#felt somewhat stressed drew a sheep creature

[canisalbus]

[hello-im-not-a-possum]

20. Sin

One of the greatest sins is blasphemy and one of the greatest forms of blasphemy is declaring yourself a god in front of your former god. What makes it worse is that Allison and the Ink Demon know for a fact he’s not bluffing, at least, not anymore. (Set in FIFE, the end of the cat and mouse game between Allison and Sammy.)

“I still think you should’ve stayed, Inky.” Allison stated as the cold air bellowed on her face. “If there’s anyone Sammy hates more than Tom... it’s you.”

“That’s WHY I need to come!” The Ink Demon protested from within the large inkwell underneath her arm, completely unaware that the wingless angel was rolling her eyes. “I need to apologize to him! I never got the chance back at the motel, I was too focused on the questions I had for him whenever he was with us, and… and if he didn’t do it already, he might not even survive this. ...Let alone make it back home…”

The strong smells of bleach, citrus, and smoke wafted through the area, only growing stronger the deeper they descended into the ex-prophet’s final destination.

“If he did the ritual already and didn’t survive it, then what would be the point of you coming here?” She dropped the inkwell containing the demon as he grew so heated it burned her skin as soon as the question left her lips. It proceeded to roll a bit and prop itself upright in front of her. “He’ll never forgive you as a corpse, ...but I don’t think he’ll forgive you if we find him alive either.”

“If he’s dead, I’ll still apologize to him, but I’ll also add that I’m sorry for never telling him that while I had the chance.”

As much as she wanted to argue with Inkwell, knowing that the Demon would only aggravate the musician more and turn this already delicate and stressful situation into another “Molotovs at the Motel” incident... 

...The Ink Demon’s presence was the only thing keeping her from passing out from all the blessed bleach dripping down from the ceiling and pooling on the floors.

“Let’s just keep moving,” she sighed. “We have to be close to him by now...”

“At the forking path, take a right turn by the runny and mostly erased ink message that used to say ‘You don’t NEED a prophet when every prophecy you tell is self-fulfilling’. Well %&#@ me with a crucifix...”

“What’s wrong?”

“I still feel him, but he’s getting fainter and fainter as we speak! And I hear the Ink machine running, but it’s not pumping out ink!” The Inkwell flopped down on it’s side and rolled down the halls at an intense speed. “Don’t just stand there, run like #&!!, woman!”

“Sammy, why are you even doing this?” Allison muttered under her breath as she sped down the dripping halls after the Ink Demon.

While the holy liquid intended to erase ink had managed to nibble away at the soles of her boots, and at the sturdy glass of his inkwell, the pair’s race through the musician’s maze rewarded them with a faint song in the distance.

“Don’t weep for me my sheep, as I descend the abyss so deep…”

“Sammy!”

The pair shouted in unison as they chased after it.

“No matter how low... I’ve been cast below the sea, I’ll rise back up, as a Lent Lily...”

Allison scooped up the Ink demon’s inkwell as the bleach spread out more and more, shallowly covering the floor.

“As dreams are burned to ashes, and hope is left to die, I will keep on going onward, I will look up to the skies.”

The smells of bleach and citrus were growing so strong that it made Allison nauseous, her eyes were watering and she felt like she was in a room that was full of thick, unbreathable smoke.

“As sweet citrus boils black and bitter, as the mighty willows wither… There’s no fear that I have no more, I’ve seen it all before.”

The Prophet’s faint voice was getting louder and louder the more they ran.

“Even if I answer, the calling of the earth… I will not sleep for long as I sing the song of rebirth.”

The bleach level began to rise a bit more, but she saw the Ink machine through a doorway.

“So sing your happy songs, and whistle your happy tunes, if you wait for my arrival, I will be there very soon...”

The pair had finally arrived to the ritual site; a gigantic, rounded room with enough bleach on the floor for it to go up to their ankles, a relatively small transmutation circle was painted in the very center of it, the damaged looking ink machine was suspended by chains with it’s nozzle pointed at the circle. But no one besides them was in the small coliseum.

“Sammy?” She looked around the hollow stadium and called out again. “Sammy, where are you?”

She scanned the room once more trying to see if anything moved, and was greeted by a groan from above her head.

Allison jumped back from the splash zone of the wheezing Ink machine, which began pumping out…

...Allison couldn’t tell what the fuck it was pumping out, but she could tell that in spite of its ink-like color, it was not ink, at least, not THE ink she was used to.

A large glob of the stuff oozed out the nozzle and plopped into the ritual circle.

Its texture was chunkier and it smelled absolutely awful. It was mostly coppery, but it also had a sickly strong floral scent and she wouldn’t be surprised if it also had a hint of the bleach smell.

“He… He’s gone!” The Ink Demon’s inkwell shook in her grip. “I can’t feel him at all anymore! HE’S GONE!”

“He can’t be…” She shook her head in disbelief as she examined the pile in the transmutation circle further. “There HAS to be at least something… You heard him too! He’s in here somewhere! There at least has to be either a body or clothes...”

The candles in the circle began to light on their own as the pile began to shift and stir. Allison backed away from it, tightened her grip on Inky’s Inkwell, and slowly drew her sword as she heard music began to play. It wasn’t the intense, fast paced and distorted music she heard almost every other time she and Sammy faced off, this song was different, it was soft and gentle, played with a music box and a banjo, something akin to a lullaby, but the instruments were broken and untuned.

“I still can’t sense him, but I have a gut feeling he’s in that circle...”

“O'r diwedd..!” A bleached white ram’s skull uncovered itself from the pile, it shook itself off and coughed out a huge glob of ‘normal’ thick ink. Lifeless eye sockets peered deeply into Allison’s eyes. “Mae fy siwrnai hir wedi cyrraedd ei diwedd.”

A demon, no. A God, no, not even that, some… thing that was not supposed to exist rose up and out of the pile in the circle, while she could fully comprehend what it was and what it looked like, she felt like she wasn’t supposed to.

Many, many arms, legs, wings, eyes, and mouths emerged out of the dripping, mangled body. The arms looked somewhat human, but none of them looked right; too many joints, not enough joints, too many fingers, not enough fingers, some of them looked ‘healthy’, others looked like they’d be at home on rotting corpses, but all of them were far too long and had too many eyes and mouths. The legs on the other hand looked perfectly normal, but they were sheep legs, not human legs. It made her feel sick just looking at it, it vaguely reminded her of the Ink demon before it redesigned itself into a proper cartoon; an otherworldly being with as much raw power as it had frailty and a body that was warped and unnatural, especially to itself.

She fought the twin urges to bow before it and to put it out of its pitiable existence.

“Sammy…” She backed further away from the being. “What have you done to yourself?!”

“Only what was meant to be done.” The creature spoke calmly and coolly with the voice it had as the prophet, in spite of its body language, it didn’t sound like it was in pain. “What He was too cowardly to do with his own divinity... I will take it upon myself to do it with my own.”

Without warning, it struck the ceiling, dozens of disfigured hands ripping, crushing, and tearing the Ink machine into tiny, useless scraps that the mouths were chewing away at.

“One god down...” If the skull on the beast could express itself, she could tell that it would be grinning, its hands then struck at the Inkwell, prompting her to dodge.

“Two to go.”