@sacriphic has met the end.
to each, a break, if only for a few minutes comes. exhaustion wipes over each present face but one; that which allows peace to smooth her features as the others recover. slowly.
the laboratory had once been a sacred place, though now it is arguably more so of such, with an angel hung crucified upon the once sterile walls now splattered with messes of crimson and gold. the tables and chairs not nailed into the floor are tossed along the previously empty pockets along the walls, those that had been secured to the tile turned aside with the floor torn up alongside them.
where liana hangs, wings stripped but reverently propped against the wall at either of her sides, her arms held up by chains and wires coiled about the whole of each of the limbs and head drooped down, ilmerrisan cannot help but be thankful that at least now, she is free. he is held down by thick, spell-imbued chains at every point to the tile not twenty feet before her, there on his knees.
a product of his own design that had been used a thousand times before. now, as much his detriment as the two bodies that stand at either side of him. the woman - dogmeat, she's called between them when they speak in german as if he cannot understand his mother's tongue - reaches into the white strands barely held together by a soft, pink ribbon that's been stained by blood and ichors. she takes the strip of lace and satin, moving to stand in front of the man held down like a bad dog.
thick metal bands rest around his neck, his wrists and upper forearms, his waist, his ankles. there is no amount of fight that could be left in ilmerrisan to break free. even as the blonde holds that pink fabric an inch from his snarled and gnarled visage.
"immortality is ugly when you spend it making a game of it all, hm?" her other hand comes forward, running through the black ichor that has swelled in his eyes and taken them over, spilled down his cheeks in thin veins gradually connecting to the actual veins of spoiled blood peaking out of his flesh. "when you spend your days killing. picking people apart just to see how far you can go. burning down the things you no longer find profit in." she rises from the bend at the waist she'd held, tying the ribbon around her own wrist as she steps backward, turning on boot heel to look up at the desecrated angel on the wall. "she didn't have to suffer on your behalf. but you let her."
dogmeat steps closer to liana's corpse, reaching up to touch at a tear in the once-white dress stained in filth from the battle that had ended this way. with more blood on the hands of the innocent than had been planned.
the innocent, now standing behind ilmerrisan and hardly deserving of such a title anymore. klaus lowers his head, crossing his chest with a silent rosary. a sin necessary, but a sin unwanted, to break an angel. "i want it to be what we discussed," the mechanoman rumbles lowly in german, the metal of his hand coming forward to rest on ilmerrisan's shoulder. squeezing tightly.
"as you wish," the woman replies, and only after another moment of looking up through the curtain of dirty brown hair at liana's face, does she step away. returning to ilmerrisan, dogmeat bends in front of him once more, bright sapphire eyes ticking back and forth between the black abysses he now bears. "i hope it was worth it."
as she rises, she nods to klaus, who releases the other man's shoulder entirely and turns away, over to the small mass huddled in the corner not far away. silently, he squats down in front of it - with its pretty little pink dress, duckies hand stitched into the hem as if marching in a line - and reaches forward, plucking it up.
the child is put on his chest, a hand over the back of her snowy white hair in braids and bows while the other tucks beneath her bottom to keep her aloft, comfortable, and her face buried so she cannot see the carnage any more than she already has.
it is only when ilmerrisan hears the door swing closed, latching as it always does, that he realizes. there was never any plan to kill him. it was always this. to force him to look upon the destitution, the massacre he had crafted over the centuries beholden on the one life he had placed above all others, while taking away what they had created together in purity.
the walls are too thick to hear ilmerrisan's screams, but as dogmeat and klaus leave the building and step out into the sunshine, he pushes some of that white hair back out of the young girl's face, speaking to her in a soft coo. "du bist jetzt in sicherheit, katja..."
