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KJV, James 1:19-20 "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God."
"As you eat the eye of the Vulture King, you look at Buddy."
Kristen bites back the waves of nausea as her tongue dances across her teeth, trying to rid her mouth of the remaining morsels of gelatinous eye and fleshy fluids. She swallows heavily, a shiver trembling down her spine as she forces herself to move past the barbaric consumption of the vulture’s eye.
Sparks of divination magic make her flinch as they overcome her body in full, her veins beginning to pump the arcana through her vigorously. She blinks and the world flashes with hues of familiar blues and strikes of white. She blinks again and her vision explodes in a miasma of transparent holographic colors. Glancing around the arena, she watches the multiple planes melt into each other and paint the world like sunlight through stained glass windows. Shadows brighten and darken as all forms take on a quality of solidity or clarity in shifting beams of light. The chaotic vision calms after a moment, Truesight taking its full effect.
She turns her head, shaking off the last of the discomfort from the swallowed eye and intense arcane waves. She shivers again before regrounding herself, scoping the battlefield ahead of her with analyzing eyes.
Buddy meets her gaze with practiced ease. The charming crinkle around his eyes smooth as worry dawns across his features. His face strikes her with a familiar youthful naivety and she resists the urge to flinch at the sincerity that creases his expression. The heat of Buddy’s staff radiates at the edge of her vision, the bright vignette tugging her to look. She doesn’t.
"Buddy goes, 'Everythin’ alright?'"
She feels sickness roil within her, unrelated to the bits of rotten eye wedged between her teeth and bubbling in her stomach. She sees flashes from freshman year, from middle school, from childhood. She pauses for a moment, feeling the bone-deep resonance of a life only Kristen can know.
She has to restrain herself, wanting to snap in response to the curated benignity plastered across him. Just another exploited youth, praised to a position of social authority, severe and hefty in its judgments. She remembers the same twinkle of well-meaning dismissal and all-knowing interest from her past. Misled, overreaching their bounds, all in service of a forced divinity, rewarded with an inflated ego and spiritual exhaustion. Their similarities made her sick.
Rage flickers through her. The jostling red crystals in her pocket flinch in reaction.
Rage at the sickeningly familiar innocence painting the mirror in front of her. Rage at his genuine nature, his naivety, his purity. Rage at the culture that groomed them into deserting identity for servitude. Rage at the dismissive nature of someone with an authority of holiness, acting with the belief that their divinity is the only one with value. Rage at the deception, rage at the cruelty, rage at the comfort.
She swallows back another bite of sickness, only a beat of time having passed. A deep breath soothes her overactive heart, a reminder that her goddess is not the goddess of comfort and warmth, she is the goddess of doubt. Helio may always stoke the fire within Kristen, but Cassandra is what brings her peace.
"Something fades into view, that unfortunately- only you can see."
Formative years spent under Helio’s almighty hand keeps her tense, though she calms easily at Cassandra’s memory. A bit of light bounces off of Buddy’s staff, Helio’s symbol blinding her in it’s radiancy. She feels the heat in her chest return, eyes flickering towards the symbolled sun that brought her countless nights of safe and sound sleep, now burning her senses with her rejection of it. She looks back at Buddy.
Buddy reminds her of childhood. He reminds her of a past highlighted in golden light and warmth. He reminds her of the comfort of Helio’s light and the security of her childhood home, bursting at the seams with memories that envelop her like a blanket. He reminds her of safety.
Though she may look back on her past with disdain sometimes and cringe at the obvious indoctrination and illusion of choice, there is security and joy in the ignorance. She’s never been happier in her life than in the twilight of Cassandra and the arms of her friends, but it strikes a chord in her to see herself in him so clearly sometimes.
For all its rage-inducing nature, Kristen grasps desperately at the softness she and Buddy share in that single moment.
The way his forehead twinges and eyes melt over Kristen’s form with true kindness paints a reflection Kristen feels breathless at. Helio can never size up to the consolation of a diviner, a saint, lost without a way, watching another thrive under the same light that burned her.
Jealousy tries to take hold of her. She doesn’t let it.
She can almost see the whitened and twitching knuckles bound to Buddy’s shoulder from above. Another puppet for Helio to pull the strings of, as if only to torment Kristen in her unaddressed remorse and guilt. Her eyes finally flicker away from the almost never-ending moment amidst the chaos of battle. She takes a moment before a shifting figure behind Buddy draws her attention.
"You see, right behind Buddy, aiming a crossbow up at Gavin-"
Her eyes fall to Buddy’s hip. She centers all of her Truesight senses on the form, all different representative visions aligning as they attune to her point of focus.
A small figure appears within the muddling translucency, the image flickering in and out of the holographic streams of magical light and visibility. A halfling girl, hands shaking with the intensity of her grip, bent backwards to a point of discomfort to maneuver the weapon into a line with the proctor above them.
"-is Kipperlily Copperkettle."
Kipperlily stares up, features almost relaxed as violent concentration etches lines between her brows. Her body stands taut and frozen, knuckles white from where they strangle the crossbow with a resolute tightness, the rest of her body keeping calm and moving with methodical intention.
She stands with the peace of an undisturbed body of water as she prepares for the release of violence upon an innocent. For all her dripping malice, she stays shielded behind the pillar of ethicality and kindness of her party, working within the comfort of shadows and deceit.
A violent and desperate coward concealed by magic and shielded behind the virtuous and forgiving shadow of the illusioned and blind.
Kristen imagines she’ll see that image projecting behind her eyelids for the rest of her life.
"She turns, makes direct eye contact with you, smiles-"
Kipperlily turns, not so much as flinching at the new pair of eyes now pinning her in place. Kristen feels a pooling dread as she watches her tranquil determination flash to minute surprise- and then to menacing glee. With a single glance at their surroundings, Kipperlily’s expression changes again. Determination bleeds back into the blonde rogue’s features and her eyes flick up.
Her grin twists into something dark as she looks up at Buddy’s protective figure. One hand falls to her hip, grabbing the handle of a sheathed blade, before taking a silent step into the cleric’s space. Her eyes drag to Kristen’s, one last time, before taking action.
"-and slits Buddy’s throat."
Kristen feels the air escape her lungs in a tidal wave, her gasp coming out almost silent in its speed. It takes less than three seconds.
Raised to her toes, hand just barely at a height with Buddy’s throat, she pulls the jagged and glinting blade across her cleric’s throat with ease.
Kristen sees the flash of confusion over his gentle features twist to pain as he succumbs to the ruthless and lethal strike. She cannot move.
Buddy’s eyes plead as they meet Kristen’s, filling with overflowing tears. His mouth opens, attempting to pray, a prayer Kristen immediately knows from the first words on his lips. But no words actually come, frantic prayers and begs are muddied by the blood that drips from his open throat and spills from his mouth. He coughs, thick and hot crimson entering and exiting his lungs as his breaths and coughs intensify.
Kristen only vaguely registers Kipperlily’s venomous grin disappear alongside a scaled blue hand, as her world tunes into Buddy’s frequency. He falls to his knees, grabbing his throat with fervor, hands and body trembling as fear courses through. Sobs erupt from his chest, though they are as ragged and desperate as his coughing breaths. He releases his staff and it falls to the rock floor with an empty clang that hits Kristen in the chest.
A cry escapes him. She can’t discern if he’s asking for help or calling to Helio, but it’s a broken, desperate sound. It’s pleading words held behind a severed larynx. Blood is all that comes out, and Kristen wonders if there’s an irony to that display that she can’t quite see amidst her horror.
"Buddy falls to the ground."
His fingers scramble across his chest, dipping beneath his folded collar to grab at the leather cord around his neck. A small metal accessory tied at the end reveals itself in a momentary flash to Kristen’s grasping eyes. A poorly shaped cob of corn spun in layers of multicolored and fraying embroidery floss. As his energy drains with an unnatural quickness, Buddy folds over on himself, gripping the piece with the same white knuckles Helio holds onto him with.
Kristen cannot move.
She sees flashes of her youth, memories of sitting cross-legged between her parents and alongside her toddling and infant brothers. Wrapping mummifying floss around a small and detailed cob of corn. They share prayers of assurance and promise, forging unseen bridges of love between herself and the people her world revolved around most. These same memories being the ones to alight her veins with gold and produce the power behind her first spell, years later.
Her mother’s fingers, using a sparsely seen languidity to bless and tie her floss, tending to the item with the love and faith of a mother putting her child into the hands of a divine she trusts even above herself.
Her father’s hands, calloused from a life of labor meant to ensure her leisure, dedicating any spare moment to the same divine he trusts to provide the things he can’t in his absence, the need to care for his family greater than the urge to ever question his faith.
Her brothers' tiny fingers, tying their floss with unsecured bonds, ropes half chewed and fraying from their childish grasps, the boys only knowing the blanketing love and safety of the god they know will protect their sister as fiercely as she protects them. Their faith is misplaced, but when they knot their fingers around the divine figure, tying a physical piece of their love for their sister around it- it all feels the same.
Kristen’s hand instinctually goes to her collar, grabbing the tiny, worn figurine still hanging around her own neck. She thumbs over the ridges between the layers of of aged threads, her family’s memories fluttering through her mind as she grabs the item with desperation. An object so comforting in its creation, that even when its icon fell from grace, she could not find the strength or anger to remove this chain of devotion from herself. Its weight strains against her.
"Dead."
Buddy lies on the ground, lifeless.
His skin begins rapidly growing pale, body limp and curled on its side, cradling the figurine between clasped hands. Both life and power drain from the shredded wound, pooling onto the stones, separating like oil and water.
Kristen stares down at Buddy’s body, a blinding pain enrapturing her as she is violently forced back into the corpse of Helio’s chosen, splayed on the cafeteria floor on her first day of school. Grief vines around her bones in a paralyzing grip.
Or maybe it’s the rigor mortis.
Maybe she never got back up from the cafeteria floor. Maybe Buddy is her reminder that Helio never came. Maybe this is hell. Maybe-
She reaches a hand into her pack, fingers searching for diamonds she immediately realizes aren’t there. Her nails scrap the inside of empty pockets, breaths growing heavy and rapid. Anger flickers inside her chest, demanding her to see the cruelty laid before her, demanding to bear witness to another life of dedication and willing blindness rewarded with death, demanding she look at herself him and see the lack of divinity.
Helio’s betrayal lays in front her eyes this time, rather than within her.
Kristen feels the crystals in her pocket begin to jostle again. She can’t be bothered to focus on them.
She hears the voices of her party members call out to her, but cannot find the ability to move. Her hand sits in empty space, mercy robbed from her fingers by the same god that would only ever repeat his brutality for eternity, and profit off of the revolving door of unawarded worship.
She cannot find the strength to move from where her hand grasps around air. She cannot find the power to listen to the frantic yells of her friends growing closer. She cannot find the resiliency to do anything but stare. Stare at a shattered mirror- one that grew too similar to remain unaltered, unharmed.
The winds around her begin to whip and howl, dust and pebbles join in the growing chaos, inky essence of night emits from her aura and darkens the clouding storm building around her. She no longer hears her friends’ calls, they disappear amidst the softly rolling thunder. She doesn’t see the urging red crystals that shimmer and spark, now at her side, melting into the brewing tempest.
Finally- she moves.
Throughout their junior year, The Bad Kid’s had faced a common and recurring theme. Everywhere they looked, an infectious rage had begun to corrupt people, harm people, kill people. The forms and fashions of this specific rage were extensive, but they were also notably unnatural. Divine.
Rage that killed Kristen’s god.
Rage that encircled and gripped with a devotion to relentless destruction.
Rage that shattered in physical shards of it's material might.
Rage of a deity, robbed of divinity.
Kristen didn’t know rage. She didn’t know fury and vitriol, she found little comfort within the confines of anger and destruction. Even at her most hurt or betrayed, she only knew sympathy and petty apathy. For all Sol was known for being rageful and destructive, Helio had never passed on that sentiment to her. His followers had tried and fail. Their rage has turned her away from Him, though that same rage had never been part of Him.
It felt foreign under her skin. Like bubbling heat, threatening to drip from her pores, to infect the world around her, to corrode the stone beneath her feet.
Kristen doesn’t see what her friends see when the rage penetrates her flesh and binds to her bones in a mummification of mourning. She can’t watch as the red shards, illuminating the roiling storm clouds, cracking with spikes of energy between them, twist and spin around her. The storm becomes a sickly shade of reddened gray, and chaos erupts. Air is sucked from the rest of the dome to accompany her furious heaves of breath, rocks slam into the walls and skitter across the stone floors, heat and humidity begin to fill the stadium.
Her hair whips with the wind, body trembling against the unnatural waves of concentrated emotion. Her rage burns deeply inside of her. It would boil her alive if she let it. She can feel its force try to drag a primal scream from her chest, adrenaline roiling within her torso. She recognizes the weight of her anger, understanding the evidence they’d seen of flashing fury that had wrought destruction in its wake. She feels her blood pumping harder, begging to feel tender flesh rip beneath her nails, to be dripping in the heated blood of a victim, to see justice in the physical remains of its power.
She’s at Buddy’s side. She drops to her knees, certainly bruising the tender skin with the heavy impact against unforgiving stone. She isn’t sure if her party members are still calling out for her, voices muffled and sucked into the winds, but she suddenly feels very alone. Air lashes around her, suffocating her, stinging her, shoving her in every direction, she doesn’t so much as twitch under it’s wrath.
Kristen knows Cassandra would help if she could, she knows despite the tragedy her goddess cannot seem to escape, she would never have allowed this to happen to Kristen- she would never allow mercy and justice to be robbed from her disciple.
But Cassandra cannot help her here. She knows she could try, it wouldn’t be the first time Kristen has bent the rules of divinity and demanded intervention, but she doesn’t even entertain the idea.
She’s on her knees, curling over Buddy’s body, and though her hands are silhouetted in the black essence of a night sky and her tongue holds the name of another deity- she glances to Buddy’s golden lapel pin, sticky with blood, a featureless corn cob staring her down.
Cassandra cannot help her in this moment, and Kristen is not a cleric known for staying within her bounds.
She takes in a single breath, deep and slow. The winds around her shutter, her eyes are closed, and she attempts to center herself.
Rage twists around her, crimson shards slice at her skin, her hands shake. She can’t seem to escape it. It hurts and it stings and it fills her with adrenaline and dread and ecstasy. It makes her stomach hurt, so much chaos inside of her and-
So much chaos inside of her.
Chaos within her soul, chaos surrounding her, chaos beneath her nails and between her teeth. Her domain relies on chaos, there is no doubt if there is no chaos. And amidst the chaos, amidst her domain, amidst her dominating rage, Kristen finds a channel.
She knows the damning rage has taken hold of her, she knows this is the magic that has killed many gentle innocents in its curse. She knows this is destruction, bound to her in spirit and body, this is an otherwordly rage that fills her veins. This is the rage of a dead god.
This she’s familiar with.
She stays bent, blanketing Buddy’s praying hands in her own. His fingers stick together with drying blood, the stream now slow and trickling down his neck to the stone floor. Her other hand comes to her own chest, and in both hands, she grips the Helioic idols. Inky twilight wafts off of her, it billows and sways, it comes to her hands and she feels Cassandra’s hand over her own, only for a moment.
Twilight surrounds them, it shields them from the storm. Behind Kristen’s eyes, she watches memories swim through her consciousness. Her parent's faces, young and patient, old and hardened. She remembers games played on the back porch with her brothers, the praise and smile of her mentoring priest, the golden warmth of her first miracle, all held beneath her fingers.
She touches Buddy’s idol, and as it shifts against his limp fingers, Buddy’s memories melt around her own. A familiar heat spreads across her arms where she holds Buddy tightly, and she feels a pulse of magic twitch through her veins, and she recognizes herself for a moment.
A cleric, so devout, she was raised as a Saint to a god whose name she did not know. A cleric, who forged a god into existence with her own hands, only moments after cheating death with the force of her own sacrality. A cleric, who resurrected a god from far worse than death, who stood before them and revived her blind faith for the sake of an unknown deity, lost to it’s divine monstrosity. A cleric, who casts despite her god being without bearing or form, who can fashion her own connection to the divine without guidance. A chosen one, who chose herself over her creator.
She recognizes her station and releases a held breath.
The world around her quiets. The chaos stops.
She confines herself to her senses, and though her eyes stay closed, she knows where she is. She hears the comforting coo of evening birds, the sway of climbing trees, the shifting winds of a warm night's breeze. She feels her magic surround her, floating amidst a plane she knows well enough, and her magic strains against her as she bends the fabric of reality once again in the name of devotion, and in her mind's eyes she views memories of a life that is not her own.
Her idol reminds her of a childhood she cannot help but love, and she feels the same weight of comfort surround her as she watches Buddy’s. They’re a bit hazy, details smudged and shadows uneven, but they play between her own, and they almost look like they belong there.
She sees the non-descript smile of a father wrapping the idol in a green twine. She sees the shaky and frail hands of a grandmother holding Buddy’s childish ones as they wrap a red floss together. She sees floss pulled from a box at the top of Buddy’s closet, wrapped by him and his father over the headstone of a woman named Emellyn Dawn. She sees the laughter of Buddy’s eldest sister as they both guide their toddling sister’s hands to wrap her own floss.
She experiences Buddy’s memories, she feels his faith, and comprehends his drive. She feels his spirit, channeled through the idol within their hands, and settles. Rage ebbs at her once again, it feels foreign in Cassandra’s place within the astral realm. She wonders if it will sicken the forest and taint her future resting place. She tries to stay calm, knowing rage cannot help her in a place of doubt, but it makes her itch.
The cuts on her skin begin to burn. Buddy’s memories align too closely with her own, from life to death they are the same, and Kristen cannot stop the boiling in her veins. Cassandra will forgive her, just like Cassandra would save her. Her eyes stay closed, she grips their idols furiously, and releases the rage she’d tucked behind a misplaced rib.
She isn’t sure if she speaks aloud, but she knows she’s praying.
“Helio. Son of Sol, divine protector, god of corn.”
She cannot feel the world around her, the material plane is only a memory to her in this moment. She can feel the burden of her divinity on her shoulders, not a weight she carries within her mortal form, but it drags at her spirit in the astral plane. She imagines it’s palpable and visible, feeling the way the night sky vines around her and tugs are her limbs. It is a part of her in Cassandra’s realm, and it is heavy. Her power is almost too much to bear.
“-your chosen one demands an audience.”
Nothing moves, but the ambient sounds of the forest silence around her.
Their idols suddenly heat, a red-hot fire beneath her hands, beneath the layers of twine and thread, and she knows she is being heard in this place- and not by her own god.
“Aren't you embarrassed?”
She tries to contain her fury, but her cuts sting when she bites her tongue.
“A god who can’t show up to protect his most devout believers? His own chosen one?”
Freshman year. A dead cleric on linoleum floors. The images join in the rolodex of memories behind her eyes.
“Some might call that a false idol.”
Her voice echos through her own ears with an unheard venom. It simmers within her, it begins to corrode her, it begins to change her.
And something in the ether flinches.
The divinity that weighs her down reacts with speed. She allows the rage to course throughout her, it burns, but it follows her movements. Her astral self flicks away from her, and she feels it materialize into a gripping fist, stronger than her own clasped hands. Her body sheds its manifestations of rage and it courses through her, to her astral form. It holds the listening deity in an unyielding fist and drags them closer.
She revels in the power that dances through her, before realizing she has only found the strength to control it for a moment. God, it burns. She doesn’t know if what she’s grabbed is Helio, but she feels its divine tangibility under her unseen fingers and cannot stop to check. She grasps them with enough force to crack her knuckles, and she feels her actual fingers break beneath the pressure of a primordial rage, channeled with impossible delicacy, by a cleric of universal challenging.
Her voice drips with malice, barely restrained.
“You are not worthy of a single prayer, a single life in your dedication.”
Her pulse blooms with energy, holding the listener in place. Her fingers dig into divine flesh and clutch at the very bones of a god too weak to stop them.
“A god who would allow his flock to be left to the worms without fight is no more the shepherd than the wolf.”
Something splinters beneath one of her hands, and she cannot tell if it is beneath the fractured fingers of her material form or the trembling fist of her divine one. She jerks the divine spirit as near as she can, she forces its focus to share in her psyche, and the rage begins to hurt her. Her heart races, pain strikes through her mind, her features begin to distort unnaturally.
She grits her teeth so hard they squeak, and she prays to Cassandra that she doesn’t harm her domain.
“Take what you must from me, but see to it that this spell fucking works.”
And for a moment- the world stops.
In the material plane, the dust storm pelts and abuses her desperate friends, and they cannot get through to her. The tinted red gusts of wind and debris suddenly flicker with a golden light, and it all stops. Pebbles and dust fall to the ground around her, the air thickens back to its natural state and her friends breathe in heaves of air as they scramble to her side. She does not respond.
In the astral plane, she hears a crack of thunder, and her twilight divinity, her astral form crackles as she holds the deity in place, channeling all of her unnatural rage from her flesh to its own. Pain strings through her from head to toe, and something tears within her.
Flashes of Kipperlily’s smile, a gnarled blade, bubbling skin, a silent cry, the youth of a dying child begging for forgiveness for unrewarded devotion. Flickering gradients of Kristen and Buddy’s memories, of the horrors the divine have laid at their feet. The glint of Kristen’s mom’s glasses, the embrace of Buddy’s eldest sister around his shoulders, the urn of Kristen’s stillborn sister on the mantle, a faded memory from almost too young to recall of Buddy’s sickly mother in a hospital bed, holding him in her arms with a love only a mother can convey.
Kristen uselessly heaves for breath, as the adrenaline rushes from her body and into the ether, where she directs its full force into the deity gripped in her fingers, clarity allows her to recognize the texture of Helio’s skin under her fingertips. She hopes he’s bleeding.
She screams, from the bottom of her chest, a wail so deeply sorrowful it makes her dizzy. She releases her rage, her sorrow, her grief, but above all else- her disappointment in the god. She forces the divine under her hand to feel the mourning of a disciple, to hear the cries of his chosen one as she takes on the responsibility of caring in his absence, to convey that though she follows another god- she will always be tied to him, and it is her greatest grievance to know a pain this holy, or to have put her life in his hands at all.
She presses harder and harder, feeling the trembling agony of Him beneath her grip, only barely finding it in her to release him when her rage is gone. Her bloodthirst is gone as soon as her rage is, and she expects to return home, to return to her body.
But she doesn’t. Not yet. Her divinity has released Helio, it should return to her so she may leave, but it doesn’t. She shifts and feels an unearthly ache across her back. Something bleeds into the astral plane, she can feel its sticky heat float around her, it tastes metallic.
It hurts. Worse than the divine rage, worse than jumping down ten flights of stairs in an elven prison, worse than being gored by the Great Unicorn, worse than death.
It spreads- an unbearable agony. Something is wrong. Her divinity begins to stitch itself back to her, preparing to return to her material body, and something is missing.
She returns to her mortal body with a gasp, the pain gone as soon as she feels the stone bruising her knees and the heat of her friends' hands on her skin. They’re rubbing her back, and though the pain and ache are gone, their fingers touch a part of her spine that is cold. In her mortal body, something is still missing.
She struggles to catch her breath, her head pounds relentlessly as blood rushes through it and exhaustion weighs down her limbs. She’s bent at the waist, her own gnarled hands cupping Buddy’s. His hands are still cold and his chest remains silent.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Fuck-” She chants between burning breaths and wet whimpers, hoping if nothing else, that Buddy hears her from heaven. That he feels her grief and sorrow and knows he was worth a miracle, even if it never came. She hopes what she lost in the ether, whatever torn part of her divinity still bleeds into the space where Helio wept, finds Buddy, and provides him her devotion as a reward.
Voices melt together around her, but sound returns. The proctor speaks in an apathetic tone of warning, while her friends verge on a panic. She wants to listen, to return to the world above her, to return to a world where this didn’t happen. Where devotion surpassing identity found reward and purchase. Where Kristen Applebees wasn’t killed under Helio’s watch again. But that isn’t something that exists. There isn’t a place that she can find rest, that Buddy can find rest, it’s not a-
She yelps when her wounded fingers explode with an immediate and biting pain. Hands squeeze around her own, and her entire body flinches both at the pain and the immediately drawn attention that flickers to the world around her again in full. She wrenches her eyelids open, eyes twitching as they begin to frantically search, to quickly meet the open and responsive eyes of one Buddy Dawn, staring up at her with a glassy, tired reflection.
The voices around them silence. Kristen can’t find her breath, her body doesn’t so much as move an inch from where she is plastered in this moment. She holds Buddy’s intense and returning gaze, between them they share a bubble of air and the people around them blend into the vignette of their senses. The two priests stare back at each other for seconds, minutes, hours maybe, sinking in the truth of the moment, sharing and processing an experience that no one else in the world could possibly know.
His eyes are still wet and glassy from the tears shed as his life drained from him only minutes ago, but as he and Kristen stare each other down, his eyes refill with tears, and Kristen fights the urge to mirror him. Her rage had stayed a dry and tamed wave, but tears threaten her now, watching as his cheeks and nose shade to red, and his body tenses as sobs tear through his chest. He jerks her by their hands, pulling them together, and wrapping her in a mummifying embrace, his breathing ragged and harsh against her.
Life erupts beneath the touch, the radiating heat and thrum of Buddy, holding her tight enough to bruise. She cannot move, paralyzed in his grip as her mind fully begins to grasp the life surrounding her. The life that had almost slipped through her fingers, that had been grabbed and torn from the afterlife in a feat of impossibility.
Her mind plays a reenactment of the past minutes, busy harnessing divine power she shouldn’t have. She feels the exhaustion begin to seep into her, and can’t find the strength to do anything but pull Buddy closer and melt into him. He takes in a breath, deep and long, welcoming the returning life to his body with a painful ease.
His face presses into her neck and she can feel his shuttering and heaving breaths against her, his hands flinch as they realize the life that now runs through them. He shakes like a leaf, Kristen only calming when she can wrap her own arms around him in turn, needing his full force of life near to her, fearing her magic will drain if they grow even inches apart in this moment.
His fingers tighten against her back, and they both gasp when his nails dig into the frozen and tender skin in the center of her back. He lightens his touch, but his fingers span around the nonexistent wound, where Kristen knows she doesn’t bleed or scar, but Buddy finds the seam between her and her divinity, where it has been torn and damaged. He finds the missing puzzle piece, as if he knows it’s there, as if he recognizes what happened in ways Kristen does not.
He’s almost silent when he mumbles out an incantation, and magic pulses around her spine, the familiar magic of a cure wounds spell spans across her, but her soul remains invisibly lacerated. They both can tell. His hand flattens, and he tightens his hold, refusing to move. Exhaustion begins to sink into her limbs, and he supports her weight as it sways in his arms, her head falling to press into his shoulder as her vision begins to blot in and out.
The world around them is still silent, their sobs and breaths loud in the echo of the chamber.
She holds Buddy with the same intensity as their childhood hands held their idols like a lifeline. She feels power rush throughout her bloodstream, feels rage evaporate through her pores, and feels divinity dampening her fingers from its molded position beneath her mortal hands. Her body goes limp as her consciousness wanes, slumping against the cleric only alive from her demand for intervention.
Her body aches, with fingers bent in the wrong directions and lungs bruised. The draining effects of rage darken her vision, golden blood still coloring her veins in a glowing ichor. She knows she isn’t dying, her lifeforce is present within her body and within her embrace, an impossible resurrection made possible only by force of holy mutilation.
She hears the gasp of a god beneath her singular misplaced rib and knows she will never feel its gripping hands on her shoulders again. Saint Kristen Applebees holds Buddy Dawn like a sacred memory, memorializing his resurrection in her broken fingers, fractured under the strength of a god forced to be holy and the desperation of an idol held by a nonbeliever.