B.R.T. 16.15 - Cheat *** Had Tsugaru thought the deathblow would be painless, she had been wrong...but in fact, she had not cared. The pain she already felt, in her wrecked eyes, in her battered body, in her shattered heart, could not be enhanced. She was still wrong. Blades jammed hard into her eyes, lifting her from the ground. She screamed as syntears and oil bubbled away in a flood of something like liquid metal. Then the burning gave way to an agonizing explosion of pain through her face, her head, her whole body, and then it gave way to something horribly worse... Sight. Streaked with leaking fluid, tinted in strange hues, distorted and strange, she saw again. She saw the thing that had spoken...a terrible beast, gigantic and pale...fangs smiling wickedly...gesturing..down. Down. And there... Her lover. Sleeping, unburned, undamaged. Peace in his face, a rose in his hand. A rose for her... a Christmas rose! Tsugaru's heart leapt, collided with her dawning comprehension of how she had been tricked...tricked by the terrifying pale beast..tricked on the very brink of... Then the deathblow came. ***