Your dearest kin below the skin
One, two, three.
Their forms hit the floor before the spray of crimson does, sudden and silent. Something about the way the blood dyes their sashes a deeper cardinal only emboldens him further. Gabriel's mouth waters at the sight, but he cannot linger long enough to fully appreciate it. He leaves the bodies to rot upon the golden carpet where they once stood.
Four, five, six, seven.
Bright scarlet billows across the crystal clear waters of the fountain in the grand courtyard, pouring from the headless corpse that had toppled over its smooth rim. A glass of wine lies shattered at its alabaster base, its deep hue shamed by the ichor spreading across the brickwork. White-hot coals smolder in the pit of Gabriel's stomach as the waters run as red as Heresy's skies.
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
The Councilor falls forward onto the book he was reading, life-blood soaking into the pristine pages, dripping into his lap. Through the mania gripping him, he feels that heat spill over, as addictive and potent as the sight of the corpse lying in a pool of carmine, right by the library's entrance.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.
They fall so easily to his blades. Justice carves through one's chest, Splender slices off another's arm before a slash across her back severs her spine. A call for the guards is silenced when the tip of his sword pierces their neck. Why had he ever been afraid of these blasphemers when they die so swiftly to his own power?
As Gabriel approaches the final Councilor, senseless chuckles bubble up and out of his throat as they cower upon the bloodied floor. He feels dizzyingly good, between the sheer catharsis surging through his veins and the molten arousal pulsating between his legs as they beg for their life.
"P-please, Gabriel, see reason!" They plead, true colors on full display. "The Council follows the will of The Father! You seek to go against our creator-"
"Face it, brother." Gabriel breathes, and for a just moment, bitterness bleeds into his voice. "God is dead. The fire is gone. You're chasing phantoms."
He steps forward, Justice glistening with droplets of blood upon her azure edge. The pathetic, sniveling angel upon the floor chokes out one final plea.
"B-b-but The Father's Light! Without me, you cannot hope to reconnect with it! I-i-if you kill me, you'll be dead in a matter of hours."
Gabriel pulls in a steady breath, readies his blade, and lets it out in a rush of distant resignation.
"I know."
Seventeen.
Gabriel steps out onto the balcony, and shows the countless denizens of Heaven the truth of their mortality, the beauty of the ruby ambrosia dripping from the Councilor's head onto the golden roads below the auditorium, and that there is nothing more to be afraid of.
After a moment, he releases the severed helm, and lets it fall to whatever fate awaits it below. He turns away from his people, erupting now into sounds of astonishment and horror. The archangel strides back into the main hall and past the corpses that litter it.
He's done all he can here; it's up to them, now.
Gabriel makes it to an intricately carved column in the nearby antechamber, speckled with droplets of red, before he's overcome with a sudden feeling of lightheadedness. He slumps against it, sliding to the floor in a heap of overheated flesh and metal. As the adrenaline continues to fade, a giddy sort of mania is all that remains. Giggles erupt from him as he stares down at his hand, dripping still with fresh ichor and shaking slightly.
His armor is stained with the blood of those heretics. The headiness of his bloodlust rushes straight to his skull and burrows into his core. He replays the scenes of carnage, over and over, in his mind's eye. The wide slash that had killed three in one fell swoop, beheading the angel by the fountain, slitting the throat of the one by the south bookshelves. The blood, blood, blood that had poured from every fatal swipe of his swords.
Gabriel's thighs press together, and it only offers him the faintest sense of relief.
He catches his own hand roaming down over his armor, trails of red staining the gold and ivory. Further down it goes, emboldened by the rushing heat that spills from his stomach and directly into his core. Crimson follows his fingers all the way to the start of his belt.
It's easy enough to slip them beneath the leather and the band of his skirt, where his bloody digits gradually hit the hem of his loincloth. They slip just a little farther down across the fabric, until they brush over his aching clit, twitching just from the touch alone. Gabriel sucks in a sharpened breath, the air tainted with a faint, coppery stench that sits so heavily upon his senses.
His fingers press down harder, head lolling back against the marble and his hips pushing up into his own touch. It's all it takes for the smoldering heat to at last erupt into flames, for him to let go of any lingering sense of shame and chase euphoria just for the sake of it-
And then there's a commotion from the north hall, the clattering of armored feet hurrying towards the scene of his rampage. Reality cuts through the pulsating heat clouding his brain with a feeling akin to being splashed with ice water. He can't stay here; he doubts they would even let him explain.
Gabriel swiftly rises to his feet, and the air cracks around him as he departs from Paradise for the final time.
Heresy's grandest cathedral is exactly how he left it. Splatters of crimson paint its marble floors, shotgun shrapnel and sharp tack litter the pool, and a few craters have been made in its masoned walls.
Where the approach of the guards had brought him back to momentary sobriety, a needy throb from his still-sensitive center coaxes him back into that heady haze. Gabriel sits down with his back to the organ, swiftly sinking into the clutches of long-suppressed lust once again.
With long-practiced but hurried motions, he sheds a few pieces of his armor, the ones that would be mostly in the way. His chestpiece, pauldrons, and, after a moment of deliberation, his bloody gauntlets. Finally, his belt is falling away with a faint clink of metal. Gabriel's head falls back against the wooden frame with a hollow echo, yanking his skirt up his thighs. His trembling fingers slip on one of the tied strings holding his loincloth together, but tug the knot free after a moment. The final barrier of modesty falls away, slipping down his thighs just enough.
The memory of the machine's hands upon his skin are still fresh on his mind. They had been at the forefront of his thoughts since their intense copulation had ended, and especially while he slaughtered the Heavenly Council. How did they touch him? How did they play his body like a fine-tuned instrument to make him sing?
Gabriel's fingers slowly follow the dip of his navel, over his midriff, the bunched fabric of his skirt and over his public bone, down to where he's still so painfully sensitive, even hours after the machine had taken him. And at last, he brushes his digits over his engorged clit. A shudder wracks him, faint sparks spiraling up his spine.
He moves them in slow, curious circles. Gabriel tilts his head back, recalling the sight of the Machine above him. Four hands grasping at his form, a thigh pushing open his own, their optic a muted yellow and their eye half-closed. How their body had felt upon him, around him, in him, the sensations of being filled for the first time...
It feels good, but it's not enough. He thinks of the Councillors sliced to pieces upon the floor, the sight of blood pooling beneath their prone forms. He can see them in his mind's eye, missing limbs and heads, the spray of crimson arcing into the air from their fatal wounds. How the feeling of divine steel cutting through their bodies vibrated through the hilts of his swords. A heated pulse radiates from his core outward. He chases the feeling with harsher touches, but even that's not enough either. His thighs spread just a bit wider, allowing room for his other hand to reach down.
Quickly, his fingers move down to spread his lower lips. His middle digit slips down, pushes in, and Gabriel is distantly astonished at how slick he's already become. Another follows, his own pleasantly thick fingers filling his hungry cunt with incredible ease.
Gabriel slips them in deeper, and lights spark behind his eyes at the first hint of a stretch, helm slamming into the massive instrument supporting him. He's barely aware of his body sliding down to the floor until he's flat upon the marble. The angle allows him to reach farther, thrusting his fingers in and out of him with an increasing pace. He adds a third and only wants more.
His thoughts jump back to the end of his battle with the machine, how they so easily tore into his flesh for blood, for fuel; claws that cut deep into his body and fingers that burrowed into bullet wounds. How it had hurt.
Gabriel's hips jolt up into his own touch, a debauched moan echoing through the cathedral. He jams his fingers down onto his clit, rolling them across it fervently. He slides the digits of his other hand as deep as he can. His imagination runs wild, memories of blood and death with fiery passion and rough touches blurring. It pushes him closer and closer to the brink.
The machine's railcannon tearing through and cauterizing his gut simultaneously, decapitating the final Councilor, blood staining crystal clear waters a brilliant red, talons flaying his stomach open. Flashes of shrapnel and the crack of a gunshot before the burst of pain that would light every one of his nerves on fire.
V1 snatching his swords out of the air and running him through with them, pinning him to the ground. Their cock pounding into him wildly as blood pools beneath him-
The tight coil of heat at last snaps. With a debauched cry to rival the ones that had echoed in these halls not hours prior, Gabriel's hips arch upward desperately into his own touch. White hot euphoria rolls over him in crashing waves, drowning him in its relentless surge.
He's dragged back to his senses slowly, trembling from the aftershocks. Gabriel slips his fingers out of himself almost lazily, coated with an obscene amount of slick. His other hand removes itself from his abused, burning clit. And he lets himself float.
Gabriel knows not how long he lies there, but at some point, his breathing slows, the afterglow fades away. His eyes open back up to the pipes of the organ, looming over him like a concerned old friend.
He's reminded of where he is, what he's done, and what's to come.
The archangel pushes himself upright, swaying with a faint dizziness for just a moment before regaining his balance. There's a faint ache in the junction of his thighs, but even that almost feels good too. With methodical movements, Gabriel redresses, donning the shed pieces of his armor in very little time.
But when he's relatively presentable again, he lingers, still, turning his attention to the beautiful instrument.
It's been his companion through the start of Greed's rebellion, the final days of Lust's Renaissance, his time as the Judge of Hell and the endless march of sinners under his scrutinizing eye.Gabriel lets his hand touch the ivory keys of the instrument, his fondness for it pushing away any salacious thoughts that may have remained.
It's the last time he will ever see it. Never again will his hands spin music from its towering pipes, letting all his emotions pour into its sound. Melancholy rises to the surface of his turbulent emotions, but it's for only a brief moment. For in the next, resolve steels itself within his chest, burning bright with newfound fire.
Then, in a flash bang of light and sound, he is gone, departed for the farthest reaches of Hell, and more than ready to face his glorious demise.
