text: [Themes: grimdark fantasy, villain protagonist, fantasy]
  
  You take a deep breath, close your eyes and exhale.
  
  You can do this.
  
  You open your eyes.
  
  You will do this.
  
  You wave your hand and instantly the music stops as all the corpses cease their animation.
  
  You aren't going to enjoy it though. It's just necessary.
  
  Now you contemplate about HOW you're going to do it.
  
  You half wonder if you shouldn't recruit the rest of the Dark Order to help you, or at least some of them. The problem with this approach though is then you have to trust that lot to not turn on you before the ambush or even during or immediately after the ambush. There's also the chance that they'll just make things worse by bungling.
  
  If you take out Azrael yourself, you're fairly confident though that the rest of the Dark Order won't oppose you since you will have proven yourself more powerful.
  
  The problem with that is Azrael might not be the best wizard, but he's really damn powerful at one type of magic and that's more than enough. You aren't sure you'd be able to take him in a one on one fight.
  
  It occurs to you that you're going to have to resort to trickery, but something that you know damn well he's going to go fully into without thinking too hard about it.
  
  You leave your garden and head to your bedroom first to prepare a few things and then go see Azrael, mentally preparing yourself for what you need to do.
  
  You find Azrael going through one of Mr. Demar's old necromantic tomes. When he sees you enter the room, he turns his attention completely to you.
  
  "Catalina. What's going's on? Has there been another Grand Alliance army spotted?" he asks.
  "No, I just want to speak to you about something." You reply.
  "Look Cat, if this is about the Ghoul King alliance again, I really don't want to fucking argue about that. It's done and we'll see what happens. As I said, Hessan is with him and I told him to end the blood sucker if there's the slightest hint of betrayal."
  "Yes, I'm sure that will all work out, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about though. It's about us."
  "What about us?"
  
  At this point you move around his desk and put your arms around him. You're not exactly an expert at this whole "seduction" thing, but fortunately you don't have to be in his case.
  
  "Well...this is friendlier than you usually are." Azrael says.
  "I've been thinking lately I should be even friendlier. I think my hostility towards you has just been my way of being cautious. I don't have the best experience with guys." You remark.
  "Completely understandable, but as I've said I..."
  
  You interrupt by kissing him.
  
  "No more talking." You say and then drop to your knees. He's surprised at first, but soon gets into it and falls back into his chair.
  
  While you have complete control over the situation, the problem is he's still looking at you. It takes awhile, but eventually he gets to the point where his head has rolled back in ecstasy and that's when you move your hands up to caress his chest.
  
  You then slam your hands on his chest and using all your focus, you begin draining the life from his body. Azrael is completely unprepared for this and he doesn't even react so much as he seizes up as his heart can't take this direct necromantic energy you're unleashing.
  
  After it's all said and done, you've killed him by literally sucking (and swallowing) the life force out of him. A bit unconventional, but honestly a sexual encounter was the only way you were going to catch him off guard and you think if you'd actually gone all the way with regular sex, you might have gotten too intimate and backed out of the plan.
  
  Even now as you look upon Azrael's corpse, you feel...weird. Not just because of how you killed him, but that you did at all.
  
  You lean back on the desk, and start to tear up a bit. Then you allow yourself to cry altogether.
  
  Why does this hurt so much when you weren't even really together? Was there another way? Could you have had a relationship with him and it worked out?
  
  Those questions are all moot now because what's done is done. You've chosen to live without any sort of potential weakness. Whatever happens now, your destiny is truly your own.
  
  And yet, your feelings aren't going away. They won't either, not immediately at least. You look at Azrael.
  
  He's still intact (If a little withered). You could still have him. It might even be better. He'd be yours and you wouldn't have to worry about any sort of power struggle or anything else because you'd always be in control.
  
  However, you wonder if that's really a good idea. Maybe you should just move on completely.
  
  > keep Azrael around
  Yes. You can still have him, why deny yourself and put yourself through any excessive pain? Besides, now he's attractive in a whole new way.
  
  You waste no time and cast a preservation spell on him, then raise him back from the dead.
  
  His eyes open and he stares at you. There is nothing behind the eyes but devotion to your commands now. Your mood improves and your previous sadness soon disappears.
  
  However, there's a very brief feeling of unease as his dead eyes stare through you. You dismiss this though as this being a bit of an unusual situation.
  
  The first thing on the agenda is gathering members of the Dark Order and establish who is in charge now.
  
  Your announcement is met with surprise. Nobody opposes your rule for various reasons. Most of them due to figuring if you took out Azrael, then you must be even more powerful and they aren't in any hurry to challenge you. (You naturally left out the exact details of how you managed it) The other minor reason is you did train most of them and you were in the Dark Order a lot longer than Azrael, so they're a little more comfortable around you anyway.
  
  With the new hierarchy in place, your next problem is a bit more concerning. When you killed Azrael, you lost just a little less than half of your undead army. You didn't really realize just how much necromantic power he was using to upkeep it. In fact Dark Order some members were running around trying to figure out what happened since they saw whole platoons suddenly just collapse.
  
  Not long after the initial collapse however something odd happened which is some of the dead had arisen again and stayed put. Nobody knows why this happened with some of the dead and not others, as there didn't seem to be a reason.
  
  You silently have a theory that perhaps by bringing Azrael back to life, some of his lingering necromantic energy allowed for saving some of your losses. Good thing you decided to keep him around, not just for your own personal reasons.
  
  Still, you have lost a significant amount of your army. You still have enough of an army to defend Aftermath, but Azrael's plans of expanding aren't going to be happening anytime soon. Not that you had any major desire to expand since that was more his idea than yours.
  
  And yet...
  
  There's a part of you that realizes you do need to expand if you're really going to cow the Grand Alliance and the rest of your enemies into submission. You just need more troops to do so.
  
  And you'll get those from the Ghoul King. You're still not exactly keen on the alliance that Azrael set up with the Ghoul King, but since it's already in motion, you might as well keep up the arrangement. You'll have to go meet with him though because obviously you need to establish the fact that you are just as powerful as Azrael was. Hessan is still stationed there as well, so you need to update him as well.
  
  Belial is the most competent so you leave him in charge while you personally go to the Drozz wasteland. You also visit with Azrael in your bedroom before leaving.
  
  "I'll be fine. I know I don't like leaving the city, but this is important right? You set this up and the least I can do is see to it that it wasn't in vain, especially since we need the extra support right now." You say.
  
  Azrael doesn't answer.
  
  "I know, I know, I'll be careful. I've dealt with vampires before. Stop worrying so much about me. I'll be back before you know it and we can spend some time together. Okay?"
  
  Azrael still doesn't answer, but you give him a kiss goodbye.
  
  Your meeting with the Ghoul King and Hessan is surprising to both of them. Hessan especially since he's now under a new leadership, but isn't going to oppose you.
  
  The Ghoul King is a different situation. One odd thing is his face keeps mildly changing. It's like his face is a blur. You think he's hairless with red eyes, but other details are sketchy.
  
  He mentions why should he have faith in an idea of an alliance with the Dark Order if its leader could be killed and replaced so easily.
  
  You point out that you are better necromancer otherwise you wouldn't have been able to overthrow Azrael in the first place, you then say you can prove your claim by doing what Azrael said he would be able to do, which is raise a giant from the dead.
  
  The Ghoul King is impressed by your confidence enough and says he has a few giant corpses laying around and if you are as powerful as you claim then the alliance will stay.
  
  You've never done this before, but you feel confident that you can do it. In fact, the whole time you've been outside the walls of the city, you haven't even experienced any anxiety. It's like something within you has changed.
  
  It requires all your focus and your nose starts bleeding and you feel incredibly drained afterwards, but you manage to raise a single giant back from the dead. The huge creature stands attention waiting for your commands. Hessan and even the Ghoul King look on in amazement by your powers.
  
  With this great show of power, you keep the alliance in place and plan on raising more giants to eventually expand to take the Brot Kingdom.
  
  You return home exhausted, but filled with a new confidence that you made the right decision. You immediately go to your bedroom.
  
  "Azrael, I told you I'd be back and everything went well! I believe in a few months we should be able to expand to take the Brot Kingdom and finally take out that asshole Trelik for good."
  
  Azrael says nothing and embrace him tightly.
  
  "I couldn't have done this without you. I think it's time to consummate our relationship officially." You say casting a spell on Azrael to do just that.
  
  Two years pass and it's all been a blur of the events that have happened.
  
  Your attempts at expansion were never quite successful. You just never had enough troops to take the Brot Kingdom, even with the few giants you managed to raise.
  
  The Grand Alliance always fucked up your plans to keep you and Trelik weak. Eventually you had to pull back and just focus on defense. Which was just as well since vampire assassins attempted to murder you on several occasions, though the last attack focused on some of the other necromancers to wear down your defenses.
  
  Really though, those are the least of your problems.
  
  Ever since you raised Azrael back, your mind has grown increasingly erratic. At first everything seemed on the upswing, but with things getting worse, you haven't been feeling yourself.
  
  You talk to Azrael whenever you get the chance now. He doesn't actually respond back, but you feel like he does. Like he's communicating to you on some faint level through your mind. You frequently go from asking for advice to blaming everything on him to apologizing and making up physically with him. It's a vicious cycle and one you can't even easily break now, because his mere presence is upkeeping a lot of defenses.
  
  And you hate him for it or at least you would if you didn't love him so much.
  
  Your behavior hasn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the Dark Order. They often hear you ranting on occasion to seemingly nobody, but they do hear the name Azrael being mentioned sometimes and rumors are soon whispered.
  
  Another year passes and you barely come out of your bedroom anymore, just spending all your time with Azrael. (Which isn't a secret any longer)
  
  Belial and Hessan both came to you saying that you needed to become more active again as the Grand Alliance now has taken out Trelik and armies are starting to march on Aftermath directly. Even the Ghoul King has not been lending his ghouls as assistance as he once was.
  
  You didn't listen to them though; you just demanded to be left alone and even killed Belial in the process.
  
  This act was enough for Hessan to gather up the rest of the Dark Order and just leave Aftermath. He didn't think he could oppose you even with more numbers, but he sure wasn't going to stick around anymore.
  
  You didn't care or even notice though. Now you had even more time alone with Azrael.
  
  But that time wouldn't be for long as more vampire assassins easily entered Aftermath and confronted you.
  
  You manage to hold your own for a while, but during the attack, Azrael's body takes several throwing blades to the body, one even decapitating him.
  
  You scream out in anguish and this temporary distraction is all one of the vampires needs to sneak up behind you and everything going black.
  
  You look around and find yourself back in the present, whatever that means in a place like this.
  
  You know this didn't happen. In fact you're almost distressed by this experience, not due to dying as you've been there before, but the fact that you not only killed your beloved, but that you went completely mad in the process. You can't imagine just losing so much control like that, but if you really did hang on like that, you suppose it could very well happen that you'd lose yourself.
  
  In fact, it almost seems impossible that such a scenario could have happened. However, everyone has those dark thoughts even towards those they love and there was a very brief time when you did ponder the possibility.
  
  After a bit of reflection on what just happened, you realize you'll have to try again to reconnect later. When will that be? You never can tell.
  
  But it'll happen again. You'll reunite with your beloved.
  
  It's only a matter of time.