[PK] The Death of Devilry

[Karina 423]

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It didn’t come as a thousand pyres. It didn’t come as a hateful mob. It wasn’t some grand, fated story; played out on the battlefield of time. When death found her, it was violent. It was quick. Chaotic, bloody and over in an instant. 

 

Leoni was right. She deserved far worse. To be ripped apart and fed to wolves. To suffer under the yoke of another for a thousand-thousand years. She had overplayed her hand. Adya was right, it was theater to her. The suffering of another was but an elaborate play. A chance to sway with the beat of lifes drum and find endless entertainment in the weaving of a continual string of lies.
 

Of course, she didn’t expect the knife. Nor the arrest. Nor fate itself to conspire against her, as it played out. Iron dug against the leather of her gauntlets. Presenting a constant reminder that freedom eluded her, even now. In her most brilliant moments, and her most mundane.
 

But she had escaped captivity before. She had done much to survive. Standing before the previous Pontiff, Sermi made a mockery of justice. Spit on the courts and Godan themselves. Fostered undue apology from those who had been made a fool of. 
 

This time was different. Something ate at her chest, but she wasn’t quite sure what. Maybe it was the look the other had given her. Maybe it was her blessed kin near ravenously waiting for the chance to pounce. The point came where her lies started to crumble inward. 
 

She could deny, she could pretend otherwise; but they knew. She knew they knew, and when she moved to turn her back to Gusiam… She expected the blade that would come next. Staring through the iron bars of her cell to the woman she had once loved, and thrice broken.
 

A flash, and thannic steel started to bury itself into her neck. Cracking through ferrum chain, and spilling forth her unholy blood. Her hand clutched at her chest, as muscle started to yield. Death roared, as it threatened to take her.
 

In those final, fleeting moments of blessed sanity; she clutched one name to her chest. To her heart. One name, as hateful as she was. They had once offered peace, an escape from this cycle. A chance to be born again. Maybe, even, freed from the strings that bound her limbs. As Zaitharn gripped and clawed at her soul, she held that name tightly to her. A plea, as much as it was an offer. 
 

M O R D R I N G
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[satinkira 5981]

Serwa was one-fifth of her way through the walk, and therefore heard no news, but she did wonder what had become of the old sinner. She recalled how Sermi had looked down on her - what were the words - Finally gone soft?

 

In the end, it didn't matter. Only one of them was going to heaven.

[Cheese 2319]

Juniper, after receiving word, spent the rest of the day pacing. She paced her room, before her feet led her outside, to the beach. And there, she walked the sand while her fingernails dug into her arms.

 

Finally, Juniper stopped, and looked to the sea. A dry, bitter laugh escaped her. Was it finally over?

 

But nothing was over. There would be no peace. Not for Juniper, and certainly not for Sermi. The war was not over. And so, dutiful as ever, Juniper returned to Kiyoshi’s side, to comfort him should he wish. It was the least she could do.

[sapphic_spidy 155]

"Hey, Gnarla, have y'ever killed a demon?"

-----

Sydney doesn't know yet. 

But if he did, he would celebrate.

Finally, his family is a step closer to being free. 

 

He has no idea how he evaded Sermi. Sermi who, over a decade ago, before it all went wrong, suggested they get to know each other, make a game of it. She guessed wrongly, about his motivations, about him. 

 

Syd, if he knew, would regret that he hadn't been a bigger threat. That he had done more than spread whispers about her location. Sermi hurt his family, in more than just one face. 

 

Sermi tried to break her, time and time again. Sermi tried to take him, when he was hurt and desperate to do something. And all Sydney could do was whisper. 

-----

"I want to ask her about her pretty white cat."

 

He heard the kid whispering to the other woman, he followed him, he knew where Sermi was. And yet, he only whispered to a few people. Could it have been ended sooner, had he brought them to her? 

-----

"She lives here. But you didn't hear that from me."

"'Course not." 

He wanted her gone. Out. Of his place, of his town, where he felt safe after decades of endless fighting. 

And now, she was.

 

If Sydney knew, he would celebrate.

[ProcaPro 71]

A woman once loved, thrice broken had stared at Sermi through the bars of a cell and said that she had been tormented enough. Sermi had smiled at her. Moments later, black blood had splattered her face and her shackled hands. An end, decades in the making, had come. They had been tangled together for years; their threads stuck and tied together beyond helping. Even there, even as she watched a devil who had tormented her beyond saving die, there was grief in her heart. Grief, pity, and guilt. This was her fault, after all.

 

"What will be done with the body?" She'd asked. "Am I freed then?" She held out her shackled wrists to her captors. But she wasn't free and would never be. That was assured long ago. So, a woman thrice-broken stumbles her way out of the prison that had held her and Sermi, calm as can be. Perhaps she was too numb to be anything else. She turns her eyes to Leoni, the red devil next to her, and she makes an ever-familiar offer. 

 

"If you ever need alchemy or medical help, ask me." Something she'd said a while ago had flickered across her mind of familiar offers and extended hands given to the woman whose blood now dried on her face. She turns away from Leoni, going to the nearest aviary. Jade eyes look over the black blood still wet on her gloves. After a moment of thought, a digit is lifted to her mouth and the ichor is tasted for no reason except for that it could be.

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

"If you ever need me, just ask." She had said this while handing a cozy blanket to the purple devil across from her. The most she could offer the hunted woman was a couch to sleep on and access to a stocked pantry. She hadn't known, then, what lurked underneath. If she had, perhaps she wouldn't have offered such a thing.

 

In hushed whispers, she'd spoken of a recent missive. "Del-Mar lives in the same boat... Odd for someone to take a position so quickly..." She'd muttered at a tiny dining table as she and the devil discussed, two people bonding over a mysterious death that'd broken the heart of a mutual friend. 

 

"My son is missing," She'd wept in some small room in Valdev to the devil, who had once been her friend. "Help me," she'd requested, grief-stricken. A year later she'd told the devil something else. "He's dead." They had never spoken of it again.

 

Her hand had settled on the devil's shoulder under a night sky, sat on eroded stone in the middle of nowhere. A peaceful place, hidden away. She'd brought plenty of drinks to take anyone's mind off anything. She'd listened as always to anything she was told, accepting and quiet. "They burned all the good out of her." The devil had said of an old friend.

 

She was beaten by infernal hands, in pain and hurt. Her mind was cursed to lack remembrance; a concussion was building. She'd heard a familiar voice. "If I have to shatter every bone in your body so you finally realize the truth of my words, Naya, I will. I will break you, and break you again, until you learn to love your leash. You will learn your place." She'd seen familiar feet trail to the sink to fill a kettle. She'd screamed. She begged for mercy in a mother tongue, she had begun to die watching a familiar smile on the devil's face, the same smile given before the devil herself had died.

 

~-~-~-~-~-~-~

 

Naya removes her finger from her mouth, having tasted and remembered enough.

[sam33497 2829]

Power. Rats scurry in a dark chamber, clawing at each-other not for necessity but because they can. For irrational fear or for want of something they cannot have; it remains there there is no rationality to it. Struggle, and struggle endlessly. Own others, destroy them. Save them if you wish, but that's just another way of owning them. This is the way of power.

 

So said Lanre Cerusil. 'I would have saved you from such a fate.' is also a thing he might have declared. Well, that might have just been another form of this. Eternal war. The power to go back and incinerate yourself in the eternal battle against those who have wronged you.

 

. . .

 

But that man is no more. Power. It is because there is no reason behind it. Destroy because you can - power is mathematical consequence, and that which exists outside of it is resistance in the slow-circuit of culling. Indulge your whims, but at the end of the day, destroy because it satisfies your nature. Have we not all done this?

 

Red-orbs, caught in the confluence of active embodiment of his ideology, turned to the north-east. Sermi is slain. It is the natural way of the world. Perhaps she would return, as I had, and endless war will continue through her. Or perhaps she will be free from it in death. Az'rekash.

 

 

[ellielove15 273]

Leoni had to admit, she didn't expect Sermi to stay down when she saw the warlock's head cleaved from her shoulders. The maroon-skinned devil gained some vicarious satisfaction regardless. She only wished to make the ride to oblivion much slower than what [Redacted] gave her.

 

Finally, after such brazen admittance and such open arrogance did the she-beast finally fall from her own hubris. Who would have thought it'd be a devil that helped bring this rampaging monster to their end? She'd rest a bit easier knowing that the first of the triumvirate that cursed her has been sent to Malleus for judgement.  

 

"The White Cat will soon follow her lackey." She thought to herself, a hunter's determination in the devil's silver-grey eyes. 

 

[Rushodan 59]

Kiyoshi received the news, not taking it amazingly well. After the destruction of bedroom furniture he collapses into a heap, an absolute mess. This wasn't the way she was supposed to die. There was supposed to be CLOSURE. A better ending than THIS.

 

The infernal court had been undone, the devils dealt with. So why didn't it all feel better. . .? Why wasn't he HAPPY yet?

[KillerMaid 69]

Upon hearing the news from her sister, she felt like she was about to cry from relief. Malna did not know Sermi, did not speak with her... but she knew what she did to her sister, her ukhti. That terrified her, unraveling the perfect life she tried to build, only for her to build it again.

 

"You will be safe Calleina... I promise."

[xo31 466]

"What a journey. . ." he spoke out. "A skilled liar, you were. It is a shame you put your intelligence to poor use. . as so many do, these days. I hope you find your peace, Sermi." spoke the mage off of the edge of his tower, as the wind blew his cloak behind him.