★★ 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.”
chaos has always been the foundation of this life, pools of blood and piles of corpses painting the very ground he walked on as he basks in the aftermath; waking up to the cacophony of cries from humans and animals alike was not as startling to tyki as it should be. that was until he took a step outside of the building and saw for himself the shape the chaos took in: people frantically running away from unseen predators, leaping over invisible chasms, dashing through walls of flames his eyes could not discern.
yet among the amusing sights tyki could have spent days watching in sadistic pleasure, there stands a looming presence that pulled his attention skyward: a singular pillar of light, hovering above the city like a god watching the world drown, pulled under and torn apart in the torrent of their own sins. a pillar of light... the divine retribution...
i͎̩̘̞͆̈́͊͂̍͗̑͟n̵̢̮̼͖̬̙͓̬͂͛̿̆̋͐̕͝͝ṇ̷͇̮͙̥̽̓̆̾́̒́͗̎͟͠ õ̸̹̼̤̳͆͆̂̅̅̒͜c̶̛̖̘̮̃̐̂̊̂̕̚͢͢͠ e̸͕̫̞̻͓̎̇͋̊̿͘n̸̛̝̖̲͎̮̄̉̓͛̕͢ c̶̣̭̪̩͇̺͋̓͋̈͗͠͞ ě͙̩̻̖͕̞̰̪̉̉̋͊̐̚͠͠
a searing pain tears his face in half, in splinters, in a thousand shards, tyki’s pulse a thunderstorm as the noah, joyd, rages and claws his way out to take revenge at the pillar and all that destroyed their world. their home. theIR EVE R YTH IN G—
“ what... ” he blinks and turns his attention to a mop of orange hair. in the encroaching darkness filling his vision, the bizarre color was a welcome sight, and it pulls out a chuckle from his mouth poised to ravage humanity a second ago. “ ...yeah. yeah. i suppose i’m fine. can’t say the same for you though, orange knight. ” tyki stands— when did he bend over?— and nods at the blood spilling from the man’s arm. “ a company would be lovely if he’s not bleeding like you. how did that happen, anyway? ”
