#;kingcliff

[lamentmournanddespair]

Wildcliff, killcount?

"... Many Wuthering Heights have fallen to me. I have lost count... but I am refracted across too many realities at this point. So I don't care to know. Why should I care, when the only one I never meant to kill..."

"... will die, at my hands. Again, and again."

[lamentmournanddespair]

"Where was I."

"... Mm. Right. The campaign of destruction."

[lamentmournanddespair]

"It's getting closer to the end of the month and I cannot even hunt vampires. This is why I'm depressed."

[lamentmournanddespair]

This presence, approaching... Familiar, foreboding.

The chains that bind them to him tighten. The Erlking holds those who harmed him in a contemptuous grip. And these new stragglers are only just spared the same.

"Pour your rage upon this realm. Mourn with me... for your new loss."

[lamentmournanddespair]

...

...

...

When the Wild Hunt emerges, all is still. The stormcloud above has ceased thundering, though the rain still lightly falls. The number of the Hunters... has grown.

They are still the restless dead... and many of Port Obello's fallen still walk with them.

[lamentmournanddespair]

A low rumble of thunder across the sky punctuates many heads turning as one.

And as the echo sounds over the great growth, a split second...

Turns into several more seconds, when a blade plunges into that instant and tears it open. That gap in time, between potential and destination... was all that he needed.

Wuthering Heights can hide in many places, but he will always find them, no matter where they go. No matter what ends to which timelines they conceal themselves within. They will be found.

The gap between seconds closes.

They will return with their spoils soon.

[lamentmournanddespair]

the forest knows what you have taken . even now , it rises up to greet you , wrapping vines around your men and pulling them deep , back into the earth . bone , broken by ever green . branches scrape and thorns pierce .

in the distance , there is the faintest of light .

Thorns pierce but the pain is so forever engrained that it is just another moment of life.

The dirt devours them. But the rain washes down just overhead, like a personal cloud, and those bones are revealed again. A low rumble of thunder promises lightning that never comes.

Vines are scraped and gashed but never cut clean through. Left to mend, left to live. Every step, heather blooms and when the foot is lifted, heather decays.

"You used them not," the Erlking growls, "and yet you try to take them from me? Just as all things do..."

[lamentmournanddespair]

The scent of the earth. Heather and moss, dirt and rain. Iron. Mold. Decay.

Heavy footsteps against the earth.

There was a world for each of him. And he lived in each world.

In this path it would reveal itself. When the moon hung right against the branches stretching out to the sky. He would find them, then, and collect more. More. More. Until none were left.

That house felt like a ball and chain.