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stillness-in-green · 4 years

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Spinaraki Week, Day 3: Emptiness | Harmony

Hope it’s closer, hope it’s somewhere When it’s over, hope we don’t care I’ll be there, too, there when it comes true So take me down with you

A fan soundtrack — with accompanying fanfic shorts, if desired — for Shigaraki and Spinner, from Gigantomachia, to Jaku, and beyond.

(google drive | youtube playlist)

Below the cut, the fanfic shorts and links to the lyrics.

forever or never — cinema bizarre // take me under — man with a mission // so cold — breaking benjamin // silver lining — hurts // all i need is love — sakai mikio // stay alive — may’n // fake wings ~ bitter sweet ver. — kajiura yuki // roads untraveled — linkin park // all of my days — alexi murdoch // shØut — sawano hiroyuki

———–

Track 1 | Forever or Never

They were two weeks into fighting Machia and Spinner right in the middle of another series of complaints about what kind of food Shigaraki was eating—as if he could even make time for anything more complicated than supplements and protein drinks when getting enough sleep was way harder to manage—when Shigaraki made up his mind, leaned forward, and kissed him.

“S’nice that you’re worried about me,” he said to Spinner’s gawping. “But if you’ve got something to say, you should come out and say it.” He was floating on sleep deprivation, the world too many colors, too bright and too fuzzy, and Spinner sitting right in front of him, the most colorful splotch of green on the smudgy brown woods, pink eyes staring—they’d been staring a lot lately.

“Machia could break me in half tomorrow. Tonight, even.” He laughed raggedly. The knowledge felt like his family’s hands—too heavy, nausea-inducing, but still offering an endless freedom. “I don’t want your last words to me to be, ‘Shigaraki, you need more carbs.’”

“…Well, you do!” Spinner sputtered, but he set the latest round of pills and juice packs down roughly in front of Shigaraki and beat a hasty retreat. Shigaraki watched him flee; a lazy grin sat on his face with alien comfort.

Track 2 | Take Me Under

Somehow, even though he looked like he was about to pass out mid-stride, Shigaraki was still pulling away from him. Everything he touched dissolved into flecks of ash, while the zealots on the bad end of Spinner’s blades remained doggedly fleshy, snarling and wrathful, all shouting voices and grasping, tearing hands and maybe Shigaraki had nightmares like this, maybe he was used to them and that was why he cut through it all so easy.

Spinner dragged his arm through another vicious slice, dragged his legs through another step, focusing on Shigaraki’s narrow shoulders. Don’t go without me, he willed. Bring me with you! I wanna see it too!

Track 3 | So Cold

“Not gonna talk about Stain-sama anymore?” Shigaraki asked, an edge of challenge leaking into his voice. Spinner had been weird since Deika, hanging on Shigaraki’s words with a hushed air of attentiveness that made Shigaraki too aware of the sound of his own voice when he’d hardly ever worried about that kind of thing before, and definitely not among allies.

Spinner flushed, the suffusion of red across his scales suggesting he had a bit of chameleon in there somewhere, but not a very cooperative bit. He rubbed his neck, looking away at the common room the League had requisitioned for their private meetings.

“….Maybe now and then?” he hedged. “I mean, he was the reason I got out. I’m grateful to him for that. But it's like I said back at the shack. I joined the League to find a purpose. It wasn’t—it wasn’t ever about Stain himself, exactly.”

“You find something better?” Shigaraki tipped his head on one side. There was a vague itch in his chest, a wiggling little need to hear about this new purpose—it was a leader thing, probably; he got Mr. Compress his sushi, and Toga was never shy about what she wanted, and now here was Spinner ready to spill his big goal. Like getting a 100% complete, taking stock of what it was going to take for his allies to get what they wanted.

Spinner looked back up, expression weird—eyes a little wide, vulnerable, like he’d just been hit or he was bracing for it, but the set of his mouth around his beak firm. He looked at Shigaraki like he was trying to stare a hole through him, but he nodded.

“Gonna tell me what it is?” Shigaraki pressed.

“It’s… You don’t need to worry about what it is.” Cagey asshole. “We just gotta keep going.”

Shigaraki drew his nails down his neck almost idly, a simmer of dissatisfaction in his skin, holding Spinner’s gaze long enough for him to go through both awkward shifting and a stubborn bounce back. His eyes were clear—too clear, Shigaraki thought, and it hit him.

The horizon.

He folded forward, struck to laughter, though the annoying feeling in his chest worsens. Spinner had showed up all enamored with Stain’s ideas about a purge this, a cleansing that. Or course he could see the appeal of emptiness.

“Who’d have thought you were fucked up enough to want that?” he murmured, snorting when Spinner stiffened in offense. “Okay. We’ll keep going, then.”

Track 4 | Silver Lining

Shigaraki after the first stage of the surgery looked pale—even more so than usual—and drained in ways even Gigantomachia hadn’t left him. He didn’t want to talk about how it went. He pressed an unselfconscious kiss to the corner of Spinner’s mouth and leaned against him, listening and nodding to Spinner’s faltering report on how things are going with the Front, chipping in now and again with an opinion or an order. To Spinner’s immense relief, he even managed a few sarcastic comments.

When Ujiko came for him, Spinner almost couldn’t breathe, didn’t even really try until the black gunk welled up in his throat to send him back to the villa. He wiped his mouth after coughing it all up and straightened.

There was work to do.

Track 5 | All I Need Is Love

Endeavor hit him with another blast of fire and the meaninglessness of it all pulled laughter out of Shigaraki like broken teeth. He let himself fall back from the force of it, landed on feet that seemed to know what to do with only minimal guidance from him.

His body hurt—hurt in ways he’d really thought he was past feeling, but then, fire had always been a particular brand of all-over pain—and the feeling in his chest was worse. The awareness floated at the back of his mind, a list of cold facts pinned up in his brain under a spotlight, cognition in the style of lepidopterology.

Heroes had found the lab.

The Doc had kept that lab hidden for longer than Shigaraki’d been alive. The heroes had to have gotten new intel somehow.

All the possible sources for new intel were holed up in the mountain villa.

Flying heroes were rare, but not so rare that there wouldn’t be more fighting him here (Majestic alone would be doing a better job playing keep-away with Eraser Head) if they weren’t occupied elsewhere.

The conclusion sat at the bottom of the list: Machia was on his way, but Shigaraki wouldn’t know who he’d lost until the moment the big gorilla got here.

Still, there was just the barest trace of comfort there—Machia was on the way, and either the others had made it or they hadn’t, and soon he’d find out whether Spinner meant it or not, about wanting to see this horizon.

Track 6 | Stay Alive

Earlier than expected, Toga had said. Spinner clung onto Gigantomachia for all he was worth, eyes on the horizon as the chaos of the battle at the villa finally receded behind them. His heart pounded so hard it hurt, throbbing with the memory of Shigaraki at the bottom of that crater in Deika, his tangled hair and bare shoulders all but glowing, pearl white, in the shafts of pale sunlight filtering back down through the scattering debris. Shigaraki tucked up against him in the cheap bed Ujiko kept in the lab, tracing his fingers along Spinner’s scales with unthinking abstraction, not afraid, not disgusted, not even paying all that much attention.

Spinner had been helpless then and he was no better now, terror thick in his throat as he watched the horizon for anything—the hospital, a telltale cloud of dust, a sign, just—just anything to give him a bit of hope.

Track 7 | Fake Wings ~ bitter sweet ver.

Shigaraki hadn’t regained consciousness yet. His burns had healed, but the deep, dry fissures in his skin wee slower to close. They corkscrewed down his arms and speared out viciously over his chest, cicada shell cracks, and who knew what had been trying to pull itself out of that body when Spinner and the others had finally made it to him?

Two crevices ran up either side of his spine in eerie symmetry, each branching once before continuing up, angling along the inside edges of his shoulder-blades. Spinner tried not to look at them more than he had to—every time he did, he’d get horrible mental images of wings shuddering their way free, sticky and wet with blood and enzymes.

He smiled. Spinner reminded himself of that every time he sat down to reapply hydrocortisone and calamine. When he saw us on Machia, he looked at us and he smiled.

It had looked pretty ghoulish, but a lot of Shigaraki’s smiles did. More importantly, though, he’d looked at them with recognition. Whatever had been brewing in him to make him look like some kind of haggard, slough-skinned revenant, Spinner had watched it recede when Shigaraki’s red eyes fell on them, on him.

He dared to run one hand over Shigaraki’s hair, rinsed painstakingly clean by Spinner and Mr. Compress as soon as they’d gotten settled in the tiny, two-road hamlet Skeptic had directed them to. They were laying low for now, hoping to meet up with stragglers from the villa, Re-Destro and the rest, but Spinner couldn’t make himself think about it with any clarity. Not when Shigaraki was still out and they didn’t have Ujiko around to tell them what was wrong.

Wake up, Shigaraki. Please. Please.

Track 8 | Roads Untraveled

“Did you see it?”

“Shigaraki!” Spinner started violently when Shigaraki whispered the words. “You’re awake!”

“And you’re loud,” Shigaraki grumbled. Pain ran a latticework over his body; he wrestled one arm out from under the sheets someone had tucked him into and examined it. A freshly-healed scar spiraled up his arm, putting him vaguely in mind of narutomaki. Skimming the injury, his eyes caught on the hole in his palm and it struck him, foggily, that he didn’t actually know if Sensei had always had those or if they came with Air Cannon.

Sensei. He thought the name slowly, deliberately, letting the syllables prod at his own mind, seeing if there was any response. Nothing poked back, though he still felt strange, emptied out and scraped back into a new container, all mushed up from the transition. Weird. Nothing he couldn’t get used to, but still.

Spinner was still talking, he realized belatedly, and tuned back in in time to hear, “I’m sorry we didn’t get to you sooner. It just got so crazy so fast, we—”

“Spinner,” he interrupted, because there was a ring of shame in Spinner’s voice and Shigaraki wasn’t in the mood for it. “What’d you think of it?”

“Of what?” Spinner asked. He’d changed clothes, out of his polka dot vest and dark cargo pants and into a plain cotton button-up that fit him too tight around the shoulders. Not one of his, and not his style, either, so probably a loaner, or stolen, which meant they were in another hideout.

Shigaraki briefly debated whether he was angry about that and immediately decided that anger was much too intense for how empty he was feeling at that moment. He answered Spinner instead.

“You know what.”

It took Spinner a second to put it together. He might have done better if Shigaraki had stopped staring at him for a minute, but Shigaraki didn’t much feel like doing that, either. Spinner’s awkwardness was comfortably familiar.

“It… It was amazing,” he answered finally. “Practically the whole city was gone.”

“Bigger than in Deika?” Shigaraki asked, more for confirmation than reassurance.

“Way bigger.”

“Papers have a death toll yet?”

“They’re still just talking about casualties—a few thousand, ‘expected to rise.’ But Skeptic says they’re way underreporting.”

That’s still too low. They must have figured us out, Shigaraki thought, even as Spinner frowned, somewhere between angry and distraught.

“Hawks got information out somehow,” he went on. “I’m sorry. We should have—”

“We didn’t. That’s all. We’ll just do it better next time.” Shigaraki tried to lever himself up. Immediately, Spinner leaned in next to him—not trying to browbeat him into resting, which was a nice change, but hooking an arm around his back and giving him a good sturdy vertical surface to brace against. Or maybe just rest against. Fuck, he was tired. I’m gonna kill the Doc; super-regeneration is supposed to work better than this.

“How’re you feeling?” Spinner asked anxiously. Spinner was—weirdly comfortable. Warm. Solid. Shigaraki lost whatever his response was going to be, letting himself go lax against Spinner’s side. “Shigaraki?”

“Feel like I’ve been cold since I got out of the tube,” he answered, too tired to bother with anything but the truth, to which Spinner immediately held him closer. Heh. Bonus. “How about you? Find anything to fill you up while I was away?”

“Not that I’ve got to show you. The whole villa was—” Spinner paused, frustration giving way to suspicion. “Was that a dirty joke?”

Shigaraki snickered and leaned back, pulling Spinner down into the bed with him. Spinner fell with a muffled yelp. “Eh.”

“I don’t believe you,” Spinner said, but quietly, and didn’t follow it up. Slowly, his hands found their way up to Shigaraki’s face, those sharp claws of his infinitely careful as he pushed back Shigaraki’s hair. “Gonna sleep some more?”

“Gonna make me?” It didn’t sound like such a bad idea, honestly. Spinner would have told him something by now if wherever they were wasn’t safe.

“I don’t think I could if I wanted to,” Spinner muttered. “You got really ripped.”

The confused, not quite envious tone dissolved Shigaraki into dry cackling. Of all the shit to focus on.

“Guess I did.” He decided to let himself have the moment—no telling how long it’d last, after all—and relaxed with a sigh into the circle of Spinner’s arms.

Track 9 | All of My Days

Shigaraki slept in his arms.

There were a thousand other things to worry about, things Spinner had sworn he’d start thinking about as soon as Shigaraki woke up, but that boat had obviously sailed, seeing as Spinner’s brain had decided that now was the perfect time get stuck on things like, Thank god he’s still him, and, How did it wind up like this? not to mention a repeating chorus of, I’m so glad he’s alright, and a bunch of fragments like, I never thought I— and, Back then, I—

He exhaled, stirring Shigaraki’s hair. Splayed lazily on his chest, Shigaraki snored softly, undisturbed, drawn back from hazy-eyed detachment by that last burst of laughter, which had been cutting and mean and perfect—and, judging by how fast he’d dropped back off, had also tired him right back out. He’d gotten heavier, which Spinner already knew from muscling him around the house for the last two days, but like this, his weight just felt right. Reassuring.

Savior and liberator, those were the words Re-Destro used for Shigaraki, and Spinner had always rolled his eyes about it, because it was too much, flowery and over-exposed. But when he thought back on his life before, just a set of scales stretched thin over a hollow ache, just fitful anger with nowhere to turn but inward…

He sighed again and tightened his grip, just a little. There was a lot ahead of them still, bad news to break, temporary separations and permanent losses. But despite that, just in that moment, Spinner felt—okay. Like things would be all right. Like the moment he was in was enough. And it’d been such a long time since he’d felt that way that he couldn’t even bring himself to feel guilty for it.

Shigaraki slept in his arms, and Spinner let himself breathe.

Track 10 | Shout

The little house they were in—a guest house, the impersonal decor of which had not survived half a week with Toga, Mr. Compress and Skeptic all under one roof—was steadily transforming into their new base of operations. Gigantomachia had been hollowing out a space below ground, dank and shabby compared to the repurposed flood cisterns beneath the villa, but it was slowly filling up with people—stragglers the old MLA smuggled in, because Hawks might have figured out who the Army’s heroes were, but even he was never going to get a full member list; the Army hadn’t even kept one. They’d been doing the hide-in-plain-sight operation for generations, and being back in a scenario where they could get raided again mostly just seemed to fire them up.

Shigaraki was back on his feet again like he’d never been off of them, scars—what was left of them—faded to thin white lines and mostly hidden behind his clothes. He was right back to black, too, courtesy of a fashion expedition Toga and a few local kids had run to the nearest town over.

The news was still going crazy; no matter where Spinner went in town, there was always a boxy little TV or an old radio on with people standing around paying keen attention to the complete meltdown happening across the country—the destruction of Jaku City, Shigaraki’s escape, the discovery and capture of Ujiko, Endeavor’s connection to Dabi (which Shigaraki had apparently figured out half a year ago, in the aftermath of that very first Vanguard Action Squad attack), Hawks’ disfigurement, quirk-erasing bullets, the resurgence of the Meta Liberation Army—a 24-news cycle wasn’t enough to cover everything, and while “vindictive glee” wasn’t quite what Spinner had had in mind back when worried about keeping morale up, well, he still wasn’t going to complain.

They had their feet under them now. Every day, plans were being redrawn, the math being refigured: subtract the element of surprise from the MLA’s operations, but add in the damage done to the Hero Billboard Chart’s precious top ten; take away the Noumu, but wait, actually, maybe don’t, because just how impregnable is Tartarus, exactly? Shigaraki was free, and if he wasn’t quite at 100%, well, Ujiko wasn’t going to be around to finish the job for a while, so there was nothing for it but to move forward, and the way forward stretched before them unobstructed.

Shigaraki still planned to tear it all down, stone from stone—if anything, his fight with the heroes in Jaku and finding out about Twice afterwards had left him even more determined. Somehow, no one seemed to mind. The ordeal had burned their leader clean and sharp, a light burning at the end of the universe, impossible to blot out.

Spinner had never felt more ready to take on the world.

#spinarakiweek2020 #shigaraki tomura #iguchi shuuichi #spinner bnha #fst #bnha fst #boku no hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #my hero academia #my writing #ficcing

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splintered-dreams · 7 years

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Comeuppance

Title: Comeuppance Fandom: Original Story Published: 10-23-17 Words: 2,482 Warnings: Gratuitous gore, descriptions of sexual assault

Summary: He swallowed his heart back down from his throat and tried to hide the tears in his eyes. “I told you I’d do anything for you.”

She appeared to him as she had in the days leading up to her death, her messy blonde hair cut in a bob, pale skin unmarred by the ravages of time or man, with a small gap between her front teeth that showed when she opened her mouth. He wanted to sob. He always did, when he saw her. “Des!” she cried, rushing towards him and leaping into his arms, her form barely wavering as he held her close, tears running down his face. She pulled back slightly, placing her small palms on his filthy cheeks. “You haven’t been eating or sleeping again,” she scolded, pouting, running her fingers over his taut cheeks, taking in the dark bags under his mismatched eyes. “Ooh, mummy’s gonna getcha good when she sees you again!” All he could do was try and smile through his tears.

“It’s been a long time hasn’t it, Tetyana?” he choked out. “How’s my favourite princess doing, huh?” It felt like a sin to be holding her like this, caked in blood and sweat and grime, even though he knew she would remain untouched by his filth. The mage wiped his face, hiding the tear tracks with bloody smears. There was still a job to be done. At least he had company this time. He knelt down and she climbed onto his shoulders, fingers threaded through his tangled hair, a phantom weight as he walked through the bodies strewn about the hallway. Her eyes, he knew, saw everything but nothing at all. It would be pointless to attempt to shield her gaze. You can’t hide anything from the dead, after all.

She hummed. “I’m okay,” she said, before directing him to turn left, down a corridor he hadn’t seen earlier. “Mum misses you. She still worries about you, even though she knows you’ll be okay.” She was smiling, he knew, flashing that teasing grin he used to despise before everything went wrong. “My big brother, champion of the lowly ones, the voiceless ones, the broken ones; never would’ve thought you had it in ya.” It goes unsaid that he only picked up those nicknames because of his crusade to avenge her. That he would become anything to avenge her. That he cast away his humanity for her.

“I am whatever the masses decree me to be,” he said, large hands gently gripping small, phantom ankles, not because his sister’s shade needed steadying, but that it was an ingrained habit from when he was young, always holding his baby sister steady atop his shoulders so that she may reach up and try to capture the stars in her embrace. He missed those carefree days with such a sharp longing it felt like a stab to the heart with an acid-dipped blade. He forced those memories back, knowing it wouldn’t do to become distracted when he was so close to completing his current task.

The corridor the ghost directed him down led to a veritable labyrinth of dimly lit stone passages, a stark contrast from the soft velvet carpets and ornate wooden walls of the main section of the mansion. It would be easy for a normal mortal to become lost in these twisting halls, but the mage was undeterred, avoiding dead ends and decoy paths without batting an eye. While disgusted, he wasn’t surprised by the change in scenery. He knew what kind of people resided within the walls of this facsimile of a socially acceptable house, had seen the darkness that lurked in the eyes and hearts of those that entered the grounds. It was like a portal to the past, memories layered atop reality in the worst kind of way. He felt his sister’s ghost briefly lose her corporeality, a sensation like a sheet of cold water running down his back as she phased through him, before falling into step next to him, her bare feet disturbing none of the shallow puddles the duo walked through.

Up ahead he could hear muffled crying, the screaming of a child in agony, and bile rose up in his throat. His sister’s gaze burned as it lay on his stricken expression. “It never gets easier for you does it?” she asked quietly, not expecting an answer. His expression was far away, and she knew he couldn’t be reached by her voice. Not in the present, anyway. “You always hear me in their cries, see me in their mutilated bodies.” The dim lights flickered and faltered as the mage’s strides grew, increasing his speed until he broke into a run, eyes focused but unseeing. He didn’t notice he was leaving his sister’s ghost behind. As he darted ahead, consumed by both the horrors of the past and his current goal, his sister’s form changed from that of a five-year-old girl to that of an ageless being that only loosely could be classified as humanoid. Speaking to no one, it said, “That is why We chose you, Desmond Hoss,” before melting into the floor without a trace.

The mage, unaware of the being he left behind, rushed towards the sound of children in pain, reality blurring with the memories he was never able to suppress, not fully. Sigils flared to life around him, hovering and twisting around his arms and hands, flickering a sickly green light that cast strange shadows as he moved. There was an old, oak door at the end of a corridor, from behind which muffled screams were emanating. He didn’t bother with stealth, simply pouring his magic into the doorway with one intent: destroy.

The doorway exploded outwards in a shower of wooden and granite shrapnel, slicing through unprotected skin, but he barely registered the fresh cuts adorning his face. He walked through the destruction, webs of green magic crawling along the right side of his face, oozing in viscous streams from behind his glass eye, casting a menacing glow on his twisted countenance. There were dozens of children of all genders hidden away in the room, ages ranging from five to twelve, drugged to the gills and chained to beds and each other. Some of them seemed semi-conscious, while others simply sat there, unaware. Many sported hand-shaped bruises on their necks and wrists, while more still were littered with bite marks. The older ones were in worse shape than the younglings, inflamed abrasions on their wrists and ankles showing they fought against their restraints often, probably as soon as the drugs started to wear out. Their nails were blunt and bloody. Some had bloody mouths. The mage noted all of this and snarled.

There were adults in the room as well, men and women in various states of undress, masked and taking pleasure in the bodies of their captives. These children weren’t drugged, instead screaming, begging, sobbing, writhing, desperately trying to escape their restraints and the arms of their captors, crying out in fear and pain as they were violated, all to the soundtrack of their captors laughter. The scene was so familiar he nearly retched, watching helplessly in his mind’s eye as his sister was desecrated in the same manner, able to hear her crying for him to save her while he was bound and made to watch. Des snapped, his magic throwing the vile creatures posing as humans off their victims, throwing them against the far wall. His magic crackled, leaping off in arcs of sickly green light before snapping back to his body, sigils flaring in slowly spinning circles behind him.

He stalked forward, using his magic to hastily put the children into a deep sleep before vanishing them to the upper floors of the mansion. Rudimentary healing, both physical and mental, could take place later. He sealed the hole where the door had once stood, an electrical web weaving itself into place in the gaps between the stone, hissing and sparking dangerously. The scent of ozone hung heavy in the sealed room. The vermin huddled in on themselves, trembling, some even deigning to scream in horror as his form started to waver slightly, stretching and contorting before returning to normal in the blink of an eye. The only light came from Des’ magic, casting an unnatural green hue on all the objects in the room. “Now then,” he purred maliciously, eyes wild, grin full of teeth that lengthened and sharpened to unnatural points, “I think it’s time I punish the sinners, don’t you think?”

“H-How did you-?” one of the vermin tried to stammer out, but Des darted forward with inhuman speed and punched his hand straight through the man’s gut, cutting his inquiry off with a howl of pain, his viscera-covered arm protruding from his back. The mage smiled, equal parts cruel and amused, as he pulled his arm out with a thick, wet sucking noise, and let the man drop to the ground, watching him struggle to push his innards back into the hole in his gut. Watching him writhe like a maggot on the filthy stone floor, feebly fighting to stay alive, filled Des with sick pleasure.

“Haven’t you heard the stories? The myths?” he cooed, kicking his first victim over and grinding his heel into the gaping wound, the screams music to his ears. “When children are in pain, when there’s nowhere for them to turn, when the world has turned a blind eye while the innocent are crying out for salvation, don’t you know who they pray to?” He cackled as the man’s eyes shone with horrified realization, but before he could say anything, the mage crushed his neck with the heel of his boot, hearing the bone yield with satisfying cracks.

The vermin’s associates truly started to panic, the reality of their situation beginning to fully sink in. They had heard the stories, of course, everyone who shared their sickening tastes had heard that there was one who would deliver salvation to the abused while the abusers were never heard from again, but that’s what they were thought to be, just stories. Now, it seemed, they would pay the price for not heeding the warning in those tales. Most of the rats pressed themselves against the wall or backed themselves into corners, tears filling their eyes as they begged for mercy. Several tried to make a run for it, only for their doomed escape to come to an agonizing end as they ran into the barrier made by Des’ magic, electricity coursing through their bodies as they howled and writhed before falling, limp, smoking, blood and other bodily fluids leaking from various orifices.

A few brave, or perhaps just desperate, vermin tried to attack him, armed with only their fists and fueled by adrenaline and terror, but the mage ended their feeble attempts without breaking a sweat, gouging out eyes and ripping out tongues, tearing off genitalia and limbs, crushing skulls and windpipes with careless, thoughtless, yet precise movements. Screams rent the air, blood splashing on the walls and spilling onto the floor, hot and wet, streams of crimson snaking through the cracked stone floor. Once the proactive vermin were dealt with, Des turned his attention to those cowardly ones, the ones who still believed that begging and grovelling would save them. He put an end to that belief with extreme prejudice, ripping organs from the screaming fools, digging through their chest cavities to tear out their hearts just to make their helpless compatriots eat the still-beating muscle.

The sigils behind Des glowed brighter with each kill and his form began changing into something less than human. His skin blackened and his face briefly became featureless except for his grinning mouth filled with blood-stained teeth and the green webbing stretched across the right side of his face, and then hundreds of glowing green eyes opened all over his body, disappearing below his clothes. All the blood on his form, whether it belonged to him or one of his victims, was absorbed into his body. A thick, viscous liquid that glowed the colour of his magic dripped from his maw, hissing as the droplets hit the ground. Of the few victims who remained alive, only one had the energy left to stammer, horrified, “M-monster… y-you’re more of a-a monst-ter than you claim we a-are!!”

Des pushed out his magic, letting the sigils adhere themselves to the walls. “A monster, you say?” he rumbled, voice distorted. His eyes were devoid of emotion as he prepared his magic for afinal ritual. “No, I am no monster.” The mage laughed, throwing back his head to reveal rows and rows of needle-like teeth in his mouth. “My form is naught but a nightmare created by the darkness in your hearts. You created me.” Only he knew this meant more than what his victims could ever comprehend, not that it mattered. Animals didn’t need to understand the motivation of their butcher, only that they were about to die and there was nothing they could do about it. “Don’t you know who I am?” he mocked as the ritual symbol on the floor flared to life. The room echoed with the screams of the damned and he watched as skeletal hands grasped at the bodies and souls of the sinners and dragged them to the punishment realm to suffer for their crimes eternally. “I’m the chosen of the goddess, the savior of the broken ones. The only monsters here are you.”

A bright white light engulfed the room before dissipating, and once it was gone there was no trace of the slaughter that took place in it moments before. The bodies and blood were gone, vanished without a trace, and all traces of magic faded away, as though they had never been there in the first place. Des stood amongst the rubble from his initial break-in, human once more, and shook himself of the ghosts of his past. If a few tears rolled down his cheek, well, no one was there to witness it. A small hand grasped his and he looked down to see the ghost of his sister standing beside him, innocent and untouched as she always should have been. As was common after a job, he was struck with how little he believed what he told the sinners before he cast them down when he was faced with the image of what he believed goodness to be. He wanted to pull away, to prevent himself from poisoning her with his taint, even though he knew it was a ridiculous notion. However, Tetyana’s ghost simply pulled him from the room, a small smile on her face, and said, “Thank you, my Saint.”

He swallowed his heart back down from his throat and tried to hide the tears in his eyes. “I told you I’d do anything for you,” he simply replied, and the duo headed to the upper floors so that the mage could try to reverse the damage done to his goddess’ charges.

#original fic #gore #des hoss

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