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superhell2023-03-25 10:49 pm
hellscapes) wrote in superhell2023-03-25 10:49 pm
Entry tags:
WEEK SIX: EXECUTION
Hello, deadlings.
We gather here today for the most somber occasion. The weekend "fun" isn't over just yet.
On Sunday morning, you'll soon hear a sound coming from the dock. There's a large ferry waiting for you, and even if you resist you'll eventually find yourself compelled to climb aboard and set off on a short voyage. The islands around you look fairly blurry, but you don't go very far before you stop at a slab of land with two large buildings stationed. You won't be able to look at the one on the right now, the one you've come to know as the trial bar. Instead, your feet navigate you to the building on the left as the door creaks open. On your way in, you notice some posters hung beside the door, advertising today's event.
Inside is a bar. It's pretty swanky in comparison to the others you've seen, tables and chairs arranged comfortably for everyone to have a seat and spread out however they'd like. The bar is fully stocked with all kinds of alcohol along with an arrangement of bar food for anyone who's feeling a bit peckish. At the head of the room, there appears to be a stage washed in red lights with a wide area for performances.
At a table in the corner all six demons are gathered around. All of them appear to have left behind their work uniforms and are clustered together in a dark corner, watching the stage with various ranges of interest.
As you find your seats and get yourself something to drink, darkness begins to fill the bar and a banner unfurls over the stage.
FILBO
10AM
Enjoy the show
No matter where you look, you will find that Filbo is not amongst you. But there isn't time to look further before the lights dim and the curtains draw.
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[-which he intends to sound more confident than it does, but there's an edge to it he can't fully stifle. He's missed the touch of the shadow, but there's always that underlying fear of what goes along with it-- those who would use its power know well enough what lives within the void, after all. He knows better than most.
Being wrapped in it like this feels like it did before he died. Like digging too deep, like touching something impossible, like seeing too many possibilities all at once and being unable to contain it. Like whispering voices replacing his own thoughts, feeling himself unravel before-- nothing, 'nothing, nothing'.
It mimics his own voice, adds its echo to the cacophony, and pressing his hands to his ears does nothing. It's so loud this close up, all around him, but he can at least still hear Filbo's voice over it, hear him asking to end this.
It goes both ways, he thinks. If he belongs to the void, this still belongs to him in turn.
One hand shoots out, the visible shape of it distorting and lashing out across the stage, the clubbed end of a tentacle taking aim at Filbo's head.]
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[He can't worry about myself because he worries for others before that. Rynlan's voice echoed in the stage, Filbo can see Rynlan's distress. While he tries to pull, he shouts at Rynlan:]
Don't listen to it! Focus, you can--you can do it!
[From his forearms and one of his shins, parts separate from the limbs, falling to the floor and scooting away in the vague shape of some kind of insects. Small strawberries, with googly eyes, are briefly seen before they merge again with his shadow. There's no blood from where they fell -- Bugsnax are great for restoring tissue and healing, after all! -- but it's a clear indication of what will happen unless he's killed.
Mercifully, Rynlan slams a tentacle at Filbo's head. The hit is precise, there's a strong blunt sound when it happens, and Filbo cries out when he's hit. That hurt, that really hurt--but he looks up at Rynlan, dazed, but...still alive]
Don't listen to your shadow and--keep going! You're not gonna let that all hold you back, right?!
[The moment Rynlan hit Filbo, his limbs stopped degrading into shadowy food insects. They did continue extending, the tendrils beginning to dig into the shoulders and thighs, but it seems Rynlan attacking stops the infection's worst effect of him losing parts of his body.
The larger part attacking Rynlan slips from what's left of Filbo's paws, he too dazed to hold on, the shadow swinging at Rynlan to try to hit him in turn]
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[How could it hold him back, when it's exactly what he'd always sought out? (Are they his own thoughts, or the constant whispering in his ears? Does it matter, in the end?)
As it stands, Filbo seems relatively fine after that hit, and there's the shadow to contend with-- he focuses on the more immediate threat, then, gathering the shadow to himself. Filbo's strikes, and as it slaps into him he reaches out with his own to try to wrap around that shadow and stop it, restrain it while it's close.
'All must end,' the void hisses. 'Everything. Every life. Hunger as we do.'
Everything ends. This has to end; more tendrils of his shadow stretch up from the floor.]
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In the background of it, Kuranosuke's voice is sounding, what he's saying too soft to distinguish properly, but it definitely is him. 'Why are you all like this?' Filbo's thought back then. 'I have done many mistakes. As usual. Why are you saying this all to me? In fact, why are you all so...why are you all so nice to be with?'
He actually felt he was having conversations with others. He felt some listened to him. He felt like a few looked out for him. Even the teasing felt fun because at least it wasn't intentionally grinding him into dust, and the rougher ones at least weren't relentlessly going after him day after day. He was...happier talking to everyone here than he had been in a long time.
'But why? I haven't acted any different. I haven't done anything unusual. I'm still me.Why is it acceptable all of a sudden?! Why is it that you all keep coming back?! Why is it okay to be me here?!'
It had to be a bad joke, that only after having died, only after having fallen in literal hell, surrounded by nobody of his same species, he finally felt even a little bit accepted by more than a single person. Kuranosuke's voice keeps sounding, and Filbo just...thinks one last thing: '...I don't deserve it, but I'll take it. I guess.'
But it sure didn't make it any less painful, to know this was all temporary. Nothing like knowing something you always wanted has an expiration date.
Filbo's shadow melts a little into a puddle, while Filbo pretty much throws himself onto it, looking up at Rynlan, while his shadow, apparently deciding facing Rynlan was too difficult, once again turned against Filbo, beginning to constrict him. He looks up at Rynlan, pleading]
...okay--okay, please, do it...!
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The void stretches wider, indistinct shapes within it shifting that almost hurt the eyes to look at, and the shadows around his body distort its shape. But-
There are one or two voices that stand out as different as he limps forward and looks down at Filbo, somewhat battered from the strikes of his shadow, one arm wrapped around himself.
'You'll have to learn, Dawnslight,' says a more normal-sounding voice, 'who is going to live and who isn't. You'll be able to do the math on it fast enough that it makes you a little sick to think about, but you're going to learn how not to think about it.'
'But-- we're meant to learn how to save people.'
'This is saving people.'
Sometimes mercy can only come in one form, but it still weighs heavy, every time. There are more voices in the background of the whispers-- crying, pleading, pained.
His form stabilizes a little, despite the ugly chanting ringing in his ears, as with a gesture of his hands he gathers what control over the shadows he's managed. This is his. It killed him once, and it might again, but it is his.]
...Elor bindel felallan morin'aminor, Filbo. I'm sorry it had to be this way.
[It isn't a weapon that can be sharpened. That isn't suited to the shadow. But it can be used with force, at least, and if Filbo isn't easy to kill... he saw how this was done last week.
His shadow's tendrils constrict and crush Filbo's shadow with all the strength that he can put behind them.]
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His shadow writhes, beginning to flake apart. Everything on Filbo begins to melt, losing its strength on him -- they're not needed anymore, after all. Rynlan is the one constricting him. And as sturdy as Filbo is, suffocating him by crushing his shadow is darn effective.
While his shadow is falling apart...a third memory comes.
'The party is next week. I gotta decide what to do with myself but maybe I'm hoping for too much when it comes to what may happen. Come on, there's gotta be something that'll make things better...!'
The sound of a glass is picked up. A drink, there's Lu Bixing in the background, inintelligible. Filbo's voice aloud says something along the lines of he not remembering exactly what this one has, but that it had the Doing Just Fine one, that he was sure of, but surely anything else he added was going to be a funny effect. And he took the drink, not remembering he had mixed that one with the Strange Medicine.
For a moment, his thoughts turned off, like it had all gone dark. Silence. And then...slow at first, voices nobody recognized. Voices that were being dismissive of him. Every single one grinding him down. Things that had been said to his face, things he had heard about him. Reminders of all his flaws, of everything that was wrong with him. Filbo's own was among them, echoing them.
With every passing second, the voices were louder, sharper, and faster, and soon, there were others -- the voices of everyone in hell. The demons and the fellow tortured souls, countless conversations in chronological order, sped up to the point nobody in the audience knew for sure what it all said.
At first, everyone's voices sounded weirded out. Filbo's own voice sounded resigned. But in matter of seconds, the more memories replayed, the voices seemed to take a lighter tone. More amicable. And Filbo himself sounded happier. Then when the conversations seemed to be around the time of the memoryshare week, everyone's voices kept the same uplifting tone, but Filbo's began taking a nosedive into melancholy. The more the memories kept coming to the present, the less and less happy Filbo sounded.
The moment it reached present time, it all looped again, faster, more frantic, over and over, three, five, eight, twelve times, and it was faster every time, and it felt like something was creaking, maybe it was the stage under Filbo's dying self, maybe it was his psyche back then, the carefully compartmentalized feelings and thoughts beginning to shatter and mix together and crumble apart to overwhelm him with the weights accumulated throughout the worst year of his life, his death, and two months in hell. Filbo's voice began sounding louder the more times it all replayed, deviating from the conversations and instead drilling a few sentences over and over:
'...what's the point.
Going back to my life holds nothing for me. I will be alone.
I couldn't do anything for anyone before I perished. They died because I wasn't enough.
Staying in hell will only hurt. There's no future here.
I can't go with anyone. Living somewhere else would be pointless.
Everyone I cherish here will leave and go back to their lives. I'll be left behind.
In a week and half this will all be over.
If every option that awaits me is a dead end, then...
There's no point in any of this anymore.
Someone tell me what to do.
I really don't know.
I will be alone
I'm not enough
There's no future anywhere
I'll be left behind
I can't do this on my own
I know nothing
Because I'm just me.
That's the problem, right?
No wonder I'll be alone.
No wonder I'm not enough
No wonder I have no future
No wonder I can't do anything on my own
No wonder I know nothing
What am I supposed to do now?
It kept going, loud and relentless, until after a long minute of cacophony, it all fell into silence. It was only a minute, but to Filbo it must have felt eternal back then. Lu Bixing's voice is still there in the background, and Filbo does respond, a bit dazed, but gives no indication of how in just one minute he had a total meltdown. "Wow...I think that one did nothing. Weird, eh?"
Wheezing, Filbo is almost immobile, on the brink of death, most of shadow sloughing off him except the bits covering what had already broken apart from him, and then there's in front of Rynlan, thankfully grumpus shaped, small and powerless, Filbo's shadow.
Time for the final blow, Rynlan. Do your worst.]
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You still have time.
[It's all he can think to say, in response to all of that. He'll go elsewhere, and he'll still have the time to figure this out for himself, if he decides to.
The figure of Filbo's shadow forms before him, and he lifts a hand, the shadow roiling and writhing around him, tendrils forming and dissipating and forming again somewhere else. Curls his fingers, and they tense, ready, the whispering quieter for a moment.
He flicks his wrist, and they shoot through.]
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----------
'What would someone who isn't me do?
I think I know.
If I can do something to solve everything went wrong, I should take it.
It doesn't matter what happens to me.
Everything that went wrong around me was my fault.
Someone who isn't me would take responsibility for their failures.
But...
...killing someone for just a chance? I can't do that.'
The noise of the water intensifies. The pleading of everyone he knew who had died are gone.
'...should I...?
Anyone who isn't me would do it.
If it's for a small chance everyone I tried to save will live.
If it's for a small chance I can make up for not having been enough.
If it's...for them then it's worth it, right?
Right?
Anyone who isn't me would take the chance to go back to life.
Anyone who isn't me would do anything to help save others.
Nobody else seems to have even a doubt about any of that.
So I should too.
I'm not needed but everyone I should save are needed, so...'
His willpower is far from solid, but the idea is there. As hesitant as he felt, in the end he would do it...he had to do it.
It was almost curfew time.
'Yeah, no, I see why I'm in hell.'
-----------
Filbo Fiddlepie is dead.
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the applause tapers off and the shadows stand upright, fluid movements enhanced under the lights. filbo's shadow scoops up his body, and without another word steps back into the darkness to take him away.
rynlan's shadow, meanwhile, begins to shrink little by little, returning to its original size and settling behind him once more. it looks like it's back to normal…but who's to say?
the lights are raised in the bar and the door swings open. the table of demons seem to be watching before they all begin to move once more. all six of them seem to gather themselves, taking their leave without another word. this is your time now.
as last week, the last ferry of the day leaves at 5pm. everyone is free to linger around the island for the rest of the afternoon if they'd like. there's alcohol and food available all day, and while the trial bar isn't open the island has space for anyone who wants to find a quiet place to relax a little. you've all lived to see another day…enjoy it, for now. ]