Without a word the man left. Snorting in derision, Elizabeth went back to making plans, easily falling into her own world. Cesare left her there, taking the girls over to the trash. “Alexandra, break up the bigger stuff so we can move it into a pile. Anastasia, this is the perfect time to work on controlled flame.” Quirking an eyebrow, he gave the girl a challenging look. “You feel like doing some practice?”

Understanding flowed between them with an ease few would ever find. It was more than showing off flashy moves. This was the perfect time to show the school how magnificently destructive she was, to let them know how far beneath her they were. She needed to be a goddess, but worship was a fickle thing needing flesh on the daily. Cesare wanted them to fear her, for their eyes to swim with terror born reverence. She needed to tear free from the constricting womb of a student, birthing herself into the world, wet and dripping as the elemental thing of malice she was.

Feeding parasitically off those needs was the twisted desire to hold her in his, to show the gladiators they were together. Maybe not as he wanted, and certainly not as she wanted, but still together. Cesare hungered for it, like a starving child holding out its hand, flies infesting its mouth, distended belly bursting with hunger, bony ribs outlined in paper thin skin.

Lips curving in an arch look, she turned her back to him, facing the open courtyard, she opened her arms in invitation. The ease of agreement shocked him, sending a spike of fear racing down his back. The depths of her trust scared the hell out of him. Cesare was never sure where that trust ended, and Anastasia's ravenous appetite for power began.

Coming up behind her, Cesare's hands rested on her shoulders, fingertips ghosting over the sides of her breasts as his hands caressed down her lush body, possessive, desperate, and needy. The crowd went still and silent at the claiming. His breath whispered over the wasted landscape of her neck, tracing her hip bones, Cesare hesitated, unsure how far she wanted him to go with the eyes of the students on them. Taking his hands in hers, she pushed back into him, molding their bodies together. Anastasia drew his hands low on her hips, pulling them across her thighs, tight and high, inches from cupping her sex. Intimate, sexual, saturated with meaning, it drew blushes from girls and envious looks from the boys.

“You ready to show them what you can do princess?” Anastasia shivered as cool words washed over ravaged skin. Caught in the moment with her, Cesare's tongue traced over the tortured flesh in a forbidden caress.

Trembling at the touch, Anastasia’s voice was weak. “You need to stop that or I’m going to cry.” Her voice was husky with desire, barbed with vulnerability.

“Hmmm, but you taste so good.” More than words, they were conjuring’s of shadowed air, sweat on a moon stuck night, the sweet smell of rain on a summer’s darkness, the thundering power of lightning, and the oppressive wet heat of the south. His tongue licked its way over the valleys and ridges of scarred skin as a low whine cut softly through the air. “Your stunning.” The word rolled across her skin in a demanding, wanton caress.

Anastasia's sexual aura flared to life. A wave of wanton need stripping the faces of the students, black currents wrapping tendrils around young bodies, pulling them into the depths of their tormented desires. Arousal flared in their eyes, need tightening flesh, hungers demanding claws pulling at thoughts, embarrassed looks passing between them.

At ground zero, Cesare felt the aura beat against his soul and pound into his body. Rampant need blazed, hot and vicious, a deep growl echoed, thrumming along Anastasia’s bones. Her low purr was a sensuous touch, twisting over and through his base growl.

“If I say you win … will you stop?” Anastasia said breathlessly, reigning in her aura, purposely dialing it down to a low current that teased the senses.

“I thought you liked to tease?” Cesare asked, teeth nipping the plastic smooth skin of her neck.

“Only when I’m on top.” Holding his hands, her tone turned soft with truth born of soul deep need. “I don’t care about these children and their disgusted, patronizing looks. You’re the only man I want to be with. That I can’t give you what you want doesn’t change my love.”

Turning her head, she met his lips, greedily pushing her tongue into his mouth. Relishing the kiss, Cesare drank deeply of her taste. A low growl sounded from his chest, wrapping around her whine of need. Desperately, her tongue plundered his mouth, seeking to take him into herself, to devour and make him part of her. Cesare felt her needy, crazed desire in Anastasia's mad, darting tongue.

Sliding apart, they were inches away, breathing the same air, locked on each other's eyes. This had been more than he’d expected, more than he’d thought she'd give him. There was no turning back for her, she wouldn’t be able to get a guy to go out with her after this public coming out. No one wanted a girl who’d kissed the shit bag of the school so savagely in front of everyone. She'd be tainted goods. Guys might want to fuck her, but they wouldn’t want to be with her.

Bewildered shock rampaged through the crowd. Disgust, envy, sadness, and the raw hate of thwarted dreams filled the bloody trenches the shock left in its wake. This wouldn't make him any friends, but he was full up on that front. Looking over at Alexandra, he met approving eyes. Complicated didn't begin to explain the bond between them. Alexandra wanted to serve the master of the valley of death, a man steeped in brutality. She wanted Cesare to be a predator worthy of her service, a creature that took what it wanted, be it mates or flesh.

Behind the vampire, Elizabeth watched with a weary smile. A lot was said in that brief look. She knew Cesare loved theakatharton with a burning need of tormented blessings. Elizabeth wanted him to find someone his own age to love, a girl available in a way Elizabeth would never be.

“Now.” The word darkened the world with its utterance, a command to the vampire and akatharton.

Instantly, a piece of wood flew into the air, Alexandra responding to the command without question. Anastasia dropped into her trance, the abyss pulling her down with breathtaking speed. Power roared around her, the Ebon Flame a living thing rushing for the world of light.

The flames flowed through her in a river of holy defilement, the usual barriers dropping as Anastasia embraced Cesare's mindscape. Pieces of wood flew into the air above the crowd, met by strings of annihilation in an orgy of blazing black flame. Anastasia’s hands wove through the air in a ballet of destruction. Tendrils of hungry black dancing through the air, leaving afterimages of corruption across the pure day.

Leaning into him, Cesare’s words drowned the girl in his arms. Anastasia was ravenous for his presence, greedily saturating taking him into her mind, from the feel of his hardness pressing into her ass to the breath along her neck, every sense woven together by the velvet shadows that painted a world across her mind. She was powerful, but when she surrendered to him, utterly giving up her being into his hands, that's when she became a black unholy sun, the image of who she hungered to be.

The display drew the gladiators like flies to rotting meat, fighters thrived on violence. Carnage was their holy sacrament, a way of life and the path of dreams. The flaming, cataclysmic, destruction pulled the strings of their souls. Awe struck, the courtyard watched the unleashed prodigies power. Grinning, Alexandra sped up, becoming a blur of movement, purposely tossing the wood above the crowd. Multiples pieces gathered in the sky as Alexandra shifted to the harder training routine they’d worked on.

Responding to his gentle words, the lines of flame gave way to snake quick tentacles weaving through the air, striking at wooden prey. Shooting from her hands, they twisted through the air, disappearing as wood was consumed. Another serpentine flame birthing itself from her pale hands, desperate to commit its own ordained suicide. Hate beat down on the students as they watched in adrenaline fueled fear at the display of raw, undiluted force. Ash coated the ground, dusting the gladiators with the remains of her victims.

“That’s it,” Alexandra said quietly.

Sweat ran in streaks down Anastasia's face, catching in ridges of skin, pooling in valleys of melted flesh. She poured heat into the air like a blast furnace, Cesare's skin prickled with a slow burn where their skin touched. Kissing her neck, he tasted the tang of salt. "Good job, princess."

Running her hands down his arms, Anastasia threaded her fingers with his were they rested along her inner thighs. “We make a good team.”

“Always,” Cesare said, laying another lingering kiss along her sweat soaked neck.

“And forever,” she whispered.

Stepping back, his hands smoothed over her taught hips to the smooth hills of her butt as she turned to face him. Anastasia traced his face in a needy caress. “There will come a day when it’s not so complicated.”

Alexandra had broken down and cleared out the garbage as she'd made targets for them. The area was far from clean, with mold creeping along the ground, tendrils of growth working their way up the wall in its mad need for rot. Small hills of decomposing material dotted the area where dirt had buried decomposing garbage.

With a rumble the earth shivered, undulating in a wave, frothing, the hard ground transformed into tilled soil. Washing up against the walls in a wave, the earth sucked the mounds of decomposing wood and leather into itself, stripping the stone of mold. Valley's and dips smoothed out and hardened in seconds, leaving perfectly level ground in its wake. The swell of the wave washed under Cesare and the girls, the ground reshaping itself to the will of Gaia’s Beloved Daughter.

This corner of the courtyard was as smooth as glass, with a ridge marking the boundary to the rest of the courtyard. Elizabeth raised her hand, grass sprouting in a rush of green, a vibrant emerald that stopped knife sharp at the boundary. Lush and alive, the grass was the perfect green Cesare had only ever seen in Raven's Rest. Born from her soul, it reflected her connection to the earth, an ideal birthed out of power and will.

Winking across the few feet that separated them, Elizabeth grinned joyously at the act of creation. Cesare walked across that no-man's-land between her and the rest of the world. Even the girls wouldn’t approach her when she was in the fullness of her power. People forgot how powerful she was, they attacked the vulnerability she could never truly hide. And in her fragileness, she let them hurt her when she could so easily bury them.

Elizabeth watched him, unable to hide that painful vulnerability, the fracture others had hammered into her soul. Rejection, hate, disgust, and cruelty, born in the hearts of children had scarred her, leaving her with a crippled soul like him. She held his eyes, unwilling to turn away, braced to take the pain of his rejection while hope wiggled in the mire of her soul. She couldn’t help the power she commanded, any more than she could change the gentleness of her heart. She was better than him, he knew that, all the things he’d wished he could be, she was. Empathetic, giving, and loving, she cared for things and people that he didn’t have the heart to. She was a gift from the Lady of the Earth, manipulated by her parents and people, degraded by her peers.

Walking up to her, he watched as another one of those walls she’d built crumbled to dust. He wouldn’t run from her power. He’d stand by her until the world stopped turning and death came for him in all its beauty. It was worth it to earn one of her gentle smiles, the ones she only ever gave to him.

Standing beside her, the mountainous hulking power of the earth towered above him, an eldritch weight felt along the edges of the soul and in the lizard brain. The gladiators watched from a safe distance, whispers squirming through the crowd on Elizabeth's arrogance in using her powers openly.

Stepping sidewise, she bumped shoulders with him, it was the only way she could touch him in public. Raising her hand, the earth tore open, roots squirming from the depths, writhing and whipping the air as they wove themselves together. Gray as Cesare’s soul, they intertwined with what looked like mindless force. Shapes born in seemingly mindless movements.

Wolves appeared as roots formed an arena for fighting. Twisting and knotting, they created a running pack with barred, feral grins. Furious joy radiated from every line of their coursing bodies, a sense of untamed wildness that called to his spirit. It was family and slaughter, brutal survival wedded to serene acceptance.

The fence firmed and went gun metal gray, the earth settling flat as a board. Cesare met Elizabeth’s shy eyes. “It’s gorgeous, the finest thing I’ve ever seen.” Blushing, she gifted him with her gentle smile.

“Now for the wooden men,” she said with satisfaction. Raising her hands, power thrummed through the air, a beating pulse slow and steady, the beat of the earth mother.

She must have seeded the ground with her bamboo shoots while he’d worked with Anastasia. The first one shot up, growing out of the ground with eager, gleeful life. Shoots wound around each other, binding into intricate life like joints, legs, and arms, under Elizabeth’s exacting eyes. Weapons sprouted from hands, swords, tridents, and knives, called into being under the touch of her power.

Like soldiers, they marched along in a line. Far enough from each other to allow someone to practice without worrying about hitting the guy next to them. Cesare's hands ran over the muted green of the men. They had the same locking mechanism that his training dummies had, but were equipped with weapons that could be set into their hands in any pose Cesare wanted.

It was a mindboggling piece of engineering joined to priceless art. The grooves in the weapons locked them into the bamboo hands preventing a strike from knocking it lose. He couldn’t count the number of ways he could use a dummy like this, it was a quantum leap beyond the poles the gladiators were using.

“You’re a genius.” Pitifully inadequate, they were a moron’s words on viewing the perfection of the Sistine Chapel. Usually the students used the palus to go through a series of moves known as the dictata. That black hole of time could be turned into something dynamic, evolving the training into actual learning. It wouldn’t, couldn’t, replace sparring and one on one weapons practice, but it was exponential leap beyond the simple logs the others used.

“You’re too generous,” Elizabeth said quietly, hands running over a bamboo man fondly.

“No one would ever call me that,” Cesare said softly. “You may have the power of a goddess but you're more than that. You're a creator in a world of users and destroyers, you bring beauty to a world that despises the original. If the world were a fair place, you'd be exalted as the wonder you are. I can’t tell you how proud I am to have you as my friend, even if I only exist in your shadow.”

Red climbed her cheeks until he could see it even under the corpse pale make up. She couldn't keep the radiant smile off her face even if she deliberately avoided his eyes. “I’ll add the runes.”

Walking down the line, her fingers traced the eldritch runes across the dummies chests. As she left each dummy, their chests bore a rune that tore at reality, burrowing holes in the fabric of the world, each a window into an alien, nameless dimension, where power was born out of mad need.

He felt the girls come up on his sides. “She could bury this school. Doesn’t that ever scare you?” Anastasia asked.

To them, Elizabeth was a power that slept fitfully. The mistress of unfathomable force, a cataclysm towering ready and hungry over the world. She embodied the mystery of nature, gentle and giving, wrathful and terrible when roused. They knew what she could do, and while it might not scare them, it made them wary of the woman. Maybe that was the root of the hate the school had for the beautiful teacher; they couldn’t face their own fear of her power.

“No more than I fear the rest of you,” Cesare said simply. “You come from a world were only a handful of things can hurt, let alone kill you. Where I come from, everything's stronger than me. Anything could kill me. Meth addicts with crazed eyes, pimps looking for an easy piece of ass to sell, gang bangers hunting for some blood play. Fear just doesn’t have the same shine when you bed its cold corpse.”

They'd grown up in the realm of the glittering, golden elite, money, power, prestige, and entitlement, taken in with blood laced mothers milk. The best schools, private tutors, and all the support they could ever want, everything and anything to make them a success. Completely outside of their genetic gifts, they radiated the confidence of those that knew their worth. They'd never lived a life were every minute was soaked with terror and everyone a threat.

“You want to give the arena a shot?” Alexandra asked with a mad grin.