AN: Firstly, a warning. This story is rated T for violence, language, disturbing imagery...basically, everything you'd find in a typical SH game. Might change to an M rating for later chapters, depending on where this little journey leads us. Hopefully, I can hold your attention for that long.
Sigil
Prologue
And the blood continued to flow, even after Claudia had been pulled into the darkness and Heather followed her with the sort of determination only vengeance could inspire. It was all watched in a bleary, dreamy delirium which was simply accelerated as he tried to pull the knife from his chest and succeeded, his efforts rewarded with a thick gush of the ruby liquid. His right hand, still clutching the blade, fell to the side; he should have felt sharp bolts of pain pinprick his limb, but the only thing he could discern was numbness. He was dying, and it was coming slow. The body was shutting down at a snail's pace: a cruel end indeed. A quick finish needn't apply here; Claudia had stabbed him vitally for sure, but she didn't thrust the weapon in deep enough. It would be over soon enough, yes, but he would not be granted a merciful loss of consciousness before that.
It was mildly fitting, in a perverse way, and so were the circles he feverishly started to paint in his own blood on the floor next to him. His let his index finger guide itself by instinct, the tip smeared with red as it composed a large ring, as big as he could bring his hand up to create, for charity. Had he have been capable of rational thinking at the moment, he would've berated himself for such an act of hypocrisy; he'd always scoffed over the worthless notion of charity and how people expected blind acts of mercy when it was always their fault for their poverty and bleak conditions. This must have been karma's idea of a truly sublime joke on him, for wasn't he anticipating the same?
The second inner circle for resurrection, the most important ring, was soon after depicted, but his finger stilled before he could finish the circles of past, present, and future, and hung limp on his hand like a tired puppet. His legs convulsed and stiffened up, and his chest burned. He gave a shrill little cry at this, blood bubbling and trickling out of his mouth, down his chin. The hand that still held the ceremonial dagger gave a sudden jerk, and he could vaguely make out the sound of metal scraping against rock.
And just as Claudia had found herself dragged down into the depths of a nightmare, the blackness overwhelmed his senseless and the burning stopped and he saw nothing.
It watched him die in silence, and it approached his body with equal stealth. This was not an act of respect as one might assume, however; curiosity and cautiousness overpowered any shadow of estimation, and besides, it was sure that he didn't deserve it. The woman had deemed him a sinner, a hell bound soul, and perhaps that was true. Perhaps he did deserve hell for his wicked ways and blasphemy of God. Maybe he was already there.
But he had invoked the sun. And because that was under God's domain, he had invoked Her. The blood was the life, and he used what little remained of his own to appeal to Her. Selfless or selfish, it didn't care. It only existed to carry out Her will, and if this was what She commanded of it, so be it.
It crawled over to his corpse, grabbed the legs, and started to pull the carcass across the cold stone floor and onto the rusty mesh grating, leaving a dark trail of crimson behind it.
God loved all, and Her pity extended to even the most lowly of creatures. He was no different.
The blood that was left in its wake crawled along the grating in the form of tendrils until it was soon creeping up the walls and cobwebbing onto the ceiling. By the time Valtiel left with the man's body in tow, the chapel had become a writhing mass of gore and quivering flesh.
Which, in its own way, was exactly how it wanted to remember it.
