EXECUTION III

[faentasy]

Execution

Like clockwork, the melody calls you together for the execution, although the circumstances are perhaps a bit better, if you can even call it that. Those who choose to attend will see an odd sight: two winged beings present in a magical bubble: one is Lucifer of course, six wings folded like they were much of yesterday and the other is a cream colored mourning dove, Nageki.

The mirrors and scenery is much like it was the week before, but—the air feels slightly heavier today? Maybe today is just a day for oddities.

Comments

[oversaw]

[ —ah. Dread. That's what this is, isn't it? This sinking feeling, the one filling his limbs with lead and halting every thought in his head. He's always been slow to act when he isn't prepared. This is no exception.

Even so, he can't just stand here and watch. ]

Stop!

[ The word comes out as he dashes forward. ]

cw; gore

[begrimed]

[ If Nageki's words register, Hamelin has no response other than a deranged grin. He lobs the grenades, and they bounce once, then roll to stop exactly at Nageki's feet. Turns out Hamelin has pretty good aim all around, but then again they are in a bubble. The dual explosion that rips through the room shatters the closest mirrors and cracks the farthest, not dampened by the archangel's wings who moved swiftly, but not fast enough.

The result is a goddamn mess.

Even through the resulting smoke that expands outward, specks of red and white hit the barrier, chunks landing resoundingly with a plop, shreds of shrapnel landing with an almost jingle afterward. The last debris to hit the floor, are feathers, falling ever so slowly, their rustle lost in the sound of everything else. The exact nature of the fallout is difficult to see wherever you are, but one thing is clear.

Nageki Fujishiro is dead. ]

[oversaw]

[ Too late. That's how it always is, in the end. His inaction has caused so much unnecessary suffering. Suffering he's tried to convince himself was necessary for the past two thousand years.

His wings flatter after the explosion—they never would've been quick enough to shield Nageki anyway. The knowledge twists his expression once again and exposes all the pain, the anguish, that he's long repressed. After concealing his heart for millennia he would've thought he would be better at guarding his expression.

Maybe that, too, is because he was too ill-prepared for this moment. Or maybe it's because denying himself doesn't matter. Not anymore.

He collects himself slowly and looks to Hamelin. ]

[faentasy]

[Mirror shards fill the execution room inside the bubble. Everything outside it is intact, everything inside it is a wasteland of glass and mirror. Blood and feathers coat everything, creating a grisly scene, and to a side, there's Hamelin, bleeding all over but alive.

The smoke starts to clear. What's revealed is that Nageki is unmistakably dead, but Lucifer is alive. The chosen executioner has been obliterated, but the one to be executed still lives. It'd be so simple if it all could end here, one life having been paid with blood.

It never is that simple. Sometimes, the story will do what's necessary to force its plot points to happen, so to say. This is no exception.

Lucifer doesn't get to move before it all starts. At first it's a small hole, round and the size of a coin. It'd be forgivable it was some soot from the grenades' explosion, despite the perfect round shape. Once it starts expanding such a thought turns ludicrous.

Anyone looking will see it's completely black inside, as if the floor simply stopped existing. This is the third floor, if a hole opened on the floor you should be able to see into the second, but instead there's blackness, nothingness...yet at the same time it feels full, like just by looking at it the void will draw you in.

That's what happens to Lucifer. The hole widens in the blink of an eye, expanding until it's several meters wide. Glass shards and gore pour into the emptiness, vanishing before Lucifer does. It takes no more than a second for Lucifer, who now has a look of surprise, to disappear as well, falling into the depths of a void that shouldn't exist, of an emptiness where solid objects should be at. There's no time for words from neither Lucifer, Hamelin, or any spectator, in the blink of an eye Lucifer is gone.

The void lingers for a moment before, as soon as it appeared, it just...gets filled with floor again. Takes just a second for tiles to ascend from the depths of the hole and form a floor, leaving a round, empty, clean space in the middle of the ruins and the blood of one innocent bird.

There's the sound of the skittering of insects somewhere, as if it were all around you, but once you try to focus it's not there anymore.

Lucifer is dead.]

[biqe]

[ He probably shouldn't have looked, knowing how gruesome of a sight it would be, and he absolutely feels sick as soon as he lays eyes on it.



But that void... ]

[mirrite]

[He's just going to physically grab and turn Phil's head away after a moment.

Don't look, you don't want to see...]

[begrimed]

[ Eventually, very eventually when all the various parts and pieces (discordant, offbeat, not in tune with each other or arranged in any kind melody), settle and there's silence, Hamelin moves from where he's been standing the entire time since throwing the grenades. Or rather, where he was pushed back after the detonation. Anyone who came back into the room after all of that wouldn't have gotten an answer or a smile if they shouted to him, but that seems be his MO after he answered that one question and everything went sideways and frontways and backwards and upside down. He's covered in bright red bits and bobs, singed and cut all over his exposed torso, dripping in blood, clumps of ash sliding off his clothes.

The barrier finally breaks, pops like so many other things had tonight and he doesn't wait a second longer to just move, as fast as he had when he had to interfere in this twisted chain of events. Whatever reaction he had to the void was lost to the dissipating smoke but he doesn't spare it a second glance, doesn't look back. He's careful to avoid stepping on any shards of glass as he exits, a purple and red blur. ]