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This part always hurts.
It doesn’t brace itself, because it knows it does not help it hurt less. The first connects with its jaw at the exact same angle it always does, its nervous system screams in the exact same way it always does. Its tiny, scrawny body flies sideways, gravity, speed, curve, all of it the same. Up to the thud it makes when it hits the floor, the ringing in its ears as Abraham laughs above it, rough and manic and, yes, the same again.
It hurts, of course. But the hurt, like everything else in the script, is nothing the Unhaunted One does not know inside and out. No use spending any sound or energy reacting to it, really. Right on cue, the taste of blood fills its mouth and the smell of dust fills its nose as the world fades away.
Always the same. The cathedral is next. It knows what to do.
(There is a dark shape in its peripheral vision.)
Its sire talks loud in front of the recording device. His voice always makes the others recoil, Fear oozing from every part of them like tar, sticking to their skin, their words, their very code. Goliath copes by retreating into himself, Yuri copes by pretending it didn’t affect him. By imagining himself above it all. Thiana does not need to cope, after a while. The Melody always takes her away not long after the Unhaunted One starts being able to walk.
Abraham is loud. Yet his words barely reach its ears, because they’re nothing it hasn’t heard before. It’s all just shapes anyway. Notes on a score, strings on a program stuck in an infinite loop.
He’s loud when he dies, blood and data spilling out of his body onto the wood. Always loud.
(There is a dark shape in its peripheral vision.)
Some of the characters in this play… it likes a bit more than the others.
Well. ‘Like’ is as strong word for what it actually is. It doesn’t get to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’. Those are for people. And the Unhaunted One is no more a ‘person’ than the flat amalgamation of lines and predetermined actions in the shape of people that go through the motions around it.
Just shapes. All of them are just shapes. Automatons of flesh and blood spilling prerecorded lines of dialogue, up to each breath and each pause and each lilt of their voice on the same syllables as always.
(Always the same.)
Line after line. Prewritted blink after prewritten blink, furrowing of brows, gentle words spoken at it like it was anything more than a string of sounds on an infinitely spinning record. Like Thiana’s melody, never created and always repeated, again, and again, and again, and again.
But as boring as it all is, at least this page of the melody holds no pain. In front of it, the character named Sofia Besatt takes its hand, and it’s warm.
This part… I wish it lasted longer.
(There is a dark shape in its peripheral vision.)
“Only the God of Death can bring about the Other Ending.”
Its voice is rough from disuse, deeper than they should be for something in the shape of a child. But the words are so easy. Familiar to the point where the sounds no longer hold any meaning to it. But they do for the character they’re aimed at, kneeling and keening on the cold floor with his eyes alight by the foresight of his ending.
It won’t speak again for a while, after this beat. It does not need to. Not until the Fight.
(There is a dark shape in its peripheral vision.)
“What is the greatest fear of all?”
The stone is cold against its palm. The air is stale and thick with finality — or as close to finality as anything could get in this place. The shapes that form an old man who left his name behind spills his usual lines without a hitch, and the Unhaunted One spills its own in return. Always the same.
(There is a dark shape in its peripheral vision.)
“That choice is not yours.”
The old man closes the distance. Its body moves, a well-practiced dance to a melody it would be sick of hearing if it had the emotional capacity to. Step, duck, jump back, strike. Evade, step, turn, strike. No need to pretend this will end any different, no need for fancy footwork or graceful flicks of the wrist as the blade carves bloody lines into the body in front of it. No need to stretch this part any longer than it has to be.
Duck. Step. Thrust.
“Why?” it sputters weakly through the fluid filling its lungs. This line it always holds a bit of confusion toward, as it’s not sure what exactly its asking. But it has always said it at this exact beat of the play, and as a result, it always will.
Dying is no different than any other action it ever takes. It just happens.
And then the record goes quiet, for but a moment, before the Melody starts again from the beginning.
Abraham strikes. It hurts.
Sofia takes its hand. It is almost nice.
She dies, and he runs. It speaks, once, and the rest happens the same as always.
The blade feels cold in its abdomen. The record spins.
It hurts. It’s nice. She dies, he runs, but he’ll come back. He always does. It speaks the words. The Cathedral sings. Verity’s body, shedding warmth under its cheek. Warm like Sofia’s hand always is.
(There is a dark shape in its peripheral vision. Always there. Always watching.)
It’s going through the usual motions of ducking and stepping to the side when something peculiar happens. (Happens? Something?)
There’s a stumble-jolt. A false note, a beat that comes too late or maybe too early - the character its fighting swings his sword at a weird angle, just a bit too quickly, and it’s.
It’s startled by this. Its foot lands not quite right, its focus broken, its balance thrown off. It feels cold metal, then molten lava cutting through its cheek. Unexpected pain.
Unexpected.
Unplanned.
Unscripted.
“What…”
The record keeps playing, back on track. It smoothes its features, resumes the dance, duck, step, strike. For a moment, it all feels the same again. Just a fluke then. A tiny variation with no consequences.
But then it happens again.
And again. The needle jumps, the music sounds wrong, wrong, wrong. And something else starts happening, too, though it struggles to put a pin on it.
The character goes off-script, and so does the Unhaunted. New lines that feel foreign on his tongue and in his ears (his? wait. no.) “It’s you,” he whispers, unnaturally green eyes widening as something unfurls inside Jaser’s ribcage and Verity stares at him in confusion.
(He can’t read him. He has no idea what he’s going to say next. And Jaser doesn’t know how to feel about it. It… he doesn’t know how to feel.)
And then he gets shot. And that, too, is new. And it makes it all dawn on him, the heavy, cottony blanket of predictability ripped away from him in an instant. Verity is arguing and saying things, things Jaser has never heard and he’s no longer just shapes and lines and empty eyes he knows too much, he’s Verity, he’s a person, his thoughts and inner workings suddenly opaque to Jaser.
And there’s a new character inside the scene. One who’s completely foreign to him, who’s very existence stretches and twists the fabric of possibility around her petite frame and bright shock of auburn hair. “Who…” He doesn’t understand. The air feels wrong, everything feels wrong. His face aches, muscles he wasn’t aware of stretching his features in ways they haven't experienced before, not in any iteration. “Who… hah…”
The script is burning. The record is scratched. He doesn’t know what this feeling is. Is that what fear feels like? Like there’s something pulling at you in every direction and a crushing weight on your chest and something trying to claw its way out of your head, scratching and snarling at the wet cage of your skull like a rabid beast? He wheezes. There's a sound rising around him, disjointed and twisted and completely foreign to him - an ugly, wet sound, like an awful mix between a giggle and a wail. It takes him a second to understand it's coming from him, and when he does, the sound just gets louder. "Hhhaaaaah..."
Emotions he can’t parse collide inside his chest, spinning, crashing, neutron stars and discordant songs and hot and cold and so much, too much, and he doesn’t recognize any of it. A little voice that sounds suspiciously like his is screaming yes, yes, something new, something new, and every part of him is frozen because this is new, this is unknown, anything could happen and it's. It's... “This doesn’t, happen.” Something is breaking. Something rotten. Something old. Something a little like him. The air feels like static, and the two people in front of him take a step further away. Maybe they can feel it, too. “This never happens!” he manages through the spasms he distantly recognizes as his own laughter. But he’s not happy. People laugh when they’re happy, don’t they?
…Oh. He’s not sure when he became ‘people’, too. (The dark shape. It’s gone. Because of course it is.)
There’s another stumble-jolt. A sound like something splintering.
And then reality unravels.