Two kings fighting to death# 11

Broken by his loss, his family left Romania.

Even though crazed and trapped,  Constantine's life force kept his people and land alive.

*******

How?

The king shivers from the memory of her words.

Constantine.

It was impossible. She could not know.

How on earth?

He was hysteric. It had been a lifetime since someone had last said that name. No human remembered,  and no Romanian dared.

The wind howled,  perhaps spurred on by the storm in his head. Dark ominous clouds gathered overhead,  as if a harbringer of the calamity to come.

He feels it. The surge of power.

He feels him, even before he sees him. A slight wave in the earth, and yet he recognizes that trace of power all too well.

His heart hammers in his chest,  threatning to burst out; blood rings in his ears, even as he gives the command to his people to run.

He knows the other can feel it. The communication he has established,  and yet he hopes his presence will be enough to distract him.

He gulps in sorrow. Recognizing that scent. 

Crazed or not, this is his son.

"Hello Father"

He looks back at a pair of crimson  eyes.

***********

A man stands at the edge of the forest. His eyes crimson with madness,  his cheeks hollow with fatigue.

He steps out from below the canopy of trees; a rip in the clouds allows the moon to shine on him.

He smirks.

Readying himself for the massacre he himself would bring.

He remembers waking under the earth, hearing the ground talking soothingly to him, feeling the dirt like a cool balm to the heated madness of his mind.

Home.

Until he snarled as he picked up a foreign imprint.

The mark of a king.

He thrashed under the Earth, his animal side livid at the clear challenge to his authority.

He was king. Nobody else.

It is his father. The imprint had changed, and yet there is no way he would not recognize it.

The old man did not understand,  the land does not obey him anymore. The title has passed him already,  it belongs to Constantine now.

He can play king, but he will never truly be one.

He gave the earth a command to part over his head,  which it didn't. He smiled as he reached out to his father's bindings. They were strong,  and yet he was stronger.

Except he didn't try to break them. He went back to the call that woke him up. It was his name,  reverbrating through the ground,  and yet it had penetrated his father's safeguards,  the deepest of his people's magic.

He didn't care, he decided. The rush of a potential kill working deep inside him. He flexed his body, working rusty joints again, and cut through the magical bindings like a hot knife through butter.

He broke out from the Earth, looking at the men standing at the base of the statue he was buried under.

Once his most trusted friends and allies- his King's Guard.

Now his captors.

He snarled,  hating these men he would once die for; these men who would once die for him.

He hated that he salivated at the thought of their deaths, hated that he has lost so much of himself to madness.

And whose fault was that?

The anger in his head grew to a white, hot flash. She was dead. And it was all there doing, he did not know how. Only that it was.

Only that in his pain,  he had to blame somebody.

He knocked them out with a single command.

And in his haste to face his father, he did not even notice his ability to think rationally again, didn't notice he had just spared lives, when he enjoyed nothing more than  taking them.

Now standing before the man that created him- that taught him the lesson of courage and honor,  he thinks of how far they have come.

Something moves inside him,  even as he feels his father turn rigid. He hears the command he sends out to his people, stands still as he feels utter terror from their end.

And there he stands,  broken and cold. Crazed and King,  as he greets the man he once looked up to.

"Hello father"

He looks back and Constantine sees himself reflected in those eyes. The same shape- except his now glowed a deep crimson.

He smiles, even as he feels himself fall to madness once again.

Red clouds his vision, and he lunges with a growl.

Claws clash and both father and son growl in warning. Hits after hits,  some missed, some evaded and others that cut through skin, muscle and bone.

Grunts and snarls echo through the clearing as two kings fight to the death. Although at the last minute, the  balance of power shifts.

Fot how could it not? A present king,  fighting with the former. A son fighting a father.

All it takes is a simple misstep and Stefan looses his footing. His breath leaves him in a whoosh as he hits the ground hard.

That one mistake is all it takes for Constantine to best him. Fangs bared,  he looks down at his father.

Claws out, instincts pruned, ready for the kill.

He strikes like a big cat, and just as his claws graze his father's jugular, a movement in the jungle catches his eyes.

A face that penetrates  the cloud of madness around his thoughts and makes him take a step back.

His mate.

His beloved.

His Alina.

He howls in anguish as he follows her. Leaving the man he had almost killed forgotten at the ground.

___________________________________

He is back.

Constantine.

Our hero and our villain.

What do you think? Thoughts please. Let me know what you feel for the story.

- Elliana