Night 57: The Coliseum

[el_aguila]

Touching the sandy grounds of the coliseum was a catalyst, and the progression of day did not mean the end of the process. By fortune or otherwise, this group's efforts were not allowed to halt simply due to the rising sun. Therefore, when nighttime was pronounced, those who had undergone the beginnings of an incomplete trial were pulled from their

Comments

Your soul is mine, etc. etc.

[affictitious]

To him, Erika's rage might as well have been a baby's after he'd stolen their candy. (Not that he was shallow enough to try something so positively immature. Please. He had standards.) He was hardly interested in revenge no - okay, that was a horrible, horrible lie and he couldn't even make it in his head. When his head snapped back to his brother's body ripping open again, Gabriel's face went cold. He had seen Castiel's form, as faint as it was, once his power had returned to him. His true face, hardly describable in any human language, shuddering and caged in his pathetic human form.

Then it flickered, the wings straining, turning black.

His jaw was clenched hard enough to crack teeth once he was facing Erika again, directly flying in front of her. Flying for angels was something that wasn't meant to be seen by mortal eyes; if anything, it was as if he'd teleported directly in front of her, leaving his angelic blade far behind him, still sticking in the sand.

"You don't mess with the Host, Erika." It was the first time he had acknowledged the girl had a name at all, and it would certainly be the last. Absolutely no humor was left in the archangel. His brother was dying by her hands - insulting in and of itself, really - and Gabriel had been forced to sit here and watch.

He leaned closer to her. He didn't snap his fingers this time, unlike the thousands upon thousands of punishments he had doled out before this moment. He didn't need the snap. It was showmanship, and that was now completely unnecessary.

Erika would begin to feel her skin tightening like a raisin in the sun. Her organs were well on their way to solidifying, but not in their natural, wet shapes - they were separating into smaller bits, turning hard and hollow, depending on what square of internal flesh it was. Her blood evaporated, or perhaps it was sucked into the hard, cell-like pieces her body was becoming.

The best part? It should have killed her the moment it begun, but Gabriel made sure she stayed alive. Just for now. He left her eyes for last, just long enough to see his blade appear in his right hand in a soft flash of golden light.

Oh, he was going to enjoy this. Gabriel hadn't torn apart a pinata in years.

OMG I'M SORRY I DIDN'T NOTICE THIS LOL

[witchdetective]

Even though anyone should have been able to tell that Erika just made a horrible mistake... The girl herself held her ground, not even flinching when she saw the look on Gabriel's face. It really was an ugly face, but to a girl who constantly traded that sort of look with fellow witches, she might have thought that it was nothing she hadn't seen before. Still, she was a human detective before she was a witch, so even Erika couldn't hide her surprise when Gabriel immediately went on the offensive; to be honest, she did not foresee this move. That was because Erika, for all her bragging, had failed to grasp the situation completely. She had truly failed to realize that there was nothing to disprove, and she had foolishly thrown away her chance at victory.

"Oh?" That was the only sound that came out of her mouth, because ... there was a squeezing feeling, like her own skin was suddenly two sizes too small for her own body. Because of that, her vocal cords were quickly crushed and constrained as her body began to rearrange itself, shrinking and twisting, changing form. The girl was only minutely aware of what her new form was like, because it was a new form without nerves, without blood, without feeling. Perhaps it was a form fitting for a cruel girl like Erika, with no heart and no patience to understand it.

"...?!"

There was no way for her to look surprised, because her new paper-mache form was dangling in midair, on an invisible thread. Even though pinatas were supposed to be fun, colorful toys, there was something creepy about the pinata that was swinging in front of Gabriel.

After all, who ever heard of a spider-shaped pinata?