A Lullaby for Gods Chapter 150

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: HONEY, BELIEVE ME, I’LL HAVE YOUR HEART ON A PLATTER

???

They ended up having to duck behind a building, blocks away from their original drop-off point. Cronus wrenched himself away Hal, who had grabbed onto his shirt and was effectively strangling him with his collar; Dualscar pulled away from Nightwalker and braced himself again a wall, disoriented from such fast teleportation; and Karkat immediately ran into the nearest street, searching as if he could still find Vriska even when she’d been whisked away. Finding no one there but darkness, he hissed, “Fuck!”

“Quiet,” Dualscar barked. “If the Sylph finds us, we’re done for.”

“I thought you said she couldn’t fight on her own.” The boy whirled back towards him, glaring.

“She’s not supposed to. There’s a lot about her we don’t know – I told you not to underestimate her. There’s something wrong with her.”

The troll leaned back against the building, one hand on his chest as he tried to catch his breath. Cronus hunched over, hands on his knees as he similarly wheezed. Karkat marched back towards them, clicking his tongue.

“So what now?” he asked.

“We’re going to have to brute force our way through this,” Dualscar said. “They’re both threats, but they’re stronger together, so we have to keep them apart. But the Sylph must be attacked with intention to kill.”

“We’d have to find them first,” Hal said. He looked about the cramped space they’d ducked in. It looked to be an alley. “This is New York?”

“It used to be,” Cronus said. “A lot of shit happened while you were out.”

The boy said nothing, instead just nodding to indicate he’d heard.

“So we’re just going to run straight at the Sylph and hope she doesn’t get the jump on our asses,” Karkat bit out. “Great. Stellar idea. Like she can’t just pull the same trick she did earlier.”

“It is a problem that she can apparently summon heralds like those at will,” Nightwalker said. “We can keep teleporting away from them, but Vantas and I can’t keep an eye out for everyone in the heat of battle.”

“So you two’ll just have to be our main heavy-hitters,” Dualscar said. “And there’s no saying if she’s not affected by those things either. She came to us from the sky, far away from those rifts…maybe she can’t get near them. We just have to fight her up close.”

“Or Eridan,” Cronus pointed out. “If she’s protecting him, she’s not going to risk him getting sucked into one of those things.”

“So we just have to teleport close to them.” Dualscar nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, great plan and all that, but we have to know where the fuck they are to even do that in the first place.” Karkat crossed his arms. “And if we try to get close to scope where to drop by, she’s going to sense us and fucking strand us in those weird pocket dimensions. She had to have some way of figuring out where the fuck we were earlier.”

Hal raised an eyebrow. “I think the massive beam of moonlight we used to get here might have had some influence in that, but maybe it was something else.”

“Can it with the sass, tin man!”

Nightwalker held an arm between them before Karkat could try and claw Hal’s already-broken face off. “Karkat’s right, magic use would just give us away, so if we try to find out where she is with that, especially using the Full Moon, she’d get the jump on us.”

“She’s a Sylph, she can already sense us by our emotions,” Cronus cut in. The others turned to where he was leaning against the opposite wall, deep in thought as he tried to recall his studies. “Sylphs are…because their magic is so derivative, most have ambient sensory abilities. They’re usually hyperaware of everything that has to do with their aspect, like with our Sylph, Aranea, who always had this nose for knowledge – ”

“Kanaya was always about decoration and clothes,” Karkat said.

Cronus pointed to him in agreement. “And someone godtier whose job is to heal wishes and dreams would have to be able to sense emotions like those.”

Karkat threw his hands up, walking away a few feet before coming right back. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault the game us ridiculously overpowered.”

“Fine, you – ” Karkat turned to Dualscar, who just gave him an unamused look at the disrespect, but Karkat plowed on, snapping his fingers at him. “ – with the magic bracelet. Anything there that can help?”

“Not that I know of. I don’t know of any way to cloak Nereus’ magic,” Dualscar said.

Hal blinked at that, and then ran a hand over his face.

Karkat turned to him. “What? What?”

“Roxy,” he said. “Roxy would have been able to help us.”

Rogue of Void, right. She would have been able to shield all of them from perception by simple distributing nothing over them. But as it was, they were all just combat-oriented powerhouses whose presences would be too noticeable if they used their magic.

Great.

“We’re just going to have to wing it,” Hal said. “Look, the same way Anshu can find us, we can find Eridan. Magic that strong, he’s gotta be easy to sniff out even if we don’t use ours. We all noticed Anshu before she summoned those rifts.”

“We’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” Nightwalker said.

“We’ve got a better chance walking than we do taking shortcuts,” Hal said. “What other choice do we have?”

The five of them looked at each other, waiting for someone else to bring up a suggestion. When no one did, Cronus ran a hand through his hair in resignation, Dualscar huffed, while Karkat made a noise of displeasure and turned to march down the street.

The rest of them slowly followed, trying to concentrate as much as possible in order to pinpoint where the massive well of destructive energy that was Eridan could be hiding.

Slowly, one by one, they stopped, and turned.

Even through the endless night of the city, they could see the dark shapes of the buildings around them. Far, far off, down the road and up a hill, was a chapel.

#

Jaeger actually managed to get into the room the Prince was sleeping in. It took an embarrassingly long time, and she was grumbling the whole way, but she did it. She was in the room, the boy was unconscious, and all it would take was a pillow to suffocate him and she could blow this whole place to kingdom come, the pesky rescue squad included. She frowned at the reminder – curse Anshu for taking enough control to Manifest Cronus’ safety during the last battle…if Eridan’s killing blow had just blasted his head clean off his shoulders instead of harmlessly bouncing off from her summoned shield, he and Dualscar could have just bled to death in the city.

“I should lobotomize you, somehow,” Jaeger muttered.

In retaliation, Anshu drowned out her entire consciousness, fully taking over the body. Her eyes snapped blue, the tension leaving her body, and she collapsed to her knees on the floor, heaving. It always took such strong emotions in order to fight the possession, and Anshu wasn’t one to feel things so strongly; it was exhausting, tapping into anger and hate.

Still, she had enough resentment to keep her going right now. She crawled all the way to Eridan’s bed, slumping against its frame in exhaustion. Now that she was back in control, she could feel all the pains of her body, the soreness of her muscles and the deep, gnawing ache of bones broken and reset over and over.

But, she had things to do. She needed to get Eridan to the others before the Heir of Blood took back control.

“Eri,” she mumbled, but as deeply asleep as he was, Eridan didn’t hear. She sat up properly, reached a shaking hand over, and nudged his shoulder. “Eridan.”

He didn’t wake, so she did it again. It took a few tries, but thankfully, slowly, Eridan’s eyes sluggishly opened. They dully stared up at the ceiling at first, before he had enough awareness to realize where he was.

Eridan turned to her, barely able to move from his own fatigue. “An…shu?”

“You need to get out,” she said, not wasting any time. “The others are here. You need to go with them before he kills you.”

“Who…does?”

“The He – ” she choked, her throat suddenly seizing. As the constriction travelled down to her diaphragm, she felt something squeeze, and she hunched over, retching.

“Anshu!” Eridan was alert now, scrambling to sit up. Anshu coughed, blood splattering all over the floor. “Shit.”

Anshu waved his concern off. It would heal. It always did. It just meant the Heir was trying to get control back, she was getting way too calm, she was slipping.

“I’m…fine,” she wheezed as she tried to hold on to her anger, but it was escaping her. Her exhaustion was stronger, and constantly being so rageful was tiresome.

She turned to Eridan, trying to focus on him instead. She needed to help him. She needed to get him somewhere safe.

“Listen to me,” she croaked out. “This is going to sound…crazy, but I don’t have a lot of time. I need you to go find your friends and go with them, go hide…somewhere. Wherever. Just go get somewhere safe.”

“What?” Understandably confused, Eridan dropped to his knees beside her, holding her up by the shoulders so she didn’t have to stay hunched over from her body’s sudden seizing. “What are you talking about, who’s here?”

“Eridan, something is wrong with me,” Anshu enunciated, carefully. “And it is going to get you killed, so I need you to trust me and get as far away from me as possible.”

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. Fuck, he wasn’t listening. His eyes were wide, frantically searching for injuries. “Do I need to take you somewhere?”

Anshu couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out from her. “Eri,” she said. “There aren’t any hospitals anymore.”

The situation came back to him, at that, at the realization of what was happening; what had happened. The world was ending, or perhaps already had ended, and the entire city was in ruins. He’d sunk a part of it, even, just out of sheer rage and a tunnel-visioned drive to kill his ancestor and dancestor.

He sat back on his heels.

“…you can manifest a cure, right? If I wish for it?” Eridan asked.

Anshu smiled, weakly. “Not this time, Eri.”

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked again. “I can help you. Just tell me.”

That was sweet of him. He had no capacity for helping or healing, that was her thing. Not that it mattered, given that Anshu probably couldn’t even say the name of the creature that had done this to her.

She tried, anyway. “The He – ” Her throat seized again. Eridan yelled in alarm as she started another coughing fit, and once again threw up blood all over the floor.

When she finally calmed, minutes later, she tried to take deep breaths while he rubbed her back in concern. Her vision was fading, her fingers were slowly going numb…it wouldn’t be long now.

“Eridan,” she said. “I’m…not myself.” The careful wording was said slowly, and when nothing happened, Anshu plowed on. “I’m supposed to be dead, but I’m – here. Instead.”

“What?” he asked. “What are you talking about? Didn’t you come from another universe?”

Right. The lie that the Heir had served up to him and made him believe when she’d showed up. That his version of her was dead and this one was just someone who was so close yet so far, just an image that looked like her, but was never going to be. A mockery of his grief, a little something to push his already fraying sanity to the edge.

There was a longing for clarity in the corner of his mind. Good. She could use that. She latched onto it, her magic drawing from it and magnifying it and – Manifest. A wish for information. She could give that, have it strengthen her control enough so she could speak freely.

Anshu took a deep breath, feeling the effects of his wish put some air back into her lungs.

“Listen to me very carefully,” she began, turning to look him in the eye. “I died a few months ago. You remember this. You were there.”

More confusion settled onto his expression, but given her limited time, Anshu could not afford to slow down, so she continued.

“I was…awakened. Brought back, so to speak, by something. I don’t know what at first, but I was not alive then. I was not fully dead either. I didn’t see someone revive me, I just felt them do it, and they had an instruction. I needed to hide, I needed to run, and I needed to keep myself existing. They said they had a use for me, or, someone else did, anyway. To solve some problem and help them with a wish,” she said. “But you kept getting in trouble so I…”

She trailed off. She could see that he was starting to piece things together in his mind, from her undead visits during the early days of the apocalypse, and why she was always gone unless he truly needed her.

“I got caught by – ” Anshu felt her throat beginning to tighten again, so she skipped it over entirely, hoping Eridan would be able to put two and two together. “I got thrown into this…glowing ball thing, along with this body that’s actually alive. It’s not a real human body, it’s made of – of magic, so I can’t really get hurt and it just heals over. I’m not godtier, I just can’t die.”

“So what…what are you – what are you saying?”

“Just let me finish,” she said, putting a hand to his shoulder in a bid for him to be patience. “I’m not right, Eridan, this body is two things in one. I don’t control myself most of the time. I try to, god, I try to, but it’s so hard.” She bit down a sob. “I’m Anshu. I’m your friend that’s supposed to be dead. I’m not supposed to be here, but he – ”

Eridan’s eyes were wide now, his mouth agape. She could see, that he had gotten to the conclusion she’d wanted him to come to, even when she couldn’t properly say half of what she wanted to. She was his version of her, she had been the whole time, the Heir of Blood had been lying to his face, using her like a puppet to get him to go nuclear, and she was trying her goddamn best to protect him all while trapped in her own mind.

“He’s going to kill you,” Anshu said, putting as much urgency into her voice as she could. “He’s been trying to these past few days, so you need to leave.”

“You’re Anshu.”

“Yes.”

“You’re Anshu.”

“Eridan.” Anshu put her face into her hands, tears welling up the corners of her eyes. “Please, please listen. You have to fucking leave!”

“But you – I can help you. I swear to god, I can, just give me some – some time and – ”

“No, you can’t! He’s going to fucking kill you.” She grabbed him by the shoulders, holding tightly and shaking him, hoping the pain would make him see sense. “I don’t have much to live for, Eridan, and I’m not even supposed to be alive right now. You’re the only person around I have any investment in, so please, just go.”

“Where?” he asked, “To who? Anshu, I…” He took a pause, his voice broke. “Anshu, you don’t…understand. There’s nothing left out there. There’s no one left out there.”

“Your friends are here to help you!”

“After I tried to kill some of them?” he asked. He looked at her, earnestly lost. “I promised myself I wouldn’t turn to violence anymore, and I broke that because I was scared of having to go through your death again. I killed people – ”

“You didn’t,” she reassured him. “Dualscar and Cronus are fine, they’re fine.”

“But I still nearly did,” he said. “How the hell do you expect me to come back from that?”

“I don’t know!” Anshu cried. “I don’t fucking know! But I just want you to get out of this alive!”

She listed forward, too tired to hold herself up, and Eridan had to wrap his arms around her in a hug just to steady her as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

They sat there, in silence, for a few minutes, the only sound being Anshu sobbing into his shirt.

“The world is ending, anyway,” Eridan murmured. “What does it matter?”

Anshu closed her eyes. She couldn’t blame him for the way he thought now, he’d been holding onto hope for so long and it constantly always failed him, but still. There had to be something. There had to be someone out there.

At the mouth of the tiny house that was tucked beside a chapel, the tiny house that they were staying in, something crunched under a boot. They turned at the sudden noise.

#

“A fucking church,” Karkat muttered as he stepped into the busted doorway of the small shack they’d narrowed Eridan’s presence to. If the guy had actually ended up asleep in a church, Karkat would have slapped him for the pretentiousness.

“This is a caretaker’s dorms, I think.” Nightwalker took care to keep his footsteps light as he crossed the threshold, blue eyes roving to search for threats. The only thing that this house seemed to pose was a threat to their healths, as run down as it was. Whether it had been through time or through the apocalypse, none of them knew.

“Can barely feel them,” Cronus said. “Eridan must be tired.”

“The Sylph’s probably hiding on purpose,” Karkat said.

“No.” Dualscar sniffed the air, the only brave one out of the five of them. Who knew what kind of airborne diseases this man was inviting into his lungs. “Something’s different.”

“What? She decided to keel over somewhere or something?”

“Something’s different with her magic. Pay attention.”

The five of them fell silent again, instead waiting for that tell-tale prick in their skin, that lump in their throats that came with the presence of Anshu Jaeger’s magic in the air.

But there was none of that. Instead, everything simply felt…peaceful. Inviting. Healing, even.

Something was different.

“You said Anshu’s two things stitched together,” Hal said. “Might be something to do with that.”

“That’s troubling if she could just switch between those halves,” Nightwalker said.

“You guys know anything about that?” Hal prompted.

“Kankri said something about her being biologically tied to something else,” the man said. “Dualscar concluded she must be tied to the Heir of Blood.”

“Shit,” Karkat said, softly, though the way a vein jumped in his jaw told them he wanted to swear much, much louder at that.

“Whatever he’s done, we don’t have any concrete evidence of what it is, so we don’t know the full extent of her situation,” Dualscar said. “We don’t even know if it is her or just something wearing her skin.”

“…and we’re going to kill her,” Hal said.

The troll turned, brow furrowed. “We don’t have a choice. It’s her, or everything else.”

Hal took a while to answer. Behind the aviators he’d hastily grabbed from the estate, his eyes flicked away momentarily, before he faced Dualscar once more.

“Yeah,” he said, softly. “I guess.”

“Stay together,” Nightwalker instructed. “She’ll pick us off quicker if we go our separate ways.”

“I’ve seen enough shitty movies to know how this goes,” Karkat grumbled.

The house was small, but with their targets as dangerous and volatile as a Prince and Sylph of Hope, they made their way through carefully, slowly, all on a hair’s trigger to lunge forward or defend themselves, though no one made any move to summon their magic. Why Anshu hadn’t done anything to attack them when she should be able to clearly sense them, they had no idea, but they weren’t about to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Still, they were vigil. Nightwalker led the group, Karkat flanked the back, and Hal was at the center, with all three of them able to either teleport the others away or deal a killing blow to the Sylph.

The kitchen was uninhabited, save for a few rats. The common room was empty. That left their only option to be the bedrooms, and as they entered the hallway, there was a worrying amount of congealed blood all over the place, though no body to indicate a corpse.

Hopefully, those smears weren’t ground human flesh.

A clatter ahead. All five of them turned towards the noise and froze, but instead of something jumping out at them, the noise grew faint, and then disappeared.

“They’re fucking running,” Karkat said.

“Shit, after them,” Dualscar hissed, and – abandoning all caution – all five of them sprinted forwards to the room the noise had come from. If those two were running instead of facing hem head on that meant something was very wrong. Their magic, perhaps, was finally growing tired and running out, or one, perhaps even both, were in no condition to fight. This was their chance.

Nightwalker got to the room first, teleporting across the space, and kicked the door open. They found nothing but an empty room, bloodstains on the floor – fresh – and windows whose panes were still swinging from the force of being opened. They’d jumped outside. The house was a single story.

“Fuck!”

Nobody had any idea who said that, only that it was exactly what they were all thinking. Picking up their pace, they raced over to the window, each vaulting over and landing the small distance between it and the backyard. There wasn’t any other place to hide in, in the vast open space of the church grounds. There was only the chapel a few feet away, and there was an open door that the duo might have escaped to.

They ran there, as fast as they could, all on high alert, but as with before no attack came. All they got was their footsteps echoing in the small, stone chapel, and a whole lot of nothing. The darkness in this room was a lot more pronounced, being an enclosed space, and it took a bit for their eyes to adjust. Nothing ambushed them, nothing rushed at them; the place was seemingly empty.

“Did we lose them?” Cronus asked, whirling around, his seadweller eyes adjusting to the dark much faster.

“We would have seen them if they ran off,” Karkat said.

“Anshu can fly,” Hal said.

“We would have seen her then too.” Dualscar stepped forward, making his way further into the church. “There weren’t a lot of trees outside, something in the sky would have been obvious.”

“It’s dark out, we could have missed it.”

“Try to feel for them, then,” Nightwalker said. “Don’t argue amongst yourselves, we’re losing time here.”

So they did, each clamping their mouths shut in barely-concealed impatience and irritation, once again trying to seek out the corrosive air of Eridan’s magic and Anshu’s now soothing balm of an aura…it was surprisingly close.

Karkat began to open his mouth to point out just that, before there was a sudden snap in the air, like a switch had been flipped on; Anshu’s magic disappeared, and – no, it didn’t disappear. He’d felt that magic before, when she’d shown up earlier and attacked, then but this time it was more biting, it was sharp, exactly like it had been when she’d blasted Vriska off this plane of existence. All the peace and comfort it had taken on earlier was gone.

There was a loud scuffle to the side. All six of them turned towards the altar, and at the sound of a thud, they ran, Nightwalker and Karkat at the lead and ready to teleport whoever they needed to away. A flash of light shone behind the altar and –

They all came to a stop beside it, all of them bracing for a fight. Cronus and Dualscar’s hands were alight with their Hope magic, Hal had Electric Love out, Karkat and Nightwalker had Space magic on their hands.

But the two behind the altar were already at a standstill. Anshu sat – or knelt, more accurately – and was holding down Eridan with a forearm to his neck like she was trying to crush his windpipe. The boy was sprawled on the ground and trying to get purchase on her shirt, which was what the noise had been, and in his other hand, burning through his skin, was a small glowing knife made of pure Hope energy, held up to her throat.

They were both crying, though Anshu’s expression was cold, and Eridan’s was heartbroken.

“Ah,” the girl said. “Your friends are here, Eri.”

“Let her go, you bastard,” he gritted out.

“I can’t even if I wanted to. I’m part of her now, remember?” Anshu smiled down at him, sweetly, like she wasn’t trying to choke him to death. “You want to kill me, then you’ll have to kill her.”

She pressed her arm down on him, and at the same time, the sharp end of the knife dug into her neck. It pierced and drew blood, a bead of it slowly running down the glowing side of the blade, bright red against golden white, dripping down the edge, and then the handle, until it pooled and overflowed, running down Eridan’s knuckles. The small puncture wound began to sizzle, and slowly, only visible from the light of the knife, veins of black started to spread from it to a small patch of Anshu’s skin.

Dualscar’s eyes widened, and he faltered, just for a moment, murmuring something that sounded like “Like the Heir of Doom.”, though only Cronus and Nightwalker understood what he had recognized.

“Go on,” Anshu taunted. “Kill me. You can do it. She’s still just like you, after all, and your magic can destroy her. You see that, right?”

She inclined her head so that the blade sunk a little deeper into her neck. The black veins and the burn spread with alarming speed, now a flowering spiderweb on the girl’s skin, and Eridan had to pull his hand back in panic, though he still kept the weapon up.

“You can free her if you kill me, Eridan, you’re the only one who can,” she said.

“That’s enough,” Hal said, and when he made to step forward, the room was suddenly flooded with a heavy presence, one that had all of them stopping in their tracks, unable to do anything but try to stay standing.

“Quiet,” Anshu hissed. “This does not concern you.”

“Eridan!” Cronus yelled. “You have to kill her!”

“Cronus, shut the fuck up!” Karkat bit out. “You’re not helping.”

The pressure abated, just slightly, though it hovered in the air in a wordless threat that it could easily crush them. Anshu giggled, even despite the situation. She still had Eridan pinned down, and the wound on the side of her neck hadn’t closed; instead it was still bleeding, still blackened, still smoking.

“Yeah, Eridan,” she said.  “You have to kill me.”

With her free hand, she took his wrist, smearing the blood that had gotten on it all over his palm, and held his knife up to her neck. This time, she didn’t let it touch skin, just let it hover by a hair’s breadth away.

Pinned down as he was, the only thing Eridan seemed to concerned about was the wound on her throat, at the ugly burn that had marred it, one that still, still wasn’t healing. His hand shook as she took it to hold his weapon up near her skin, and he dragged his tearful gaze to her, slowly. She was smiling down at him, mocking, her expression kind but her eyes cold.

He could kill her. He could. He was supposed to. He was made to.

His fingers loosened. He dropped the knife.

“That’s a shame, Eridan,” Anshu said softly, still smiling. She dropped his hand.

And then proceeded to plunge her own into his chest.