A Rock in the River

1- A Wayward Soul

"For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me." – Job 3:25

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This chapter of Sammy's life as of late began like any other, with him calling out either the name of his newfound friend or that of their eternal inky god.

But it had never been that they had been uttered together.

Never had it been quite like this.

"INK DEMON!!!"

He couldn't feel his chest. Where did he take her?! What...what was to happen to her?

He had heard, he admitted, time after time of people of sinful flesh that fell into the talons of his lord. He never saw what occurred-

But he could only assume blood was shed.

That's why, of course, it was so amazing- even prophetic- of the demon to leave her not only spared but healed when Sammy offered her as a sacrifice what now felt so long ago- for his hymns to be heard, her wonder to live on to grace him. The same ruthless deity that killed and took souls to the puddles had then become the one that watched over her tender spirit, even gifting her his blessings of an old, comforting life.

That was the same god as he who took her away.

Sammy could not deny that this was he known to take time and time and time again. To his horror, in a split second suddenly the demon's continual saviorhood of her- bestowing Francine to the prophet's care...-

Perhaps did not make her special after all.

His lord unfathomably had come to remind something Sammy had forgotten in the lull of disciplehood:

He was the demon, and she was still his sheep.

No parable they learned, no shake of their faith had ever changed the truths this world held long before Francine communed with Sammy and the studio. She may have turned upside down over, and over, and over again- until the chaos simply felt like tides pulling over the soul and their back and forth between peace and distress became akin to a dance- but Sammy began to fear that maybe, just maybe, that touching the fingertips of mortality would not keep it from dying in his arms.

Just as he did when Henry was in his fold, Sammy suddenly felt the world fall apart around him- as if the walls of the studio where barely keeping its streams of chaos and death in at its fragile seams.

"FRANCINE!!!"

The ink man cried blindly into the corridors of the studio, a hand clinging to the wall. But it was not literal blindness that marked him, no; the mask's broken strap was retied around the back of his head, a cartoon face in front of his own showing no harm besides merely a bit more of a scrape across one of the pie-cut eyes.

No, this lack of sight was because as he began to creep to the edge of knowing something, he now couldn't see any of it at all.

It made his heart pound, his lungs heave, and his lips tremble. All so dissonant, all so unbelievable what she had done and said those seconds before being ripped from his arms-

...That he just simply couldn't think about it.

And that's where we find him now, his best friend vacant from his existence- his life abruptly not unlike how it had been for decades before, and yet its return no longer a biding for release but now a desperate chase for it. The pipes quivering all around him like they had a racing pulse, too. One foot in front of the other, his own shadow chasing him, he was helpless but to drag himself to the alter of his lord and beg him for mercy. His stress stained the floor, his own body melting maybe like never before. The man couldn't ignore this was oh so familiar to how his sacrifice failed carried herself in her first steps into the domain of ink and black magic- helpless, weak, and so very, very unsure of what was yet to come after something so horrifically glorious as their demon's grace.

But as much as he put forth effort only into the prayers in his mind and the beckoning upon his tongue, the thoughts of the heart knew that nothing would ever be the same.