Book ; Dragon Age, The Stolen Throne Page ; 71 — Sentence ; " Bright blood stained the tall grass. "
Death and decay, has always smelt a bit like freedom.
Flames dance prettily, leaves ashes and charred pieces of wood in their wake, make screams rip from parted lips as cerise hues graze each pair of twisted features. His limbs are tired, strained from continuous running, continuous braising from blows he couldn’t possibly allocate. There’s pain and hurt in every corner of his body, bloodstained fingertips raking through dark strands of hair, leaving sanguined traces along his forehead and cheek.
He is safe. Alive, and safe.
Dominik repeats it like a mantra, while weak legs carry him forward, through his own chaos. Through the mess created by his own hands. Doubt of open fields for battle has since long been present in his thoughts, proven wrong this night. When the moon shines upon them with gleaming rays of red and blue. This is no dark alley behind a popular nightclub, no open street in the midst of a waking city. He’s far away from home. They are far away from home. And as darkness drapes further over a slowly dying congregation, his body is growing colder. His heart is slowing, and it’s difficult to keep sharp eyes open.
The edge of the wood is near, where trees reach the sky with their magnificent crowns. In the depths is where he has told him to stay, where he has begged him not to move and he prays, Dominik prays to the gods above in perfect silence, that his plea as been heard.
Or everything he has done, will have been for nothing.
His sacrifice will have been, for nothing.
Stripped of pride he is, as he wanders closer, closer to the edge and closer to his own hope. Closer, to the only being that ever brings light and peace to his existence. His ceasing existence. Pressure lingers upon his chest, making it harder to breathe, each step hurts more than the previous one and he’s about to cave. He knows, he’s about to cave. It makes his eyes grow wide, lips parting to let out something, anything, but he falters, leaving a wheeze of desperation to fade into nothingness between stones and roots. He holds on, grasps for anything he can find for support and he continues forward. Because he has to, because he has to, make sure that what’s his to protect remains to be protected. That he has remained safely guarded, amidst smoke and bone. Blood and fire.
His fingertips, numb as they are since long ago, brush against the rough bark of still trees, of what always stands tall no matter rain, sunshine or hail. no matter how frozen they remain to be. Dominik is freezing to ice from the inside, and there is nothing he can do to stop it anymore, nothing he can do to prevent the end that is slowly coming towards him. But he doesn’t welcome it, he struggles against it. Because he isn’t done yet, he isn’t done. There is something he must do first, something that has been left unfinished.
It almost takes a bit too long, for him to reach the open spaces of the glade he had left almost two hours ago, the place where he had left his unspoken treasure. Where the his treasure still sits, at the exact same spot where he left him, features tilted upwards. Dominik knows, he’s speaking with his dear stars, and it makes him smile.
Safe and sound.
Melancholy drapes over his own pale features, when amber meets cerise and they both know. They both know because the wound cutting into flesh, dragging along his entire torso is too large to be healed quickly enough. And Dominik has lost too much blood already. His heart is pumping slowly, breathing shallow and uneven. He continues, he steps forward as far as he possibly can, before his knees give out and he’s caving for real. But his head never reaches the ground, the chill of damp grass only reaching his legs. The familiarity of cool hands keeps his mind straight for the last remaining moments, the way he recognizes the swirls of light blue in beautiful eyes.
“ You’re beautiful. ”
He breathes, as he strains himself in order to raise his hand far up enough to cup a pale cheek, not minding the way he’s smearing blood across Caleb’s flawless complexion. He’s too gone, too out of his own mind to care. Eyelids are heavy, the pressure of breathing growing stronger and darkness is closing in at the edges of his vision.
Bright blood stained the tall grass.
As moments pass. Millisecond by millisecond.
“ I love you. ”
His voice is a hoarse, breathy mumble, as lips curl upwards in the faintest of smiles. Color has been drained from his features, from everything that he is and his irises are slowly turning grey, like the image of ashes.
His heart stops, seconds later, his chest stills and his frame dissolves into thousands of fiery sparks, dancing like small individual flames before they turn into ashes in the hands of his beloved, a whispering echo of a passing wind, the light of the moon seems to falter as time stills.
Lost to the cruelty of a human world, is a soul without path,
a clueless wanderer with a kind heart.
A Hungarian prince, without any living equal.