By now I expect 'truth' has become Heather's least favorite word in the English language. But then maybe it's about to pull a fast one on her...
-.
The Smith rested on his knees. His arms rested in his lap. The kilns were unnaturally quiet. Lost in his own smoldering embers, it took him a long while to notice his siblings was crouched before him. The angel was very still, his palms flat on the ground between his knees. There was no expression on the Psychopomp's face; his long toothy maw was closed and invisible against the smooth flesh of his ovoid head.
His Yellow twin wanted to know what he had done.
The Smith looked around slowly, regarding his domain. The agonized and spiritual creatures that had once dwelt there were gone. In fact, throughout the Smithy's chamber, no clay, filth, or grime could be seen. He'd harvested all of it. All of the spirits, all of the grime; everything he could reach from the confines of his cell. He had clawed frantically for every scrap, stretched and strained till his chains had injured him. Yet now, with everything gathered, purified, smelted, and refined, the hardened core of spiritual metal now loitered cold and shapeless atop his forge.
He did not know what to make. His art had failed him. His last creation had been perfect.
YOU INTERVENED, The Smith growled, trying to lay the blame somewhere else.
His twin didn't twitch. The angel stared at him. The Smith had been wrong; the Witch would not embrace her own destruction. Now he would need angelic help to bring her to Justice; and they would bind him to their laws. The fingers of his unbound hand clenched defiantly. After at last he had some freedom, after so many years of captivity, would he truly restore his own chains? But then, wasn't Justice his purpose?
He lowered his head because he did not want to talk to his twin. Not yet. He wouldn't negotiate yet. Heat blazed out angrily from around him. Leave Me Be.
Something was missing, the Yellow one hazarded.
The Smith looked slowly up at his twin, at the thoughtful hesitance on the angel's face.
He had forgotten for awhile... forgotten but now... he almost remembered. Something... something important was missing...
The Smith hesitated, the fingers of his free hand twitching with nervous energy. He too remember that time, not too long ago, in which his twin had come to him begging answers. The angel had reeked of a purged Blasphemy. Such Blasphemies were only possible because angels had been engineered to love mortals as if they were gods. The Smith, like all demons, answered only God and so was incorruptible. ...Or so it was assumed.
But what had the Scribe cut from his sibling? What dirty secret, what unclean falsehood had she torn from his mind? A sudden desire struck the Smith, something sweet and terrifying that elevated his breath. But what madness had put the desire there? He was demonic; he was infallible in his purpose. How could he honestly wish to see whatever it was the Scribe had rewritten?
But, then again, what said that the Scribe herself had not been corrupted? What if she had stricken a truth, and replaced it with a falsehood? Impossible; The Smith had felt the lingering ghost of the Blasphemy himself.
His twin moved suddenly, picking up something the Smith had not previously seen. The angel was holding several tattered leaves of paper, and as his sibling watched, the Psychopomp carefully-almost lovingly- smoothed them out to 'look' at them. It was true that Metatron could see better than Samael; but it did not take canny vision to smell the human fingerprints on the paper, or place their owner.
Everything inside him suddenly screamed: Do it. He would have once chance. The Smith lunged forward, grabbing at his nimble twin while the other was lost in thought.
As Walter danced away, the Pyramid Monster sent a booming roar after him. He swiped and grabbed at his agile opponent, and then gave a high pitched shriek of rage when the smaller man actually succeed in pulling a rug out from underneath him and tripping him down to one knee. His helmet cracked hard into the wall, overturned the bedside table, and sent an old expensive lap tumbling to its demise on the cold, unforgiving floorboards.
Heather was sitting up instantaneously, grabbing her katana from the side of her bed. Her hair was a disaster, her eyes had dark circles under them, and she was heavily disoriented from being woken up in such a chaotic way. Also, her sleep leading up to that moment had been craapy. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU!?" she shrieked at both of them before she was even truly conscious, her voice enraged and nearly hysterical. She dropped the katana and whipped a pillow at Walter, who was actually quite startled to receive this reaction. "I AM TRYING TO SLEEP!"
"Sister-"
"I AM TRYING TO SLEEP!" she repeated, then nearly died of frustration when Henry and Eileen showed up on the scene to figure out what in tarnation all the commotion was about.
"Heather-"
"AAAUGGGH!" she threw the other bedside lamp at them.
The Pyramid monster grabbed on to the side of the bed and hoisted himself up to one knee, roaring viciously after Walter. The undead man smirked, stepping backwards and spreading out his arms (or, well, his arm + arm stub) to show he was unarmed.
Heather gave the Pyramid Monster an angry rebuke and a shove, but he seemed oblivious to her. Furthermore, Walter's peace gesture did not seem to assuage Samael, who grabbed on to another handful of fabric and, tearing the mattress, sheets, and blankets slightly, hauled himself up to his feet and started to stand; a now constant metallic thunder coming from beneath his helm.
"AAAAHHH-" Heather snarled, beating the monster over the helmet with her other pillow, which of course was absolutely ineffectual, unless her goal had been to destroy her pillow. "I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!"
Walter frowned. "I worry about you, sister."
Heather collapsed and slapped a hand over her face. "Oh God," She moaned. "What time is it? Walter, Walter, I cannot talk religious philosophy right now," she croaked. "This is like the level of tired of being woken up by the fire alarm after going to bed at three the day before exams. Twice. Please."
Walter frowned and folded his arms over his chest (or tried to). The Pyramid Monster roared but, surprisingly, neither dove over the bed, crushed Heather to death, nor even fully righted himself. He remained poised over the bed, and after a moment he suddenly grabbed at her and hauled her closer to him.
Heather loosed a stream of obscenities.
"I'm confused," Eileen said from outside Heather's door. "There are two gods, right? Red and yellow? If Valtiel's yellow, why does Walter talk about him as red, and why do Crimson books talk about resurrection and not just execution? Which is the attendant, and which is the executioner? If Valtiel is Metatron, why did Walter kill people? Which is the demon? If they're siblings, why are they fighting? Why are they fighting over Heather? "
"His purpose is to destroy you sister," Walter noted. "Don't be fooled by the skin he wears. You know better. Use him, or flee! Why persist in trying to ignore it? It's the truth-"
Before Heather could kill Walter, Samael made a sharp metallic click of a noise and then suddenly eased a huge knee on the bed, which squeaked ominously.
"Alex-" Heather yelped, then squealed when the Pyramid Monster suddenly dropped his weight on her, shoving her down into the blankets on her side. Five hundred pounds even sans helmet, it was like being sat on by a horse. It shoved all of the air straight out of her.
Walter blinked incredulously, watching as the Pyramid Monster smothered Heather Mason into the blankets with his body, worming a clenched-fingered hand into the sheets on her left side and an arm under her on her right. He dropped his tongue possessively into the much smaller human's blonde hair, and growled low and dangerously up at Walter Sullivan.
At last the undead cultist did not look so sure of himself. He frowned confused at the scene in front of him. It wasn't the possessive hoarding that confused him; it was the bizarre way in which the monster was doing it.
"You cannot separate a god from its divnity," he echoed from that time long ago when he had first explained why Valtiel was beyond saving. "You can build up a thick skin, but deep down you know all it takes is a quick snip to cut it away. And you know what the Crimson Helm intends." He then calmly turned about and walked out of the room.
Henry peered in and then stiffened in alarm at where he found the monster. "Heather!"
"Can't... breathe..." the Mason girl rasped soundlessly. At her voice (or maybe because Walter had just left), the Pyramid Monster lifted up his weight and rested the bulk of it onto his forearms. Having just been saved from asphyxia, Heather Mason choked, gagged, and gasped for air. She tried to claw her way out from underneath Samael, but the monster growled unhappily and re-positioned himself to keep her pinned.
"Are you- what do we do?" Eileen exclaimed, horrified at what she was looking at. And, being that she had the dirtier mind of the two, it of course occurred to Eileen first that she should ask the vaguely worded: "Is he hurting you!?"
Heather cackled. "Technically speaking," she said, still slightly smooshed but now breathing find, "he can't reach. His hips are too far behind me. But no, I don't think that's what he's trying to accomplish."
Henry blinked, looked at both women, and then covered his face.
-.
In Nowhere, the chase had gone differently. Ensnared, the angel screamed out in indignation, and he writhed, twisted, and convulsed to try and get free. But the Smith held on so powerfully that the fingers of one hand dug into his twin's flesh; the other hand he kept closed around the Psychopomp's throat.
See What I See.
The Avatars' memories flooded from one god to another, and they were something of an alien violation in the other deity's mind, for all that they were necessary to convey the Smith's meaning. He and his twin had made and suffered similar attacks before, as each tried to force the other to agree with them about the mortal faithful; and that had been long ago, during the creation of Paradise. This time was different; the Psychopomp had no counterpoint and nothing to fight back with.
As the memories invaded, the angel's mouth parted and his head tilted backwards in surprised horror. Then he howled and shrieked and thrashed anew, trying to get free. His claws tore up the Smith's arms and ripped chunks out of his chest, throat, and metal helmet, bleeding out the larger twin's creative energy.
Still the Smith clung to him, forcing his twin brutally into the ground, trying to hold on to him for every additional instant, every additional memory.
It was getting too painful. Fingers latched into the Smith's arms, burying deep into his flesh. His angelic twin was warning him; if he didn't stop, he was going to regret the consequences.
Kaufmann stayed outside to intercept the other survivors before Heather killed someone. Although the Pyramid Monster was technically still pinning her, Heather still had the katana, and Kaufmann wagered she might throw it at someone if any more people invaded her bedroom that evening.
"Well? He's gone. Get off me," Heather complained, stabbing her fingernails ineffectually into the monster's arm. She tried kicking at him, but the monster's legs were off the bed and his hips dragged the side of the mattress so low that the weight of his torso had completely immobilized her own legs. He was just that much taller and heavier than a normal person. And he did not appear to be listening to her.
Her Pyramid Monster glared down at the floorboards, presumably looking straight in the direction of Walter Sullivan, a low and primal death rattle still shuddering out from his helmet menacingly.
"Well, what do we do?" Eileen exclaimed.
"Get him off me!" Heather shouted in bitter frustration.
"He weighs like a ton!" Eileen shouted back grumpily.
No one was prepared for Samael to suddenly roar at Eileen, hiking Heather up an inch against him and giving a very small feint or lunge towards the other woman. Eileen leapt backwards in surprise.
"The hell was that!" she yelped in a tiny voice. "He didn't even attack Elle and she-"
The Pyramid Monster hissed violently, the tip of the helmet weaving back and forward and scoring the nice fresh sheets.
Still effectively buried by her companion, her cheek pressed into the mattress and her back crushed into his abdomen, Heather Mason frowned. She listened for a moment, eyes shifting off to look at nothing for a moment. Then she lifted her chin a little and tried to look at Henry.
"I think he's confused," she decided slowly.
Henry frowned where he had an arm protectively between Eileen and the monster. "Confused?"
"His heart's racing, and I think he's shaking a little," Heather confirmed.
"Of what? Of Walter?"
Heather was so smooshed she couldn't even shrug properly. "Yo asshole," she grumbled up at the Pyramid Monster. "You are crushing me." The heartbeat against her was steadying, at least. "Alex! Walter is gone, and Eileen and Henry aren't going to eat me!"
At that, the Pyramid Monster gave a low, scraping, metallic whine. He shifted about his weight uncertainly, his fingers clenching and unclenching hesitantly. Heather winced when she thought he might drop on her again, then sighed and when calmed down. Henry stepped forward and came up to get another perspective on the situation.
"Are you in pain?" the man asked.
Heather blinked sullenly. "Not really," she grumbled. "Just stuck."
"Then are you in duress?"
Heather and Eileen stared incredulously at him. The monster grumbled, shifting about his weight. This time he seemed to consider getting up and picking Heather off the bed; but after a moment he just settled back down on top of her.
Henry waited for an answer.
"Excuse me!" Heather exclaimed. "A grotesquely hyper-exaggerated re-imagining of my dead boyfriend in X major on top of me and squishing me!"
"But are you in duress?"
"Henry!" Eileen hissed. Henry looked at her in confusion.
Heather shifted slightly and thought about the question, rubbing her face slightly. "... I guess all things considered, if it means I get to sleep now without any more interruptions..."
Eileen gave her a funny look.
"What?" Heather snapped. "Let's face it, if we took Henry before he ever met you, made him look like this, killed the real Henry, and then sat this on you, you would be a disaster too."
Eileen kept giving her a funny look.
"...But if that's the plan then you need to give him a little push, because I can't feel my left leg. Easy now. I think he's still reacting so defensively because all these different people and different minds are freaking him out, and you're sort of connected to Walter..."
When the Psychopomp simply refused to take anymore, he clawed his way free. The Smith bellowed in agony as the talons cleaved his flesh in long flat strips from his bones. Under such an onslaught he could not hold on any longer. Slick with his fiery blood, his fingers lost their hold on the angel. His twin scampered away, still reeling in pain and howling.
What madness? What madness?
You Said Something Was Missing, the Smith huffed breathlessly. Maybe Now We Can Find Out What It Was. Then he stiffened in surprise.
The angel had become slicked in the Smith's own blood, burning red with new life. As the blood contacted with the Psychopomp's back, it seeped into scars. Flesh writhed. Bones crackled. And then suddenly two long appendages were growing up and outward from the angel's back. Long and slender they grew, symmetrical and with two joints each. And then, as they stretched out to incredible lengths, they began to form something that was not flesh, sinew, muscle, bone, or metal. Feathers rippled down the lengths, jutting outward down from the skin into a full plumage from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other.
What...?
Shaking violently, spasming, convulsing, even vomiting once, Lobsel-Vith slowly lifted his head. He took in ragged, harsh breaths, staring at his twin though both of them were eyeless. Then his mouth opened wide and low, contorting into a thousand-toothed shark snarl. The Smith stared in baffled awe; wings could only exist in a cosmology where light, or sky, or at least freedom were valid conceptions. The Blasphemy- if that's what it was- was of magnificent proportions.
Slowly, painfully, the Metatron pushed himself up to all fours. He looked from one wing to the other, flexing each to test that they were indeed valid, functional wings. He gazed at nothing for a moment, lips still curled in a snarl, ransacking and reordering his memories. Then he noticed the crumpled scraps of paper which had been damaged and stained in the struggle. Frowning, he reached out and touched the tattered fragment, drinking in the scent of their maker.
Heather.
The Smith sneered, awed and disgusted. The sheer idea that this had been done to his sacred twin by one avatar, by contact with mortal paper, by the utterance of one human word in some miserable language of no significance...
-.
He was crawling upward through the elevator shaft of Alchemilla hospital, listening disinterestedly to the heartbeats of human faithful. He was dragging an injured nurse by the leg- she needed to be repaired- and as the drone of the fans began to eclipse the sound of human words a shock suddenly went through him. His fingers slipped from the nurse's leg and his whole body contorted in agony.
Pain! Such pain! He wirthed and hissed, sliding slightly down the elevator shaft and then leaping onto a ledge. He clawed at his arms, feeling numb and sticky, and then shrieked and raked at his head.
Pain! Pain pain! Get it out, get it out, get it out! The world was dizzy, it churned, there was a memory of flame, of scrolls, of things burrowing into his skin, his head, flaying him, turning him inside out so that all organs and gray matter and veins were exposed, and then forcing him right-side out again but with something less, something missing, something- something-!
An agonized, low caterwaul rippled out from his throat. He wailed and wailed, clawing at himself and then finally just rocking, his hands, face, arms, and chest all slicked with his own blood. He rocked and rocked and rocked, his hands clasped about his head and shoulders, his moans shaking the pipes and terrifying the many creatures around him (humans included).
He had definitely killed the nurse. It would be much harder to fix her now. But... But...
But...
His voice had gone hoarse. Shaking, his head and heart pounding, nearly delirious with pain, he slowly reached down into his boot, and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper he had stored there. His red-gloved fingers smoothed over the paper, unfolding and restoring the shape, causing grime and other stains to recede back into the void.
Alessa.
He shuddered, brows narrowing in pain as suddenly the most important quest in the world seemed to be to understand something well beyond his reach. His brain felt filled with the mixed static from a thousand angry channels, all blurring together in a smokey mist.
Sister.
His lips parted and the slender black tongue slid down from the side of his head, reaching forward tentatively to touch the healing paper.
His heart clenched. He remembered crouching poised over Insanity's lair, knowing that brother had been proven victorious and that the intervention was not his to take. Knowing that Xipe would be pleased. Knowing that... that...
He remembered her sad eyes looking at him.
Sacrifice, guidance, snow, man, a hundred nightmares, walls of paintings, angel, mice, decorations, pumpkins, chocolate, kit-kat, spaghetti, bleach, bathing, threatening, evening, eight years, god, the seal, the mother, the strand of black hair, dyed golden-
Are you real?
Shaking violently, Valtiel clutched the paper drawing to his chest. Then he lifted it up and pressed his bloody face against it, wrapping both arms about it, clutching his shoulders as he smothered himself into the paper.
He heard the human voices, twining up the elevator shaft. His fingers twitched and contorted about the Seals he wore as brands.
"She will be coming here next, I'm sure of it. And yes, I'm sure she will have the demon in tow. But it won't take many of us, just a cleverness Edwin lacks. A small surprise, a bit of a shock. The demon will be dealt with, and she'll be as helpless as a sniffling babe."
Valtiel lifted his head slowly.
Oh. Really.
Guess what time it is!? It's...
Puzzle Time.
PH *Facepalm* The Hell Is It With You and Puzzles? It's Clearly *Rape* Time.
Valtiel: *Offended and disturbed* If they get through them, I give them cake!
PH If They Don't Get Through Them, I Give Them-
Offscreen: THE CAKE IS A LIE!
Heather *currently eating Valtiel baked goods* "Says who? Valtiel is an excellent baker."
Ph *Sigh*
Valtiel *Offers Cake*
PH ...*Sits and eats cake with them*
