[OPEN TO KENOMA] EXECUTION OF THE INNOCENT
WHO: The Regent and Interested Kenoma
WHAT: As promised, the Regent is carrying out the Innocence Entity's invite-only execution.
WHERE: The Regent's Throne Room.
WHEN: Firaseri 22nd, after dissipated Kenoma have emerged.
WARNINGS: Disturbing imagery, gore, limb loss, general unpleasantness.
It's the evening of the 22nd when the call goes out: it is time for the execution. This is purely an event for the willing and or eager, and besides being informed of it, no Kenoma will be pressured into attending. Those that are interested, however, will be led to the Regent's throne room for what promises to be a very special occasion.
Upon entry, the set up of the throne room will seem quite familiar to those that have been there before. A cavernous room filled with nothing but the throne itself, its emptiness seems an intentional call to the void. Several stairs lead to the dais where the throne sits, currently occupied by a the Regent. As usual, any details about the Regent are obscured behind flowing robes and a faceted mask. Presently, they are swirling around a glass of what is presumably wine, but drinking absolutely none of it. Any Kenoma that seem interested will be offered a drink by one of the Citadel servants on duty.
It's not just the Regent present, however. Off to the right side of the room, an arrangement of familiar void-dark spears have been fused into the wall and floor, with their prisoner still held at their center, pierced from all sides. Estinien Wyrmblood appears as little more than a shadow of his former self at this stage, every ounce of color stripped from him, in sharp contrast to the black ichor that bubbles and drips from a cruel assortment of wounds. One eye is swollen with infection, oozing void, while the other is completely blank with whiteness. Each limb has been shorn down to a stub, as if burned by a dark fire from the outside in; all except a set of ragged, broken wings strung up being him. His torso, pierced as it is, seems to be barely holding onto form.
If he reacts to the arrival of 'guests', it isn't apparent. Instead, he seems practically comatose, all except for that open eye and the shallow movements of his breath. His shard is exposed, resting beneath his collar bones, an eye-like shape that has become similarly colorless. The usual sheen of color that all shards hold has faded away, now showing nothing but the gray of the stone beneath it. Those with True Sight will see that he has fallen to the first tier of Pleroma, and even that he is only tenuously hanging on to.
At their throne, the Regent lifts their glass.
"Welcome, kindred."
WHAT: As promised, the Regent is carrying out the Innocence Entity's invite-only execution.
WHERE: The Regent's Throne Room.
WHEN: Firaseri 22nd, after dissipated Kenoma have emerged.
WARNINGS: Disturbing imagery, gore, limb loss, general unpleasantness.
It's the evening of the 22nd when the call goes out: it is time for the execution. This is purely an event for the willing and or eager, and besides being informed of it, no Kenoma will be pressured into attending. Those that are interested, however, will be led to the Regent's throne room for what promises to be a very special occasion.
Upon entry, the set up of the throne room will seem quite familiar to those that have been there before. A cavernous room filled with nothing but the throne itself, its emptiness seems an intentional call to the void. Several stairs lead to the dais where the throne sits, currently occupied by a the Regent. As usual, any details about the Regent are obscured behind flowing robes and a faceted mask. Presently, they are swirling around a glass of what is presumably wine, but drinking absolutely none of it. Any Kenoma that seem interested will be offered a drink by one of the Citadel servants on duty.
It's not just the Regent present, however. Off to the right side of the room, an arrangement of familiar void-dark spears have been fused into the wall and floor, with their prisoner still held at their center, pierced from all sides. Estinien Wyrmblood appears as little more than a shadow of his former self at this stage, every ounce of color stripped from him, in sharp contrast to the black ichor that bubbles and drips from a cruel assortment of wounds. One eye is swollen with infection, oozing void, while the other is completely blank with whiteness. Each limb has been shorn down to a stub, as if burned by a dark fire from the outside in; all except a set of ragged, broken wings strung up being him. His torso, pierced as it is, seems to be barely holding onto form.
If he reacts to the arrival of 'guests', it isn't apparent. Instead, he seems practically comatose, all except for that open eye and the shallow movements of his breath. His shard is exposed, resting beneath his collar bones, an eye-like shape that has become similarly colorless. The usual sheen of color that all shards hold has faded away, now showing nothing but the gray of the stone beneath it. Those with True Sight will see that he has fallen to the first tier of Pleroma, and even that he is only tenuously hanging on to.
At their throne, the Regent lifts their glass.
"Welcome, kindred."
REACTIONS
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Grand.
It's over far too quickly, and that old loathing settled back in, but it's a wonderful day to still exist, if the Regent has so utterly destroyed the Innocence. Estinien's shard lay in their hand, and he could see it, the lack of... anything. All of that power, all of the abilities that Thing had given him, and what had it gotten him, in the end? Murdered. More than murdered, it seemed. Tortured, miserable. Fighting against the tide of what they were trying to do, Estinien had been nothing but the ultimate in the Pleroma -- to the point of signing on with that Entity. He'd taken more than all of them on, he'd fought them all, with power to spare. Silco had barely been able to believe the existence of the Sanctifier. So much power. So much ability. And he'd squandered it. There could have been the ability to rend reality in twain, with that. What had he done instead? He'd charged in for friends, squandered the power, and left The Thing to hold the weight of it. Which of course played into the Regent's hands. He honestly wasn't sure who was the more foolish, the Thing, or the man who had held it?
Not that it mattered, he supposed. Not now.
He took a step back, and then another, from the crowd, now that It was gone -- the Innocence obliterated -- and one might think Silco was leaving -- but no. He spoke quietly, to one of the servants, and although they tried to keep it quiet, there was the tell-tale pop of a champagne bottle, that broke the silence.
With a flagrant look, to whomever looked up, and toward the noisy bottle, he said: "Too soon?"
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If there was a time to be bring out the festive nature of a party, it's certainly after the deed has been done and the results are etched into the stone of history without doubt. "You earned this," he encourages. "Victories are to be celebrated."
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Silco was under no delusions. While he'd lurked in the shadows, filtered information from the Regent, through Ciel, and to the rest of them -- his part that he'd played was little. He perhaps had the...motivation to kill it, but aside from managing to spook it at just the right time in Venera to draw it out, he really hadn't done much.
"Care for a glass?"
/SLAMS FIST ON TABLE
After he is able to return to those senses, the idea of it sits in his stomach like a heavy rock. What he finds himself considering most is how peaceful it felt - Peace he has not felt in so long. Within the back of his mind, he finds himself beginning to feel a longing for that quiet. No more trudging onward bearing the weight of thousands of souls. No more endless conflicts. Rest.
The pop that breaks the silence coaxes him to look up and put such thoughts aside. Ah.
So Emet-Selch sighs, approaches, and holds out his empty glass as if nothing significant has occurred. "My, one would almost think that you harbored some sort of animosity." It's meant in good humor but something in his tone comes off as drained of all usual pomp.
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And then the Regent plunges their hand into Estinien’s chest, and Barnaby himself can feel that uncomfortable burning across his own skin, his own shard begins to vibrate like it might shatter. Instinctively he places a hand over his chest in a pointless attempt to shield it; he can’t risk more damage to his shard with it already in its current state.
Then comes... nothing. The room is gone, his body is gone, his thoughts and feelings all obliterated with it.
A jarring pop of a bottle uncorked jolts him to his senses. He realises his arm has dropped to his side, as he had simply given up resisting. Nonexistence had been easy, empty. Not comforting, that being far too warm a word to describe it, but it had at least released him from all the suffering of continuing to exist. It’s only the sight of the Regent that reminds him he is still needed here, at least for now.
Though he helped earn their victory here today, Barnaby's in no state to savour any celebration. At the earliest opportunity, he'll turn and try to slip out unnoticed.
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They could easily shatter Makoto's shard in revenge. Or slowly carve it up in a manner of torture that is far worse than any bodily abuse. As a demon, a creature that has been shaped in his most formative years by misuse, rejection and then a loss beyond compare, J knows the mind suffers worse than anything else.
If he is returned, on the slim chance Abel and Himeka will release back into the wild a monster that rumor has told him visited them for an extended time, would he be the same? Would they crack and chip away at his shard until he's forgotten himself, his memories, and lost any recognition of his own master? Perhaps he'll have gone mad, like every one of the other mortals J had tried to usher into a second life at his side. In some twisted act of cosmic retribution against the demon, the Universe may finally succeed in exposing the sheer hopelessness of his desires after nearly a thousand years of trying to drive that point home.
Or so the nightmares say, as they creep upon him in the dead of night while he holds vigil over a body that may, one day, simply dissipate under J's unwavering gaze. Without giving him any indication if that end is from the destruction of the piece of him the Pleroma hold- or the erasure of his shard-bound soul.
J is not some ignorant child, nor obtuse enough to miss the cyclical nature of this moment, and it's imitation to an age-old loss. And while his ward isn't yet dead, not knowing what tomorrow brings, living on an endless drawn-out stream of uncertainty that sinks tooth and nail into him deeper every day, feels like grief.
Just has J has done every day since Wald has died, he searches for an outlet, a distraction for the emotions that doggedly chase at his heels. Seeing Barnaby make an attempt to separate himself from the spectacle gives J the answer as to what that will be.
J steps over to the exit and feels himself relive that moment from the Regent's courtroom, when Barnaby had made up his mind about defecting. But this time, when Barnaby approaches where he's come to lean against the exit, J simply tilts his head and offers the both of them an excuse to leave, dropped almost conversationally, "I've had enough of rubbing elbows this evening, how about you?"
The Regent is surely watching everyone's reaction, including Barnaby's. He's obviously discomforted, to say the least. Should he rush out in a hurry, that may reflect poorly upon him. But if he leaves with someone else, leisured and wrapped up in J's overly familiar way of interacting with him, well. People can assume what they want, but it won't be that Barnaby is showing hints of rebellion again.
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But as they leave the throne room together and exit into one of the many dark halls of the Citadel, it's J who has his attention instead, a frown marring his brow as they walk. He knows what must pressing on his mind, much worse than what concerns Barnaby currently feels for Howl, who is at least safe in the Citadel's underbelly while he recovers.
"Are you all right?" It almost seems like a pointless question when he already knows the answer, but at least J will be offered room to give voice to what plagues him.
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Still missing his right horn from when it had snapped off in the aftermath of his ward's battle with the Sanctifier, when J had thought not a moment before cushioning Makoto's plummet to earth with his body, the loss gives an all together different air to him than before. Oddly enough, without the obstruction of that horn and anything to pull his hair back, loose strands fall over that shoulder and around his face, leaving J looking younger than before. Or perhaps less held together, like a picture frame slid out of place, or left hanging precariously off a single loose nail.
There's still enough pluck in him to pin Barnaby with an abrupt hike of his brows and a brief glance down, their heights mismatched enough to require it, "What's this about, now?"
"After all those times I looked after you, what I was hoping for you to learn wasn't how to hen-peck me in return," is all he says to the question. J's world may have shifted, with an uncertain future casting its shadow over his mind. But that doesn't mean the cryptic slant to his words suddenly lifts, exposing an open door for easy passage into his innermost thoughts.
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"... But there's nothing wrong with being looked after in return. If you don't want that, forget I said anything."
He's entitled to his privacy, and for his personal worries to remain personal. Whether he decides otherwise is entirely his choice.
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A laugh doesn't unwind all that's been sewn into the fabric of reality in the days that followed an ugly fight, but it does offer a temporary distraction. Obscuring from his immediate view the conundrum that J needs more than a red-hot thirst for restitution to muster any success in his efforts. At the very minimum, he requires a team of Kenoma volunteers to even any odds he's working against that might be aiding Makoto's kidnapper.
One hand reaches to swipe at his own cheek with a grin pulled wide under mischievous eyes, to evict any trace of a tangled mix of amusement and less exuberant emotions pricking at the corners of his vision. "Mother-henning, then."
"You've very good at it, what with all the time you've spent with the tiny-tots around here." He lures the subject away from matters close to heart, and in a direction that keeps J's impish grin from so much as budging. Until Barnaby suddenly offers, in a sense, for J to make use of his shoulder to lean on, should he need it. What a strange notion. An Archduke set among the most powerful and high-ranked creatures in all of Hell, ushered into being tenderly coddled by a mortal. A man who had started out as merely a useful pawn, turned into someone that now pulls him from the well of darkness the last few days have been.
"Is that so? And for how long do you plan to look after me?" As they walk, J's form dips nearer to gently bump against Barnaby's side, nudging him affectionately as they wind their way farther from the memory of the Innocent's demise. Up towards a portion of the Citadel that boasts a little fresh air with a wide balcony and a bar meant for socializing, which he feels isn't just desired but warranted under the recent circumstances.
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He's died before, of course. This is different. There is nowhere for his soul to retreat to - no thundering urge to do so - no light to turn away from, back towards flesh and fire and fury - because there is nothing.
This is exactly what he wants, isn't it? An End. The rest he's been denied time and time again; no more tepid beige slurry to crawl through, searching for that one bright spark of transcendent joy. That Resentment - that desire to Unmake - is his own self writ larger and brighter and Magnificent and Terrible, and it is tearing into the thing the Hates. This should be Beautiful. It is, in its way.
... so why, then, when the pop of Silco's champagne cork shatters the silence-beyond-silence, is the taste that clings to his teeth one of Fear, and not Relief?
He realises he's been holding his wineglass tight enough the stem has shattered in his grasp, and stalks towards one of the remaining servants to deposit the shards unceremoniously with them and source another drink.
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(Not verbatim.)
The sense of shared nature is one he's always had for fellow Visionaries, but it feels stronger now, spun from something sturdier than the spiritual threads he's felt between them since arriving in Horos. Before he died--dissipated. Briefly blinked out of existence, as he did just now in the blast radius of the Regent's power. When Zenos' glass-stem snaps, Matt looks down to his own hand to make sure his fingers haven't clenched.
And, hell, he needs a new drink after this. He heads over, moving with surprisingly soft footfalls.
"Could I get another too?" he asks the servant. The man nods his head decorously, offering Matt a glass from his tray. To Zenos, Matt says dryly, "You have the right idea."
He can't get the image of Estinien's shard out of his head. Nor the moving picture of how he'd looked pierced through with dark spears, still shuddering to breathe and be no matter the cost.
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"Quite the show, was it not?" he smiles, thinly, raising the glass in a small salute to the shorter man before draining it and taking another.
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What is Matt's measure? Well, 5'10", but past that, only Zenos can say. He has no weapons on him at all, unless they're hidden in the blousy sleeves of his bluish-gray, bead-speckled shirt. His posture is quite good, which could speak to some level of martial training, but his twiggish frame and big doe eyes don't seem to fit. And then there are the more interesting markers: the scar arcing across his left cheek, the dark band encircling his right wrist like a tattoo. His left hand, which is entirely missing, terminating at the wrist in a smooth stump.
At the moment, he seems to be paying attention to no one and nothing but Zenos.
"Were you here when she first showed up?" He takes a sip from his glass, nose wrinkling. "'First' relative to this round of Aions, I mean."
The last round, if the Regent's intuition is correct. It's the kind of thought that makes you shiver.
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"She being the Innocence?" He inclines his head in a curt nod; his features are generally impassive, his default expression one of tedium, but there's no disguising the curl of distaste that thinking about that 'first' manifestation brings to his lip. "I was in Venera, yes. Her death is long overdue."
That much, at least, is genuine, so if the "This is a victory" he tags on afterwards sounds a little like he's trying to convince someone (maybe himself?) that's probably coincidence.
He takes another mouthful of the wine (a more normal one, this time, rather than emptying the glass in a single swallow), gestures to the stump with the half-full glass. Tact has never been his forte, and will inevitably lose to curiosity. "What happened to your hand?"
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Still, he murmurs agreement over the rim of his glass. At Zenos' question, he stiffens.
Matt should probably start expecting this. In a way, when he's around other people, he always is--buzzing with awareness of what he's lost, shame and awkwardness hanging around him like a miasma. None of it prepares him to answer the question, though.
Part of him thinks, fuck it. He's closer to the Kenoma now than he's ever been, and that's the only force he really needs to impress.
"I cut it off," he answers. (Technically Xishen cut it off, but that wasn't really her decision. She sure as hell didn't suggest it.) "Scrying for the Innocence. I don't know how much it helped or not in the end, but I figured--she hurt so many people, I had to try."
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(It's everything else that he's still figuring out)
And apparently Matt contributed, or tried to contribute, to that uncomplicated good. Presumably it did something, if the limb is still missing; those digits he'd lost himself, shattered into chalky powder resisting the Innocent's attempted transformation, have long since grown back (not an experience he particularly wishes to repeat, but useful information to have given how often he intends to cross blades with the Pleroma). The conviction is impressive, as is the directness of Matt's answer; the both combined earn a slight eyebrow raise of something-like-admiration.
"Is that why you're here?" he asks. Matt does not seem the sort to revel in suffering, especially if what the Innocent did moved him to such measures.
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After a moment's consideration, he nods.
"I thought I should see it through to the end," he says. "Or the next phase, however you want to think of it."
He pauses a moment, sipping his wine, before venturing: "And, you know ... I don't like the guy at all. He tried to kill me even before he tried to kill like, all of us. But I don't want to see anybody get eaten up by something like that."
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Should he take it personally, that he seems to be one of the few Kenomans Estinien hasn't tried to kill? He can only hope it's because his First Friend has staked that claim, though there's a lingering whisper that says no, it's that he's become a very small fish in a pond increasingly full of sharks.
A light shrug, and he glances back to Matt. "Now we wait to see what the Pleroma do next; his loss, and hers, must pain them."
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Is Matt really just realizing now that the Pleroma might feel a way about Estinien being captured? Yes and no. It's more like the brief hours between waking up below the Citadel and coming here, during which he's begun manifesting new abilities, have only had room for so many thoughts. And most of those have been related to relief that Abel and Himeka are alive.
A relief that mingles with guilt, now. That he tries to quash down around the Regent, worried they'll read his thoughts and find him wanting (again). In the moment, Matt's nose wrinkles in distaste.
"I can see how they'd miss him. Even beyond their personal reasons ... he's formidable." Matt was lucky to get out of his own conflict with Estinien relatively unharmed, but he saw what he did to Kaeya. "But I'd hope the Pleroma aren't mourning the Innocence. They've gotta know she's too dangerous. I mean, she was manifesting again and again, stronger every time. That's not stable."
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Of course, Matt likely doesn't know any of that.
"Given the stakes if they lose? I imagine they considered the danger an acceptable risk, to wield so potent a weapon against us."
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"I would find that pretty disappointing," he murmurs. "I mean, to be fair, I guess I don't really know what they all stand for as a group, apart from 'preserve the status quo.' So it wouldn't really represent hypocrisy per se." Except from Himeka, who seemed to be pretty firmly in camp Helping People, Spreading Love, Saving the World. "I guess maybe anti-authority, which is fair enough. But the first batch of them didn't exactly get a primer on the political situation before they made their choice."
Ah, Matt, how quickly you forget that when you arrived in Horos, you were kidnapped and manhandled by emissaries of the Regent, then spent several weeks convinced they were going to sacrifice you in a blood ritual. Just saying, maybe the Pleroma read the tea leaves there.
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Zenos' tone is one of faint, amused scepticism, one eyebrow raising slightly as he regards Matt. His own experience was quite different, coming in the second wave, and from what he's heard from Meteion that first impression was particularly ungentle... but the unmaking of reality-entire is always going to be a hard sell. He remembers Himeka's demand for Proof, and her confusion that anyone would fight for the Regent's promise of a world reborn without it. All a more diplomatic opening salvo would have secured, he's pretty sure, is a higher number of defections the first time that conviction was tested.
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Despite himself, his voice is tinged with affection. He shakes his head.
"The only thing that's really come up when I've talked to them, though it's come up a lot, is that they don't want to believe their worlds are gone. They just can't let go of the possibility. And they want things to go back to the way they were, which ..."
A slight shrug.
"I don't know. Maybe it'd be normal if I wanted that too."
(no subject)