If there's one thing about himself that Subaru absolutely hates it's the fact that the scent of burned flesh and death follows him everywhere. How smoke lingers on his skin and how ash settles on his clothes. How the roar of the flames haunts his every waking moment.
Everything about himself repulses him. The scars that litter his torso makes bile crawl up his throat and fills the inside of his mouth with copper. Even catching a glimpse of his own hands fills him with the need to pick up the cleaver stored in the tool closet and chop off those dirty, hideous, slothful fingers one by one.
Subaru despises himself.
He absolutely loathes the way blood gets into every little dip on the canvas of his palms and fills his nose with its tangy copper-like scent. How the weight of every body he's burned, minced, and buried seems to latch onto his ankles and drag behind him.
Subaru stands before a large furnace. A huge bulky stone construct built right in the center of The Mine. It reeks of death and charred flesh, the stench permanently ingrained into each carefully laid brick. Flames lunge at his feet, heat nips at his neck, and embers snap by his ears.
He doesn't even so much as flinch when he makes a step forward. Instead, Subaru grits his teeth and tightens his hold on the body's wrist. Willing as much strength as he could muster, so he could toss the body into the flames, while desperately trying to avoid looking into those lifeless hazel eyes. It takes a lot longer than Subaru expects but eventually he throws the body into the blaze and furiously making a point to stare at the blood-stained shirt it had worn instead of its emaciated face.
The fire practically screeches the moment the body goes in. Forcibly drawing his eyes into its hypnotizing waltz. Hot fangs flickering left and right. Sinking its heated blades into flesh and bone. Devouring everything in its greedy jaws.
Subaru can barely recall a time when fire didn't mean death or smelling like burning flesh. A smaller, more tame fire flickered once on a candle while resting on a cake. It was decorated with the themes of his supposed favorite superhero. Only small blurred details that he can never remember with any real clarity.
Only the ghost of a warm hug and the fleeting feeling of wishing for something he could never have been left in the fragments of his memory.
Loud steps tear Subaru out of his headspace. A cultist's monotone voice inquires, "Status report SV-01."
Dredges of the blurred memory rattle through his head and slides down his back. It takes a bit longer than a couple of seconds for Subaru to pull himself back to reality to reply. He looks back at his hands. The hands that have thrown hundreds of poor souls into these very flames. His body chills at the thought.
"All bodies disposed of. Returning to upper levels for a new assignment." The words taste like ash.
"Make sure you come back in a presentable state. The Sin Archbishop has business with you when you return." The cultist's voice cuts off and saunters off, leaving Subaru with nothing but the crackling fires and a lead ball resting in his stomach.
Wonderful.
The darkest hour has only sixty minutes.
He finds himself alone in the upper levels of the mine. Petelgeuse is never late. For the Sin Archbishop of Sloth, he seems diligent to Subaru.
So he waits.
And waits.
Subaru's skin suddenly feels like it's been drenched with slime. The collar of his dark uniform feels tight against his sticky skin as beads of sweat roll down his back. His palms turn clammy with anticipation (fear?).
Subaru's mind twists itself into circles trying to think of something he had done wrong. What had he done wrong? What had he done in the past couple of months that could have incurred a one on one meeting with Petelgeuse? Fear wraps itself around his neck in a vice lock as anxiety starts crawling up through his throat and threatening to spill out onto the ground. His pulse beats rapidly under his skin as the countdown begins as he becomes hyper-aware of every second that ticks by.
He goes over what he thinks are days, weeks, and months in his mind. Tentatively looking through every detail while skimming through flashes of decayed limbs, and mauled faces tinted blood-orange. The putrid scent of burning flesh tickling his nose briefly before he screws his eyes shut and forcibly shoves those memories back into their place.
He had done all his assignments and hadn't even tried to skip a single one in the past couple of weeks (months?).
What was wrong?
Subaru wrings his fingers tightly, already starting to feel the panic bubble up his throat. His fingers start twitching, and his lungs start to tighten. His vision swarms and shakes as his brain begins to fail him. Heart thundering in his chest while everything inside of him starts constricting. The next breath he takes comes in short and scratches the lining of his lungs. The realization that he was starting to hyperventilate makes him start free-falling.
Panic seizes his body at the dawning horror that if he breaks down here with Petelgeuse looming over the horizon he'll be thrown to the wolves. His brain backtracks to his early days when he had been only six years old.
The memory is blurred around the edges like everything is in soft focus but it does nothing to make remembering it any easier. The vertical scar slashed from the base of his neck to his tailbone burns as he tries to refocus his flailing brain. He can't afford to break down here. Not when the clock is ticking down until he has to face the wolves. Who knows what the punishment will be this time and he had barely survived the last one.
Subaru's not so sure he could endure another one.
Blood coats his tongue and it's coppery taste slides down his throat as he swallows. Internally wincing as the inside of his cheek starts bleeding profusely. The pain offers him a small refuge from the storm raging through his mind.
But it's not enough to pull him out.
Desperation worms its way through the rising tide of panic as he starts gnawing at the torn flesh on the inside of his cheek. He tries so damn hard to just push everything into the back of his mind where it should be. But blood-stained floors flash by his eyes and desperate wailing echoes through his ears reverberating through his skull and vibrating through his veins. The phantom feeling of his skin turning to ash and cracking like glass rages through his nerves.
Everything fills his mind with its cacophony.
He wants to scream, to do something, anything to get it all out of his head.
But he can't.
The Archbishop is here.
His steps begin to echo through the cavern as he hears his delirious laughter coming from above him.
Running would do him no good. If he makes a single mistake he'll be signed off as defective and returned to The Mountain. He couldn't go back. He'd been nothing but obedient for the past couple of months (years?).
He simply couldn't afford it. He just couldn't, he just couldn't, he can't afford it, he can't-
"SV-01." Subaru jerks backward, stumbling on his own two feet as he sucks in a large breath. Eyes flitting rapidly trying to grip onto a single focal point. They lock onto a figure wearing a dark garb. Subaru gets the distinct feeling the man is smiling underneath the black hood.
"Archbishop." He grits the words out like they're made of stone. Syllables grinding against his teeth as its sharp corners cut into his tongue.
"I thought we taught you better manners than that SV-01." Petelgeuse takes a step forward. "Manners like that are truly slothful." His footfall sends vibrations through the ground and tremors up his body as his throat goes dry. His presence is like a chokehold. Stifling everything that dares to exist within even a meter of his existence.
Subaru remains silent as he forces a smile onto his face. The silence is deafening. His heart begins thundering in his ears.
"Let's get going, shall we? I have quite a surprise waiting for you, my little SV-01." His voice picks up that strange high pitched lilt at the end that makes Subaru feel like he's being talked down on.
Petelgeuse signals for the cultist behind him. Ice floods his veins. Subaru looks down. The puddle underneath him forcing his own sickly reflection into his line of sight. A gaunt face decorated with dark bags and hollowed eyes greet him. He can't go back. No. What did he do wrong? He's done everything. He burned all of the bodies that have died in the depths of The Mine. He's even helped to expand this horrid place. So, why? Why does this world want him to suffer so much? Isn't it enough to be have been stuck here fo-
The cultist curses him. He drops to the ground with a loud thud. He can't even muster the strength to open his eyes. It takes all his willpower to just stay awake.
"Take him up and throw him in a cart. He's got fun days ahead~."
The darkest hour has only sixty minutes.
The moment he's thrown into the cart his heart jumps as he begins to regain his strength.
One of the only upsides of his sinful body was his ability to regain his strength fairly quickly. This ability was one of the only reasons he was able to leave The Mountain in the first place. Petelgeuse was already turning away from the cart and walking towards another cultist. This left Subaru with a few precious seconds to pull the remnants of himself back together.
Petelgeuse walks back right when Subaru has tried to subtly dig his fingernails into his forearm. He snaps his wrist back and presses his fingers together into a tight fist.
For a long while, neither of the two speak. The silence pushes against Subaru like a battering ram suffocating him the same way Petelgeuse's presence does. Pressing its imposing weight against his chest until it's crushing him. Panic stalks at the edges of his mind ready to pounce if he even so much as slips on the thin tightrope.
When the cart starts vibrating and the trees begin to move Petelgeuse finally speaks. "You're not in any trouble my precious SV-01. No need to act like I'm about to bite."
Subaru's lip twitches upward wryly. He wouldn't really know now, would he?
Time begins to blur together and the bright blue sky that mixed with the clouds begins to turn dark. He doesn't quite remember the journey when they arrive at The Mountain he begins to internally panic. By the time they stop and Subaru spies the familiar branches of trees, he knows that he's about to enter a man-made hell one far worse than anything seen at The Mine.
The darkest hour has only sixty minutes.
When he's unbound from the ropes, he barely has the ability to walk.
Petelgeuse, instead of his crazed demeanor laughing maniacally about the coming of the Ordeal or other Gospel bullshit, is completely silent when he slips behind Subaru, pressing a palm against the small of his back.
To anyone outside, it would have looked like a comforting gesture, like a father would a son about to go to the doctors for the first time.
But Subaru understands the action for what it is. A thinly veiled threat.
"Let's go."
They move forward with leaves crunching under their shoes and nothing but an autumn chill to keep them company as they proceed towards the cave that Subaru knows all too well. It's dark obsidian-like stone glints in the evening sun as if anticipating how fast his life was about to spiral downwards.
Each step they take forward makes his legs feel like jelly. The muscles threaten to collapse in on themselves as his muscles shake and jitter. His whole body repulses at the idea of taking another step instead there's a desperate urge to turn and flee. To simply run as fast as he could in the opposite direction. But the firm pressure on his back keeps him moving forward because as much as Subaru despises this place, he despises Petelgeuse a lot more.
Both of them come to a standstill at the entrance like they're waiting for something. The pressure on his back increases again leading Subaru further into the lion's den.
Subaru's blood turns into ice. Copper trickles over his taste buds as he keeps reminding himself he's survived worse in order to placate his rabbiting heart. He has survived worse. Even if the scars that litter his body burn and the bones that have never been set correctly say otherwise. (But deep down in that dark part of his mind, he knows nothing he's gone through would compare to his time spent here.)
Once they step into the cave one of the cultists wraps a blindfold around his eyes and takes over for Petelgeuse who disappears to wherever creepy, manipulative, and insane archbishops go. Subaru can't help but be a little smug with the blindfold.
They started blindfolding him since his first escape attempt and it's something Subaru has been proud of since (but the blindfold never blocks out the distant screams that echo through the cave every time they walk.)
They spend most of the long walk in silence with only the echo of their footfalls to keep his ears occupied. His nose is hit with the familiar scent of must, blood, and vomit but it's almost always faded in the depths of the cave. They come to a stop at some point and the guard(s?) shuffles around behind him before there's a satisfying click and something blows cold air across the skin of his face. For another couple of moments, there's absolute stillness before the blindfold is removed and he's shoved roughly forward with the hilt of a knife. A loud slam resonates behind him as Subaru takes his time readjusting his eyes back to the light of the room.
Subaru takes a while to recompose himself blinking rapidly as his eyes try to readjust to the lights, but he has a distinct feeling he's in the physical examination room that Subaru is all too familiar with.
"On the table." It's a gruff voice with a low pitch that is soon followed by the rustling of paper but Subaru doesn't dare take more time to get his eyes to readjust. He stumbles forward towards the voice hoping it's in the general direction of the table and praying he's not about to piss this guy off for taking too long.
Subaru ends up crashing into something cold and solid. A tight pressure wraps around his shoulder and he's being hauled onto an uninviting metal surface roughly. When he tries to open his eyes, they're immediately assaulted by bright lights that burn into his skin and bleed warmth through his clothes. Subaru doesn't dare open his eyes again after that, already feeling distant memories crawling forward.
Consciously Subaru knows this is only a physical checkup. After all, this was the room they did it in every day for his younger years. But something can't help whispering in his head that this wasn't the examination room but the awful one filled with "doctors" and syringes that were filled with a viscous violet sludge that they pumped into the people strapped to the table. But he can't help it if his heart pounds painfully as if he's waiting for hands to strap him in. Readying himself for the scratch of leather restraints against the porcelain skin of his wrists and ankles. He can feel his whole body tense up.
Don't open your eyes Subaru, don't open your eyes, don't open your eyes, don't open them, don't look, don't see their cold distant eyes, the blood-stained masks, red-tipped gloves, and the cold glint of a bloodied scalpel.
He tries. He really did try to restrain his panicking body. Tried so damn hard to shove the memories away to where they belong. But they stubbornly persist at the forefront playing out like a badly shot movie. His chest constricts and his heart hurts as it pounds faster and faster his whole body tensing up anticipating the first touch of cold metal before blinding pain. Subaru furiously keeps his eyes shut, and tries to persuade his mind that he's not there anymore. He's not, he hasn't been there in a long time. But the dark corners of his mind whisper he will be. He'll be returned to that room that smells more like blood and rotten flesh with the stink of death clinging to his skin.
If not now he will be returned eventually.
The sudden jolt of a stethoscope being pressed onto his still clothed chest makes him flinch back wildly, eyes snapping open. Dark silhouettes of multiple people standing over him their fingers dipped in blood, the stenched of his own vomit filling his nose, and the glinting metal scalpels prepared to cut into his flesh again-
Subaru shoots out wildly to grab one of the "doctor's" wrists and moves to twist it between his fingers. An audible crack sounds and a familiar crunch reverberates under his sticky palms. But he can't hear anything over the blood roaring through his ears and the adrenaline pumping through his taut body.
He can't, he just can't go through this again, not again, not again, not again. He starts thrashing wildly, moving as frantically as possible to keep the doctors away. When he raises his knees poised ready to kick at the doctor who surely has a taser ready for him he freezes. There are no leather straps holding him down.
Subaru's heart drops as he blinks rapidly looking around trying to clear his vision. There's only one "doctor" and he's at least 6 feet back nursing his right wrist glaring at Subaru with venom. There's a metia pressed between his ear and shoulder as he barks out sharp orders, Subaru's breaths coming in short gasps. There's a slate that's clattered to the ground and parchment strewn all around the floor. His brain comes to a complete stop at the horror that dawns across his face. There's a loud crash somewhere to his left and his head is slammed back against the metal table harshly. His vision is greeted with the sight of the dark masks the cultists wear. Distantly, he's aware they're shouting words and telling him something but their words fly through his ears never quite registering.
He's gone and done it now.
When he's pulled off the table he can't help the small stream of relief that flows through him but it's quickly burned away when he realizes the situation he's put himself in. Metal cuffs are slapped onto his wrists and he's shoved out the door unceremoniously falling multiple times as they make the trip outside. A blindfold is wrapped around his face roughly as they keep shoving the hilt of their knives into his back to keep him walking.
His ears are buzzing with cotton as his mind races. Subaru can practically feel the executioner's ax that's swinging over his head. The thin hairs on his neck prickles each time they shove their knife into his back barking their rough words.
The cold air that he sucks through his lungs stings his overheating insides and it does little to keep him from hyperventilating. Subaru forcibly drags his mind away from the looming thought of the future and instead tries to focus on keeping himself steady instead of bumbling around like a newborn calf. It's a lot of effort trying to keep himself walking in a straight line with all the rough shoving and the amount of willpower he needs to keep his knees from buckling on themselves. But each step he takes he counts it in his head in a pitiful attempt to keep his mind from straying to any other thought.
"Stop." The words are soon followed by a rough hand yanking him back nearly making him fall flat on his ass but he regains his sense of balance soon enough. Though it's more muscle memory than active effort. There are more shuffling sounds as the guards slide in a key before a click sounds. Afterward, they untie the blindfold and shove him hard enough that he falls onto the ground of his cell.
Pain rocks through his chin and shoots up the side of his head but he doesn't bother to move. He knows this is temporary, as they're finding a cage for him to be put with the others. He simply lies on the cold cement taking in deep shuddering breaths that shake his whole body as he tries to recompose himself. But the memories don't let go. Instead, they claw even harder to make themselves known no matter how hard he presses his nails into the palms of his hands.
Images flicker by his eyelids as his breathing quickens. Memories of his first days in captivity are by far the worst.
The cages were suffocating. Always smelling of rot and blood and low groans of pain filling the space. Sometimes occasionally when a new unfortunate soul was brought in there would be screams, and begging to be let out but they always fell quiet eventually.
Even Subaru.
He remembers sitting in the dimly lit space filled with stacks upon stacks of cages that contained people. When he had woken up there the first time he had screamed and cried fat tears. He asked questions, begged for answers even but no one answered, and eventually, Subaru tired out and fell quiet just like every other newcomer. Most of the time it was adults that were carted in and slotted into a spot but sometimes there were children like him. The cultists would cart by his row with someone on occasion but he'd never seen their face. Sometimes they would be screaming or crying, but most of the time they were silent.
Subaru tried twice to talk to his neighbors but they never replied. Their dead eyes simply flickered to his face before reverting to the ceiling of their cramped cage.
The second week he spent there was even worse. He hadn't been given food at all in that first week up until the following Sunday. The cultists came for his cage and started carting him out. He tried to ask them questions but his words were too raspy and quiet to come out for them to hear. Subaru wasn't even sure if they would have answered him anyway. They brought him into a room filled with 10 other cages of people. They dropped a plastic bowl filled with dark brown pellets and a small water bottle in his cage before leaving him there. Eventually, Subaru learned to hate feeding time too.
In the center of the room, there would be a metal table with leather straps and they'd take the people out of the cages and force them onto the table. Subaru watched in horror as the people were pulled out of the cages. Sometimes they would be screaming and clawing as they were dragged, others were silent. But all of them had their skin painted ashen white under the bright light with the only drop of color spilling out of their bodies staining the dark floor and flowing through the drain under them.
A lot of them begged for death on the table. Screamed and wailed for it but the "doctors" never gave them that mercy. Simply moving on and plugging them into their injections before continuing with their scalpels. They'd thrash against the restraints sobbing and laughing all the same. Sometimes they would drop dead with their head thunking against the metal and lolling around uselessly as their eyes became glassy. Those would be kept on the table dissected by the "doctors", their stomachs cut open to reveal rotting innards and pollute the room with the sickly sweet scent of rot before being disposed of, their cage cleaned, and shipped off for the next person.
When it came to his turn he screamed and cried too. And just like all the others they never listened. Sometimes he'd wonder if they were deaf. Only someone deaf could ignore these cries of anguish and agony.
Only once Subaru got to find out what happened if the liquid they injected into people went on too long. The skin of their body would start rotting right off their flesh and their bones would crack loudly as their faces decayed as they started turning into some inhuman color.
Those people never screamed again after that.
Subaru had sat across one of those corpses in his cage for a whole week after that. He'd watch their unmoving flesh rot off the brittle bone throughout the week as their skull cracked and fell to reveal the still pink flesh of the brain.
Subaru couldn't eat when he was fed for a couple of weeks after that.
The memories were relentless after that. He could have spent hours laying there listening to distant screams and cries, remembering the smell of rot as people vomited up dark violet liquid. It could have been hours, or maybe only five minutes that his breath bounced back to his face but eventually, he forces himself to get up and crawl onto the cot in the corner.
The scratchy material tears at his skin and he already knows it'll be impossible sleeping on this uncomfortable cot. He's overcome with the urge to just scream and slam his fists into the wall like a child. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He tastes copper on his tongue as his throat tightens up because he can't muster the strength in him to do it.
All he had wanted was to be a superhero, to help people. And then what? He had been put into this wretched world. There's bile crawling up his throat. It feels like something wants to come out but it can't. Like it's stuck and clogged inside this wretched twisted body that doesn't even belong to him anymore. Everything burns. His blood boils, and his skin itches against the scratchy cotton. There's a heavy weight sitting on his shoulders knowing he'll have to sit here for god knows how long before being taken out to meet the consequences of his mistakes.
Maybe if he wishes hard enough they'll kill him this time around instead.
It's hilarious really. The only thing he could remember from his childhood was that all he had wanted was to be a superhero! As far as he could remember he hadn't done anything wrong, or at least nothing bad enough to deserve this hell!
But here he is kept tightly under the thumb of the witch-cult with no superhero coming to save him. He begged, and prayed for all he was worth when he was younger. Wishing for someone, anyone to burst through the walls and announce he was there to save him and all those poor people who have likely been there far longer than he had been.
But they never came. No superhero came. And he felt his childish hope wither away with each passing day.
This was reality.
Superheroes don't show up and save the day.
Really it's funny. It's fucking hilarious that this is his life now. He doesn't miss the irony of his life as he starts laughing. Hiccuping in between sporadic breaths and wheezing so loudly that you could have confused it for sobbing if you hadn't seen the upturn of his lips. He's laughing because he can't scream anymore.
Subaru didn't believe in a god after that first month.
The hollow laugh rings about the room releasing all the glass shards of his hopelessness. The laugh feels like he's coughing out nails, and scratches his throat like sandpaper. He wants to cry, to give out those ugly sobs with the shuddering shoulders and gasping breaths. But he can't, no matter how hard he tries it's just a deep hollow chasm inside of him.
He's numb.
Even now if a superhero came they couldn't save him and all the sins that drag him down to the deepest and darkest pits of hell.
The darkest hour has only sixty minutes.
When they took him out of his cell they dropped him into a hallway leading up to a coliseum instead of doing what Subaru thought they would have done. He can't help but feel elated that he won't have to go through that again.
There's a long moment of silence as he's standing behind a closed metal door already feeling himself wither away. He takes in the familiar cracked stone beneath his feet and the spider cobwebs hanging in the corner.
They threw him in here to die. Is this mercy? Is this the mercy that God has finally decided to give him? The rusted metal in front of him screeches open and the noise hammers through his skull giving him no time to continue that train of thought as he shields his eyes from the blinding light in front of him.
"Go." One of the cultists states gruffly shoving his back with the hilt of their knife.
Subaru takes slow measured steps forward already taking into account the ruined state of the age-worn arena. There's another set of rusted iron gates across from here and Subaru already knows what's waiting for him. When those gates pull open a massive mabeast will come out. It's the biggest he's ever seen. Even if it's back is hunched over it stands at least 10 feet taller than Subaru.
But it doesn't. The mabeast isn't real. He watches as the iron gates open just to reveal the man he despises the most.
"Subaru-kun~. I've been wondering when you were going to show up. I've heard you've been a naughty boy. Very, very, very, very, very, very naughty." Petelgeuse's upbeat voice is a stark contrast to the terror Subaru is feeling at this moment.
Everything about it makes Subaru want to vomit the remainder of his small lunch.
"You should be grateful that the witch has blessed you so strongly. If the witch's scent hadn't been so dense on your body, I would have killed you years ago, when you first tried to escape. But alas, the witch's love hangs so deeply on you that I mustn't kill you. But I must still punish you for your slothful actions."
From the iron gates comes a cultist with a large metal table. It's not the table that frightens Subaru, it's what's on it. A single woman, gagged and tied to it, barely being able to breathe through the muzzle on her face. The woman is placed in front of Subaru, her eyes pleading with him, begging him, to let her off the table and out of this horrid place. He notices that she has a small bulge in her stomach. Wait, is she pregnant? What kind of sick place kidnaps pregnant women and restrains them on a table? Subaru feels a chill go down his spine.
Another cultist enters the room, this time with two babies, probably not even over a month old. Next to them, a third cultist brings in an aquarium filled with water, but with no fish. The two cultists place the children and the aquarium next to Petelgeuse and leaves them. It's just the two of them now.
"I bring you a test. You must sacrifice the woman on the table in the name of Satella. You can make her death as quick and painless as you wish. But, if you fail or can't finish the job, I will make you watch these two babies drown right in front of your eyes. Watching them squirm for oxygen before they finally die while you are powerless to do anything. Isn't this a fun game~? You have the next minute to kill the woman or the babies say goodnight."
Petelgeuse is standing there patiently next to the aquarium with his hands neatly folded in front of him with his head tilted in such a way that makes Subaru think he's looking straight at him. Petelgeuse looks at him like an innocent man who's done nothing wrong.
Subaru despises this man with every ounce of his body. Hates him for the pain and agony he's caused him. But it's not just to Subaru, but to every poor soul he's turned into ash and every innocent he has locked away rotting in the cages in the cavern. This is the man who decided to throw Subaru into this god damn hell to die. This is the man who decides all of his punishments, who decides what he's worth, who decides whether Subaru deserves to live.
Fuck him and his shit plans.
Anger and hate boil through his blood and shoves the pain into the back burner.
Fuck this guy and everything he fucking stands for.
He's always been telling him what to do, what he was worth, and what he would never be able to achieve. He has deemed Subaru "worthy" and sent him to The Mountain.
Subaru hates himself. He absolutely despises himself and all the sins that paint his body. But he hates Petelgeuse even more.
Life had never been fair. The odds have been stacked against him since he had been born for fuck's sake. He knows that life isn't fair; it's a lesson that's been burned into his flesh and carved into his bones. He hates the cards he's been given, he hates how little control he's had over his own god damn fucking lif-
"Time's up."
His head is struck with a metal object as he falls towards the ground. Everything is throbbing. His legs and head are pounding like a hammer to an anvil with his vision swimming. Subaru blearily looks up to Petelgeuse. He imprints the look of his wide eyes and eyebrows drawn together in a tight line.
"Wai-"
"You are truly slothful."
Petelgeuse simply stands there as Subaru glares at him for a long while before the cultists enter the arena ready to drag the woman out of the arena. Silence reigns over the place as they cart her out.
His glare remains firmly locked onto the man.
Petelgeuse starts clapping. The sound echoes and reverberates through the arena. The sound waves rolling through the air and bouncing off the walls. He claps slowly at first like he's contemplating an idea before rapidly quickening his pace like this was an event that was truly something to be celebrated. It's the only sound that occupies Subaru's concussed head as he watches the two children get lowered into the aquarium.
If he was an awful person before, he was irredeemable now.
Complete submission before Fate—or, what is the same thing, the inscrutable designs of Providence. Murmurs, doubts, laments, reproaches against … XXX. Shall I throw myself into the embrace of Fate?