ORIGIN - But No One Came

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Barnett bared his teeth at the sight of Diot's distress, turned away, swallowed thickly against the vomit building in his mouth. "You're not dead. I would know. I just would." He wasn't that far gone, there was no way he was so removed from the world that he could forget killing his own son. "Eve," he breathed out, one paw trailing down to his side, gripping the softly glowing pebble that hung on his belt.

"Eve could see me. She could see you. She saved you! How the fuck could I imagine all those people, huh?" Spinning on his heel, Barnett snarled at the image of his son, contorted by grief. "How? It's not possible!" But already the doubt began to creep in. Makyna showing up just long enough to know she was still alive. Leon following her, welcoming him, as if nothing odd at all had passed between them. Arkrael, not even seeming to care that he was the brother of the man who tried to kill her.

Too perfect. Too in-place. Too pristine.

Maybe none of this was real.

Panting, the numbat hissed, clutching at his head as a pounding headache bloomed behind his eyes. Soft footfall made his gaze snap up, Clover's voice wavering through the air, gentle and sweet. "...Clover?" The word was strangled, pained, like a rat choking on its own spittle, poisoned, trapped in its own body while its insides boiled. "Clover. You're okay? I wondered, after Vicktor... no, but, that's - I'm. I need a favor. Diot. You - you can see him, right?"

The plea was wheezy, almost a whisper, and Booker shivered in place, hands clenching into fists without anything to hold onto.

@Belladonna

"Hm?" She frowned just a bit more, her pretty head tilting in slight confusion. "What do you mean?"

She whispered to her magic to aid her now in breaking the glass from under Booker's feet, and it responded like a roar in her head, rising and filling her up with almost more than she could control. It spilled out of her in waves, reality forming to her will.

At the same time it was like a veil was dropped in the surrounding area, and the snow was gone, perfect, crying little Diot was gone, and so was she. In its place was wrack and ruin and death and decay all around them, dead trees with no leaves, black and dismal and rotting, the ground was nothing more than dead, parched earth, and Clover was this pustulent, rotting corpse, grinning at Booker with half of her face just plain gone, stark white bones showing through the falling and decaying flesh, and Diot was too, he was on his knees, just this dead thing with so much blood, so much blood pouring from him, and he fell into this puddle of pure red blood that stopped just short of Booker's feet. His hand shook, reaching out for Booker, his little voice gurgling, filled with the blood, and he coughed it out in a splatter on the dead leaves near him, then moved no more.

Belladonna walked towards Booker, more and more of her flesh falling from her bones as she moved, and she grinned wider and wider and wider, till her face split with it. "I'm dead too, Booker."

"......."

Booker grimaced at the questioning lilt, the cock of her head, innocent and damning. "He's - he's right there, you have to see him," he bit out, frustration making his words mulish. "This is ridiculous, I can't believe I'm even arguing this. Must be a bad trip," Barnett reasoned, spitting blood to the side, tongue throbbing from being bitten into, stress making him shiver and his stomach roll. The fire in his head was swirling down his spine, resting in his palms, biting at his nails.

The bond was... empty, dull, lifeless. He couldn't tell, anymore, if it had ever been there at all.

There was a strange, red, melting image at the corner of his vision, but when he tried to focus on it, it fled just as quickly, until he was turning in a circle, watching the world drip, drip, drip away, until the snow was gone, until his feet felt sticky with blood, until the smell of rot filled his lungs. Until he was so full of it that he vomited, blood and bile and herbs, insect legs that twitched, some piece of him that was vital. Diot writhed, leaked blood like a stuck pig, and Booker stared, eye dull and lifeless, stepped back from the corpse a minute after it fell. An afterthought.

Clover was rotting, rotten, to the core of whatever she had been, her golden glow gone, voice turned sinister and sour, like spoiled, infected meat. "You're not dead," he whispered, but it was monotone, more for the sake of argument than a denial, anymore. How could he deny what he could see? A last ditch effort, then, some final fit of energy, sparked at him, and his eye closed, opal spikes sparking as he tried to reach for the bond, pry it open. Help me I'm sorry I can't make it stop and the mental screech faded, overtaken by the roar of flame, uncontrolled, wild, burning clear through his skin, digging holes in it, his own power turned destructive, searing marks into his flesh like chains.

The man went quiet and still. Everything was blank. He couldn't tell who was in control. Booker was silent, reeling, dissolving under the weight of it. Barnett - protector. Defenseless against the loss of the entirety of their world. Who could protect against that? Long, silent minutes later, he spoke. "I killed him. Who else? Who else did I kill, if I'm not dead?"

He counted, mentally, a simple 1, 2, 3, until it turned into Diot, Bara, Bones, Dove, and he wondered. Waited. How many did it take, to make someone a monster? Was it two? Three? One hundred?

Or maybe it was who they were.

A son.

A brother.

Two.

A sister.

Strangers.

The thing waited, patiently, swaying in place, fire burning his hands black, filling the air with the scent of roasted flesh. Waited to be judged. Waited.

Waited.

Waited.

@Belladonna

Belladonna's shadows delved into his pain, his desperation, and she could smell the delicious intoxication of his suffering and the burning flesh, the ambrosia filling her up till her head swam with pure ecstasy. This, this was her heaven, this right here was what she needed, she craved, and like an addict, she wanted more.

She called to her magic and pulled Bara and Dove from the dead brush, one on either side of Booker, the great dragon's flesh decaying, great rend marks in his flesh from his fight with Raheerah, his ribs showing through, and the smell of rank grave dirt came off of him, like he'd come from his grave he'd been put down into a long time ago. Dove was similarly rotting and decayed, her face nothing but a skull, her gem teeth sparkling in the low light.

Belladonna left the hollow image of her rotting self where it stood, grinning at Booker, while she made herself hidden by way of manipulating the layer of death that let them see not the snow, but dead trees and barren earth, and she silently walked around Booker, talking all the while in her sickening voice.

"We're all dead, Booker," She hissed, enjoying the sweet taste of his writhing sorrow and pain, such an indescribable and perfect madness that she felt like she was floating above the clouds. "Everyone, everyone,"

Bones came out from the bushes too, nothing but a skeleton with scraps of fur stuck to his form.

"Everyone you've ever loved is dead, Booker,"

Eve came flying in and landed on a dead tree branch, her flesh just made of nasty, rotting carrion.

Belladonna was behind Booker now. Louie came in now, his face nothing but a husk of burned flesh, almost unrecognizable, and he dropped a dead husk of a gentle bird down into the grass with a soft crunch.

She leaned down and settled her mouth right behind Booker, her breath on his shoulders.

"And you did nothing."

Delphine. Khloros. Magdalene. Till he was surrounded with the grinning, patient, staring dead.
"......."

@Booker

The ground was moving, shifting, rising up and twisting into new forms, standing up like they'd been there the whole time, and the scribe withered in place, eye widening, flicking from one image to the next. "How..?" Baratheon breathed out rot, ruffled his fur with it, and Booker whimpered, bit down hard enough on his tongue to cut through meat, blood pooling down his throat.

Dove ducked close enough for him to see her gemstone jaw glitter, vacant eye sockets level with his own, decay clinging to every inch of the cat. He couldn't have, he couldn't, but he could picture her drowning in the eyes, stilling her blood in her veins, robbing her of any power to save herself. Could feel the bond trembling, crumbling, because it had never been there, God, he had made it all up.

All of it.

Every little detail.

"Please stop," the scribe pleaded, moaning when the bodies kept coming. Eve, fluttering through the air, pieces of her flesh sliding off to land with delicate thumps on the forest floor. Louie, burnt to a husk, and Barnett could almost see it in his mind's eye, himself, lighting the fox on fire, burning him, not stopping until long after the man had stopped twitching.

Delphine, her throat constricted out of petty revenge. Khloros, left alone for too long, caving in under his own disease, torso bent and misshapen, chest bloated with infection. Magdalena, and the longer he looked at her, the more beaten and bloodied her face became, until a line of red encircled her throat, and her head rolled to the ground.

But he could have made it. Booker and Barnett could have taken it, buried it, made peace with it, somehow. They could have survived.

If not for what came next.

"Bones," the boy breathed out, heart dropping into his stomach, bile dripping from his lips. "No, no, you promised. You promised." But the dog was nothing but ribcage and delicate spine and bits of rotting fur. "I didn't." It was a statement, wavering but certain. "I would never hurt Bones. It wasn't me."

Grief made him shudder, hunch over and vomit into the dry grass, cringe at the cloying touch of Clover's breath along his shoulderblades. "I'm not, I'm not a monster," Barnett panted, guilt and disgust and anger rolling into one mass of hatred. In an instant he rounded on the doe, teeth bared. "I'm not a monster!" God help him he wanted to be. He wanted to dig into her chest, open up her ribcage until it looked like a white-and-red butterfly, hold her heart until it stopped beating.

But he couldn't. He had to stop this, because this wasn't his life.

He was off like a shot a beat later, dragging his back leg, bloodying the top of its foot without care, only slowing when the burrow came into sight. "It's here! My home is here! I dare you! I dare you to take it away!" Because if he was wrong, and she was right, and Diot was dead, and Bones was... gone.

Well.

He'd go too.

@Belladonna

She chased Booker as he ran, laughing so hard as he ran, her voice growing louder and more hysterical, her joy mounting as he grew more and more frantic. She could taste him, his last hope of proving her wrong, that he wasn't the monsters she was convincing him to be, and she tried to keep up the illusion of the dead trees, she honestly did, but she was having so much fun that it faded away from her grasp, the snow showing through again.

He was going home, he knew, and she wanted to be there when he finally broke, where he would dig into Diot's grave and see his corpse lying there in the dirt. She would make him suffer and break, and drink deep of his sins.

"......."

@Diot

Munching silently away on a succulent fruit, Diot was busy tending to the glowing alien foliage that decorated the burrows walls. Allowing each plant to grow and weave their way through the soil, strengthening and shaping the lovely archways that led into each new room. Patting the millipede around his neck gently he let her slowly crawl down his arm. Watching her escape into her own bedroom down one of the halls. One heavenly stocked with the best grub around; just for her.

It was her feeding time and now come to think of it; it was also Booker's. Staring towards the entrance of the burrow Diot could only itch the top of his head in wonder. His father was never late missing a meal. It wasn't until this factual thought crossed his mind that panic set in. Approaching the entrance of the burrow he stared out into the white snow, waiting for a sign of that familiar numbat to come limping home. A few minutes past and nature deemed it better to focus on other tasks, Booker was fine; alive at least. He could feel that much with absolute certainty.

"Speech"

@Booker

The snow crept up to his chin with every terrified leap, struggling to stay ahead of the poisonous shadow that had taken the form of his friend, her laughter clouding his vision and forming a noose around his throat. Booker panted as he ran, letting out a strangled yelp when a rock, hidden by the frozen wastes, bit into his bad leg, wrenching the ankle backwards and sending a shock of aching pain through him.

The numbat never slowed, terror and adrenaline keeping him going, until the silhouette of the burrow became the actual entrance, and he barrelled inside, freezing cold and soaked to the bone, shaking and twitching erratically. The sight of Diot almost made him collapse from relief, but instead he stopped a foot away from the tamarin, too scared to touch in case his hand went straight through again.

Salty tears bit at his eye. "Diot, please, please say that you're actually here, because I-I can't take anymore, I can't."

@Diot @Belladonna

Belladonna slowed down her pace once Booker reached his little den, and from her point of view, she could see the grave, lying there in the snow. She smiled a slow, lazy smile. She would let him lay his suspicions down at the real Diot's feet, but she would leave a surprise for him to find to seal his fate.

She'd never made an illusion where she couldn't see it, so it was an interesting challenge. She kept Diot's form in her mind's eye, and she let everything else fade away while she placed his form underneath the snow and the dirt. It was fuzzy to her, because she had yet to make him convincingly rotted, but she would get it right. She had some time.

Bella felt practically drunk off of his exquisite pain and shattered mind, and she could still taste it in her mouth. Like fine wine, like ambrosia, like everything she'd ever wanted.

It tasted like bitter copper, warm and thick, and she loved the taste so much.

"......."

While focusing on other tasks Diot made his way away from the burrow's entrance. Tending to health of the plant life within the burrow. It wasn't something that needed to be done for them to survive. But it helped in their growth and nourishment to become a permanent part of this home. A soft breeze danced through the tunnel and Diot turned to the wind's words. Was his father coming home?

Listening keenly he could in fact hear; someone outside running frantically through the snow. That panicked and haphazard crunching of the soft ice crystals beneath their feet. Booker probably realized what time it was and come back home to eat in a hurry! A smile took the tamarin's features; that was until the numbat finally barreled inside. Freezing cold and soaked to the bone; shaking and twitching. Diot opened his arms for a hug, to help drive off what ailed his father. Yet, they stopped just a foot away; avoiding their common greeting.

The words that left Booker's mouth were a cause of worry, panic slowly boiling up from inside their being. "Diot, please, please say that you're actually here, because I-I can't take anymore, I can't." Diot's mouth pulled into a line, slowly turning into a smile of reassurance. He didn't expect for his father to relapse with fear like this, at least not so soon. He could only offer comfort; and prove to them that everything was alright. "Of course I'm here dad...its ok..."

Approaching his father slowly he draped an arm around his shivering form. Pulling him closer in a loving and comforting embrace. "Just breathe easy...I'm here now It will be fine...now what happened out there? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Speech"

@Booker

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