“Pick me apart,” I gasp, pulling him down to cover me. My eyes are dilated, my fingers just a hint of claw at his throat. I am panting as I hold his gaze. Arching up into the palm of his hand, my body begs him to touch the stitches which I guarded from him so long. “Examine my insides. I fucking dare you.”
His caress on my patchwork flesh is clinical, careful. I don’t want careful. I’m not a goddamn china doll. You’d think he’d get the message when I’m mewling like a cat in heat, but he seems content with the deft exploration that I find maddening.
I hiss and sink my teeth into his throat.
“Fuck me, you bastard,” I growl, squirming. All I can think of are his hands- his sterile, spider-like, surgeon’s hands- sticking into me and tearing me open at the seams.
“You’re aroused,” he observes.
I punch him.
***
“No!” Frantic, I pawed at his chest – not rising not falling not breathing why isn’t he breathing – searching for the wound, trying to stopper it. My hand found cold, smooth steel instead of flesh. It was inside of him, and I had to pull it out, had to get it out of him, had to save him. I took hold and wrenched it free, my eyes never leaving his. His gaze was fathomless, sightless blue.
Raziel’s body crackled with a strange static. There was a faint hum.
He evaporated in a spray of gore.
I was left shaking in a thin veneer of cruor… clutching the blood-spattered hilt of a broken sword. A hellish shriek filled my ears, and I belatedly recognized my own anguished screams as I crumpled in the void where he lay a moment before. Everything began to make sense.
I remembered.
***
I am the Ossochanter. I am Ozymandius. I am Chanter and Raziel and Rosiel.
Once, I was Ozryel.
“Call me Ozzie,” I rasp, and plunge Soul Reaver’s reunited blade into his chest to the hilt.
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