The wind was gusting now. It had a heavy scent of peat, like bourbon, rich with the promise of a stormy night, maybe even thunderous. It rattled windows as it passed and swirled down the streets, stretching out thick streamers of dust that downed the odd pedestrian.
More relevantly, it kept people looking up at the sky often enough to miss the predicament Issei was currently in. The sounds of his knees knocking together vanished powerlessly into the howl of the wind, though they made a wonderful coconut-esque accompaniment to the beat.
Issei, for his part, was somewhat unable to pay them much mind either, though it was not because he'd discovered a heretofore unknown musical genre (sounds mediterranean!), but rather because he was simply very, very scared. Had he been of a mind to, perhaps he might have been indignant that his fear rated so lowly on the cosmic scale against a little wind and rain, but the world around him had seemingly vanished, and even the tunnel his vision stretched into seemed to pull away to infinity as he fought to keep eye contact with the priest staring him down.
Priest of sorts, anyway; Issei was beginning to quite question the authenticity of these so-called men of God. Not a one of them had offered him booze and crackers, two things he'd been assured went hand-in-hand with faith. Somehow, he got the feeling that this man didn't really intend to change that, though Issei was tempted to ask anyway.
But where the promise of charity failed to move, the overt threat of violence proved more effective in jogging his mind.
For his part, Issei attempted to communicate infinite regret through his stare, while the peeved churchman responded with indistinct growls and a bloodshot but very clear homicidal intent, as he attempted to draw his weird silver dildo.
It was something of an overreaction, Issei thought indignantly. Fairly uncalled for.
Regardless, the priest was really angry, but he seemed smart enough to be careful. Issei had enough time to make out the etchings in the shiny, shiny chrome of whatever he was pulling out of his pocket, as he tried to shield it behind his massive bulk. Funny, it looks a little too round to be a gun, Issei thought. Three things stuck out about it: The aforementioned roundness, several sear lines running down the top like it shat lava, and that it was apparently stuck.
Very stuck.
You see, what Issei had thought of as slacks were actually tight, bright white, high-rise, snakeskin leather bellbottom jeans. Skin tight. Something that was extremely apparent as the man continued to dance about, trying to draw his steel dildo.
But the pants were apparently just so damn snug he couldn't work it out. The churchman struggled, and huffed, and slowly teased it out, inch by torturous inch, his pants stretching and popping at a few seams. Issei was tempted to applaud the man's obvious struggle, but he'd been struck by a thought: whatever this thing was, it was probably bad. Really bad. As in, the flashes of it he could make out of the corner of his eyes made Issei's teeth chatter and his palms sweat. If that thing comes out, he thought to himself, I'm dead. I don't know why, or how, or anything, but I'm fucking dead.
Indeed, you could call it a sign of his experience ducking danger, or merely the instinct of a cornered animal, but he was entirely correct. And like all animals, he had a sort of sixth sense about his impending demise.
And that simply wouldn't do.
So Issei strode closer with two, massive steps, seized the priest by one large hand, and with his other, shoved the metal back in with a finger.
The churchman slowly looked up, meeting Issei's eyes with his own eye-wateringly crimson pair.
"No," said Issei, more petulantly than he'd hoped.
He felt the veins on the man's wrist throb with suppressed tension, as the cylinder was once more hopelessly twisted up into his pants. The gripped hand made an abortive move upwards, and Issei got ready to duck it and grab at his balls or something.
There, both men stopped. Not because the priest wanted to, but because he'd realized that because he'd been teasing the cylinder out with his fingertips, his hand was now stuck in the pocket with his weapon. Issei watched the man's biceps bulge as he made the tragic resolution to just tear the pants, nudity be damned.
"No," Issei insisted.
And then because he was probably somewhat tipsy and it seemed like a good idea, shoved his own hand into the man's pocket, to make sure it was all hopelessly fucked.
And it was. For a beautiful, glorious moment, all effort completely stalked out in the face of the hopeless fuckery in that man's pocket.
And then Issei realized he was stuck an arm's length away from the man.
Shit.
The priest seemed somewhat stunned for now, but Issei was smart enough to realize this was an exceedingly temporary state of affairs, and began looking wildly around for a lifeline. He wasn't finding one. The people around them were still dancing, if slightly faster, and closer together. Some people had shimmied their way under shelter, where they had their own muted little raves out of the cold and rain, but most people were content to suffer; shivering every time the wind blew, and making ugly expressions every few seconds as water trickled down. Presumably the suffering made it better somehow, because they seemed disinclined to stop. Issei didn't think he'd ever understand riajuu and he was glad for it.
"Hey!" Issei called out urgently. "Hey! Anyone?!"
Not only did no one respond, some of them seemed to be dancing away from him, doing the occasional shimmy shimmy slide down the sidewalk or hip-thrusting in a direction he wasn't in. He caught some of them avoiding his eyes, and rudely gestured in their direction. They responded by groping their girlfriends or whatever it was popular people did. Issei couldn't actually see, but his imagination gleefully filled the gaps. God, they made him mad, these fucking imaginary riajuu.
And the music, Lord, the music was only getting louder as the DJ chose to drown out nature itself with harder beats. Maybe he'd taken the thunder for a challenge from God Almighty because the pulsing of the sound was starting to match the rhythm of his pounding head.
"HEEEEEEY!" Issei screamed hoarsely. "HEEEEEEEY, ANYONE?!"
"They aren't going to respond," a hoarse voice said gruffly. Issei whipped his head around to look at the churchman, who looked to be struggling to suppress his own fury. Malevolence shone clearly from his eyes, as he said, "They're busy, boy. The beat is all-encompassing. The groove is good tonight, and they will pay us no mind at all."
He took a deliberate step forwards, letting Issei's arm bend awkwardly out as he closed the distance. "Sounds like there's a good cover tonight." The man said softly. His other hand was upraised to the heaven, palm flat as though to press against the sky itself. "The Kennelly sings high above us, the solar wind swirls and reflected upon the night sky are a thousand, thousand broadcasts," he spoke with a fanatic quaver. "Music, boy, it's all around us. It culminates tonight, here, pouring down like manna, the only God any one of us ever asked for."
Big talk for a man in leather yoga pants. Issei responded with a slow step back, and like a dance the priest followed. They moved in double beat, Issei very careful to not squeeze or tighten his grip at all in fear of what he might accidentally grasp, and the priest seemingly content to try to throttle Issei with his single outstretched arm, which he lowered like a spear and thrust at Issei.
His hand completely missed, as he stumbled over one of those damnable loose flagstones ("I'd never ruin the fun, come on man") and as Issei allowed the priests own recoiling force to spin him out of the way (and sliding his hand out in the process), thrust that hand right into the squirming, writhing bodies behind them.
And emerged with an itty-bitty purse that could barely contain the entire bottle of Bunratty jutting out. Swill. The dancer was probably better off, honestly.
"THIEF!" someone screamed amidst the crowd. God knew why, she ought be grateful.
Issei however, ever the fan of on-the-spot solutions, had a finer use come to mind, one far more worthy than letting it touch his sensitive palette. He gently seized the neck of the bottle with his good hand, while with his other, grasping up to feel for the man's face. The priest let it happen, perhaps confused by the wandering fingers, until Issei finally felt for the mans jaw and managed to hook a finger behind his teeth and yank downwards. The man got out a strangled yelp—ough ogh uogh—before Issei wound back and smashed the damn bottle over the priest's head.
Glass and liquid sprayed out violently, and the priests' jaw scissored shut over his hand, and both Issei and the priest were screaming now, stumbling imbecilically backwards over each other, limbs thrashing, pressing into the crowd.
On contact, they were immediately sucked in and bounced around painfully. Entering the crowd was like walking into a nest of mud vipers. It was dense, and humid, and hot, and constantly thrashing and slamming into his sides. Only his sides too, which was annoying. But the writhing mass fought to keep him in, even while it ripped them apart, and while both his hands were free and burning, his right hand felt just a little more clumsy than usual, and perhaps a little lighter roughly where his index used to be. He pointedly wasn't thinking about that.
Issei sobbed a little, unable to see, but knowing a little bit of him was gone, and it wasn't even his virginity. Through the heaving crowds, he turned his head, and met the churchman's eyes, and though they both froze for a second, the priest quickly began shouldering his way towards Issei, like a starting gun had gone off. It was like watching a truck navigate a bike lane, his implacable mass shifting everything it touched violently aside. Issei tried to slide backwards, but found no further give to the crowd. Turning, the mass of the crowd rejected him, people shooting him ugly looks and shifting aside, only to be immediately replaced as smoothly as tumblers by other dancers. He pressed inwards anyway, fighting through where they rejected him, arms groping and grabbing, feeling a slick warmth trail down his wrist and palm, and a rough stickiness as his hand finally closed on something small and glassy, and slipped right off.
This is gonna be trouble.
He squealed in panic as he felt the priest close in, the eddies of people being shoved aside, grasping and grabbing with the bloody hand as it tried and failed to grab hold. Bumping what was left of his finger revealed the top down to the knuckle missing, and the immensity of that single inch of flesh revealed itself over and over as he lost his grasp.
A hand pushed down on his shoulder, a terrible weight like a mountain crumpling his shoulder, and forcing his dangling fingers to claws from the pain. He pushed, urgently keening as a terrible pressure on his collarbone seized his throat and arrested his breath, until his clawed little fingers caught the lip of a little phial by the ring and middle, and slid it neatly into his palm. He spun around with whipcrack speed, arm trailing and hand swinging forward like a pendulum, and smashed a full crystal bottle of No. 4 Morte by Chanel into the man's face, and ground, just to really make sure the shards dug in this time.
The screams were growing familiar, but Issei felt like he could do better. Once more a hand darted out, the good one this time, and with the godlike confidence of a man used to getting away with stealing panties from a locker room while people were still in it, snagged a loop, tugged it free, and withdrew a vial of hand sanitizer. He took a drop for his grabbing hand, and ground the rest into the priests eyes, which now seemed inflamed and weepy enough to win an Oscar. The screams hit fresh octaves of pain, but Issei wasn't done yet, groping and grabbing several times as the true prize barely evaded his grasp, a bunch of bikers passing it around and not noticing his wandering hands. Eventually, though, he managed to wedgie one, and he dropped his hand low enough for Issei to seize it—a jackass-sized bottle of Everclear. This one, he kissed fondly before breaking it end-first against the priest's face.
But this time, things went silent.
He withdrew the shattered half of the bottle with some confusion, eyeing the blood on the delicate tines. Issei pricked his ears and blinked his eyes to see the priest's cold features staring back, one eye through the bits of the glass bottle that appeared to have all but scooped it out. It was bug-eyed, squeezing out into the neck, and his scalp almost sloughed off his head as he shifted. Inflamed, snot-stained, covered in fluids and tears, but his unseeing eyes were focused on Issei—through the hand he had clasped over Issei's trailing arm.
Issei squealed with fear as he stumbled backwards towards the crowd, before his caught arm nearly wrenched itself out of his socket and he was pulled back towards the priest, who waited with fingers outstretched. Issei ducked, pressing closer as the priest swung for his head, and used his free hand to punch the man in the inner thigh. He missed his target, but the priest swore as his leg twitched to Issei's left, and Issei decided that now was as good as any other time. He went low, diving for the man's leg, and sunk his teeth into a bared, hairy ankle.
A scream echoed above him, but a violent blow promptly exploded against the back of his head, the shock of pain nearly pushing him into the black as the back of his head was forced down, but somehow he held on. Fear kept him going, holding tight, but the chill that ran up his body as a heavy hand placed itself lightly on his neck was tremendous. That he still had the sheer durability of mind to be gentle—the animal part of Issei was screaming, screaming in horror.
"Now hold still boy, you smell like a fucking devil," the voice above him said gently, a terrible focus behind the words, "but it's weak, so I'll make your death painless."
And now Issei was really, really scared. Because while the first hit was in anger, the next blow would certainly land on his spine, and it would be a debilitating, final sort of strike. So as he felt the priest wind up, Issei boldly jammed the missing tip of his right index into the back of his knee, where the hard bone was exposed, and ground inwards. The brief flash of joy (past the burning, searing, hair-pullingly intense agony of his hand that immediately went numb) as he heard the man buckle in pain was intense, but immediately swallowed as he watched, almost in slow motion as he threw himself backwards, as the cylinder finally slid into the night air as the back of Issei's head knocked it free, caught as smoothly as a tumbler bounces by experienced fingers, almost thoughtlessly brandished, before—
Issei ducked, instincts howling, and the scorched little tube blew a searing hole through some poor dancer's gut, sending chunks of hipster flying, and spraying the crowd with a fine pink mist of 0.202% alcohol.
Issei watched him fall, as the priest's blind eyes whipped back and forth while growling like a beast. The priest hiccuped once, twice, vomit faintly foaming out of his mouth, but he stayed on his feet and kept that little metal cylinder branished. Issei crawled slowly back, arm dead from agony and giving out until he was pressing into the warm boundary of the crowd, shifting painfully against his back like so many sharp-angled snakes, where elbows and knees dug into his back.
"Nowhere to go," said the priest, looking in entirely the wrong direction.
As he continued to try and fail to hide in the crowd, Issei's mind stepped into the magical and heretofore unknown land of Immense Regret, a land he had avoided prior to now due to generally getting away with being a complete scumbag. And the thought came to him that maybe he'd get lucky again, that maybe Yubelluna had noticed and was all ready to kick this guys ass, or Kiba had made it back early and was standing behind him with a weapon, or maybe the goons had secretly followed him after all and had gotten a real humdinger of a prank in motion to just fuck this guy all the way up.
And then reality came back a little, and he was still sobbing with fear.
The priest had already caught up with him and was leaning over him and twisting his arm behind his back and he felt like vanishing back into the world of Infinite Regret for a bit longer. At least then, he wouldn't have to deal with this reality.
Issei could feel the last grains of the hourglass slide down, trickle onto his head and slide down his back. Something silver and metallic was spinning, something heavy and deadly. The world spun in color, his ears heard the clanging of church bells, and his throat ached with a suppressed scream that built in his chest and ping-ponged about his lungs, gaining in speed and volume as it built up in his throat as time snapped back to its usual speed.
And then he looked up. And saw, like a reflection, an unfamiliar and pimply-pale face looking back, inebriated and confused and fearful, but with some horrified awareness of what had happened lurking behind his eyes. But undirected. Uninfluenced. To the left and right, more and more faces were visible. And he hadn't even noticed that the music had fallen away to nearly nothing. And it came to Issei in that one beautiful moment as the scream in his chest finally ripped its way out.
"HELP!" he screamed, directly into the man's face. "RACIST!"
Well.
Well, the words had gotten a bit jumbled in his head, and it wasn't quite what he'd intended, but that sorta worked, he thought absently, as the crowd suddenly gave way and he slipped through as neatly as a wet bar of soap.
The priest, on the other hand, despite his attempts to bulldoze through, was suddenly hopelessly trapped. He looked confused. A terrible, idiot confusion as his instinct told him that something had changed. He looked that way all the way until he vanished behind the mass of the crowd.
Issei shuddered violently, with his full body, and scrambled away, first on his hands and knees and then, as he found his feet, full-pelt down the damp sidewalk. Blood was still dripping from his hand, and he could barely feel it. He felt light headed. The world was spinning around him. People were moving in double-speed, moving towards the noise behind him, familiar howls raising in pitch until they squealed like a violin on string, never quite cutting out, only sharpening in pitch to a flawless C7, that held all the way down the road, as what sounded like a storm descended on the plaza, and the faint wash and stink of blood billowed.
It wasn't the metallic drone of far off silver drums (sounds mediterranean!) that woke her, but the sound of metal nonetheless, rattling behind her ear.
A spoon, blackened and grimy lay by her side, scraping against the ground from the breeze, and she had memories of lapping something that half-shone in the moonlight from the reverse bend. Light, tiny and glimmering, reflected off the blackened metal, and shone painfully into her eyes every few seconds.
Under her arms, crushed glass pressed against her supernatural flesh, a pinprick to her durability. A cigarette butt still hung between two fingers. In the same hand as the butt was a crushed carton that bore an embossed elephant trumpeting. It flickered with a blue-gold light.
She lay on brick. It was cold, and hard, and her shoulders were sore. The surface below her was jagged and uneven. She got up, and puked a little. She reached out and seized a patch of shirt nearby and tore it off. The man who owned it was already in a pool of off-white bile, and rolled slightly in it. The putrid scent of rice wafted off of it, and crushed grains continued to drip from his open mouth. Yubelluna mopped herself off and tossed the sodden rag back where it came from, before rising uncertainly to her feet. She tottered slightly, as she took a few steps, but quickly righted herself and moved smoothly onwards, away from the now silent venue. She didn't notice the silent, massive crowd gather at the far end, nor how they turned, one by one to watch her walk off. But she noticed footprints by her side of a familiar size and shape, and she allowed them to guide her up the hill to the lonesome church on the bluff.
Music was the first thing Yubelluna heard, from far below. Thin strains of a vigorous cello, echoing from far off. The thin copse she found herself in was deceptive, and often she found herself back where she started, hopelessly turned about. The trees were off-white and skeletal, but they broke up shapes effectively, and often she'd turn, certain something was following. But it was only another withered branch, creating form where there was none.
But the music echoed, all of a sudden, and she found her feet guided upwards. With a point of reference, the journey was easy. The shapes fell away, and a path formed beneath her feet. The faint music burgeoned into the sounds of Geoffrey Plautus and trombones and trumpets crunching underfoot like the twigs and acorns and pine-nuts, rolling about like the drums, and above it all the heavenly violin guiding her movement onwards.
A dark shape took form, between the upright skeletals, far off in the distance. Only the very tippy top was visible; it took her a moment to realize that. That she was looking at the roof, the pinnacle, with chimney and winding spire jutting upwards like a monolith. From below, the church rose as she approached, rising upwards with every footstep.
As she approached, the sweet reek of rotting flesh grew powerful, and the earth grew soft underfoot. Freshly turned. Had she paused, she would have realized there were no more trees on this side of the church. Only row after row of wooden crosses, each unadorned save for a name.
But Yubelluna moved through, eyes drawn to the massive wall, and the spot of darkness almost buried at its base, that grew as she approached. The wall was built upon slat after slat of creaking, termite-ridden wood. Cobwebs and filth stained the side, and it curved around to an open passage that likely led to the entrance. The footsteps went the other way, around to the back.
Yubelluna was interested in neither direction. She moved onwards, towards the spot of darkness that interrupted the smooth paneling.
It was a door. Half-buried in the soil, with only a slim staircase leading down to it.
Here, she finally paused.
"Oh, dear." A hand slid through his hair, brushing it away from his face. Issei was half asleep, his eyes fluttering. His mind felt foggy. He was so…tired. "Dear boy, how have you come to be here? It's been a long, long time since I've been sought out, even if by accident." The hand bore long fingers, unadorned by callus or weathering. It was intolerably soft. It made long passes over his head, tracing the peak of his hairline and bearing the peculiarity of swirling his forelock backwards. As the voice spoke, the hand slowed to small, slight brushes, before stopping entirely.
As the voice sighed lightly, the hand on his hair briefly tightened painfully, nearly shooting him awake, but then the grip eased, and he slid back to his restless half-slumber.
"But of course, you wanted something?"
"Mmmm…" Issei grumbled, feeling parts of his mind surface slowly as the question slowly churned. "Mmm…not really…" His thoughts followed the swirl of the hand on his brow, easy and smooth. He felt no pain. His hand no longer hurt. His feet felt sheathed in a tender warmth. He had an erection.
The hand paused. "Nothing…?"
Something urgent in the back of his mind screamed. "Titties…?"
"Titties…" The voice sounded thoughtful, and the hand resumed the long strokes on his head, "I don't have those, per se…"
Issei felt something in his mind sour, and his grumbles took on a plaintive note.
"I know someone who does, of course. You might even find her attractive…I'm told she is, by mortals."
"Mmmm…?" Issei was interested.
"We are all beautiful of course." The voice continued. "We were made to be. But attraction…no, I never understood it. Enjoyed it, indulged, perhaps. But never understood. Azazel was better at that sort of thing than I."
Azazel….
"But you will need to settle for me, I suppose." The slim hand, icier and smoother than porcelain, drifted to his ear, where it twisted the delicate shell into a spiral. It hovered on the edge of discomfort, and viciously twisted.
Issei hissed quietly in pain, eyes fluttering again, body arching slightly, and then the hand let go. Soft apologies were muttered, but this time it was a little harder for Issei to drift away. He recognized the feeling under his body. Wood. Smooth and polished. His legs were pressed up against something, and were crumpled against his gut. He was laying on his side.
"Mmmm…"
"Mmmm, yes. Yes. The girl is busy, my apologies…" the voice laughed softly. "Love makes us do the strangest things…"
Yubelluna proceeded into the dark. The staircase creaked underfoot and she paused. She tested the next step, first the middle, then slowly tapped across until she hit the side, which held steady. She slipped down, stepping off to the side as much as possible, testing each step as she went, until her foot eventually placed itself on stone. The other foot joined it, and then she was standing before the door.
It was far larger than it had seemed from above, large enough to dwarf her entirely. It was iron, and almost rusted through. Great barbarous patches divoted the surface, and had she pushed even lightly, her hand might've gone right through. A little ring hung from the side, large enough for her to wrap her whole hand around. It was painted black, and small barbs of metal protruded from it.
She seized it and pulled the door open, and waited for a moment to grow accustomed to the smell before stepping inside.
Her first step sank into something slick, and wet. The second landed on something hard she could brace upon, so the third and fourth were close together. The fifth sank in again, and this time something burst underfoot.
"Enjoying yourself?" The voice came from the dark.
Yubelluna ceased walking forwards. "Not particularly."
"I could say the same, I suppose." A throaty laugh, and a somber silence followed.
"Do you know what you're stepping on?"
"Besides bodies?" Yubelluna deliberately took another, wet step forwards. "Not really. Were they important to you?"
"I'm not sure. I never really had a chance to think about it…and I don't quite recall anymore." A light flicked on. And then another. And another.
By the light of three holy blades, a pair of black wings unfurled.
The hand resumed stroking Issei's hair. It was still pleasant, but less soothing. He feared a third spike of pain.
"Oh dear. I seem to have ruined your rest?" The calm voice chuckled. "I apologize. I'm not…used to it."
One of Issei's eyes slowly cracked open. Light immediately seared into it, and he squeezed it shut, a tear trickling down. It opened again, and this time he blinked it rapidly, trying to get used to it. He couldn't see very well, everything was…quite blurry. But he saw a mass above him. A mass of great, black feathers, and a slim head perched between them.
"Would you mind keeping me company a little longer, dear boy?"