more fanfic but about lofties
Summary: There is Executor character development, the fat-ass monster from the Lanox secret dungeon, basically useless Anpassen, and poor, poor Wanderer.
Ships: none SURPRISINGLY ENOUGH FOR MY AINCESTING ASs
It isn’t until Executor is shoving Anpassen’s half-conscious body into Wanderer’s trembling arms while tossing a few spears flimsily projected from his rapidly-depleting creation reserves onto the ground in the hopes that the morbidly obese demon the color of a bruised blueberry would kindly stop chasing them and impale itself, that he begins to understand exactly how bad their situation is.
Executor makes a mental note to never listen to Anpassen again whenever he declares that they are fully prepared to take on a particular dungeon.
As they wildly backtrack through the uncomfortably hot cavern, the ground shaking beneath their feet with every step the demon behind them takes, Executor grabs onto the back of Wanderer’s shirt, dragging both him and Anpassen into a tiny sanctuary that is essentially nothing more than a cave of thin rocks, where he can only hope they would be safe, if only for a few minutes, from their pursuer.
“A-Anpassen won’t wake up…” Wanderer’s nervous fingers are tangled in the fabric of Anpassen’s clothes, wearing holes into his precious jacket and his visible eye is alarmingly too close to tears for Executor’s taste.
“I can see that,” he snaps, trying to block out the sounds of the roaring demon that were steadily becoming louder and closer and to figure out exactly how they were going to get to safety in one piece.
Wanderer only whimpers softly in response and cradles Anpassen’s body closer to him, and upon more careful inspection, Executor can see that Wanderer’s distress, for once, is actually legitimate and not a product of the other’s relentlessly overbearing anxiety.
Anpassen is actually bleeding.
While their forms on this realm were essentially human, they were still supposedly much more durable than that of a normal being’s, and the fact that Anpassen had actually taken hard enough hits to his brainless head to make him bleed is more concerning than Executor would like to admit to himself.
Of course, neither he nor Wanderer were in the best condition either, and Anpassen, the one in the supposed role of the healer, had somehow decided it would be a logical strategy to place himself firmly between Wanderer and the demon’s attack.
“What...what are we going to do…? Do we have to go back out and--and fight that thing?”
There is real fear in Wanderer’s eyes, but aside from the mix of terror and worry written across Wanderer’s face, Executor is struck by how much faith Wanderer is placing in him, that if he ordered Wanderer to fight the demon again, the other would go.
And Executor knows then that something within him has changed, probably for the worse, as he finds himself hesitating to consign Wanderer to death, something he once would have done to the twisted creation of Ishmael without a second thought.
“No. We are not going to do anything. It’s your fault that Anpassen is like this in the first place, so you are going to get him out of here. I am going to...distract it and catch up with you later. It looks stupid, even more stupid than the two of you combined, so it’s probably already forgotten that it has three targets instead of one.”
“B-By yourself?! I can...I can go…” Wanderer mumbles, the credibility of his words significantly dulled by the tears on his cheeks and his increasingly tight grip on Anpassen’s coat, as if it was some kind of security blanket.
Obviously, he dislikes the idea of running into the open area and offering himself on a silver platter to the demon, but somehow, he finds that, as pathetically emotionally and physically weak and corrupt as he finds Wanderer, he dislikes the idea of Wanderer being mercilessly devoured by the demon even more than he does himself ending up in that situation.
Wanderer would probably trip over his own incompetent feet and mess things up, anyway.
“Yes, and lead us all to certain death, most likely. Not only do you have the bare minimum amount of control over your abilities, you are rather useless when it comes to being separated from Anpassen. You follow him around like a baby duckling follows its mother…”
“I-I don’t!” Wanderer denies, but then looks back down at Anpassen, who is beginning to regain some semblance of consciousness, his green eyes dazedly looking between them in confusion. Wanderer’s expression becomes relieved as his mother hen finally awakens. “Ah...Anpassen, help! Executor is going to--”
Executor can already hear the Anpassen’s protest against his admittedly foolish plan in his mind and sincerely contemplates returning Anpassen to sleep with a another blow to head as he silences Wanderer with a glare.
“Fine, you can either take Anpassen away from here, or you can sit here like the worthless lump I always knew you were and let him die, along with yourself.”
“Wait, what--?”
He doesn’t wait to hear the rest of Anpassen’s confused mumble before he steps outside of their hiding place.
The demon, he notes, has torn up a large portion of its temple in its vengeful attempt to find them and has luckily situated itself opposite of the exit of the temple. He thanks Ishmael for this small blessing, that at least something today is in his favor.
Executor shatters his pendulum, and allows the familiar comfort of his celestial form to wash over him, temporarily erasing the pain and the burden of his human body. Already, he can feel the limits of his power, the duration of his time in this form significantly shortened by the loss of the energy he’d already used.
Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he can see a blur of green and black, fleeing towards the exit.
The monster lifts its head and turns toward him, sensing the influx of energy in the air. He barely has the time to wonder how something so large can move so quickly when the demon is upon him, its claws destroying one of the few remaining layers of rock in the temple that had the great misfortune of being too close to him.
The floor is a patchwork mess of lava and cracked stone, his creation magic is just about gone, and Executor firmly believes he no longer has the right to call his counterparts foolish, as this is potentially the most idiotic thing a celestial as ever done.
It’s certainly doomed to fail, wastefully self-sacrificing, and disgustingly, uselessly, human.
And even as he turns and runs deeper into the temple, leading the demon away from the two most singularly frustrating beings he’s ever met in his entire existence, he still isn’t sure how he feels about that.