For the absolute first time since entering the arena, Loche finally understood the true meaning of what death could hold. The grip it had that slowly tightened around you until you were pleading for it to end it already as your life meant nothing anymore. There was no other way at explaining the emotions he felt besides doubt and ultimately ill. Telling time was a non-given along with the sense of a security. As he moved almost robotically through the hellions that scattered the Demon realm, each inch closer to a sense of empowerment felt like a gallon of empathy from the audience that was indefinitely gathering around, starting at the screens. His hair would be plastered to his forehead while his grey eyes were colder than a forged stone set to wither. Cheeks drawn taut from the lack of energy and an overall worn grace.

Mortals were nothing more than objects of reason. With little of a sense in power, and a muse of insecurity that glossed the emotions hidden inside. This was something that both Angel and Demon could gather. They were both soldiers of their realms set to accomplish the task of producing their dying breed. Loche underestimated Zachariah in more ways than one. From everything he'd collected as a feeble child, one of them was the fact angels showed no mercy. After watching how the angel used the air around them to his advantage, the slice of his blade through the silent winds, he seemed to be proving the hypothesis correct.

Zach walked next to him, taking long strides that forced Loche to speed up in order to keep pace. Both of them took steep breathes, counting the entire way as they guided the lands. The realm was not mistaken for anything safer than it truly was, and Loche tensed as the screeching of a murder of crows past overhead. Neither took action in speaking, allowing the silence to weave a thick coat of wool.

From the cornucopia, together they had managed to stock up on enough supplies to get them through a few days' end if they used it scarcely. The crossbow Loche had slung across his shoulder dug into the tip of his collarbone as a reminder that their next encounter might be enough to kill them both. A murderous look flickered across Zach's face in an instant before being replaced with a sigh of exhilaration. Pulling on the thick of his hair, the oak wood color seemed to become more visible in the blistering heat.

"I'm fucking done with this shit," groaned the angel, but at this point, he seemed more devilish with the sneer covering his lips. Loche knew from his time spent with the that this was considered calm and content compared to his usual fiery rage that he had settled deep beneath. Yet, it had no idea which he would choose if it came down to the entire 'friend or foe' that the games and arena seemed to be settling inside Loche with each passing minute he was set to be consumed in the pits of Hell. Yes, that's what he had decided to refer to it as. Because after all, this was very barbaric.

"You know, I'm already getting sick of whatever games these are," Loche couldn't defuse the explosion before it happened. Building up for what felt like centuries, the ticking time bomb that as many referred to him as was set to detonate, and it was happening in this very tension-filled area. Sadly enough, Zachariah was the one who would be forced to listen to his endless rants and questions.

He sucked in a breath before speaking his mind, "whatever these insidious people believe in is sick. This is not natural, putting us against each other in an arena like mutts! Who do they believe they are? This is nothing, we're all creatures of the lands and even the gods couldn't bring this down. Our time is reigning, and enough has become enough. I, for one, am broken already into what these people like to accept as coherent." It didn't take long for his babbling to continue into a morality of words that seemed to be stringing on like a boy who couldn't decide between two optimal females.

"Oh, big language for such a tiny guy," the angel tutted in response, the boiled over humor continued to fester. They knew that if this continued they'd end up in a brawl, ending the short lived conversation with no following response that couldn't even begin to reach the climax they had both worked hard to build up. Instead, they let it simmer back to an uneasy flow of grunts and mumbles.

The coos of the incoming night settled beneath the horizon, and the copper sun lowered until it became a pooled liquor of black. Mosquitos swarmed, nicking their flesh and flushing them both with an overall coloring of swollen red, the bumps becoming puffy. Loche became hazy, the tired trek made his arms ache and legs burn.

Suddenly the environment changed. The colors turned foggy and buzzing filled Loche's ears. Spots flew in each direction and he knew it wasn't just mind playing tricks on him. Something it really liked to be doing recently. Water seemed to be shrieking in his ears even though they were in a desolated dessert. Dunes turned to horizontal lines that wiggles and the obsidian city bobbed, sinking a hook in the ground and swallowing it whole. His legs gave out, sending him free falling in slow motion towards the ground. The mortal heard a disgruntled shout before two hands wrestled to keep him steady.

"Loche!" he heard a gurgled voice but there was nothing after that to make sense of. The ground seemed to quake beneath him at the sudden topple. As if the world turned in on itself, and switched orbit, Loche went tumbling. His eyes shut for seconds before being shocked awake.

A ghastly hand stretched towards him. It's porcelain skin pressing hard on the skeletal bones that encased it together. The nails were a polished indigo, the wispy flick of its wrist as it flipped over, inviting him to grab hold. The body that was connected to the limb was what sent a shiver up Loche's spine.

The doe eyes of his mother stood lingering with a blank expression. The bleakness of her hallow cheeks followed by the blanketed foul of her dollop hair. The color serene and full as night-lock with a streak of gothic white. Pulled back in loose ringlets as she called for me to grab hold, put my faith in her arms one last time before else end.

This couldn't be real. The vivid memories appearing before him made his Loch's stomach curl. The memories of her form, so broken yet open as the lies sat at the tip of her venomous tongue, ready to throw them out of spite if provoked. Though, it wasn't lies. Truth of the innocence Loche once held as a child reappeared, and he couldn't get his head straight. Seeing her like this, in the best years of his life and childhood was enough to send him wrenching. His eyes turned sodden and there was nothing, not a barrier that helped support the endless nausea he felt after hearing her speak like this. Nothing, no one could be there to comfort him, to save Loche from this illusion, as he was forced back to the memories of him being beaten as a mere child.

The wailing cries of his sister could almost be heard in the distance, as he remembered everything from the night that was the bottom. The breaking point of all that was unearthly. The time that made Loche actually want to fight back, and show everyone he wasn't the defenseless boy that the spectators assumed him to be. Instead he lashed back out with a vengeance he neither established, nor knew he could hone in on.

Everything that once was stilled, sending him into a dilapidated version of looking through broken glass. Cracks that counteracted the perfectly imbalanced portion of deceit, and horror shredded under the pristine cover. A nagging pull settled in the back of his mind as whimpers escaped through his parted lips. There was no answer as to what was happening to him. How glimpses of the past came, sending him into traumatic shock. Loche struggled to escape what was occuring, he knew this couldn't be real, yet it felt just the same. Each sting jabbed at him, but this time much harder after knowing what he knew now. Illusion, sick and disgusting as it was, came to give an ugly reminder on the life he suffered. The actions he struggled to forget, locking them away through a section of his mind that he swore never to visit again.

Not even Zachariah, his best friend, enemy, and brother, knew what went on in the cavernous depths. How Loche shielded his pain behind false accusations and how each smile injured him completely was a nonexistence to the angel. Naïve to his friend and the life he once lived. Neither had known the true reason why they left their realms and met in the forest against the laws of their given creations. Never having reason to question the priorities of on another. It was a given to understand they both held a deep sympathy for abuse, and overall pain that had been constructed ever so carefully. Like an artist, painting a canvas with harsh brush strokes that were used to let the anger and frustrations out. Loche was that canvas, and the paint was blood.

Loche grappled, trying to bring himself back to the brink of reality before being succumbed back into the haze. Faint noises captured him, but trying to single out a distinct voice came to a conclusion of impossible. There was no doubt that Zachariah wasn't a part of the mixture, but to Loche, the boy who was nothing more than dust, reality was in close quarters and being carefully watched. A complexion of purity, and dirt was prohibited. The ratchet life he was bonded to gave him the scars that marred his skin.

You're nothing to me but a sickening guilt. A reminder of the mistake I made, and you shall be treated as such! She would scream before her hand came pummeling down in an instant. A puzzle that was missing a piece, the rheological theories of matter, all in dying need of answers. Loche felt that same way, as if nothing but a scrap on the floor.

As the air escaped his lungs, his mind broke, splintering like an old piece of wood that had set out one too many winters, and endured too much. A swing that squeaked when used. Dripping water out of a rusty faucet. A pale bucket that had a hole in the bottom. He felt his knees give in, his hunched figure now crumpled to the ground as he wept for the loss. The numbness became a bitter frost that was becoming warmed. So much pain, endless and treacherous pain danced inside Loche.

Then, those two arms that had been reaching out for him faded, and all that was left was Zachariah.

His eyebrows were scrunched, and his eyes held an emotion Loche wished he'd never had to see again, pity. The pity for what he had witnessed. There was no doubt the angel had just seen what Loche felt.

"Lo-Loche," he stuttered, unable to form words that could give resolution. "what was that?"

Loche didn't want to respond, knowing that as soon as he did, his voice would crack. Answers came quickly, and he knew almost ultimately that the things he thought were mosquitoes were in fact, parasites. He felt so stupid for not seeing it sooner. The obvious markings of their crimson bodies, the welts they left that formed an almost perfect lump underneath the skin.

They made you hallucinate, drive you onto the edge of insanity, and Loche had no idea what would have happened if Zachariah wouldn't have been there to stop them. Their goal is to make you suicidal. Bring you back to your worst moments of time. Knowing that the past is deadlier than what the future could ever hold.

Loche took a shaky breath, his lungs felt like ice. "I don't know," he shook his head slowly, trying to comprehend the intense emotion.

He never wanted to go through that again. His secrets were now unveiled, and in order to repair the damage, Loche had to make it crumble.