Lionhearts ||Skephalo||

72

Skeppy's vision unfocuses as he takes in the full sight, a sound escaping him unbidden.

Tubbo, Fundy, Vurb, and two piglin, one he vaguely recognized as the guard from Bad's cell, look up in alarm from the symbols they're writing on the tiles in bright chalk.

"Skeppy—" Tubbo starts, but his words are lost.

The body laying in the center of the seal is like nothing Skeppy's seen before—at first glance, it seems horrifically deformed, bones bent at angles that seem unnatural and painful.

Somehow, though, it gets worse the longer he looks at it.

It's not deformed; those are wings, spiny and batlike, splayed over the tile. A thick, finely scaled tail rests alongside legs that look more animalistic than human, and sharp claws and horns take away more humanity from what little was left.

Scales replace soft skin. Everything is jet black—darker than charcoal, like ink spilled over a once-empty, snow-white page.

Skeppy feels sick, but he can't look away—can't tear his eyes away from what feels like a sacrilegious defilement of an angel.

He can't stop his eyes from raking over the unconscious body again, searching for some trace of the person he'd grown up with—something, anything, to show him that the other was still there, even a tiny bit.

But all he finds is spines down its back, fangs slightly protruding over its lips, and ebony hair fanned over the tiles.

He feels a touch on his arm, and looks behind him to see who it is—Sapnap's deep blue eyes meet his for a second, concern in his gaze, before he sees the body. The same horror creeps into his expression, and Skeppy stumbles back, unable to process this.

Tubbo hops up, and dashes over, putting himself between Skeppy and the body.

"He's still there," he tries to assure Skeppy, but the words don't register, aren't even any language Skeppy knows. "I saw him, we can fix this—"

Revulsion rises through him like a torrent, and he shakes his head in despair, swallowing.

"Tubbo." The younger stops to listen to the soft, choked words Skeppy says. "I—need a minute. I need a minute." Whatever that thing is—

And yet...he glances back, eyes drawn as though by magnetism, to the body.

...those are Bad's clothes, barely intact and draped over the prone form. His stomach drops further, and he tries to look away.

Sapnap shakes his head a few times, and grabs Skeppy's shoulder, turning him around before dragging him out of the room.

"Deep breath," he tells him, and Skeppy wonders why for a minute, but that's before his knees buckle, and he collapses into Sapnap's grasp. "Breathe, come on-"

Like Tubbo's words before, it seems like Sapnap is speaking another language, different syllables. And the world seems to be spinning, and everything seems to be losing its color, Skeppy wonders if he's dying or if this is something else—

He can hear his heart, he can feel it beating so hard that he thinks his chest might split open, he can feel his lungs filling with shallow breaths over and and over until his throat burns and he coughs, gags, and turns away from Sapnap to throw up onto the floor, what little he had on his stomach now splattered over the tile.

Some sort of whimpering is playing over and over again as he claws himself into a standing position, digging his hands into Sapnap's shoulders almost painfully.
It sounds distant, and nothing is making sense.

He feels someone—Sapnap?—leading him over and helping him into a sitting position against the wall as he struggles, panicking.

Minutes drag on like hours until lucidity finally breaks, Sapnap's gentle touches slowly helping him calm down enough to take a drink of water.