Once More, Let Me Try Just Once More,

God. Seeing corpses is something you will never get used to. The blood staining the grass. The front view of the innards spilling from the bisected halves. The terror frozen on this face.

At least, it’s only your body this time.

“One more time,” you call out, “give me one more time!”

As a ghost, you cannot feel anything. You have no body, thus no nerves, thus no physical sensations. That’s why even after so long, you still startle when that familiar heat press against your shoulder, a canine maw nuzzling the side of your face. This old god has no hands; hands are for holding, petting, throwing, using tools, and what use does the divine have of these? They’re all jaws and flickering tongues. They’re made to hurt, and to devour. You don’t particularly care about that. In a situation like yours, any help is welcome, be is from a saint or a demon.

Surprisingly though, they don’t take you back. Instead, an uneasy feeling pulses through your body, which you have since learned to interpret as wrong.

You frown, mindlessly raising a hand to pet the jaw by your throat. “What’s the problem? You’ve never had any issues taking me back before.”

There is… static. Something rolling around your head, like a marble or a wheel. After a few seconds, you get another ping: cold blade in your flesh. Pain. Pain. Pain. Fear. Panic. Don’t kill me don’t kill me don’t kill me- blank.

“Yes. These were my last thoughts before I died. What about them?”

Wrong.

“How so? Can you feel my pain?”

Wrong.

“Then what does it matter if I feel pain before I die?”

There is more static as they think. As time goes on, the marble in your head slowly colors red. Odd. Are they getting frustrated by their inability to communicate? They’ve never done that before. They’ve always been more than happy to let you do the talking. You don’t think they even had a concept of communication before… they met… you…

… Oh fuck. “Are you feeling bad that I am in such pain?”

The marble stutters. Stops. Starts rolling backward. And then, a shy, tentative light pulses inside your chest: right.

Oh. Oh.

You have, on occasion wondered about the consequences of teaming up with an outer god. Rarely, though; you have a rather strong sense of self, and you’ve never seriously considered the idea that they might corrupt you. But never in a hundred years could you have considered that you were the one infecting them with humanity.

“Hey, hey. Listen.” You turn around, gently taking the maw on your shoulder between your hands. The skin feels like velvet under your fingers. “Pain sucks, but it’s not exclusive to dying. In that specific way, dying is nothing special.” Well, dying is usually more painful than being alive- but then again, Shuten demonstrated you can be vivisected and live to tell the tale, so. Regardless, you keep your mouth shut about that part. If they’re starting to grasp the concept of pain is bad, there’s no telling what they might conclude if you tell them that. “So there’s no issue with sending me back. Besides, I’ll get it right next time. I won’t die against this specific dude ever again, I swear.”

Static. Light. Water. Discomfort. Static. Right. Inquisition? Wrong. Confusion. Confusion. Don’t know what to think. You’re about to reassure them some more, when-

the maw between your hands open, and they speak.

Their voice is like a stone torn right out of the earth, rough and sharp with angles that dig right into your eardrum. Their pronunciation is approximate, clearly unused to physical tongues, and their volume keeps wavering between everywhere at once to whisper from a bee. They speak, however clumsily, and they say: “People die wheeeeeen. They are. Killllllled.”

It’s the first time they have ever used human language to speak to you. This tells you how important it is to them that you understand them-

and that terrifies you.

“Hey. Hey. Come on. Buddy. Friend. Pal.” You try to swallow back your rising panic. “You can’t just leave me here. You can’t just leave me dead. They’re counting on me back in Chaldea! You love them too, don’t you? You know they’ll die if we don’t rewind. You have to bring me back. You have to let me try again.”

Wrong. Are they disagreeing? Or are they merely stating that this would be immoral? You don’t know. You don’t care. You don’t have time to care. You need to go back. You need to go back, you need to go back or they’ll die, you need to go back or they’re all doomed, you need to go back whatever the cost.

You take hold of the maw and force the jaws open.

It’s surprisingly easy. Perhaps you took your friend off-guard. Perhaps that is merely the logical conclusion of a god being made of smoke and mirrors. It doesn’t matter. You force your arm inside that gaping mouth, all the way to a throat that is not here.

“Take me back!” You are pleading to a friend, you are praying to a god, you are begging to a foe. “Take me back!”

Cold blade in your flesh pain wrong pain pain wrong fear panic wrong blood on the grass innards spilling out I don’t want to do that to you

“I don’t fucking care! I don’t care if it hurts! I don’t care if I die! Take me back! So long as there’s a way out I have to try! They need me! I have a duty!”

This old god has no hands; they cannot hold you, they cannot hug you. They’re all jaws and flickering tongues. They’re made to hurt, and to devour. And oh, how it hurts, when more jaws manifest, biting deep inside both your shoulders. They could eat you alive right now. The fact that these teeth are not cutting all the way through your bones is proof that they are being as careful as they can be for a being made of violence.

Brutally, these maws snap backward, and the world turns to a blur as you are forcefully dragged through time.

Comments