Chapter Text
Silent Salt was never one to have dreams or nightmares. If he did they were so confusing and unintelligible that he never remembered them. They were blurry - sometimes comforting, sometimes unsettling, but always fleeting. Considering everything, it was a small mercy he forgot. He had enough grief stored up for several lifetimes' worth of night terrors. It did not really matter. He would be gone soon anyway, but he was grateful it was not yet another thing to deal with.
Tonight, however, the Gods were not so merciful.
It did not start as a nightmare. On the contrary, it might have been a rather pleasant dream if things had not taken such a turn.
Vague images of the Beasts being gored under his blade crossed his mind. Every time he thrust the sword deep into their guts, a different stunned visage appeared before him. Five brutal figures were at last dethroned from their reign of terror. All of them had the same look - shocked, with no time granted to be furious. Good. They did not deserve to be angry at him, and he made sure they did not get the chance to be.
Despite how often he fantasized about shredding their dough, built on the sacrifice of countless lives, actually doing so felt less fulfilling than he had envisioned. A strange mix of catharsis and agony clashed inside him like oil and water - never blending, never resolving, but ever present. He soon realized why.
It was not the heartless demons he was destined to slay meeting their ends.
It was his friends.
His precious friends who mattered more to him than anything; It was his friends whom he vowed to protect; It was his friends who were being mutilated by his own hands.
He could tell because instead of snake-like slits for pupils, their eyes sparkled with the light of their still untainted Soul Jams. Light that he was now snuffing out as if it were nothing but a dying candle.
As soon as he realized this, he cried, willing himself to stop, but it was useless. The unsteady scales weighing his conflicting emotions tipped over, and he was drowned in a torrent of horror. Where there once was any semblance of satisfaction was replaced by unbridled dread for what was to come and mourning for what had already passed. He could not move an inch except to strike the weapon back down.
Again and again and again.
He became all too aware of the sound of its grooves catching on their insides as jam flooded under their convulsing forms. Blue, red, pink, and ivory stained and tainted the metal like acid. The sweet smell permeated the air, suffocating him.
Their expressions, coming one by one, told only hurt and confusion - the ignorant wonder why their friend was doing this to them. He hoped that his own face showed how he was not the one doing this. That they were not the cookies who deserved this fate. It was the only consolation he could give.
Silent Salt was a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them. If something was not working, he would do something different. Stagnancy was unproductive. Once a primitive creature touches fire and gets burned, it learns to keep away from it. Therefore, when it became obvious he could not stop what was happening, he took a new course of action: He gave up trying to fight the external force compelling him and went limp for it to execute. If anything, he followed its command, speeding up the process as much as he could. If this could not be stopped, he would make it as quick and painless as possible. His face turned stone cold - not out of contempt, but resolve.
There was no world outside of what was in front of him. Nothing mattered except this burden he needed to carry. He, they, and nothing.
He, they, nothing.
Oblivion and the Emissaries of the Gods, intertwined and chained, and nothing else.
Even so, this was not enough. He needed them to know this was his fault. All his fault. These cookies were not the ones he wanted crumbled. They did not do anything wrong. It was all him.
All him. All his fault. He was the one to blame.
“I’m sorry..I’m sorry...”
He repeated the same thing over and over again like a mantra. Could they hear him? He did not know. Perhaps it would not make a difference.
The Justicer could not keep staring at their lifeless bodies. He sealed his eyes shut. The only sounds were those of his sobbing, their choking, and the squelching of their crushed entrails. Eventually, mercifully, all three quieted down, and he was left with nothing but pitch blackness.