Or'do surged on, his fists grinding against the battered and riven edge of his foe's scythe, deepening the shadowed web of cracks that already claimed much of its surface.

Aleorn weeping, desolate, hopeless.

Crang! Or'do's fist lent its voice to the dissonant choir of battle, jarring Gehrman's scythe far to the left, nearly wrenching it from his grasp. Dust exploded from his rear foot as Or'do lunged in, molten fist crunching against his foe's breast, nearly shattering the man's sternum, and hurling him perhaps six paces back where he stood hunchbacked and panting, shock clear on his face.

"I've done this to you." Aleorn's eyes no longer shine with that characteristic mirth, that glorious wealth of flame even a bonfire's warmth could not match.

 Or'do's fist rang against his foe's blade as Gehrman blundered it into a diagonal guard, its badly worn edge crumpling beneath the blow.

"I've done this to you."

Anger swelled, and with the speed of pelting hail, the thunderous force of a landslide, he slammed an iron fist against Gehrman's weapon, wrenching it from numbed fingers and flinging it across the wilting grass and bare earth to a point perhaps twenty paces away where it buried itself in the beaten path, its cracked edge sinking slightly in the soft ground. 

"I cost you everything."

"You cost me nothing! I surrendered my Cinder, you did not wrest it from me!"

"My death forced you to yield it; is that so different from personally tearing it from you?"

This man, this ancient beast steeped in darkness, had stolen his friend's laughter, had turned cold the warmth of his company. Or'do felt a bottomless well of hate within himself, and eagerly lost himself in its depths. Ferocity was his best hope at victory, for while Gehrman had slain many a beast, he had never fought one like this, a titan whose endless might came not from mindless, aimless hunger, but from a single, burning flame of purest hate that not even death itself could quench.