Godless

Godless. Enjoy, my dears, eternity's sweet torture.

Thud, thud thud. The icy air sliced into my skin like thin strands of wire as I soared above the trees. "You know, I'm fairly sure trees don't look like this normally," I mumbled to myself. Nobody else could hear me, nobody else could understand me. although everyone knew where I was. All the little stupid humans, standing by the podium, glaring up at me, anger in their little beady eyes. I could feel their eyes trained on me; it's not like I was hiding. I was showing off my wings at this point, as they stretched across the majority of the sky, made of the same void that was surrounding this strange place.

The edges of the land ended rather suddenly, with the stone and dirt frozen in mid-nothing. Around it was a sort of black void, with a subtle gradient of blue or pink here and there, broken pieces of sunrise and sunny sky that evidently got lost on their way out. I could fly into the void, but only to a certain point. Far away through the mist, the rest of the world was visible, but there was some sort of barrier in between here and there. That wasn't the worst thing, to be fair. The rest of the world probably didn't deserve to have me unleashed on it.

I held out a cold, clawed hand, and a plume of black erupted from my fingers and fell to the ground like burning oil, scorching everything it touched. Soon this place would be empty except for me. And Qi, of course... I could raze this place and turn it into a kingdom for him, a kingdom for only him. I could force all of these humiliatingly weak humans to bow to him, murder them to entertain him...

Something below me exploded, but it wasn't loud enough to warrant my attention. I swooped over the trees again. Their branches were made of silver, their leaves stained with black and red ink, the berries pure white. Another explosion went off, and I slowed down slightly, looking over. The Xion podium was burning with blue flames, and what looked like a human tied in the flames. Was this one of their weird rituals or something?

The scream made me fall out of the air. Qi. It was clearly Qi, but where was he screaming from? I couldn't see him, I couldn't...

The podium.

I had never flapped my wings harder or faster. The flames were taller, the screams were louder. I couldn't see amongst the thick red smoke, the smell of burning skin, the specks of ash flaming in the air. I screamed, throwing my powers at the podium. It refused to crack, it didn't even burn. I could see Qi's flaming red hair, now ironically alight. I couldn't see his face; it was all black. He was silent now. He wasn't dead, he wasn't dead, he wasn't dead...

"STUPID FUCKING HUMANS!" I roared in anger. Dark violet started to crawl over my skin. I didn't care any more. They knew what I was, I didn't care... Just that they burned like they burnt my prince. I held out my hands and the ground erupted in flames and sparks, the pathetic humans scattering. They started to cry in fear, and I just laughed, tears running down my face. My chest felt hollow, it felt like something was blocking my throat, and I could barely see for the burning black tears streaming from my eyes. They killed Qi. They killed Qi. It was entirely my fault for falling in love with a human, but they still killed him. He shouldn't have reciprocated it, everyone in existence knew what happened if a human fell in love with a godless... I shouldn't have been blaming him, how could I blame him?

Something hit me in the back and I screamed in anger. It felt sharp, and dread built up in my throat. I could tell (of course I could) that it was one of those bloody spiders. I span and tried to shake it off, but it dug it's cold glass pincers into my skin. Something icy started to creep along my back and up my wings, and I fell out of the sky, crashing onto the dying grass. One of my wings crumpled as I hit the ground, and I cried out in pain.

The glass covered more of me, my legs nearly completely encased. The humans started to storm over to me, chanting some bullshit that I didn't hear; my ears were still ringing with Qi's screams. The spiders were whistling around me as the humans swarmed around me. One kicked my side. Several on either side grabbed hold of my wings and started pulling and twisting. I screamed louder, thrashing wildly, but that only let the spiders grab more of me. My hands slowly became encased in the same biting cold glass that was covering the rest of me. One of the damn humans put a saw at the base of one of my wings and started sawing. I screamed absolute bloody murder, unable to do anything but sit there and cry. The glass was whistling louder, my legs entirely covered too. Lights flashed in my eyes as the rats pulled my wing away from my body and started on the other one. Silver blood was dripping down from my back and pooling under the glass, burning the grass. The humans were catching it in small vials and chattering happily. I couldn't understand them anymore, I didn't want to understand them anymore. I didn't care. They killed Qi, and they were doing something equally as evil to me.

The glass was sneaking around my neck, but it wasn't covering all of it, leaving the front open. I knew what they were going to do. The glass held me up as if my front were resting on a table or something similar, my arms held at about head level. One of the humans, the one who looked like he was in charge, gingerly stepped over. He held some sort of blade in his hand, a serrated knife that I'd seen humans use in their kitchens. They were using the same knives of food preparation on me; I wasn't even worth something ritually special. It held the knife to my neck as I glared at it, unable to open my mouth. Was it trying to kill me with its weak cutlery? Apparently so. It slid the blade across my skin, leaving a rather deep cut. It hurt nowhere near as bad as my wings, and I just kind of stared at the human, shadows under my eyes. It held a bottle under my neck and blood trickled into it. They were chanting again, each one holding a tiny bottle of my blood. The joke was on them, because my blood had no healing or magical properties. I wasn't an angel or anything, so why would it?

The glass started to cover my ears, and their stupid laughter went silent. It started to cover my nose, not that I needed it to live. It started to cover my eyes, and I tried to shut them as defence against the piercingly cold glass. It crept into my hair, and the holes near my neck and wing-stumps started to close. Through the glass I could hear distorted laughter, and I could feel movement. They were carrying me somewhere. I could barely open my eyes, and tried to peer through the painful cold. Either side of me were the humans, surrounded by an army of glass spiders. Ahead was the giant, blank expanse of the ocean. Were they going to throw me in, after all that effort to take me down?

There was a silence even through the glass. Every human in the dimensionally separated world was crowding around, minus Qi. Oh, sweet Qi... I was starting to think I deserved such a humiliating defeat at the hands of a bunch of stupid humans, as a punishment for failing Qi... As a punishment for falling in love with a human.

The humans shouted something together, and pushed me into a weird sort of raft. One of them pushed the raft out, and for a while I thought they weren't going to sink my body. More silence, until a hail of tiny glass bottles hit the raft. My blood broke free and set the raft alight. It cracked, and my body fell into the water, the glass weighing me down. I fell, and fell, and fell. I never hit the bottom. Trapped in the pressing darkness and abysmal cold, I retreated to my head. Qi was alive in my head, and that was good enough for me.