Some Kind Of Righteous

[ifnotwinter*]

((Ilario Fiametta III continued from the chasm to the core))

Ilario could see the infirmary from his spot in the trees. It squatted on the ground, a low, ugly pale brick building whose walls, he had no doubt, hid many bodies within. Students who would never graduate or go to university or change the world, kids who would never grow up or marry or have children of their own, people who would never get another chance to laugh or love or cry or drink a coffee or drive a car. He imagined them lying there like cordwood, thrown into corners or stacked in messy heaps.

He wondered what they did with the bodies when this was all over. His mind wandered over Rhory, dancing over the memory of her like an insect over water; skating across without dipping in. Rhory with her body washed, her injuries covered, her hands folded over her chest and her hair tumbling like a sticky waterfall over the gory mess he'd hidden away from view. Rhory's antlers to the ground, now, and sunshine tracing the line of her breasts and the soft dark track of her hair down her pale belly, showing him temptation and failure instead of his God's presence.

It was funny to think about. He'd never been this religious at home. He had spoken the words and gone through the motions and believed, at least, believed more than his sisters (skating over that thought as well, a wound as raw as the ones that littered his body) but it hadn't been like that.

Truly, he thought. God works in mysterious ways -- and then he had to swallow the hysterical laugh that tried to rip itself from his throat, his throat that occasionally trickled streams of dark blood down his chest, and for a moment he lost himself in that...something which wasn't funny, but which was funny enough to do.

But his mind returned, as ever, to the bodies.

Rhory was dead. That, at least, was simple. Rhory had taken a gun to her head, and she was gone, and that was that. He had failed. There was nothing left for it, he thought. His sisters were all bodies, sprawled haphazardly and bloating in the sun. Rhory was a body, arranged and perfect, anointed with river-water, but still a body with no soul left inside. All that he had been meant to protect was gone.

He had been praying. He had slept, and prayed, and swallowed the pills to calm his racing heart and shaking hands, and prayed some more, even if it was no more than staring at the sky and asking why, over and over again. And then he walked. And everywhere he had walked had been bodies.

This place would be no exception.

He thought there were still students left. The last announcement had passed in a blur, barely registered. But they had to be killers. All of them. And there was no one left for Ilario to protect, so was his purpose, here among the killers?

His fingers reached out. He watched the infirmary, but his fingers traced the muddy contours of metal next to him.

He was alone, now. No one left to protect.

But that didn't mean he couldn't finish his duty.

There were still students left. Students who had raped and maimed and killed their way to the top; students no more than animals who snarled and fought for dominance. He still had the gun. There were still bullets, he thought, some. Enough for his purposes. As he had since Rhory's death, he mulled over what was still to come. The fights. The deaths.

But he would win.

His fingers skated over the trigger, without ever sinking below.

Yes.

He would.

There was no one left but him, after all.

((Ilario Fiametta III continued in Everbody Looses (V4 Endgame)))