15 . JOHNUARY

[necrolord]

Who: John Gaius and company.
What: All around him, John's friends and loved ones begin to shed their skins. Also: Riteoir.
When: January
Where: Gaze and the new city.

Content Warnings: Tagged in headers as needed. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

Comments

cw: severe injury, gore

[necrolord]

[ She gets right to the point.

John is slow, which is embarrassing; Vileblood has never liked listening to him. He turns in startled disbelief, and the first lance meets his shoulder with a shockingly mortal and meaty thump— then one punches out his side, spears throat, splinters collarbone, shears off most of an ear. The air is so thick with her blood the lances whistle like falling rain.

It stops like a caught breath.

The blood shudders, taut and vibrating in the air, stilled by some invisible hand. Through the forest of wet green lances held shivering between them, God draws himself clumsily upright. He sloughs off the ruin of his bad side with a wet shrug, cracks his broken jaw back into place, hisses through the sting of fresh poison. The burning rings of his eyes seem to glow through the wreckage of his face: he bleeds a slow dark glitter like distant stars. ]

Can we talk about this?

[foulhussy]

[ This was the point all along, wasn't it? This is what she's wanted, for nigh a myriad, for her entire existence minus that scant handful of years when she had yet lived. Even when she was telling herself that there was yet a grander purpose, a reason for all the pain that she inflicted and took into herself, this is what she had truly wanted.

If it works, so much the better, but hearing her thanergetic lances stigmatize his divine flesh with that wet thump, seeing his blood spill, hearing his bones crack and throat gurgle is a meager balm for her grief, but the greatest that she has yet received.

Yes. As she expects. He halts the assault, he draws breath, he bleeds his awful changed blood but does not die. She hardly looks better. Her clothes tattered, covered in ragged patchwork of wounds that do not bleed, but simply well up with churning emerald blood. Nothing should survive what she did to herself, but they are both things that ought not be. ]

How many lies do you even have left to tell, John? I would have thought you've used them all by now.

[necrolord]

[ It's this again. He knows it by looking at her, the burning furnace of her soul— it's one more betrayal he can't remember, but not a hard one to track. That's the really damning thing, that he doesn't have to hear the story. He can guess at it.

It feels profoundly unfair that he's reaping the consequences of a love he never had. ]

Give me some credit. I'm sure I can find a few.

[ He rubs the skin of his cheek back into place, and shakes the prickling glitter of his blood away into the cold air. There's no helping his tattered clothes, the ruin of his shirt punched through to show the plain brown skin beneath. Like that, the wounds are gone. ]

But I'd rather hear from you.

[ He is stalling. It's starting to feel pointless, already. He knows the broad strokes; he knows where this one ends. ]

[foulhussy]

[ There's something strange about this. A little flash of intuitive foreshadowing telling her that this is not going to go how she thinks it will go. But that doesn't matter. ]

What is there to fucking say after this long? You had front row seats. You know why any one of us would want to do this, even if we die trying. Or do you really not fucking believe we could want anything but to love you until we're nothing but extensions of you?

[ For just a moment, she'd wounded him. Left him mangled. A stone thrown at the reflection of the moon. But it feels good. ]

I fought for you. Because I didn't want to believe he fucking died for nothing. I really wanted to believe I was serving God. I wanted it to mean something.