Greed and Penance

[CW: extreme gore, extreme violence]

You feel an unquenchable thirst, like your body is entirely desiccated; you rush to the well and wet, mossy stones sooth you. You pull the bucket from the depths, the liquid filling it is a viscous carmine, but the thirst is so dire you can’t help but drink, drink so deep you might drown but you don’t care, the thirst, it draws you in, closer to the source till the mossy rocks fail and you are falling.

Looking up, at the ever-decreasing hole, you see someone looking down at you, bathed in daylight, with a halo of sunshine.

Falling so far that the world becomes abyssal; you land softly, the water caressing you, it's comforting, warm; you wonder if this is what it is like to be her, waiting for a voice to echo off the walls, if they even exist anymore.

You awake, if you were even dreaming, in a pile of blood and bodies, the sun of a clear blue sky beating down on you; your hand is locked in embrace with the hand of a fresh body, jaw stuck in a subtle smile – she looks almost alive, like you might have invited her into the Bastion under any other circumstances – and long, ebony, hair covers her eyes. You hesitate to lift the spell of ignorance, of belief that this is her, that you have found her again, that she is sleeping. No-one knows how many minutes of tranquil nothingness pass before a gust of wind, aimed like a sniper, removes the veil of darkness and reveal unfamiliar, bulging, eyes staring back at you. You scurry to your feet in horror and frustration, blood and dirt smearing your goggles.

There is resistance to you leaving.

The arm you held so tenderly not moments ago, the tendons pop and snap crackling like a fire, bones click as they disassociate from each other, muscles twist as you try to get further away, but cannot seem to let go of her hand. One desperate final pull and the arm and host become separate, lukewarm blood spills down you, the victim of your attack sits upright, staring, armless.
You throw down the arm in disgust. Oh, goodness! What have you done? Holding someone else’s hand whilst she is trapped in the earth, what beast of a creature are you? The wisps of denial and delirium tell you it wasn’t your fault, the sky, the well! But in your heart, you know, you have brought shadow to her light; you have sinned, you must repent.

Without thought, or perhaps with too much of it, you pick up the arm, this time by the wrist; the dead, barely-mottled, part of what once was, what is, a young woman now a brutal weapon in your grasp.

You swing once:
Her humerus makes contact with her jaw; yellowed teeth fall like lead confetti as a waterfall of blood falls from its ‘face’, the smile now just a memory.

You swing again:
Her skull shatters, coalescing with the brain in a grey-white pink-stained sludge; if it weren’t for the fact she is dead, you would not call her an infected.

You swing again
And again, and again, and again, and again

A person-shaped mass of red, glistening, shreds of meat sits before you; but it still isn’t enough.

Not for her, not for you.

A strand of silver flashes in the sunlight as you wrap the wire round her neck, flesh melts into air as you cut through it, dark threads fall to the ground, sticking to you; your mind is awash with red. The ‘head’ is removed from the ‘body’ and discarded in the pit. You could bury everyone in the Bastion in there if you needed to, not that you will need to.

Blood smothers your vision, through the rosy haze you notice a figure looking at you, Bastion-side, stood still as a statue, bearing witness to what you have done. You try your hardest to wipe away the red, but your hands are so equally soaked, the only effect is making the world around you more hazy and warped. The figure shifts before you, fighting to not be discerned, it looks like everyone, not ambiguously but with striking accuracy; mingling with blood drops you see the shape of Nio, Raindrop, Mars, Coerna, Colby, Verity, your wife, your own lilac horror-filled eyes, gradually the figure becomes something not even close to human, a twiggy mess of limbs? A beating heart?

Covering your eyes with your arm, the scarlet blindfold is wiped clear, and whoever… whatever is looking at you has vanished.

You try not to look in the eyes of corpses from then on.

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