Moonless Night

Disclaimer: I do not own Drakengard/Drag-On Dragoon, those rights and intellectual properties go to Square-Enix and Cavia.

Author Scribbles: This just seemed to come as I was trying to type up the rewrite of Choices. It's a bit confusing…but then it is sort of just a whimsical or sudden splurge of writing.

Summary: Nowe is alone in the City of Rust. Running in the back alleys, ducking and weaving through the maze of paths in a tense game of hunter and hunted.

Note: This was originally written around the time of 26th May 2011, my writing style has again evolved since then.

Breathe

Nowe ran from his pursuers wishing for the safety of his companions back at their camp in the mountains above the City of Rust. Such a fool, such a foolish human!

Ducking around a corner and hiding in the darkness of the alleyway, stilling his laboured breathing as much as he could. Near certain his pounding heart would give him away or the glint of his obsidian sword in the moonlight. Nowe drew himself further back into the shadows.

As he waited silently, well as silently as a panicked human could in his current circumstance. He'd come into the populated place, without telling Manah, Urick or Legna where he was going, or that he had even left actually. They shouldn't notice.

Something called out to him in this city. There was a horrid hammering in his head…constantly tearing at his consciousness.

Sometimes when the world was still he could hear voices drifting through the stillness like echoes. Sometimes screams would rush to him, others whispers.

He was not stupid.

Nowe knew what no one would dare speak to him about. He acted like the noble innocent fool they wanted to believe existed in him. It even tricked the traitor Gismor into believing that lie.

Those voices he heard…he could hear Gismor's voice. Hanch, Yaha, Urick…Legna.

The whispers he heard…sometimes there were names that came to him in dreams…dreams of a life never walked by him. Dreams of two lovers…a vicious triangle…a love debased…

Nowe recalled what a knight had once cried out before his black blade rendered flesh and made blood sail from its home vessels onto once stark white walls.

A noise of shuffling feet brought the young man from his internal musings. A bounty hunter stood before him wielding a short curved blade, all but his eyes hiding behind a mask.

Eyes that squinted in the pitch black as the moon was overcast with thick smog just in that moment. Nowe just stayed still, trying to refrain from moving, from giving away his position.

But the head-hunter stared directly at him. The man stilled. His grip on the blade slackened then tightened. Sweat began to trickle from beneath the mask.

Nowe took a step away from the wall. The head-hunter couldn't help but take a step back away from the young man. The brown eyes widened, fear filling those organs of sight, useless in such darkness.

But Nowe could see everything. He had far better eyesight.

Those pursuers of his…had caught him.

It was so much fun playing such games with foolish humans.

A loud scuffling noise was heard as a platoon of knights entered the alley. Nowe's lips pulled up and backwards, an inhuman noise escaping in a light breath.

And they cowered.

His heart started to beat with such excitement. Humans were all such fools…so easy to manipulate.

Nowe had known from the moment he could feel, he was not human. But he pretended, eventually believing his own lies.

Oh but after he had chosen humanity…saving them…they chose humanity too.

But Nowe was obviously not human. At first he thought it was respect…but he soon learnt better. All humans feared him…mothers pulled children from his gaze, men shrivelled up to hide from him.

These men were no different. They had thought they were chasing a convict.

Instead a predator had led them into a trap of his own.

Nowe knew he wasn't human.

He was the New Breed…a dragon trapped in a human body. But to those foolish, pitiful humans…he was like a god.

He played, toying with them. Ignoring the cries of the new Goddess, the Hierarch...

Nowe was going to break all the seals, marching the world back into chaos.

From there he would take the throne back from his kind's eternal foe.

The Gods will become the Nameless again.

The human knights and bounty-hunter's screams mingled in with the roar of the world's last living dragon.

Nowe had been driven into madness by the Voices.

And as the City of Rust erupted into panic, death flooding the streets at the hands of the world's once-saviour, above in the mountains that overlooked the city, and an old castle in the distance, sat three gravestones.

Two were beginning to have vines crawl across their surface. Another was quite recent…with a regal-looking staff laid across in front of it. An axe sat nearby embedded into the ground.

Nowe hadn't told them where he was going. Urick had once warned him of where he was now.

But his voice didn't scream so loud anymore…instead it whispered faintly. Like most of the Voices now.

Nowe's migraines never stopped…

…Neither did the end ever come.

Author Scribbles:

After finishing this, it does have a tinge of one of my numerous plot bunnies. (I have a folder on my computer with about 44 files for just this category). The gist is quite similar but I have an original character with a pact partner thrown into a Nowe/OC pairing.

This is just a one-shot. But I do love the idea or Nowe going a bit insane and choosing dragons over humanity. Right! That's it from me! Hope you enjoyed this!