Chapter Text
Normal people mourn those they lost with a funeral, surrounded by family, friends and people with lost debts. If they so desired and felt to do so, they could stretch their arm and ask God to join them.
But if present here, in this cold prison, they would be told to call a meeting and gather on top of a fallen crew member's corpse. Just as they were told to do right now, inside her majesty's abode underground where their member numbers decreased by one. If they were going to continue dying at this rate, her cult would never reach the heavens.
The sounds of a forced choir glitched quietly yet loudly from the broken speakers, grinding against Tartaglia's and Arlecchino's ear drums- like water stuck after a swim.
...
I sing along and say; spare me, Tsaritsa, our God, from this nightmare even if it was you who brought me closer to death.
"You've been thinking for a while. What are you up to?" Chimed Arlecchino forward and loud, unsure if she should feel grateful that Tartaglia shat up for a minute or two.
"Nothing. Just thinking about Signora." He replied with a pause, scratching the excess paint off of a Tsaritsa statue.
Arlecchino looked at him with a straight face before bursting into laughter, wheezing while tapping her foot against Signora's coffin. As she once would push her shoulder in banter, watching the smile on her face turn her cheeks red. Bad grief. "Cut the crap, what are you actually thinking about?"
The 11th Herald sighed, jabbing the statue with a 'clack' on the top of the coffin. Thanking the Goddess beneath his breath.
"Really, she's on my mind." Tartaglia confessed, blinking slowly at Signora's portrait. "Do you think she's also on everybody else's mind?"
"I don't think so, I doubt it actually."
"Why?"
"Don't why me, Tartaglia, both of us noticed the practical deafness of this place." She cut to the point with her tongue like a scythe. "Why would everyone but us two leave the meeting, where we sat in awkward silence? For reconciliation tea? I don't think so; what do you know?" The woman hesitatently persisted, reminiscing her life before a certain someone seduced her inside this cult.
Tartaglia's smile turned the other way around, slinting his eyes at the woman ironically nicknamed 'the one who couldn't be fooled'.
"Kiss the hand of God and become him... You heard that one before, knave of the knaves?"
Throughout her entire stay at this forsaken place, hidden behind the disguise of a believer, she hated Tartaglia's existence from day one. Naive, devoted, smart only when he wanted to catch you off guard. A cunning motherfucker.
"Where did you hear that?" She mumbled, almost whispering. "Who did you hear it from?"
"I've got my sources." He replied, covering his ears when the speakers spontaneously got much louder.
"Tell me or I start chanting as well." Arlecchino spoke admist the chaos.
"Zandik." Tartaglia responded immediately. In response, Arlecchino swallowed down her offended stare and gestured for him to continue. "I heard him crashing out over someone with privilege. I don't know who he was moaning about, but it surely had to do something with her Majesty." He replied, voice distant. The 4th Herald tried to reply, yet her words got stuck in her vocal chords. Like strained telephone lines, a broken cuckoo clock caging the cuckoo bird in. Tsaritsa, is that you?
"Speaking of which." He stated, legs spread, eyes closed and hands positioned in front of his head. Tartaglia was focused. "When will you convert?"
"Never."
11 expected as much, coiling his back to the chair without another comment.
"You would if she told you to."
"Absolutely." She jumped to answer, a light piercing through her eyes. Like lighting rocking from the sky. Heart beating a thousand times per minute. Columbina. "I'd pray to her if she was who the Tsaritsa claimed to be."
"Defututa puella." He spat. Arlecchino responded with a middle finger .
Like the others, jealousy reeked off of Tartaglia and stained the walls. Not for Columbina's effect on number 4, he barely gave a shit.
It was her Majesty's stare, how she sat next to her in meetings. Something stank in this cult, and it wasn't just the speakers currently on fire.
The two shared a look, before yelling in exaggeration: "SANDRONE!!"
______
As the flames extinguished from both Signora and the speakers, Arlecchino decided that tea and expired biscuits call for a sweet afternoon nap.
Besides Columbina and skies at night, number four loved sleep. The soft cushions, rays of sunshine escaping from the low quality curtains, the absence of Tartaglia's mouth. Arlecchino closed her eyes, biting back her lips so she wouldn't think about Signora.
"Knave." Clawed at her ear. It must have been a big, disgusting bug flapping its wings. Or it was Signora's soul, coming for one last visit at the orphanage where they worked before joining this cult. For their own personal reasons, no Columbina mention whatsoever.
"We lost the kids, Signora.. Go to your lover."
"Four!!"
"Three, two, one! The hell do you want, Tartaglia?" She yelled with a fading voice, almost pushing him face first on the cold ground.
Tartaglia rose from the ground like a zombie, not responding- just staring at her with a deadly gaze. She knew he meant no harm.
"Well?" Arlecchino asked while he cleared the dust from his rugs. He must have come from praying with Scaramouche.
"Your lover has gotten away with many things." What? "But she won't get away with this."
The shaken woman pulled back her messy hair, looking vulnerable for what might have been the first time in her life. Maybe second.
"What could she have possibly done? What is 'this'?"
Tartaglia leaned forward, his shins touching the wooden frame of Arlecchino's bed. "Blasphemy."
END OF CHAPTER 1