An Evening in Hell

I am surrounded by weakness and insanity.
 
The hunger rode high in him, stalking along his skin with pinprick needle-feet. It had been rising, of late, as he all but drowned himself in cow's blood and had resorted back to the occasional rat when it became too much. It rode high along his skin, lighting his nerves on fire and the moment the door slammed shut behind them, it tried to wrap its barbed hooks into his mind. He could feel the assault from the place, upon his senses, upon his mind. He could feel the very psychic pressure of the place washing against him like wave as high tide.
 
But he was Nevermore. He was the thing that hunted the monsters, and he would be right good and damned if he let his own monstrousness give sway. He could feel the pressure of the place - to speak, to feed, to hunt. It was in every drop of blood he saw dripping from Nel's undead maw, every drop that was so casually flicked in his direction by Bella. Cardinal's presence, a rock and anchor - and blessedly peace giving magic - removed the worst of it.
 
And yet somehow, it was the people that was the actual weight upon his mind.
 
He had lived most of his adult life with the urge to be a monster inside him. Had walked, day after jaw-grinding day, with the urge to gorge his fill, to hunt, to rend, and to tear. He had surrounded himself with the people he thought were the heroes, the ones who, like him, would stand against the dark no matter the cost.
 
And then he watched them, one by one, and to almost the man, fail.
 
The rooms had become a blur and he could feel the creak of his jaw as he clamped down on every hateful thought, every bitter drop of poison that wanted to fall from his tongue. In the exact same way that he locked his life behind masks and secrets, he locked his tongue behind the iron will of long practice. They needed to survive. They needed to endure. And though his lips wanted to curse their weakness and their recklessness with every breath, he refused. His tongue bled from the effort of stilling it and he was momentarily thankful that the taste of his own, half-dead, blood never incited the Hunger inside him.
 
But as he worked the locks, as he bodily pushed Nel from room to room despite her incessant need to swallow every bit of flesh in sight, as he waited while madness, rage, and insanity took almost all of them, one single though anchored itself in his mind - a scar that would last long after the deep gouges that the lich had torn into his chest. And somehow, even under the psychic assault of the place and his own hunger, he knew those words should never leave his lips.
 
Most of you would not have lasted a single night under the curse I bear. Because you are too weak to bear it.