[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/eTM7WR0.png[/img][/center]

Was it sweat or was it blood?

Either way, it stung, the way it had gotten into his eyes, and it was the only indication left that told Ferrucio he still lived. He had lost sensation in his limbs. His helmet was suffocating him, but he couldn't even move it. Which sounds were real and which were delusions? A high-pitched ringing was drowning everything out, leaving only the faintest understanding of his immediate surroundings. He was still standing, somehow, forehead pressed against his shield, but where those around him still alive? The impacts he felt against his body, against his shield, what were they? The blows of the demonic horde, trying even now to break through a formation that remained standing, miraculously? Or the footsteps of the horde, stomping upon a man who held only a formation with corpses?

He had lost his voice.

He had lost his senses.

But...

A brilliant light. An impenetrable shadow. Even as an unawakened mongrel, he could feel it in his very soul, the tremendous forces that had gathered. Those impossible heights, stretching far beyond a bastard's ken. A force that drowned out even his own guiding star. The wall that he was condemned the claw at, never to surpass. He swallowed once, then felt his head snap back, a crude spearhead stopped by the warped slits of his helmet. Still alive then. Still alive still. Less than a footnote in the history books, such an insignificant contribution that he wouldn't even be a rounding error of a statistic. But he still stood!

[sub][i]"clear the way!"[/i][/sub]

A pitiful, pathetic rasp, but he pushed anyways, pressing his head back against the spear straining there still. Pop went his eye as the visor finally gave way, but he couldn't see anyways, could only tally this injury as another set of things that he should be able to feel but could no longer register. A reckless swing shattered his sword and the shaft, then he tore the spearhead out of his head and stabbed it into whatever was in front. One step, another! His mangled hand grasped his helmet, fingers hooking around the visor, and he tore it off, taking deep lungfuls of the [i]burning[/i] air, before bashing the scrap metal against another blurry form. It was coming to a close soon. It would all come to an end soon!

He shouldn't survive this too! He should do his part and...

[i][s]"Lay down your life for your betters, and be grateful that your name will be recorded in the lineage of House Kaides."[/s][/i]

[b]...have something worth boasting about in the afterlife![/b]