He had been panting ceaselessly as his lungs became inflamed and forced to withstand the corroded air that the dungeon thrived in the rhythm of its torture.
No matter what the inquisitor lashed at him, he held his head bent and wouldn't give in.
The smouldering Delta stared down his sight with such scorn that words made no effort to carry meaning anymore.
"Is that all you got? Put your back into it, inquisitor." Higgins managed to speak up while panting.
He sported a bold grin that revealed his fortitude.
He even dared to think that this singular degree of what had been unleashed unto him was nothing more than child's play.
He wouldn't even allow the Delta muster pity for him.
Although, the unfazed expression coveted by a mild grin on the Delta's face suggested that such thought wouldn't even fleet by the surface of his mind-scape.
"If you say so. Stop pulling your punches runt! Drag him till his skin is ripped to shreds and his resolve is molten." Ramsy narrated.
Delta Ramsy wouldn't allow the inquisitor to think of him as a living thing, that's if he ever did in the first place.
"Hmmph." The inquisitor grunted at Ramsy's belitting of his lower rank.
Betas had no say to oppose the Delta because his singular rank outweighed theirs, but the inquisitor seemed like he would rather take the whip in his hand to Ramsy instead of the persistent arsehole in his wake.
Alas, all he had been was a misguided beta whose addiction to torture bought him a title and rank in the dungeon, or so they thought.
His duty was to kill, whether slow or fast, he enjoyed the pain he brought either way.
Ramsy ordered him to do just that, what else could he do but ignore the disregard and do what made his libido skyrocket.
Higgins' didn't seem like he was even conceiving to back down, it was exhilerating.
For someone of his magic inclined prowess, a sorcerer with his skill to stare death and be so close to taking It's hand, only to pull away and hang by the edge, calling back to the already stimulated deity to take him if he could. It felt ethereal.
***
Abraham Van Helsing, the Dutch vampire hunter, once had an apprentice whom he admired and held in high regard, years before he even considered the holy order in a potential light.
Helsing betrayed his tyro and had him clipped, or so he thought.
According to tall tales that were never recounted sufficiently and were based solely on rumor.
His actions bad been as a result of the fact that he longed to scrap Higgins' memory from ever being made reference in any of the history books for an obscure reason.
While Helsing was known as the vampire hunter, Higgins was renowned for his extraordinary abilities to communicate with the dead.
This allowed for him to be christened the Necromancer Hunter, and his specialty was influencing the living by using the dead as props.
His dumped body had washed up on the shores of a massive island that housed several packs of werewolves, one of which belonged to the Nefario's legacy.
An empire of sorts, which had also been revered enough to become the name of a pack in its honour.
The Nefario pack was located in the eastern Himalayas of Aracord, a continental drift off the world shores that had become the dominating haven for various werewolf packs known for their numerous raids on one another.
The hunter wasn't dead, but that had become his undoubted fate until a human changed that, an old man.
He worked with the old man and his cause for years, until his new founded reason to remain on the continent was taken from him, of which he blamed that cause, making him a shadow of his former self.
Years later, Higgins had almost been slain during one of a raid-led attempt by two packs to wage war on each other, in the wastelands of Aracord.
He had aimlessly strode into the battle field, with the thought of how his goal to strive for the betterment for all human kind, his since disregarded thoughts of escape from the island and all he had managed to amass, now proved worthless.
His joining the resistance, being touched by his mate's lips for the first time and his child's cries ringing in his ear, all gone.
Now held as a prisoner of war, whose lying, soon-to-be corpse, stood guarded in a dungeon by ferocious betas in witness of the inquisitor and the Delta, his only aim was to cause his death.
"I've suffered enough. It's time to end it." Higgins thought to himself.
Blood flowed down his scalp as his struggled breath thought to the close proximity of the singular reason he allowed himself be captured.
The necromancer wasn't dead, but his prophesied fate was even worse: he was confined to an island that managed to provide someone to love him, took her and the only other light at the entrance of his tunnel and left him nothing.
Having been rid of any justification or reason to remain, no way to escape the taunting reality of memories made with his mate or the island itself, to end his life after years of mourning became the only way, his only salvation.
His being a human ensured that he saw enough scorn to assure that, but his words fed the flames to make them desire it more instead of seeing potential in his long lost abilities.
Humans had been reduced to mere tools that always managed to reproduce and serve as important resources for the werewolves to thrive.
They worked as slaves, were dealt with as needless, sex derived pawns and some even organized resistance that Higgins managed to have hidden under the facadé of, with their being thwarted at every turn up until it happened.
Every full moon, new omegas emerged from human that had received the werewolf curse from an Alpha's bite, and when they died at the hands of their fellow creatures, the circle of life proceeded with an unsheathed equilibrium, allowing a system to emerge.
Higgins' seized regalia included the limitless skulls of omegas—green-eyed, recently transformed werewolves that exhibited characteristics of havoc-loving wolves yielding to their primal urges—as well as other weapons he had collected from his several attempts kill as many werewolves as possible.
They become insane and are powerless to halt their never-ending terrible urge to slaughter because no Alpha has welcomed them to join their packs as scout ranks.
Scout rank teaches them how to maintain their composure before their grey skin transforms into the vicious, brown-furred, quadrupedal stance adopted by betas, not to mention their sensitivity to silver.
They formed the majority members of a pack and receive belitting remarks from betas.
Higgins had one goal: scavenge the wasteland left by the werewolves in their usurpation attempts, scour their vastness, and save as many lives as he could using the alchemy abilities he had adopted along the way.
All this was who he has been something more than ten years ago, before he met her, lost both of them and became a shadow of his former self.
Unfortunately, he was seized and held hostage in the Nefario pack Alpha's Dungeon, about to be lifted to a platform where the vulture-like vampires circled the rays of the full moon, ready to gorge on his convicted-to-death remains.
This was no mistake actually, he wanted to get captured, he wanted to die and since his hands couldn't do it on his own...
"Ahhhh!!!" Higgins' screeched to the reverb of the whip that rebounded about his body, feigning ignorance to the death that chose to elude him.
"Do you have any last words Necromancer? Alpha Damian wouldn't see truth in your attempts at laying blemish to my name so you thought the best way would be to show him, it wasn't a sensible option if you ask me. My being a Delta holds more reverence than a hunter like yourself ever would. The resistance holds no backing in Nefarios' activities." Ramsy boasted.
Delta Ramsy mustered little heed to Higgins' pitiful state as the spat to the soon to-be corpse in his wake.
Hunters were members of the resistance, who were mostly humans that had their only goal to be liberating their people and domineering the greater mass of carnivorous beast that desired to usurp any attempts they made to establish a system like theirs or breed enough to try.
Higgins' life was dangling on a thin thread, his hands laid across the two ends of the baracade by chains anchored to his wrists and a weakened resolve from that death that just insisted on taking its time before truly drawing the life out of him.
"I am not in the resistance, I left them years ago. So you were an asshole the whole time?" Higgins spoke out in an outlandish tone.
He was able to raise his attention to the rust-encrusted bars of the cell he had been confined to.
His entire attempt to disclose Ramsy's goal appeared to be a farce designed to prove his suspicions that he was actually out for something sinister.
Higgins' gaze was fixed on the Delta Ramsy with such intensity that it would take a simpleton to conclude his intentions as not been to flee in any way, but rather to stare him down, ignore the pain from blood being drawn by the chain restrained to his wrist, and see through his arrived decision to have the vultures gourge his flesh, or so it seemed.
Was this really the end of a legacy never built.
Ramsy hid more than a melodious intent in the tapping of his feet that he had begun.
"What are you playing at Necromancer? You came off as being so eager to be apprehended that it almost seemed as if..." Ramsy inquired, as Higgins boldly impeded his train of thoughts.
"I'm pretty sure you're the one with doubts, I mean you pulled me away from my attempts at Damian, told him that you would 'take care of me' and now, you're thinking I would just allow you to kill me, the f***? I am the king of death. The grim reaper has nothing on me." Higgins boasted.
He had finally proclaimed who he was and judging by the reverb in his tone, there was extra meaning instilled into his declaration.
He wanted Ramsy to try harder because the pain that stood parallel to the inquisitor's every attempt was far from even rendering him unconscious.
"You see yourself as a god but I would belittle your tainted nature, deicide you if I could." Ramsy made towards Higgins and drew on his chin, in a bid to indulge his' focus partially towards his words. "...if only you weren't the only one to know of what I need." Ramsy revealed.
Higgins' became struck, as a bewildered expression engraved itself unto his gaze following Ramsy's reveal, it basically threw him off.
"How'd you figure?" He led without a thought. "I could count a million more moons you could have come up with a better excuse, but this."
What could have been so important that Ramsy would opt to spare him and torture out instead? Higgins traced the entirety of his mind-scape for what this meant.
"Could it be what I'm thinking?" He insinuated, but solely in his thoughts.