Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 15: I Gotta Have Faith-a-Faith-a-Faith-ah, Part 1

Falling to my death wasn't so bad. Of all the ways to die, I think this one would have been a good way to go. I always thought I'd be stabbed to death in an insurrection or slaughtered by an apprentice, if said apprentice was competent enough. Those ways are slow in my opinion; this death would have killed me flat. No pun intended—was that a pun? Man, joking about your own death sucks, just humor me a little while longer.

My only problem was that I didn't exactly black out while falling; no, I was very much awake. Typhous and Ishmael's melodramatic complaining could raise the dead and then some.

"You let a whole group of people suffer for one girl!" Ishmael was screaming at me. We were all freefalling towards the bottom of that bottomless pit. "I hope you rot in Hel!"

"Yeah, and I'd do it again," I quipped, laughing on my way down to Hel. "Hey, hey Ishmael. Saving the girl and Gaia is icing on the cake, ruining your fun times was my only real goal."

"You've always been an asshole, Sanguine," Typhous said, putting in his two cents. "A new world, one where we wouldn't have been rejected, exiled, for being different. You messed it all up for a bout of good conscience!"

"Oh, shut up, you blubbering brainlet! I don't care about the Mainlanders. You were going to ruin the only good things I found in this whole damn world. The only home I have, the only person who ever really liked me. There's even a devil-god that really does care if I become a slug-slave in Hel or not. You two just wanted to be the kings of a world of decay!" I paused my rant for a moment to look down the pit. "You know, you'd think we'd hit the ground by now."

"It's a bottomless pit!" Ishmael screamed, his voice hitting high pitch. That's pretty funny.

"Well, if we're going down, let me tell you your problem, Typhous."

"Oh, goddamnit," my apprentice grumbled.

"Too eager! You were always taking shortcuts in life, always trying to get to the end and ignore the journey. I've been waiting to say that for years, but you are so obnoxious and hardheaded!"

"Like you!"

"But I learned better!"

"Fellas," Ishmael said. "If you please, I don't want to hear your bickering before I fuck off to comatose land, plotting in perpetual shadows my inevitable return."

"Shut your mouth, you mediocre movie extra," I yelled at him. "You should've at least dressed the part!"

"Mediocre!? You run around in robes. It's 2046. Stop LARPing as a medieval wizard, you tool!"

"You do wear goofy robes, Sanguine," Typhous said. "Like, who does that?"

"Your mama liked them well enough," I threw at him.

"You and 'your mama' jokes!" Ishmael yelled. "Will you stop it with the 'your mama' jokes!?"

"That's what she said!"

"No more!"

"That's what she said!"

"Damnit, Sanguine, you really are a pain in the ass," Typhous said.

"That's what—"

Typhous immediately pointed at me to shut up.

"Okay, this is besides the point," I finally continued. "You refused to learn the basics! You could'a been a villain-pro, you could'a been a hero, but—but—basics—"

"Yeah, and? What about the basics?"

That was it. I'd forgotten about the basics too; sometimes the simplest of things was the best of answers. In this situation, it was the best of tools.