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

whispers and vines

[foulhussy]

[ Kriemhild is tired. So very tired. She didn't betray God for revenge, not any that she thought she would truly achieve. If that was all she wanted, she would have stayed at his side. She was just sick of the lies, the hypocrisy, the weight on her soul. She had to run. She didn't aid his enemies and slaughter his beloved flock because she had a grand plan. It was just the only thing she could do.

It's been thousands of years, and there he is, unchanged, glorious godly hypocrite that he is. He burns into her eyes. Her heart beckons her to attempt the impossible, though she knows it will fail. His Annabel Lee is locked away, so he cannot be touched. He's never really touched anybody, not in a long, long time, older than God.

He caused all of it. Turning against him was turning against the universe itself, and killing him would be killing herself, for what would any of them have been without him?

The lances break free of her skin, a dozen, a hundred, corrosive emerald blood tearing from her as she opens her heart and lets rage and grief pour forth. It's stupid. But she has to do it. For Nero. For Apollonia. They fly at him without cease. There is so much thanergy oozing through the veins of this world, she need only prick. ]

Die, die, die, die, die you lying hypocrite murderer wormshit sonuvabitch! I'll rip out your nasty fucking death eyes and piss on your brain, fucknuts!

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.