Planebreakers of Torment

The Father

Birdsong took on a brave expression as she stood on Gillan's shoulder. Her eyes glided across the crowd before them and she saw just how scared they were. The corners of her tiny, ethereal mouth twitched. She didn't want this. She had never wanted this. It's not that they hated her — though they did — it was the fear she saw herself instilling in them that broke her. Every swing of every sickle, knife, and shovel, every iron blade — hammered out quickly and unskilfully, wasn't a sign of hatred. It was a sign of what spawned the emotion, the feeling. A sign of fear.

She felt her human's feelings, she read what had just happened in her mind and could do nothing but stand with her in this moment. Would her appearing with Gillan like this ostracise the girl even more? Probably. Yes. Was it what she needed now? The encouragement, the companionship? Birdsong didn't know. But she felt it was the best thing she could do for her, so she did it.

Gillan and her Father just stood there. After his words, they just eyed one another. The girl had fallen into a stance, the sickle's crescent pointing towards him. The man's posture didn't change. He stood straight, proud almost, with his sickle put carelessly to the earth.

He eyed his daughter. He thought of what he was seeing before him. A vile creature, something out of his own nightmares sitting on the shoulder of what he had left of his wife. The only, last, final bit of her legacy, of her soul, left in the world. He didn't want to kill her. Did he feel he'd have to?

No. Never. Why would he ever even allow such a horrid thought to plague his consciousness? Or maybe the idea's calamity did not lay in consciousness at all. The line between dream and reality had been blurred ever since the first gnome rode on his war-mount into the village. It disappeared when pixies took half the people's names away — not even straight up killing them — instead leaving them to forget everything they knew and where, from the faces of their long ones, to how to breathe. And, he realised as he saw a sprite piercing his wife's belly, maybe the line had never been there in the first place.

His breaths became slower. His heart rate slowed down. Tension left his muscles. It had been a long night. He looked at the pixie on his daughter's shoulder. He inspected its face. Was it...angry? Afraid? Just sad? He blinked. It was a long blink. One that he hoped wouldn't end. He opened his eyes. And left.

Gillan's breath halted midway to her lungs when she saw her Father lift up the sickle. But he just placed it on his shoulder. The crowd of villagers didn't stare at her and Birdsong anymore. Not even at the Mirror Devil. The far more bewildering sight was much simpler than that of a kilted girl with a fey on her arm or even that of a man who had literally just fallen from the sky. The true sight to behold was that of the Father leaving.

In their eyes, he wasn't the Father anymore, at least not then. He had stopped being their leader, their captain, the moment he turned around to leave. What remained of that frightful presence was just a man. A broken, wifeless man. A man whose flame of hatred had just died out. Not from being blown out, no. Hate is a flame that can't last, and his just let out its final ember. He went home.

Gillan exhaled. She dropped the sickle to the ground, tiny explosions resounding at her feet. She breathed heavily and deeply, tasting the oxygen in the midnight air. Her locks' crimson had dialled back down into a chestnut calmness.

The crowd dispersed fairly quickly. The father's departure left them without their snailherd and everyone was either too confused or plainly scared to go near Gillan to see the devil. When everyone left, she finally look at the man.

He wasn't tall. He was lying on the ground so it was hard to judge but still, she thought him of her own height at most. His armour was composed of bent slabs made of scales interlocked among each other. Each scale was a mirror, and each mirror was a scale. The devil's head — the helmet — was likewise reflective and bore two horns, their arrangement crescenting into a half-circle.

There were two more things Gillan noticed about the man. Firstly, from behind him stuck out a long, black shape she couldn't make out the material of. Secondly, he had no feet.

That's a xenophobic exaggeration if there ever was one. Of course, the devil had feet. Only it seemed that in his case the concept was very fluid, for where each of his legs ended there was a hunk of grey rock. Not grey-grey, too. It was the sort of grey one could see when they put their forehead against that of a person who said they'd seen white during their lifetime.

Nothing else could surprise Gillan that night — and willing to keep it that way — she came up to the devil and lifted him. Though armoured, he wasn't that heavy, The girl managed to sling the mirror man onto her shoulders and even get them both to her cabin, the crater still smoking in the distance. She kicked the door open, Birdsong lit up the room with her glow, and they two finally dropped the unconscious devil into a bed. The two looked at him — the level of puzzlement equal with fae and human alike — and thought. How the hell would they get him up?