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There is the immediate black smell of ash. The stairway leading up from the door is scorched and broken, and you can't see any light coming from above it. Fake Ellery hesitates again, then enters, the stairway creaking with every heavy step. You have a vision of them collapsing and knocking Ellery onto his ass (funny), then a vision of you falling through and landing on your backside (not funny), then decide it's probably net neutral. Thus you follow him.
Aboveground, in Ellery's manse, all is dark. All was dark before, of course. It was night when you and Madrigal (and Earl) last showed up here. All was ink and ash and wreckage and splintered mirrors. It's still night, and it's all still burnt, but now there's a blanket of clouds obscuring any stars, and Real Ellery isn't shining like the sun. He isn't shining at all. He is huddled near the only source of color around: the remnants of a campfire, faded orange coals.
Was huddled. When Fake Ellery entered, Real Ellery turned. When you entered, he stood.
He says nothing. Fake Ellery says nothing. With your superior low-light vision, you can watch the corners of his eyes move. You can't make out Real Ellery as well, but you don't think he looks very good. His face is rimmed with light, but his eyes are shaded completely. You could fall down into them.
You will either of them to say anything. When they don't, the job falls to you. You clear your throat. "Hello!"
>Failure
In one fluid motion— one eerie, over-fluid motion— Real Ellery lifts a crossbow and fires it, which you only know after the fact, from the breeze of the bolt past your face. Fake Ellery knows it too, from the bolt sprouting from his chest.
"Oh," he says. "...Dickhead... I'm such a..."
And he can't complete his thought, because there is a little noise, a <span class="mu-i">shing,</span> and a larger noise, a <span class="mu-i">SHUNK,</span> but it's not doors Real Ellery's opening. There is a bolt in Fake Ellery's throat, and also blood, but it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, because, see— a beatific look has come over Fake Ellery's face, which is blood-spattered. He's smiling, but there's no nerves in it. He's swaying some. He looks like he's seen God, except if God weren't a giant murder-snake. A nice God.
Real Ellery delivers him there with a third shot, which smacks precisely into the middle of Fake Ellery's forehead and lays him out like livestock. He is on the ground, ash-covered, blood-covered, eyes glassy. He is still smiling, even though there's a crossbow bolt in his forehead, and he's dead.
>[-3 ID: 6/14]
He's dead! He's dead. You just stand there looking at him. Is it horrible to think he looks less annoying dead? Not that you're happy about it. You're not. You're not. That would be wrong, and you haven't done anything wrong in your life. It's just the smile, maybe. Or the stillness. He can't go around twitching anymore, dead.
(2/4)
