Returning to Hell...

The rain tore through his nearly incorporeal form as the wind carried him in from the West. He knew where he was going, he had been there before, but never with such an empty heart... This was his home, so many years before, but now it seemed so distant, so unreachable, so unfamiliar. The steel monoliths that hid so much from prying eyes before now seemed so transparent...

As he reformed his body upon the precipice of the mountain, a scent thought lost on the most terrifying of winds washed itself over him...

Blood.........

Not the blood which keeps him alive, nor the blood spilt of his targets, but rather the blood of the ones he couldn't save... No, not blood... guilt... He paced around for a few moments but no matter where he turned, the stench followed him. What was it about this place, this circle drawn centuries before him, that took his mind to the most dangerous of places... Still the smell of blood... But without it he would most likely have failed a hundred times where he had found victory. Nefarious thoughts crept into his head, and he tried desperately to scratch them out... His face now wet... Without this place he would have never found his purpose within the Sword of Caine, or moreover, the world itself. Why couldn't he get away from that infernal smell? What was it, how was it always able to find him?

Blood on his hands........

He stared down at his razor sharp fins, they had somehow popped out without him even knowing. Unfeeling to the pain everytime they tore through his flesh... He raised his head and as he did they were all in front of him... Bleeding, scarred, and dead... This place, this awful place, was many things to many people at every point in history since its creation...

To him, it was a graveyard........

Standing before the legions of those he had failed, those that no matter the number he saved would always counter balance the scales in their favor, were two faces he never wanted to see again, but somehow were always welcome... Both stood there, in the places they died, perhaps not where they met final death, but definitely where they died...

Blood on his hands, blood on this ground...........

He stood up, never having realized he had fallen to his knees... This was not a safe place for him anymore, at least not now with what was coming... A feeling of relief washed over him as his mind made itself up invoulentarily... This js not where he would meet those of his blood... One closer, one farther, both had their own agendas, and he feared they would soon be caught by their own ambitions and stabbed in the back...

"Never safe, always watching..........."

What did that mean? Why had he said it out loud? No one was watching him, no one was there, he was alone, or as alone as he ever was... No, he knew who was watching, or, what was watching... The city itself always had its eyes, a living construct, an engine marching forward to the percussive beat its wheels of fate made against its track to hell...

God save them, God save them all...........

He needed to warn them, but the city has an effect on those within it... No he would stay outside this time, but he needed to see it one more time, get one more taste, one more high... He pulled himself together and then used the power within his blood to tear himself apart... Let the wind take him where he needed to be... Not for those he needed to save, but just this once, for himself...

He needed to save himself...........