"Strength of Cassion Alternate Ending" by Amy ´the Ames´ Perkins

Alternate Ending

“Please Adrian, tell me you remember.  Tell me you remember what we stood for, those years ago.”  I tried to make eye contact with Adrian but Kaie’s overbearing hatred and malice pouring through the collar made looking anywhere but at my feet nearly impossible.  I hated being meek, but meekness meant I survived.

            “I told you to be quiet, filthy Xesued,” Kaie snapped.   Invisible bees began to sting my skin.  It burned, oh it burned. My hands twitched in their manacles.

            “Kaie stop.” Adrian’s voice was harsh. “Let me handle this.” I could not see what was happening around me but I felt Kaie’s happiness? coming through the collar.   The bees had stopped as well. 

            “Look at me Tara.”  I wearily raised my head to stare at my beautiful Adrian.  How I longed to kiss those lips once more, to feel his heart beat beneath his chest.  To stare into his eyes.  But these eyes were so very wrong.  The warmth that I fondly remembered and treasured was replaced with a malice that could only be an echo of Kaie’s influence. 

            “Please remember.” My voice was hardly a whisper.  His hand reached up and traced the line of my face.  I shuddered at the touch, something I thought I’d never feel again.

            “Tara, I remember all too well.  I remember the lies you and my father fed me.  The burden of duty to carry.  The evil that must be purged.  I know better now.  Kaie has shown me the error of my ways.  I am his now.”  He smiled.  It was not a thing of beauty.  I was horrified.  How had things gone so wrong?

            Denali calmly watched Adrian begin stripping the flesh from Tara’s bones.  Before, when he was still living in that backwater town of Cassion, he might have found this procedure gruesome, gory perhaps.  But now that he was reunited with his brother and had learned so much more of this world he knew that this, slow death was what she deserved.  It would be a very painful death too.  The creature’s body kept healing so by the time Adrian had returned to where he began, new skin was ready.  Her screams had become a sweet melody. 

Denali’s face twisted into a sneer, although he did not notice it.  She twisted his thoughts, the creature Tara did.  Denali’s musings were interrupted by a plea from Tara.

“Denali, why won’t you help me?”  Blood was streaming from every orifice in her body.  She had no more hair and was missing several fingers.  She had no energy left for healing it seemed.  The end would be near.  Denali smiled and his grin broadened at the look of horror across her face as she watched him.

“You lied to me, you filthy Xesued.” She flinched at the echo of Kaie’s words and it gave him strength. “You never told me that Carrick was my father.  He never told me!  I had to grow up in that provincial town when I could have been a Lord, a King!  But my brother showed me the truth in this world.  Kaie will give me unlimited power.”

“You have both sold your souls.” Her whisper was faint and desperate.  The tortured sound of her voice thrilled him in ways he had never imagined before.  A desire welled up from deep within him, he wanted more; he wanted to hear her scream in pain.

Adrian stood aside during the exchange between his younger brother and Tara.  It was true that they had been lovers.  There might have even been love.  But now he had power; pure, unlimited power with no burden, no responsibility.  Tara had offered power, but with it a price.  She wanted him to protect, to guard.  Kaie offered the chance for unlimited power during his lifetime which would be long.  Once he died though, his soul was Kaie’s.  It was a small price.  Adrian watched the desire well up in Denali and recognized it as the same that he had first felt.   Even now Tara’s beaten body jolted his body with excitement.  The final kill would be sweet.

“Enough, Denali.  I’ll handle it from here.”  He began charging up his power for the final, life wrenching blow.  Tara’s soul was weak, it would be easy.

“Adrian.”  Kaie’s deep sonorous voice called to him. “Take control of the color.  Give her pain, make her pay for the lies she told you.”  Adrian glanced up at the grandfatherly man as Kaie tossed him the ring that he controlled Tara with.  Kaie smiled with pride.

As Adrian caught the ring he caught the swell of fear leap at him through the bond from Tara.  He could also feel the barrier she had protected her innermost core with.  That would be broken first.  Kaie led Denali from the room as Adrian began the final steps in removing the will to live from Tara.  Kaie knew that Adrian would want to do this alone, to revel in the glorious pain emanating from the damned Xesued.

Adrian looked down at Tara with a fond smile on his face.  Tara cautiously smiled back, hesitancy filling the bond.  She thought he had been acting.  He removed her bonds and she collapsed to the floor, raw and bloody.  Adrian kneeled down beside her and gently stroked her face, her perfect face which he had left untouched.  He cradled her head in his hands murmuring softly, guarding his own emotions which he knew she could feel.  Gradually, ever so slowly, the barriers around her mind dissolved and her pure essence was there for the taking.  That a light so pure should exist sickened him and he nearly lost control.  Instead he continued to hold her to him.

“Oh Adrian I thought you had really turned my love.  Please can we leave?  Let us leave this awful place.”  Her mangled hand clutched his sleeve.  “Why would you hurt me so?  Take the pain away.  Please.”  The pain in her voice caused him to shudder with giddiness; the pain through the bond jolted through his body like an electric shock.  How he had longed for this day.

With the ease of practice Adrian wrenched her soul from her body, shredding the ethereal mist of it into pieces.  The look of shock on her face caused him to gasp out loud as her eternal scream echoed in his mind and through the castle.

Denali was swept off his feet in throes of ecstasy as he heard the scream reverberate through every mind in the world.

Kaie only smiled in knowing satisfaction.