Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

> Eridan: enter.

You enter THE LAND OF WRATH AND ANGELS as the PRINCE OF HOPE.

It's bright. It's really fucking bright. Everything around you is the same blinding white, almost glowing. Your ears are ringing, you think. Your thinkpan feels a bit like it's short-circuiting, struggling to make sense of your surroundings.

You pull out your gun, just in case. You loathe the way this place makes you feel.

You make your way through streets filled with churches and cathedrals in varying states of disrepair. Some almost look like places you could take shelter in, others look like they've been bombed, like you could see the smoke rising from the rubble if you just stopped to look close enough. In the windows of those that are still mostly intact, there's stained-glass artwork. The architecture appears to be from a long-lost era of history, one before The Condesce's high-tech brutalism; a style you've only seen in hard-to-come-by history documentaries.

The only noise is the sound of your heeled boots against concrete and brick. It's more than just quiet - there is no ambiance, no wind, no animals, and certainly no other trolls. You've always had, at the very least, the gentle rocking sound of the ocean. There is none of that here, just the sound of your feet and the ever-growing ringing in your ears.

The feeling of being watched, stalked, is not a familiar feeling. You can imagine this is what a prey animal must feel like; that sneaking feeling of not being alone, of being followed. You're a hunter, top of the food-chain, literally and figuratively. You are a god-damn seadweller, a predator; you have no need to feel this godawful apprehension. Your stomach churns and you are filled with that wrigglerish desire to pick at your own flesh, to gnaw and scratch until the fear subsides. Give yourself something to cry about if you're going to act like a grub over it.

You do not look up. Keeping your ganderbulbs glued on the white-and-grey brick road under your feet. Looking at that pure white sky brings spots to your eyes and a dizziness to your acid tract.

Maybe, it is that refusal to look up that knocks you off your feet when something swoops down over you. Not quite touching you, but sending a nasty shiver down your spine.

What will you do?

> Eridan: Look Up.

There are dozens of them. Giant, winged lizard-like beasts. They're a beautiful sight, pure white and almost blending in to the surrounding monochrome. These things, whatever they are, are absolutely breathtaking. Sucking the breath right out of your bellowsacks. You gawk at them, like they're an exhibit at an art museum, some sort of display piece.

You're the real exhibit, here. An animal taken from your natural habitat and forced into a cage.

You lift Ahab's Crosshairs and do your best to aim with shaking hands, squinting through the scope. You've taken lusii from screaming wigglers with less hesitation than this. Why the hell won't you shoot?

> Eridan: Shoot.

You breathe in,

And out,

And pull the trigger with a,

> BANG.

> BANG.

> BANG.

You missed.

Shit.

One of them, the biggest of the flock, swoops down upon you, stopping right before they have you in their grip.

They speak with a choir of many beautiful voices, "Be Not Afraid," they say.

The one above you speaks with the screaming voice of many.

They're captivatingly beautiful, you notice when seeing them up-close. Their tear stricken face brings a twinge of sympathy to your gut. They cry the same violet you do, probably bleed the same, too.

Some predators inject their prey with a neurotoxin of sorts, preventing them from making an escape, but keeping them alive and awake the whole time. Inhumane, some may call it, if they make the mistake of applying modern, sapient morals to animals just trying to make it out alive. Animals live by no laws, they care not how much their dinner must suffer, just that their belly is full by the end of the night.

"Save us," the largest cries.

"Holy, Holy, Holy," The chorus behind them screams.

You are shaking, it isn't just your hands now, there are tremors wracking your body. Tears that you do not feel stream down your face. You are terrified and it is a beautiful scene. This is a feeling known only in long-lost religious texts. You cannot feel your body, you know no pain, no thought. There is only this feeling that is all fear and all awe.

You do not think you're in danger because you do not think at all. In this moment, it is only you and the choir, the holy chorus and their leader hovering above you. The chorus circles you like birds of prey. They have been slowly lowering themselves towards the ground - towards you, as the seconds tick on.

The largest of them is almost face-to-face with you, wispy leglessness almost touching the ground.

They open their arms toward you, wordlessly inviting you to be another voice in their choir.

It would be peaceful, you think. They would be the first people to welcome you, this would be the first place you've belonged. Maybe you could finally let out that breath you've been holding for sweeps.

They approach further, and despite your instincts, you lower the gun you forgot you've had carefully trained on them.

Their arms wrap around your shoulders. They're so fucking cold, even more so than you are. The choir stops their screaming chants.

You let out that breath you've held.

> Eridan: Scream.

They dig claws into your back and stab teeth into your neck, ripping through gills and blood vessels.

You scream and it burns through your throat.

You wiggle and writhe and struggle to break free of their icy grasp.

The chorus begins to scream once again.

You fight your way out of their grasp, and you do not hesitate this time.

> Shoot.

You pull the trigger, and you do not stop to check if it is dead.

You run like hell.

You can feel the blood seeping out of your back and dribbling out of your neck, and yet you do not stop even for a moment. You have endured worse and most certainly will again. Lusii and trolls who wouldn't go down without a fight are not foreign to you. They usually don't bite, though.

Your bellowsacs burn for more air, your gills breathing in water that is not there. You're sure that you'll be coughing up a storm if and when you can catch a breath, what with all of the screaming and the running and being bitten in the gills.

What in the fuck were you thinking? Why didn't you run? Why didn't you shoot? What in the hell was it that possessed you at that moment? You could have died, and yet you have never felt more at peace. Do people feel that way when on the other side of the crosshairs?

This cowardice is out of character for you, something you thought you'd outgrown sweeps ago. All of that work to carefully remove that fear, undone over some stupid fucking game.

There's a small church in the distance, just a few minutes away, if you had to guess. It looks more-or-less habitable from where you are. You hope that it's as well-built as you think it is as you speed up your pace to a sprint.

You do not hear the cries over the sound of your own pusher-beat pounding in your ears. Did they follow you? Or did they stop for a moment to attend to their (hopefully) dead? Did they give you a head-start, a moment of false hope before they rip you in to shreds? Will they still give you that moment of paralyzing peace before sending you headfirst into your own painful end?

The chapel sits before you. It isn't anything spectacular or grand or even a bit noteworthy. It's small and colored in the same shades of white as almost everything else on this godforsaken planet. From where you stand, it looks mostly intact. It has a roof and the doors look like they shut all of the way. The windows have been shattered, but they're boarded up from the inside; you suppose that will save you the trouble of having to do it yourself.

The screams of the choir have silenced. You no longer hear the flapping of wings or the movement of air. The eerie quiet makes your ears ring once more.

The adrenaline is fading and leaving you with heaving lungs and burning wounds. You can let the exhaustion take over if you just force yourself to hold on for a few moments.

You force your weak and aching limbs to carry yourself up the small staircase leading to the wooden doors of the church.

Something right before the threshold catches your eyes. One singular violet stained feather sits on a welcome-mat, reading 'all God's children welcome here' in front of the entrance. There is blood seeping into the otherwise clean mat. Other than you, it is the only splash of color you've seen so far.

Most would call this a bad fucking omen.

You do not pick it up, or make any efforts to move it out of your way. You carefully step over it, pushing the surprisingly heavy doors out of your way.

Despite its humble exterior, the inside gives you the impression that it used to be quite a nice place. The carpets are a pale yellow, contrasting against the white of everything else. The pews are hard wood with no cushioning. You could guess that this place once belonged to people who thought they could find God or Salvation through suffering. There are burnt out light-fixtures speckled across the high ceilings. There is only one source of light.

At the back, behind the pulpit and the choir, There is a grand stained-glass mural. Wings of the same pale yellow as the carpet, accented with a pale purple.

You can gawk at architecture when you aren't dizzy from blood-loss.

You get to work, removing your scarf, cape, and shirt. The scarf is stained, but the top and cape are beyond repair. Captchalogueing your scarf, you begin to rip your cape into bandage-sized strips. This is not an unfamiliar process, having to ruin perfectly good capes because you lacked the forethought to bring more bandages with you.

You clean your wounds with a bottle of water you had captchalogued god knows how long ago, thanking your past self for abandoning it in your sylladex. It stings like hell; you have to force yourself to bite back a scream. Lord knows you've done enough screaming for one night.

Wrapping yourself up with makeshift bandages while your fight back exhaustion is nothing new. Many a FLARP or hunting trip have ended similarly, patching yourself up on the floor of your ablutionblock if you're lucky, or in some abandoned building if you're not. You are adept at circumventing your shaking hands and desire to just lay down and die.

> Lay Down.

When your wounds are clean and bandaged, you lay down on an uncushoned pew - on your back despite the burning in your deep gashes.

Sleep does not come easy to you on a good day in your recouperacoon, tossing and turning despite your exhaustion, making you get up to eventually fall asleep on your loungeplank. On this hard as fuck bench, it seems impossible. Every fibre of your being aches and stings, your horns keep banging against the wooden pew, sending shockwaves through your thinkpan.

Sleep does come, eventually. The lack of sopor does not lend itself to a particularly restful sleep, but your eyes do close after a few hours of tossing, beckoning you into the dark of sleep.

Chapter Text

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You feel oddly calm. It's an uncomfortable, sickening feeling, making your acid tract churn with unease at the serenity around you, It's a strange phenomenon, when those who are accustomed to chaos feel distressed in the face of peace. Your head is empty, your eyelids are heavy, your muscles are loose. You aren't particularly motivated to move, even if you were capable of straining against your putty-like body enough to lift your head.

The platform beneath you is soft and plush. Your sleepy thinkpan instinctively nuzzles your face into the silken cushion beneath your head. Your breaths are even and light, barely able to disturb a feather.

You struggle to open your glued-tight eyelids. It's more of a fight than it should be, but you manage. Groggily, you look around, unable to really make sense of your surroundings. Your pan feels off, thinking feels like wading through honey. You feel nauseous and out of place. Something is up, but you cannot for the life of you figure out what that might be. Everything is as it should be.

You blink a few times, as if you could will your thoughts to resume if you could only wake up a bit more. Your vision blurs. Where did you leave your glasses?

A few feet in front of you is a foggy dresser and vanity mirror, white with purple and gold accents. The mirror reflects the white wall behind it. As you lazily look around, you see a respite block that you do not recognize.

The thought of trying to sit up is a daunting ordeal when your body is heavy and loose and your conscious pan is calm and comfortable, while your instincts are telling you to run. What's the harm in turning back over and getting in a bit more sleep? It isn't like you get meaningful rest very often.

But you need to get up, need to figure out where you are and how you got there.

With a bit of effort, probably more effort than it should take, you manage to turn yourself to face the ceiling. The ceiling is tall, with grand lighting fixtures not befitting of a respiteblock. Fancy as hell, even for you. You have to squint and strain your eyes, because of your aforementioned lack of glasses and because it's so fucking bright in here. Being diurnal, you aren't used to the bright lights that come with the daytime (Is it daytime?) streaming through from the outside.

You hold yourself up on shaking arms in a half sitting half laying down position. Not even applying the full weight of your torso and you're almost collapsing back onto the soft platform bellow you.

What the hell? You're normally stronger than this.

Once you get yourself fully upright, you and the room seem to sway together and nausea bubbles up from your acid tract. You hold your breath for a moment, trying to force your sickness to subside.

What is wrong with you? You feel weak and sick and wrong, but you're oddly content with that. It's like that sort-of giddy peaceful sleepiness you get when you've gone too long without sleep. Your thoughts are clouded and you feel miserable, but the blankets and pillows are so soft and they feel so comfortable, and there is a warm glow about everything. Your instinct to fight is in a neck-in-neck race against your desire to just lay back down.

You're not in any real danger, are you?

You turn your body and hang your legs off the side of the platform, inciting your insides to crawl their way up your throat once again.

Trying to put your weight on your feet makes your knees buckle, sending you to kneel on the floor. You're struggling to hold yourself up, even with your arms providing extra support.

You aren't quite sure if you're shaking is from the straining of your muscle or because of how fucking cold it is. You wish you had a sweater instead of whatever you're wearing. What are you wearing? Not a sweater, or anything remotely warm, apparently. Strange, you typically dress warmer than this.

You look around for something to pull yourself up with, and are met with the face of one of those beasts from LoWaA. They tower above you, expressionless.

There is a gaping hole in their chest that leaks the same violet that you do. This is the one you mercilessly slaughtered earlier. You responded to their kindness with a blast in the chest from a legendary ancient weapon

They are as expressionless as always, but they do not seem to show any malice. Their features are serene, peaceful.

They reach down to lift you up by your forearm. You can feel a cool glow emanating off of them.

Their touch burns cold. You try to pull your arm away on instinct, but their grip on your arm remains firm, not giving even a millimeter under their strength. You bite your lip to hold back a scream, sharp teeth ripping through the flesh of your mouth and drawing a small trickle of blood. Your blood runs unusually warm down your chin.

Something hot pushes itself up from your abdomen, burning your throat on its way. With their freezing touch and the fear confusing your thinkpan, you don't have the will to hold it back this time.

You lean over and an onslaught of violet spills past your lips. Your stomach tenses with the force of you throwing up your insides, tears are spilling from the corners of your closed eyes, and your hair is starting to stick to your forehead with sweat.

They do not release your arm. They just watch as you literally puke your guts up.

Every bit of you burns. Your skin is freezing and your insides are scalding hot; melting from the inside out while you freeze from the outside in.

It doesn't feel good, but it feels right. Feels like this is what needs to happen. Not a punishment, exactly, just an unpleasant necessity, like eating or hunting.

You are covered in your own viscera. Blood and bile are running down your chin and dripping on to your shirt, splatters on your legs from the splash-back of it hitting the floor. Your mouth tastes of metal, making your face curl into a look of distaste.

After what feels like an eternity, you get a moment to catch your breath. Your chest heaves, trying to catch up on the breaths it missed. Your stomach hurts, cramping from the force of expelling the contents of your abdomen. The pleasant sleepiness has morphed into a bone-deep exhaustion. The only thing preventing you from collapsing into a pool of your own blood is the from grip on your arm.

Their hand feels like dry ice against your skin, burning and sticking to your skin. You can't feel the point where your skin meets theirs, but you can feel a numbness spreading into the surrounding flesh. Giving you frostbite down to the bone.

Another hand reaches in to your hair, softer than the stone grip on your arm, sending a shiver down your posture pole. You're not sure if its the temperature or the unfamiliar soft touch that makes you shake even harder.

They help you shift into a sitting position in their lap, unworried about getting themself dirty with the violet filth you're covered in.

The two of you sit here for a moment and your breath slows and your violent shakes subside into small shivers. You are soaked to the skin in your own blood and bile. The block smells like a crime-scene before the legislacerators have had the chance to conduct their investigation, like death. You're dizzy, but They fully support your weight as you slump backward onto them.

You blink, and the world around you shifts.

A dark, windowless room, the choir surrounding you, watching with palpable anticipation. The only light is the dim glow of many candles. It isn't nearly as cold as it was moments ago, but there is still an uncomfortable chill in the air. You wear pale yellow robes, free of the blood that drenched your clothes. The burn in your chest is still there.

There's a stone slab in front of you, an altar.

This is almost textbook creepy cult shit. A bit too on the nose, what with all of the churches and the altars and the blood. This is a shitty horror movie, and you seem to be forced into the roll of unwilling bad-guy. You're tempted to call this bad writing.

But they're still behind you, one hand on your shoulder and another holding your wrist. It's a comforting burn, like ice, grounding you, placing you firmly on your feet. They are forgiveness incarnate.

Bodies of many colors flash on the marble before you. Gold, jade, fuchsia, scarlet, it changes every time you blink. You can't stand to look, but your eyes are glued. You don't get to just look away from this.

There is a blade in your hand and you know where this is going. The hard metal is warm in your hands, not too hot, just a comfortable heat that soothes the ice in your fingers. The knife has a nice weight to it, too. It feels like the sort of thing you might want to have. Maybe, you can take it if they aren't paying enough attention.

You don't want to do this, never did, really. But the presence behind you is reassuring, a guiding light a midst the darkness.

They place their hand over yours, gently guiding you to the throat of the shifting body.

> Wake.

Awareness comes slowly. First, the burning on your back and neck, then the hard pew underneath you, the pounding in your skull, aching in your limbs. You squeeze your eyelids tight, trying in vain to block the light pouring its way in.

You are no stranger to daymares, but that was vivid and bizzar, linear like a movie or a memory, rather than the typical sequence of brief flashes and ideas.

You'd like to think, that when faced with that situation, you would act differently. It felt a bit like choices you were making, rather than the typical lack of control that comes with dreams.

Strangely enough, your arm hurts. It's as if you can feel the freezer-burn from their touch lingering even after you wake. You think that if you were to touch it, you would lack feeling in the shape of their hand-print. You're hesitant to test it, strangely.

Everyone's been talking about having odd dreams lately. Something about moons and guys that look like little chess pieces. Was that what that was? They said they've been able to meet each other there, which is probably a load of hoofbeast shit, everyone knows that dreams are a product of your brain and not some fake magic hang-out spot.

You didn't see anyone else, anyway. It was just you and those Things, whatever they are.