This Thing Don't Look So Tough

[Clownpiece]

Grotesque, sickening sounds wafted up from the open door of the cellar. Disgusting squelches, those of flesh and muscle being torn, and bone being ripped apart, accompanied by surprisingly feminine cries of agony. Those noises weren’t Dane’s, they were the werewolf’s, who Clownpiece hadn’t known had been a girl, not until she heard the beast screaming up from the hole in the ground she’d no doubt crawled out of.

“...Five...” This time it was Dane’s voice. Each and every one of those absolutely torturous noises had been followed by yet another limb, another missing, hairy arm tossed up to the floor above. And this time was no different. A furry arm flew up over the lip of the ledge and landed right next to all the others with a soft thud, and the little fairy simply watched, holding her torch close to her chest. The maddening purple flame of her torch danced and flickered just in front of her face. So close, and yet since no heat emanated from it she didn't really notice.

“Aww is that all you’ve got?” The swordsman’s disappointed voice followed after that limb. “I was hoping to get six or seven more out of you.”

Had this been any other fight, Clownpiece would’ve been right there with him, mocking the werewolf, showing her what hell on earth was really like. Hell, she probably would’ve been commenting on how delightfully brutal Dane was being. How if he kept up that sort of behavior, he could probably get a job bestowing punishment upon the sinful souls consigned to hell. She even personally knew the Goddess of Hell! She could give him a glowing recommendation and basically guarantee that he’d get accepted. And besides, he could almost match her in strength! That made him strong enough to be a major player down there. Or at least made him strong enough to be recognizable to some degree.

Of course, this wasn’t any other fight. The little spirit of madness turned her gaze away from the hole, away from the sounds of glorious carnage, and down towards the still form of Cassandra Myst, eyes eternally open in a glassy stare, and head lolled off to the side. Where her chest once was, there was now just a gory, blood-filled cavity. The Lycan's claws had just... torn her asunder, completely. Other than a few flecks of bone fragments and what seemed to be shredded flesh and cloth here and there, there was just nothing recognizable. It sorta reminded her of a blood eagle, but... messier. This was something she was supposed to see in the many torments of hell, not here, after a fight.

Well, that was the rule of hell, she thought, scarcely noticing as the blood leaking not only from Myst, but from the snake flowed thickly over the floor. Her star-spangled tights soaked up the viscous crimson liquid, plastering them to her feet. The weak died and the strong lived. Did her brief stint in Gensokyo really make her forget that? Or was it hanging around fellow fairies so much? Making friends with hell fairies wasn’t an uncommon occurrence by any means. Down there, they tended to make some of the most... permanent friends, in that they couldn’t die. Not permanently. But even so, even if she might have been a little bit biased towards her friends that just couldn’t die, she still saw enough death and torture to balance it out. 

Not just of the sinners either. Sure, they died, they got consigned to hell, and then they got tortured until someone saw fit to try reincarnating them and hoping their soul got better. But there were others, as well. Natural-born denizens of hell loved to fight, drink, torment, and kill. It was just the way things were down there. Too many people picked fights they couldn’t win, and got killed from it. Some of them, like fairies, came back from it. Not everyone was so lucky though.

And the native-born hellspawn knew that the girl at her feet wasn’t one of the lucky ones. She wasn’t a fairy like she or Cirno or Eternity was. She wasn’t as silly and impulsive as them, she didn’t have the body of an eternal child. Nor was she a divine spirit like Honorable Friend. She lacked the strength, the raw power that those sorts of people had. So it was probably the end of the line for her. No redoes, no more chances. Just dead. All because she decided to jump in front of an attack like that.

A heavy grunt sounded from vaguely where the hole in the ground was, tearing Clownpiece’s attention away from her inner thoughts. She hadn’t noticed it before, but the cries of pain had long since stopped. Her head turned back up, her eyes flicking away from the corpse of Myst at her feet, and towards the sound she heard, her expression almost... uncaring. The blond-haired and blood-covered form of her friend clawed his way up and out of the cellar, his demeanor back to being as uncaring as ever. In his right hand, he held the decapitated head of the Lycan he just killed, perhaps as a memento, or perhaps just something he held to make absolutely sure it was dead.

“Well, that’s done...” Dane said with a grunt as he hauled himself to his feet, sounding out of breath, even bored in a way. Cassandra was lying there dead at her feet, he just got finished torturing a werewolf to death, and he just... addressed her so casually. Almost like he’d just got off a grueling shift filling out some paperwork over at the Ministry of Right and Wrong. Three deaths, two from enemies so tough he needed to call on his fairy friend, and one of an ally who threw away her life to protect him, and there he was, still without a care in the world.

“You good there, kiddo?” He asked, perhaps noticing the lack of reply from the fledgling lampad. Or maybe it was how she just sort of... stood there, regarding him with a deep purple gaze. Either way, he stepped towards her, each step over the blood-soaked floor sending little splashes of that life-bringing fluid everywhere. Whoever had to clean this up was going to have one hell of a time. Clownpiece took a deep breath, the familiar, metallic scent of gratuitous amounts of blood easily overpowering that of the usually dusty inn. “Yeah, I know, it sucks...” He started, eyes flicking down towards the vampire’s corpse. One blood-stained hand, the one not currently holding onto a werewolf’s head, lifted up towards her currently-hatless head, before falling upon her golden hair, fingers splayed as he began aggressively ruffling her locks. “But she’s a prime, she’ll respawn at the fountain just like you and I did.”

Right, that was a thing. Clownpiece had honestly forgotten. She was so used to respawning normally that it just seemed like something that happened. Her head tilted up, almost seeming for a moment like she was leaning into the hand patting her head, but that wasn’t what the action meant. She blinked at him, her neutral expression suddenly shifting into something childishly annoyed. “I knew that!” The star-spangled child exclaimed petulantly, her cheeks puffing out in a pout. “It’s just... Someone like her would never make it in hell!” She crossed her arms over her chest, her pout only growing stronger as she stared at Dane. “Who does she think she is, just jumping into danger like that!”

“Yeah...” The swordsman agreed, though his expression didn’t really change. “That was dumb of her.” And that was all that he offered. His hand simply fell from her head, and no further comment came from him. Whether that was because he had nothing to offer, or simply because he didn’t want to dump anything more on her, the fairy couldn’t tell.

“And that goes for you too!” This time all the ire in her gaze was directed at Dane himself. A small look of surprise crossed his face, but only for a brief moment. “I’ve had to save your skin twice now! In two days!”

“Yeah, but I’m alive, aren’t I?” Dane said, deliberately not meeting her gaze, and instead just bringing his hand right back up to ruffle her hair again. Something to reassure her. Clownpiece’s only response to that was to cast a quick, pointed glare down towards the corpse at her feet, slowly dissolving into Omnilium. The message was clear. Yeah, but you couldn’t be.

To that, the swordsman simply shrugged. “You know I know how to fight. If I was in any real danger, I’d have just teleported outta here.” The hellspawn frowned, opening up her mouth, ready to argue with him more.

But never got the chance. The relative silence of the inn was completely shattered by a shout and the distinct splintering of wood. Both Clownpiece and Dane whipped around, towards the sound, just in time to watch as the already well-worn door exploded right off its hinges and sailed a good meter into the room, before crashing into the ground and sending up a splash of blood from the puddle it landed in. Boots slammed against the floor as four guards flooded into the inn, crossbows at the ready, their strides rattling the shaky foundation. 

Both the fairy and the swordsman froze, careful not to make so much as an unintended twitch while the guards fanned out, crossbows trained on the two of them. Dane smiled awkwardly, letting the werewolf head he had been holding onto fall to the ground with a wet and squishy thump. Not like it mattered, they’d already seen him holding it. “What seems to be the problem, officers?” He joked, his tone light in spite of the situation.