Hey guys! Sorry this chapter took so long :) School and a million other things decided they were more important. As always, this story seems to know exactly where it wants to go, it just doesn't always let me know how it intends for me to flesh it out sometimes XD!
"Yellow God!"
So it was. As if he had erupted right off the page from one of Heather's sketches, the monsterous angel was there. He perched on the atrium mantelpiece, directly in front of the mirror, his head twitching about unnaturally.
"Valtiel!" Henry exclaimed, jumping to his feet and stepping towards the semi-divine creature, as the other two men reached for weapons and braced themselves for an attack.
"Get back!" Douglass hollered, grabbing at Henry's shoulder. Valtiel gurgled softly, looking at each of the men assembled. Travis Grady stiffened, the hair raised up on the back of his neck.
"Get Heather!" Henry said, trying to shrug off Douglass.
Valtiel growled violentl, his twitching head fixating its blind gaze on Henry Townshend. All men assembled went silent. Henry shrunk down a bit and froze in place where he stood. Kaufman was sinking weakly to his knees. The god gurgled and clicked for a moment, contemplating them, head twisting slowly in a counter-clockwise motion. Then his tongue flicked out and tasted the air, and his gaze turned up in the direction of the Lighthouse staircase and Heather Mason.
"Just another damn monster," Douglass muttered. "What's it doing here?" Henry brought a finger to his own mouth in a hush gesture.
"He is here to pose a task to you," Walter answered, and the words were so startling that Douglass and Henry both broke their stares and twisted about to look at him.
"Like hell it is," Douglass answered, "you read minds now, dead man?"
"The red devil is always with me," Walter answered, his gaze not leaving Valtiel.
"Well there we go crossing gods again," Lauren muttered quietly from past Walter's elbow.
"Sullivan, is it hostile?" Travis muttered, easing his axe into a comfortable grip in his hand.
Walter sneered. "He is no animal, Mr. Grady. In this moment he is the embodiment of a god. He could kill everyone in this room. You should be on your knees."
"Forgive us old men our bad knees then," Travis muttered, "but we'd prefer to stand."
Valtiel looked down from the staircase again, his 'gaze' settling on Travis Grady. The god contemplated the man for a moment, comparing him to the monster Insanity, and recalling Travis's long history with the witch child Alessa and her later incarnations. Everything was risky; everything was dangerous. But Valtiel's hand had been unveiled and now it needed to be played.
Walter took a deep breath, wincing slightly as if in pain. Truth be told, he could scarcely believe the words that were about to pass his lips. "If you wish to help Heather Mason, he has a task for you. Something a mortal must do."
"We've had enough of sicko monsters and religious freaks," Douglass growled, slowly lifting up his gun and pointing it at the angel. "Last time we helped you, Sullivan, you were trying to get her killed!"
"Well we ended up saving her life!" Lauren disagreed with Douglass. "Dude, this is the thing she was drawing pictures of in a chef's hat, you can't just shrug off something like this!"
"Oh yeah?" Douglass snarled. "Ask em both- Sullivan and the monster- if they ain't doing this for some religious reason! If they ain't doing it because its their interpretation of what their Devil-God's will is!"
The Lighthouse atrium shuddered, the lights dimming, the dishware rattling. Tea frosted over in its cups, and rust and grime ghosted out from the Seal of the Metatron on the mirror behind Valtiel, oozing out in cracks over the house. Valtiel himself seemed to rear up a bit, becoming larger, more ominous, more dangerous in the changing light.
Douglass swore and stumbled backwards, and Travis did as well, while Kaufmann cowered. "I thought this place was a safehouse!" Travis breathed, alarmed.
"He's a god," Kaufmann wailed breathlessly into the carpet, hands clasped before his face in panicked devotion. "He is Lobsel-Vith, Right Hand of The Goddess! He's a god!"
"Then he should tremble in his goddamn boots because we've killed those before!" Douglass answered, and in that moment he was perhaps the least frightened, most fool-hearty, and yet strangely enough the most powerful person present. "That Goddess is staying in hell where she belongs, where Heather left her, and we aren't doing shit for anyone who'd bring her back!"
Valtiel lowered his head, his body bunching up to leap, a low death-rattle of a cougar growl working up in his throat. Pyramid Heads and Butchers were not the only godlings with terrible instincts. The wood beneath his fingertips crackled and sputtered as his gloved fingertips tightened into it. Douglass Cartland sneered, trigger happy.
"You can be killed," he told Valtiel. "Just like all of em monsters. You can be killed; because nothing here's full real. Cause you're just idea made flesh, like the rest of them; the dogs, the wall monsters, the worms; all of em. See if you can't! See if you can move faster than I can pull a trigger you disgusting, faceless, sack of-"
Henry shouldered his way in front of Douglass, shoving the man back into a couch and looking up at Valtiel. He flung out his arms to protect the detective. "Don't!" he exclaimed.
Valtiel continued to growl or croak, or whatever; his sound somewhere between a dinosaur's and that ghost woman's from the Ring.
"Henry-" Douglass snarled, but Travis had pounced on the detective's position and slapped a hand over his mouth, realizing Henry knew better than either of them.
"Don't!" Henry begged of Valtiel, and then in that moment he guessed at the reason Heather was being excluded. "If you do this, Heather will know you are here; Xipe will know!"
There was a tense moment then, one in which every muscle in Valtiel's body held rigid for a deathly pounce.
"Please. Can you blame him for loving Heather?" Henry pushed, "Can you blame him for wanting to protect her? He's like an uncle to her, he helped raise her all her life after Harry died."
The angel held his position, but his death-rattle quieted down. The lights around them seemed to increase subtly in intensity. Rust and grime slithered away.
Henry took in a deep breath, and took a slow step towards the god. "We can't just save her from one type of pyre to send her straight to another, even a gentler one-" he asked the monster to understand. Valtiel hissed, arching a little more. "-But I remember what you did when Alex and I mentioned the idea of you hurting or betraying her. I remember the way you said goodbye to her."
At that, the god seemed to deflate a little, his back no longer so arched, the lights coming on further. His tongue slipped out from the mouth at the side of his head, writhing through the air. Henry looked up at the alien entity, trying not to show his awe. Valtiel looked so incredibly similar to The One Truth monster. "Will your task help her get out? Safely?"
"Without impregnating her!" Travis growled. "Without any more burning, or dicing, or any of that bull!"
Valtiel looked at Travis for a moment, and then turned his gaze back to Henry. Steadily, carefully, the avatar of Lobsel-Vith nodded his head.
"Yes," Walter whispered, feeling overwhelmed and sick at the words he was speaking, "This world is no longer any place for a Goddess."
She was warm and her lover's scent hung protectively around her shoulders like a cloak. But as Heather Mason came awake, she found it was to another gray, December morning in Hell. The bedroom windows were heavily frosted. The heat engulfing her from behind was definitely inhuman.A glimmer of red told her the helmet's was over her head, and she probably shouldn't prop herself up any further unless she wanted a nasty bruise.
This is cruel, she thought tiredly of Silent Hill, and shifted about to try and escape. Her bed-mate must have been awake from the start or else her movement had startled him because he gave a low rumble. Heather stilled. A dry, coiling sensation she'd come to associate with his tongue brushed over her ear and then smoothed itself against her temple. She sighed voicelessly and slumped.
"Good morning," she grumbled, thinking she would pay good money for James Sunderland to walk into the room and for Henry to take a picture of the man's reaction to this ridiculous sight. The hell had set Samael off last night? Walter. Heather really wanted to talk to Walter, actually, and not just to knock him upside the head for pissing off her violent bed-mate.
Samael made a soft rumbling sound in answer to Heather, but most likely he was just responding to the sound of her voice than to any understanding of her words.
"Has anyone ever told you that you have a nasty temper, a paranoia streak a mild wide, and an unhealthy obsession with spatial control?"
The Pyramid Monster gave a startled, strangled sound that made her jump. She blinked as a pregnant, almost thoughtful silence followed; then he gave an apologetic mumble. Heather frowned, her brows creasing together. She rolled towards him, looking up into the rubbery black underneath of the red helmet.
"Alex?" she asked.
The monster made a deep, attentive hum. Heather shivered and then lifted up a hand and gently touched the rubber-coated paneling at the base of the helmet and the side of his neck. The monster shifted his weight, picking himself up a little.
"I can't figure you out," she said softly. "I've given up trying. It hurts my head. I think about everything that could go wrong, and everything that has; over and over again in circles with no answers or resolutions. I think about six thousand different possible 'truths' that all end with me dying, and its just too much to worry about anymore." The tongue tugged hair out of her face and smoothed it behind her ear. "I'm just glad you're still with me now," she murmured, and the monster grumbled gently in response.
"Do you remember Elle?" she asked after awhile, testing to see if she was right about the soldier-persona's origins. He answered her with a soft affirmative grunt. "You remember her fondly?" At that the Pyramid Monster felt uncertain. He didn't seem to remember details; only that Elle Holloway was important and innocent.
Do you remember being born?" she asked him eventually, but he responded only with puzzled silence. She wanted to know, "Was it when I summoned you?" and he gave her a hesitant, negative snort in response. "Was it nineteen eighty-five?"
Was Not. He managed to lower the helmet tip between the two of them without killing her.
Heather perked up a little, her brows creasing curiously. "Was it a bazillion years ago in a fiery explosion of godly awesomeness?" Samael yanked on her hair with his tongue and growled in displeasure. Heather winced and reached up to try and stop the appendage. "You have always flipped out on me whenever I've called you a god. First it was when I called you 'Samael' and then it was whenever I said the 'X' word, and now you just nearly yanked my hair out. But why?" she rubbed her head. "You look almost exactly like him."
That seemed to send a wave of surprise or alarm through her bizarre companion. Him?
"Xuch- Well, I thought it was him. When I was fighting the monster under the school-grounds, I kept seeing him in its place. He was bigger than you, but he looked almost the same. Except he had chains wrapped around one of his arms. And he was really familiar. I think maybe I've seen him once or twice before." The monster's tongue twitched where it was coiled in her hair.
Heather paused, wondering if perhaps she had stumbled upon the answer to her own question. Then she realized that maybe this wasn't the best line of questions to be asking a homicidal demigod with a split personality. "You're slightly different," she said anyway. "That's why you don't like being called the same thing as him. He's trying to kill me-"
At that she felt the monster's tongue suddenly wrap about her neck and squeeze. Heather twisted and grabbed at the appendage in surprise, as the Red monster heaved himself up over her, his rough and violent hands grasping at her clothing. She thought, Are you shitting me? and imagined she was about to be throttled to death over something so stupid. Then the appendage loosened and writhed back into her hair. Heather choked in some air and winced, looking solemnly up at the monster.
He hovered above her, his hands drawn back from her throat, his enormous arms shaking slightly. His breath was heavy.
"... and you're trying very hard not to," she finished quietly.
A heavy slam; the monster's hands buried deep into the mattress on either side of her face, the fingers twisting into the sheets and kneading the fabric. A sharp, hollow bark hissed out from behind the red helmet. He really was shaking with effort. After a moment of coiled tension, the helm bowed slightly and a hollow, metallic gush of air oozed out.
Heather winced at the initial violent movement. Then she squirmed up into a partially sitting position, avoiding collision with the great helm and snaking her arms about Samael's neck. For a bit there was quiet aside from his heavy breathing. She hugged tightly to him, till his exertions were less and he seemed calmer, and her mind wandered a bit.
"Ya know," she said with a slightly bitter laugh, "I don't think this is what Alex fell in love with. This. Vulnerable, dependent, miserable, trying to always do and say the right thing and not get in trouble..."
The Pyramid Creature stilled, listening to her.
"I was always a fighter. Always the bitch who got things done, who lived, who made it through even when other people couldn't. I wasn't even a very nice kid. I was the strong one, the survivor. Except maybe I wasn't. Maybe I wasn't tough; maybe the truth is I was the result of... of my Dad caring about me."
She gathered her thoughts for a moment. "Alessa was like a goddess herself but she had no motivation at all to live. The will to live, it doesn't originally come from inside it's... Our strength grows in us but originally it comes from other people. The people we love, the people who love us, that's who we live for. Even when they're gone, they give us the motivation to keep going. That's why I fought to win; that's why I could kill the god-thing and get the hell out of there and she never could; even when I was just some loud-mouthed punk and she could change the laws of physics with her mind." Heather took in a slow breath. "She didn't have anyone worth living for."
The sound of her voice or perhaps her physical nearness seemed to have a pacifying affect on her monster. Her heart-felt tone seemed to have entranced him. He was no longer shaking, and the lines of anger and tension along the muscles in his back had faded. The tongue wrapped gingerly around her arm.
"Listen to me," Heather murmured after a few moments of contemplation, and hoped the monster was lucid enough to understand and anchored enough not to be offended. "I've touched your face. I know there's an eye under all that metal. One that contracts in daylight and dilates in the dark. Not a man's eye, exactly, but human enough to show expressions I recognize. And on your face, do you know what I've seen? Anger, at moments. But mostly doubt. Fear. And then, after a long time, vulnerability. Maybe trust."
The tongue wrung her arm, but the monster remained calm and still. Her arms tightened. "Stay with me," she implored him, and she heard a derisive rumble that made her scowl. "You think I don't know I sound crazy? That I don't know what you are, or what you represent, or what god you came from? I'm still begging you. If you have the choice, stay with me. Stick to me like glue. And assuming you're as real as Valtiel..." She opened her eyes, "when all this is over, find me."
The monster shifted, startled by her, and his head turned so quickly the pyramid edge dug into her side and nearly gave her a concussion. Non-sequitur.
"Yes. Yes, you. The giant, blade-wielding angry monster who likes skinning people and has relatives that dry-rape mannequins. Find me. You belong with me."
A wave of disbelief, confusion, anger, disgust.
"You're what's left of my dead boyfriend," she disagreed definitively. "You belong with me. The insanity of that statement is just one of a thousand other details to be ironed out in the wash."
Silent Hill's most iconic and terrifying monster was still for a very long moment.
Heather hugged to him tightly, because her situation was already ludicrous, and because after what she'd been through and given who was helping her, there was nothing she could ask for or say that was truly crazy or out of the ordinary.
You can feel me.
"Like words and feelings in my bones," Heather agreed, resting her cheek on the monster's shoulder, suddenly feeling sleepy again. "Walter talks a lot... Most of the time you and Valtiel are more raw, you don't really use words all that often, and I only feel the loud things. He pouts... you get insulted. I have about a two second warning before you decide to hit something because it's like someone poured lava in my skeleton."
This seemed to confuse and unsettle the monster. After a moment he leaned backwards, re-positioning his legs. Heather blinked and almost released him; then he grasped her about the back with both arms and pulled her firmly into his lap and up against his chest.
