was no thought behind them, only a base drive to satiate her rampaging lust. The lights were on, but no one was home, her will was not her own.

The faintest hint of a frown crossed his face as the images of the lost faded from his mind. He knew this wasn't right, but lacked the strength to even speak, much less act to stop her. Every ounce of strength and vitality was shifted into the dark tower of his cock, pulsing and throbbing, it's rigid length quaking with each slowed beat of his heart. It was alive and roaring even as the body attached to it it came to a stop. The rest of him felt drained, every bit of energy and power siphoned from his strong frame. It felt as if his will, his very essence were draining away to be replaced with...nothing. Another stallion, one not quite as versed in the specifics of that particular event, might think this was what it felt like to die.

As the last bit of conscious thought vanished like a puff of smoke in a tornado, it was replaced with a throbbing, aching desire for release. All thoughts of resisting this faded away, his mind nothing more then a lust filled mass of heat and desire, the change as sudden as light filling a dark room. His body, which scant seconds ago had lacked the strength to so much as lift his head, was inexplicably filled with rampant, twitching energy. His heart rate spiked, doubling then tripling in the space of just a few seconds, pounding against his rib cage with all the subtlety of automatic fire.

What started as a low groan quickly grew into an earth rattling crescendo, a pure, animal roar of lust that startled the nocturnal forest around them into silence. His back hitched upwards, snapping him upright in a motion far too fast given how drained he had been just a few short moments ago. As he landed heavily on his hooves, his single golden eye, now flashing with an unnatural fervor, swung over, locking onto her like a weapon sight. She read the manic intent in it, and smiled in welcome.

~Fuck. Fuck! FUCK! Take her now, take all of her, fill every hole, take everything she has. Fill her with cum, fuck her until she can't walk, until we can't walk. Do it, NOW.~

As...articulate, as that thought was, it was vocalized with a continuation of that roar, a low, bass, predatory rumbling from deep in his chest. He was on her before the lust addled minds of either of them had realized he'd moved.

He dove at her, and she met him in mid stride, the two of them tumbling across the room together from their momentum. One or the other smashed into the heavy cauldron, sending its charred, smoke blackened cast iron bulk spinning across the room like a top, before it smacked into the wall, coming to a stop with an echoing note that sounded for all the world like a tolled bell.

Their tumble ended with him on top, standing over her, she was on her back beneath him, staring at the rigid length of his cock that had reared back, running along his stomach to almost reach his ribs, he could feel the radiating heat of it pinned against his stomach by muscles almost absurdly tight. Her hooves scrambled in conflict with his, both fumbling as they raced to pull it down, that it could be set to work.

As one or the other finally succeeded in their haphazard goal, he barged forward again, lifting her thick ass and the lower half of her back off the ground, her rear legs stretching up to either side of his wide torso, her weight resting on her shoulders. She grinned up at him fiercely as she watched the first sloppy thrust send the girth of his cock head slipping across her stomach. The second found its mark.

The two of them, thrown together barely over an hour ago by the random and capricious nature of the world they lived in, shared a long, low groan as his length plowed into her to the hilt with one sharp, jagged motion, her sopping wet cunny swallowing him up without any of the trouble she'd had the first time around.

Like an automaton, he thrust down into her with mechanical, brutal speed. His hips pounding down against her with unchecked force, each thrust shoving her shoulders against the hard packed earth, powerful thrusts growing faster and faster from one to the next, each joined by a wet squelch, her unusual wetness easing the savage passage of his unusual hardness, the pouring wetness running down through the cleft of her raised ass and trailing down her back to the floor.

The utilitarian, earthy room echoed with a mingled auditory assault, the harsh, rapid fire slap of flesh on flesh as his pendulously swinging balls smacked down against her raised ass, joined by gasping, breathy cries, grunts of pleasure each cut short by the next freight train thrust.

She could feel every inch of him as he plowed into her, every bulge, every vein, every beat of his heart that caused the prominent girth of his tool to expand by a clearly felt fraction of an inch with each pulse inside of her.

Each time their bodies met, he felt her stretched around him convulsing, clenching and pulling, her steaming pussy drew him in, sucking greedily at his length as strongly and skillfully as her other set of lips had a short time ago. He gave her everything he had, and she wanted more. Even from her awkward position, she was pushing up towards him, meeting his thrusts with her own. The muscles of her fighters physique were working in ways never intended, pushing herself up against the beast towering over her with hitching contractions of her back and shoulders.

His rhythm broke, and a grunt/growl slipped out through clenched teeth as he started to cum. He recovered just as quickly, the vertical shaft of his cock powering down into her as hard as before, slick and sticky now with his own cum and her flowing juices for a few final thrusts. She felt the first of many stinging squirts within her, the powerful jet of his white hot seed splashing into her womb. A low, drawn out and almost tired groan rattled out of her throat as she came scant seconds later, her back twisted and her pussy contorted, squeezing spastically around the barging shaft, forcing small sprays of their mingled fluids out to splash in fat drops across the floor.

He staggered back half a step, the movement pulling his phallus free of Zecora's cum drenched nether, and letting her back drop to the floor. She moaned at the sudden emptiness, and rolled over onto her stomach, the prodigious quantity of spilled ejaculate matting her coat. She didn't care.

"Oh yes fellow, that was grand, with such skill I haven't been fucked since I left my homeland."

She crawled away into the center of the room, the odd angle having left her rear legs with the thousand pins and needles feeling of limbs well and truly asleep. She felt the blood rushing back into her appendages, but they wouldn't be up to the task of supporting her for a few minutes.

"I have saved, and you have paid, and now we are even. Rest until morning, then you shall be leaving."

Focused as she was on reaching the raised platform where she slept, the muted sounds of movement behind her went unnoticed. Unnoticed, that is, until a sizable black unshorn fetlock landed in her path, and she suddenly found herself cast in shadow.

She turned back and looked up at him, startled a little as a trick of the light had cast his face completely into black. The single, flickering source of illumination was behind his head, leaving his face a a vague suggestion of features carved in impenetrable shadow. The overall effect was imposing, perhaps even borderline sinister.

"It is growing late, and time to rest, sleeping now would be for the best..."

Behemoth heard her words, and the faint whisper of concern in them as if from the bottom of a well. Those words lacked any power or conviction. She was right, however. He was exhausted, his body past the point of screaming for rest, it was now whimpering and murmuring desperately for the release of unconsciousness and the pile of pillows he's left in his wake. As drained, as completely over drawn as he was, a twitchy, manic drive still pulsed through bones weary to the core, driving him onward, making him pursue her across the room.

Her voice faded, the importance of the look of concern on her face dropped away. His vision darkened and reddened, to the hue of a scab, and all that he could hear was the pounding flow of his own blood. His body moved of it's own accord, acting without input from the mind that had disconnected from it.

Towering above her, his fore hooves reached out, drawing her back as he squatted down over her prostrate form. With one sharp forward motion, without even the common decency of a warning, his cock, still dripping with their mingled juices, pushed between those ample spiral sun adorned cheeks. She scrambled in surprise, recoiling from the unexpected sensation of his infamous broad head butting against the tight pucker of her plot hole. The pillars of his forelegs left her no where to go, immobile as she squirmed against them. Any sort of auditory objection was drowned out by the hammer of pounding blood in his ears.

~What the hell is going on...why can't I stop myself?~

Even thinking was becoming difficult, his inner monologue fading into a red mist, his own conscious objection to the acts his body was taking faded, replaced with...nothing. He couldn't explain it, he just knew it wasn't natural.

His pressure against her built, steadily and implacably, more and more force applied slowly, until finally, drawing a sharp gasp from the shaman, the first few inches popped into her all at once. He didn't wait, there was no pause in the smooth, slow down and forward motion of his pelvis. She contorted, shuddered, squirmed and thrashed, and, finally, lay still with a drawn out moan completely soundless to him. The heavy heat of his pendulous balls were pressing firmly against the lips of her marehood, the full unchecked length of his cock buried deep in her ass.

She could feel the unnaturally fast, hummingbird-like beat of his heart as each mechanical, perfectly timed, not slow not fast thrusts pressed her against the midnight blue pillars of his forelegs. That too rapid pulse completely at odds with the almost casual fucking, his body showing none of the hyper active speed the hearts strain would suggest.

Before long, some residual pleasure of the earlier events worked its way back into her. Unbidden, she found her body responding, her rear lifted, giving him a better angle and speeding him along his dark road. Involuntary moans were driven from her each time his belly met her back. The sensation of fullness and warmth spreading, tingling through her body, all
the way to her hooves and back again. She looked up and back, catching his one eye with one of her own, a grimacing smile on her face.

"Tis been a long time, since I've took such in my butt, hurry up, brute, and bust a nut."

If her words were heard, he showed no sign, and no vocal response other then steady, slightly labored breathing, the quiet grunt of exertion. Something must have made it through though, as without warning his pace and force doubled mid thrust.

Her head was down, cheek resting on the cool ground with a smile fixed on her face. Her brilliant green eyes were closed, relishing every second, every inch. Her rear was sticking up into the air, eager to take him, again, for everything he had left. The savage, rapid fire impacts inflicting a rosy tint on her hearty, firm cheeks, visible faintly even through her coat. Each resounding smack causing them to ripple forward in an almost hypnotic fashion. The harsh impact of a high velocity scrotum into her labia and clit caused involuntary clenches in the velvet vice of her plot hole, squeezing and tugging at him each time his hips struck home.

His faded mind, consumed by the painful thudding in his chest, was only vaguely aware that his body was reaching it's limit. It could only be pushed so far on will alone, and that wall was rapidly approaching. It was a race to see which would give out first, his cock, or his heart.

He froze. All motion ceased save the faint up and back motions of the exotic mare beneath him. She knew what was coming and moaned, anticipating the flood of liquid heat filling her rear seconds before it arrived. His statuesque form wavered, starting with a faint, almost imperceptible tremor in his legs, which quickly spread throughout his battle tested frame. He quaked and shivered, shuddering with the brutal release of torrents of pent up energy.

There was no sound.

Shot after shot of thick cum surged into her eager ass, and she moaned at the almost burning sensation of his molten liquid, but he uttered not a single syllable, not so much as a grunt or cry of ecstasy.

After mant seconds of ejaculation, he stumbled back, his erection pulling free of her with the sucking pop of a filling vacuum. Staggering drunkenly away, sounds came back to him as if from an unmuted speaker. Where there had been nothing but the thudding roar of his own pulse, he could hear her gasps, the rattle of beads in the faint breeze, the roars and squeals of a nighttime hunting ground. It all came back. Color once again flooded back into the world, the brown red tones fading into the shadows to be replaced with the vibrant hues of life.

As a wave of exhaustion crested over him with all the subtlety of a train wreck, his sapped body cried out for rest. Crossing back to the pile of pillows where the events of this evening began, he was barely capable of keeping his hooves under him. Collapsing onto his side, kicking up some of the smaller pillows to rain back around him like oddly shaped hail, his last waking image was of a shadow filled corner near to the un bolted front door.

He couldn't recall if she had secured it upon entering or not, and the final vestiges of his focus weren't on it, but on those deep shadows. Too deep. A darkness significant for being darker then the darkness surrounding it. As Behemoth's vision faded, and his much abused body finally succumbed, something in that black caught the light, reflecting it back like a flash from a pool of motor oil.

The darkness moved.