Cesare let the hatred spread through him. Burned by the twin demands of protecting and hurting them. Falling into himself, he dropped into the secret depths of his soul. The Kundalini shone golden, the heat of his emotions running over its dry scales setting them shining with sunspot hot desire. A susurration sounded through the quiet places of his soul, the sound of divine scales rasping against each other. Rising up, the serpent spread it's golden hood, revealing the pristine white underneath.

Its pure light enveloped the Root Chakra, the hearts blood lotus opening, pouring fiery energy onto his soul. Spiraling up, the serpent held itself behind the orange Sacral Chakra. The six petals of the chakra gently unfurled, feral power slamming into his soul and body.

If the Root Chakra was fire and force, then the Sacral Chakra was distilled violence. It wasn’t strength, or speed, it was instinctive hate. The whispery, venomous voice that spoke of the knife on the table when you were yelling at your mother. The ghostly words that told of plans to kill your best friend after seeing him with your girl. The tendril of evil that thrilled at the beauty of a blade.

It wasn’t the pure instinct of the wild, it was something more, something beyond natural. This was the instinct to kill, to harm, to destroy for the pleasure of destroying. Killing wasn’t a means to an end, it was an end in and of itself. Death came for all things, its devouring maw taking the young and old with equal relish. That was what the Sacral Chakra was, a ravening need birthing decay, corruption, and death.

The violent, caustic spill rushed through his body, filling his veins with the desire for death. Cold and clean, the flood of lethal instinct loosened muscles in preparation. He wanted to kill, wanted to end a life, felt the rightness of that action burrowing into his bones.

The Sacral Chakra had doubled the well of prana he drew from, his soul growing in strength as the centers of prana opened inside it. The stygian ocean of prana was inside him, but he was limited, chained in how much he could use consciously. Cesare had to decide how much of each he needed. The strength of a demon, or death’s whisper, it was the choice his life hung on. Like a cup that held only so much, he had to choose the mixture, what he needed from moment to moment.

Cesare’s body was getting used to the guiding hands of the end of all things. It drove him in a way the Root Chakra never had. A tortured guardian angel of violence, it sat on his shoulder, lapping up the carnage Cesare dealt. It wasn’t evil, any more than life was good, it simply existed.

Aleph burst across his senses in a wave, sterilizing everything before it. The world froze under its alien sense, life stripped to fleshy organs and disgusting fluids, people reduced to sacks of meat. There was no grace under its un-sight, all things skinned of mystery, raw muscle quivering with agonized life. Blackness eclipsed his eyes, birthed in the void they weren’t so much dark as the absence of being.

Beth’s warm embrace ran over his skin, her love penetrating muscle, infusing bone, fortifying his skin with care beyond his knowing. Fiercely protective, it warded him from harm. His body was his home, the only one he’d ever known, and Beth meant to keep that home safe. Veins turned obsidian black, lines of live conquered by Beth and her needs.

Walking past the blackened area where Anastasia had made her stand, Cesare took a plot of grass for his own. Unrelieved black, the bug hovered over the ground. The buzz of its wings cut through the song of the Bacchante. It stopped on the line of carnage, body hanging queerly still in the air.

Black, compound eyes, watched Cesare blankly without a twitch of emotion. A statue of black chitin driven by a merciless mind. He was nothing more than an animal, to be butchered and fed to the Hive. It had as much care for him as a kid had for a drive thru hamburger. He wasn’t alive, wasn’t anything but a beast.

The students waited with bated breath while the killers let the moment ripen. They both felt it, that tipping point when violence becomes more than potential, the kill becomes real, the last whimper of the rational animal falling silent. In that dark moment, deathly whispers of soul born demons crawled across the heart, strangling kindness, making a lie that we're anything but beasts that kill.

Slowly, the queen circled Cesare, always facing him, never changing from its dead still focus, the constant buzz of its wings loud as it pierced through the wild flutes of the Bacchante. Cesare refused to follow it with his eyes. He tracked the queen with senses that burned along the neurons of his brain. He knew the feel of glossy chitin, the rough touch of its wings, the faceted eyes without eyelid, hard pincers hidden just inside its mouth, and the sharp edges of the talons that cleaved the air.

Cesare could even sense the pheromones it left in its wake. The cloud of scent markers, displaying its dominance to the Hive. He could feel them, see them, knew them as intimately as the sunlight washing over his face.

Standing motionless, Cesare gave it nothing to work with. No shuffling, no sidelong glances, no readying of the feet for its rush. A blank slate that gave nothing, without even a token defense for the queen to worry over. Whispers broke out in the crowd at the lack of life in him, speculation running like wild fire, gleeful smiles breaking out at his sacrificial offering to the queen.

Circling behind him, Cesare felt the change in the bug, its wings shifting just enough for the air flow to change. Darting forward in a blur of murderous intent, the queen came for him. The whisper of death became a shout, its cold, bony hands gripping his flesh. The Enochian Blade came out with the smoothness of a cat unsheathing its claws, the roll of a great white’s eyes from black to white. Pulsing with life, the blades steel was warm, like gripping his still beating heart. It didn’t feel like part of him, it was part of him.

Liquid steel muscles flowed, deaths cold hands guiding his body, turning sidewise becoming blade thin, arm striking out in a serpent’s kiss. Its talons bracketed him, missing tender flesh a flayed inch. The blade sank into the queen’s head like water, his arm jarring as the chitin passed the blade, slamming his grip.

Stopped in mid-motion, the light of life snuffed out in the things faceted eyes, leaving only meat behind. Lodged between its eyes, the blade thrummed with holy power. Threaded through his subtle body, white tendrils pulsed in a feeding frenzy, taking in his dense, viscous black prana, purifying it into quicksilver energy, pouring it into the bugs body.

Sliding off the blade, the bug hit the ground in a whisper of sound. A pall of silence and disappointment hung in the air with even the Bacchante stopping their wild piping. Cesare turned, making his way back to the stairs. They’d wanted him to fail, dreamed of seeing his dismembered guts on the ground to rot.

Kids stood in one's and twos. They wore black shirts with a snarling silver wolf's head on the shoulder. He knew them, had seen them when life had stripped their souls of dignity, draping them in humiliations hated glory. Laying on the ground, penned in by tormentors with nowhere to go, days of degradation marching endlessly before them. Until the day the Furies stood between them and their demons, forcing the horrors to slink back into the sewer.

But Cesare shared something with them that Alexandra and Anastasia couldn’t. They were victims, part of a club no one wanted to be in. Cesare had cowered, taken the hits, been someone's bitch because he didn't have the strength to beat them back. The only difference between them was, in his time of need, no one had come. Their membership was written in scars, blank eyes, tensed muscles, and fearful flinches. They were the food that made the strong, the cast-off meat after the butcher had taken his due. Left with only their hatred of themselves, poisoned by the world into believing they deserved it.

They stood up for him now, partly out of obligation, but more because he was one of their own. They’d all been beaten down into a pool of their own blood and shit, picking themselves up from that place a little more broken. The darkness had washed over them, taking bits of who they were with it. Until one of their own had risen out of the sewer, still dripping with shit and stinking of piss, stepping between them and the tide. It wasn’t about liking him. They stood because he was the only one to ever stand for them.

A fist of people stood up as one, fit, hard, and ready, they wore their black shirts with a different kind of defiance. Yoshisune glared at the sitting kids around them. Cesare’s students, the girls and boys he was making into killers.

None of them mattered. The broken would flee from his side if he failed, their support disappearing like mist under the morning sun. They believed in him because he won, no one wears the shirt of a loser. His students valued him for the training he gave them, their loyalty was transactional.

Even as he started up the stairs, the student body was well on their way to exiting the stadium. They’d gotten what they wanted. Death, decapitation, blood, and gore, spiced with all the suspense a sadistic fuck could need. The only thing they hadn’t gotten was his body on the grass to gloat over.

Cresting the stairs, he looked into the faces of the women. Some had known he'd win; others had only hoped. He knew how hard it was for them to watch him walk onto the bloody grass. He faced that angry impotence every time he watched Anastasia and Alexandra walk onto the field of slaughter.

“How?” Elizabeth asked, fingers white knuckled and crackling with tension.

Cesare smiled slightly, the urge to put his arms around her and make this easier so strong that a slight tremble ran through him. “Ken no Sen. There's a moment when an attacker’s will and movement are committed totally to the attack. In that space, there's a window of opportunity that can be exploited.”

She nodded, not in understanding, but in the way of someone looking for something to hold onto after a flood of terror. Elizabeth didn’t care how he'd survived, she just needed to hear something, anything, to know he'd made it. His death had been so much talk, an intellectual exercise of strategy, until something of alien grace comes inches from killing your friend.

Elizabeth hadn’t been the only one to realize that talking was a far cry from seeing a boy walk to his death. They’d known the odds were stacked against him. They'd pushed that fact away, content in telling themselves he'd always come out on top before. Seeing him come inches from death had shaken their fantasy land of lies. Now they knew a day would come when he was butchered.

The happiness of his survival was strangled by that raw truth. It wasn’t this fight; it was every fight. He was never the favorite to win, always coming from behind. The thing about long shots is, they're destined to lose, eventually. The women didn’t understand, how could they when they'd always been winners.

Cesare's life was a tenuous thing of lies in this place of predators. “You used the Enochian Blade?” Kali asked, the first to shake the grim predictions of her thoughts.

“That obvious?” Cesare asked carefully.

“No, it was too far away for anyone to see, even I wasn't sure,” Kali reassured him.

The darkness of the underground enfolded Cesare, tearing the light from his eyes, hiding the cruelness of his soul and the blood on his hands. The faded runes glowed comfortingly from their perches of stygian roots. Alexandra wouldn't wear the swords any longer than she had to. No matter how strong her faith, the cruel blades were drenched too deeply in her family’s blood for her to take them lightly.

Alexandra was the first into the room locking onto her ebony jacket with an urgency cut with the edge of vulnerability. Caressing down its sleeve, her fingers played across the liquid metal. The lion shone with a deadly, pure grace even in the murky light.

“I didn’t want it to get ruined.” A slight tremble came to her fingers when they ran over the lion. The jacket slid over her muscled shoulders, a river of black malice returning to its owner. Fierce and satisfied, her smile was wildly dangerous.

They left the cursed blades boxed up with the rifle and gun set beside them. Even Alexandra didn’t have a problem leaving the priceless swords behind. Not in this place of deep earth, protected by the nameless hungers Elizabeth had conjured to guard the womb.

Coming out of the archway, Cesare faced the speculative looks of the harem. His winning against the queen hadn't changed their calculations. The queen had been lethal, but she wasn't an experienced wet worker. The harem would roll over Cesare like a speed bump. There was no shame in that, not when Cesare had every intention of never getting caught in their jaws.

Kali threaded her silky fingers with his calloused ones. Smiling up at him, her words were soft. “I knew you’d win.”

Cesare gave the dark eyed beauty a lop-sided smile. “That makes one of us,” he said, eyeing the coming werewolves.

The three predators came across the grass with the easy grace of born runners and trained fighters. It was a lazy smoothness birthed in sweat and hard work. Cesare could almost see the wolf in their long, lopping walk, the turn of muscle and the rolling of the foot. Troy lead with his wife on his left and his son on the right.

The harem flowed forward, forming a cordon, not for Cesare, but because he was next to Kali. Stopping outside the circle of protection, Troy met Kali’s cruel eyes. At Kali's slow nod, Nzinga and Micheal moved aside enough to let the three through.