It Started With a Spinny

A Path Chosen

Content Warning: this chapter contains a discussion of historic witch trial torture and execution. If you are not able to engage with that, skip from the word "pressing" to the end of the paragraph.

She looks over at Hunter, at Flapjack, then back to Belos.

Number Five nods.

She blinks, and for just a moment she's not looking up at Belos, but up at Luz, her smile so wonderful and her hazel eyes so bright as she reaches down for her hand. She reaches back, their hands almost touching.

Vee blinks, and she's staring up at her own extended hand holding the vial of Titan Blood, the last thing Belos needs to return to the Demon Realm and painfully kill everyone who ever hurt her, ever turned her away, ever made her feel scared and alone and unwanted and wrong! She stares up at him, his one-and-a-half antlers reaching tall above his head, his electric blue eyes gleaming bright, his scarred eyebrow leaking putrid green. She stares up at the distorted face of Luz The Human, the kindest person she's ever known, about to be forced to watch her own hands destroy a world.

Vee closes her fist, and brings it back shaking to her chest.

Beluz sighs, "This really is becoming boorish," and points down at her.

She flinches back, the green spike stopped just before her eye!

Beluz frowns, the liquid spike shrinking back into their finger as they raise their arm to examine it. They smirk, "Luz, you surprise me! But then you always were so defiant! Deceitful too: you're even trying to distract me from your pet escaping!"

Vee bursts out of the archway at a blind run, sprinting for the lake, her hearts pounding in her ears so loud she barely hears the shuddering of stone until it's too late! She sees movement from both sides, her wings thrusting her back just as two gravestones smash together before her! She collapses onto her back, her crossed arms bleeding purple from countess scratches, her wings shredded! She cries out, feeling the skin between each finger pierced over and over, her wings shaking with the pain as she brings them inwards to wrap around her shuddering body, it's colour rippling between black and green. She pulls up her tail-legs, curling into a ball as small as possible, whimpering to herself.

"Now isn't this familiar," Beluz smirks down at her.

Vee cries out, again as she throws herself forwards onto her bleeding arms, still clutching the vial as she crawls forwards!

"Where have I see this before," Belos's voice continues behind her, "you skulking away in the middle of the night."

Vee whimpers as she crawls, her arms rippling green and black amidst bleeding purple as she keeps desperately going!

"Saving yourself by leaving behind two dear friends, all over again!"

She stops.

"Leaving them to suffer a slow and painful death in your absence."

She stays frozen, staring at nothing, barely seeing Belos walk around in front of her, flinching as he kneels down with a gleeful smirk. "It brings me no pleasure to tell you that your fellow prisoner, Number One, he barely survived a week."

Vee whimpers.

"He bore such a heavy burden, in your absence."

"My... I..."

"But then Number Two, she held out! For almost a month she held out, almost like she was, waiting for something?" He sneers, "Or for someone?"

"I, I didn't-"

"She died waiting for you to come back and rescue her, and instead you abandoned her, as easily as you're abandoning your human friends now!"