Page 107 of Retrograde

Too scared of what I’d hear if I ever listened to the other side.

To fight a monster, I thought I had to become one, and I damn well nearly did.

Until she came along and reminded me that it’s no victory if our humanity is the price we pay for it.

Because if we give that up, then what are we even fighting for?

I know now that I’d do a lot worse than just put on a mustard yellow uniform to bring her back.

I would do anything to bring her back.

I will do anything to bring her back.

And if there is life after death, and I end up burning in hell for all eternity for what I’m about to do, then so fucking be it. Any hell is better than the hell of knowing how unfair I was to her. I will not squander the one chance I might have to fix it.

After an endless drive, ornate spires and onion domes finally come into view. The Solstice Citadel perches on a hillock like a hen on a nest of eggs, rising above the tree crowns lining an abandoned village. A skeleton sits on a nearby porch bench, a beret still on its head. I speed up the serpentine road towards the gates.

Then I’m nearly shot when I attempt to drive around the barrier. I break some little shit’s nose and crack someone else’s ribs when they try to take my weapons away from me, and it takes four men to hold me down. Until a transmitter in the security shack crackles to life, and a sharp voice barks an order at the guards that I’m to be let through with my weapons.

By the time I reach the main entrance on foot, a man in regal black robes is already waiting for me in front of the heavy wooden gate. Startling blue eyes scan me from head to toe, and something twitches underneath the groomed, jet-black beard.

Lars Krane.

He must be in his fifties but looks a good ten years younger and dangerous as fuck—a man with a secret agenda, a man who’s always ten steps ahead, a man who’s an island upon himself and only plays for a team of one, of which he is the sole member. If I didn’t need him, I’d kill him preventatively the same way I’d squash a mosquito before it’d have a chance to bite me.

“The infamous Necromancer,” Krane says, his voice soft and surprisingly feeble. “I cannot wait to hear the reason behind this honour.” Even though I tower over him by almost a foot, his presence is anything but small. “You’re not here to crucify anyone this time, I assume?”

“I’m here to negotiate a deal,” I grit out between clenched teeth, vitriolic rage bubbling in my veins and searing the edges of my vision, my panic magnifying by the second and shortening my fuse just as fast.

He lets out a small chuckle—nothing more than a “hmpf”. But it is a loaded, arrogant sound, saying all the things he doesn’t need to say.

“A man who is allowed to keep his weapons should, at the very least, grant me the courtesy of not concealing his face from me.”

He shifts his weight, making it clear he won’t let me through unless I do what he wants. I rip my mask off and hold his gaze, my jaw clenched.

He takes his precious fucking time studying me before finally stepping to the side with another soft, dismissive chuckle that says it all; I am not what he expected.

“Men of legends,” he drawls lazily. “It is their destiny to disappoint. Never quite as grand in person.”

Fuck him.

He leads me through the gate and into the main building. Its corridors smell of incense, dust and old stone. He holds a door open for me, and we enter a small audience hall.

Slapping sounds and ragged breaths invade my ears. Stepping in, I turn my head to the side, and my gaze lands on a huge man.

There’s so much to notice about him that my poor eyes don’t know what to take in first.

With his flaming hair and smooth, sculpted, marble-like flesh, he looks like an ancient Greek statue. Except, there is a noose around his throat, hanging from the wooden beam overhead. He’s teetering on his tiptoes, the rope cutting into his neck.

He’s wearing a black leather apron, tiny on his frame. Several vibrators and an ornate knife handle are protruding from the front pouch. Aside from that, he only has a teardrop thong on with a cock ring that seems too small for the veiny monstrosity in his hand. He’s stroking it fast and hard with his left hand whilst the right is wedged between his ass cheeks, the thrusting anal vibrator between his fingers set to what must be the maximum speed.

His eyes are closed, lips parted, expression raptured. He is either completely unaware of or indifferent to our presence.

His eyes snap open with a flash of amber, he convulses with barely a choked sound escaping him, and then he looks to the ground to guide his cock as ropes of cum shoot out of it, steering it in a shape of ... what the fuck?

“Did he just ... unload in the shape of a heart?” I whisper to Krane.

“Ah, yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, he did,” he replies lightly, his tone conversational. “He does that a lot.”