★★ a place where sinners dwell, where the unforgivable burn for eternity... for a moment, sylvain had almost let himself believe it, when the city turned to a ruin of flowing lava in thick streams all around him, the spaces between covered in fire. he and dimitri had as good as promised to meet each other in that place, if it really existed, sinners alike who accepted their sins. but it was a flight of fancy quickly quashed. sylvain couldn’t just lay down and accept his fate, no matter how much he wanted to-- he had other promises to keep, too.
finding fellow sinners, for one, and the monsters he kept hearing whispers of. fate, perhaps, that he would find the two in one area, coming around a corner to see a stranger going about his own business, and a large creature to his left, equidistant to the man. though the thing had no eyes sylvain could see, he felt they locked gazes a moment anyway, his lance of ruin already in his hand, before the thing started for the less armed prey. sylvain broke into a sprint in kind, intercepting only a few meters away with a shouted “watch out!!”
he caught the monster’s teeth with an extended arm, taking the brunt of the attack with a quiet grunt of effort, before he hefted the glowing, twitching lance and gave it its first blood in months, digging deep into where the thing’s eye should be. it slumped slowly, teeth loosening, but even as it hit the ground it seemed to still be breathing.
“hey handsome!” he looked over his shoulder with an irreverent grin unbefitting the new state of his non-lance arm, “you okay? it’s getting pretty scary around here, if you don’t have any weapons i don’t mind keeping you company.”