His nose wrinkled when he'd smelt it, the stench, the suffocating breath of iron wafting the room where bodies laid strewn across puddles of scarlet. Puddles, however, felt unbefitting. The soles of his feet sloshed and squelched in an ocean of deep crimson, hands and lost limbs brushed against him in lifeless reverie. They were corpses…he thought, droves of them stacked atop one another in gazes frozen in agony or perhaps that's what it felt like. Hell. A scenery no better fit than the vile elucidations miring holy walls and yet, it felt so much more harrowing. He averted his gaze, covering his nostrils although already accounted for by the cloth shrouding his lower face. From one part of the room to another, the image only grew more absurd.
They numbered in the hundreds, their wounds varying from crushed skulls to chasmic fissures. An explosion perhaps? The lack of scattered debris and a glaring epicentre dismantled the idea, the wounds themselves weren't possible for shrapnel either, chaotic but with purpose and intelligence although most of all…power. This was the work of something far more sinister—deranged, even. At that moment he felt that terror from within bubble up to the surface, just what kind of person—what kind of monster could be so inhumanly destructive? What kind of demon had the stomach to slaughter so many? Questions without answers…
'Are you afraid?'
His movements halted, turning in panicked motion to where he'd guessed the voice to have come from but all that met him were the dark grey walls stained in blood. Fear gripped his heart again, cold and unforgiving.
"Who's there!?" He shouted, frantic in grabbing the revolver holstered by his waist as the voice came through again.
'You know me well Beryl, veeery well…' from all sides, from all Cardinals of movement did the voice seem to reverberate around him as he panted, eyes glazed over in fear whilst the subtle footsteps of stomping leather boots made their way towards him.
"Leave me alone!!"
'I can't do that, you know that as well' It spoke to him so softly, so agonizingly familiar.
"I don't…I don't know you so get out!! Get out of here!!" There was a flash and a bang, a whizz of piercing metal as the trigger fired at the head of a corpse; turning it to mush.
'Out…?' The voice suddenly paused, shocked in its tone as Beryl's gaze grew ever grimmer. 'Look at yourself Beryl, look at what you've become'
There was laughter that resonated, insidious in nature, mocking so as to call it malevolent. "No, No!!" But it was to no avail, what did it mean? What was so funny? What had he become? The thoughts assailed him, spiralling in a whirlpool of his own making and driving him mad. He needed to know, he had to! Panting as his gaze slowly drew down to himself, to his figure and that image that finally met him 'Look at you, Look at the monster you are and say my name!'
Its name? He gazed at himself, at his clothes, at his feet, at his hands holding the revolver and panted again, consumed in that depravity. Bathed from head to toe in a scarlet veil, dripping of it, drowning in it; the spills of all those around him. Was he himself.
'Say my name!' The voice shouted again as he fell to his knees, fear striking him whilst the blood on his body—the flesh underneath it, coagulated and melded with the scarlet, his fingers elongating as the nails sharpened. 'Say my name!'
"BERYL VON UNGLÜS!!!!!" It was a scream, a howl, a cry of despair and one of blood thirsty hunger. "BERYL!!! BERYL!!! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!! BUT THE BLOOD, OOOH THE SWEET BLOOD!!!"