"...he is tortured..."

(For my writing challenge, please feel free to participate!)

The infection is too much for him. His body cannot take any more pain, and collapsing, he gasps for one last time.

The blackbuck's vision fades. His body slowly stops moving. His head rests, and he draws his last breath.

And just like that, he is dead.

He opens his eyes, but cannot move.

His body still covered in her infection, he feels extremely heavy.

Then he sees it. He is being held down.






The infection now appears more like black ropes, binding him to the ground.

He tries to move, but the more he does, the more the infection digs into his skin.

He cries out, but there's no one to hear him.

He is alone in a place that seems much like a flat, barren land.

The sky is dark, the ground...oddly white.

And then his brown eyes catch a glimpse of her...

Iugulare is here, even after death...he is tortured...

"Hero...you'll never be rid of me. You've failed your own kind, and you will suffer my wrath!", she speaks, a fangy grin on her face.

The stoat's liquid body had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, and she crawls onto Quad's bound body, the infection oozing onto him, burning even more.

She loves every moment of it.

Quad cringes and cries out again.

He is trapped, he cannot move, he cannot run...

He cannot escape the pain...cannot even die...

Torture...terrible torture...

It goes on for countless amounts of time.

It could have been hours...it could have been years...

But Quad endures it, without an escape...without any means of hope...he endures.

A whisper from an unknown mouth catches his ears.

"For each and every bell that rings
Another angel gets his wings"





The ropes of black infection break.

Quad's wings regrow, and flourish outward.

His body bursts into light, the stoat shrieks in agony as she is vaporized with nowhere to hide.

He is free.

He is free.

He looks to the sky, and there he sees it...

The Endless Forest, the treetops reaching toward him, though seemingly upside down.

His four wings stretch, and he takes off from this world, going all the way up.

And when he breaks the barrier, he plummets...

But he soon glides...and finds his body...

And...

A deep gasp. Coughing up blood.

A heart beating. A body aching...

...But a body alive...