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His head was spinning as Tanya and Greta dragged him forward, bloody and broken. The world faded in and out of focus, and the laughter of the Ensemble seemed to echo and distort all around him, a million mocking voices reverberating in his ears. Roughly Roland was shoved to his knees, and when Elena’s clawed hand gripped his chin to force his head up he recognized through his blurry vision that it was the Puppeteer who was standing right before him.
“You won, bastards,” he growled before any of them could say anything, even just that much effort making his head throb with pain. “F-finish me off already then. Come on!” Jae-Heon just chuckled, and Roland did his best to thrash against the hands holding him down as he snarled. “Come on!”
“Oh, Roland. You didn’t think we would let you off that easily, did you?”
Jae-Heon stepped to the side to let the one who had spoken approach from behind. Argalia smiled down at Roland with his usual casual condescension, that grotesque mockery the Puppeteer had made standing right by his side. “Everyone here has had their life made a mess of by your careless hands. You think a quick death is what you deserve? My dear bandmates think much differently.”
“What are you planning, then, Blue Sicko,” he bit out, struggling futilely against the distortions restraining him once more as he glared up at the former Color through disheveled strands of his hair. It wasn’t really like it mattered at this point- the other librarians were all dead and in their books, and who knew what had happened to Angela. No one was coming to help him, and he’d been too thoroughly beaten down and exhausted to be able to help himself. Whatever torture this gang of creeps had in mind for him, Roland was powerless in the face of it.
“Haha, such a scary angry face you’re making. There’s no need for that. Actually, seeing you like this makes me want to take some pity on you.” There was a sinking feeling growing in his stomach as Argalia continued in his ever-soft tone. “We couldn’t have made it here without you, after all. All those you’ve killed to gorge this Library for our eventual arrival, and everything else you’ve done to draw us all together… We can’t let you live, but I think you deserve some sort of reward for your service. It’s plainly obvious you can’t take your eyes off Angelica- you’re as entranced by her beauty as ever, aren’t you? I’ve decided I can be magnanimous to my dying brother-in-law. For one final time, I’ll let you two return to your marriage bed.”
His blood ran cold in his veins.
“...that’s a sick joke even for you,” Roland rasped out once his tongue no longer felt frozen, involuntarily trying to twitch away as Elena ran a fingertip down his cheek in a parody of tenderness.
Argalia laughed once, low and soft in his throat. “And here I thought you might be grateful for this opportunity.” He couldn’t tell if it was mockery paired with that irritatingly smug look on his face, or if the other Fixer really believed he was turning down some kind of a gift. “Well, stay short-sighted if it pleases you, Roland. I’m not going to deprive my dear sister of a final farewell over your reluctance. Eileen? Get him ready, if you would.”
Tanya and Greta’s hands might as well have been iron bars keeping him in place as Eileen stepped out of her place in the loose circle around him, but there was a bolt of nervous energy flashing through him now that made it impossible to keep still; Roland twisted as much as he was able, outright thrashing when her deft fingers began working open the buttons of his jacket. "H-hey, hey! Keep your fucking hands off of–"
He choked and gagged on Elena's fingers shoving themselves into his mouth to quiet him, tasting iron as her sharp nails scratched him in the process. "I'll leave the rest to you, friends," Argalia was saying with careful disinterest, briefly resting a hand on Angelica's that thing's shoulder with a casualness that burned him. "I have some final preparations to attend to before our performance; you can find me once you've had your fun. Pluto?"
Roland bit the fingers muting him so viciously they were forced to withdraw. "Argalia!" he howled as his brother-in-law stepped past him. "You sick fuck! What, are you so jealous you can't bear to watch–"
He was cut off again by Tanya this time pressing a massive furred hand across his mouth, but it didn't matter. His outburst was the desperate snarling of a dog backed into a corner, and they both knew it. Argalia didn't even deign to give him a final glance as Pluto escorted him away.
In his wake, Jae-Heon stepped forward again, crouching to be eye-level with Roland as Eileen finished opening his shirt. "She's been looking forward to this, you know," he told him, the echo in his voice grating at Roland's ears. He bit Tanya, but only wound up with a mouthful of scratchy fur for his trouble, irritating the wounds on his tongue. "Every day, every night, Angelica just couldn't shut up about you. She would be jumping on you right now if she didn't have to wait for my permission."
…She was long dead before he turned her into this. There's nothing in there. He's just trying to get inside your head. Don't let him.
The mantra did just about nothing to keep him calm, particularly when Eileen's hands dropped down to the seat of his pants and furious humiliation coursed through him. Behind him, Greta chortled, her toothy grip on his shoulder squeezing. "Hawhaw, lookit how red his ears're getting!"
"Embarrassed to have an audience?" Elena purred, forcing his head around to look her in the eyes. "I remember how you two were. You're probably just as eager as her deep inside."
Roland glared back at her ineffectively, focusing as hard as he could on the thought of spontaneously setting her on fire to desperately block out the feeling of Eileen sliding his pants down his hips, exposing him to the crowd. He flushed, unwillingly, and her sadistic grin just widened. "Your blood's all going the wrong way, though, isn't it? I'll help you out with that."
For a moment as she reached out with her other hand Roland was horrified at the thought of her touching him, at being groped by one of the monsters responsible for violating his wife's corpse into the shambling horror that stood lifeless watching even now, trying to force him to get hard with sharp nails against his dick. What she did instead as Eileen withdrew and Jae-Heon raised himself back up might have been worse. Her palm lay flat on his chest, and Roland felt his skin prickle as if poked by hundreds of needles; she was melding into him, parting their flesh to reach the blood vessels beneath and let them directly connect, leaving him with a crawling sensation across his body that he couldn't escape as their veins and arteries were knit together until he could feel her pulse just as well as his own. His heart pounded in fear, and then painfully, artificially slowed.
"There we go," Elena cooed mockingly, almost drowned out by the cacophony of barking-screeching laughter coming from Bremen as unwanted warmth pooled in the pit of his stomach. "No more performance anxiety. You don’t mind if I take a few sips before I let you go, do you? You’re not as appetizing as your pretty head librarian, but you’ll do for a quick snack.”
“Ehey, Elena, don’t get greedy,” Tanya complained; Roland could feel her shifting his grip on him, hand readjusting itself across his mouth as her other kept one of his arms behind his back, mirrored by the shark-woman on his other side. “The rest of us ain’t gettin’ to take bites out of him, ‘s not fair.”
Maybe they would start an actual argument and turn on each other, giving him the chance to pitifully crawl away. Roland knew even as the thought entered his head that he’d never been that lucky, though. Instead he was forced to kneel and endure his body pulsing with detestable arousal, his cock slowly rising to full mast as Elena manipulated his blood inside him, the animal need standing in stark contrast to the maelstrom of his mind as he was gawked at by people he hated. Maybe instead when Tanya finally moved her hand from his mouth he could bite off his tongue and choke to death before this went any further.
He was light-headed by the time Elena was through, feeling another pinching sensation inside his chest as the bloodfiend disconnected their veins and teeming with emotions he couldn’t quite put name to other than the broad categories of fear and hatred and all-encompassing rage. “Better get started fast before he kills his own boner,” she commented, straightening up and circling around behind him. “Someone lay him on his back for wifey?”
With the blood Elena had just taken and the wounds Argalia had inflicted in their fight earlier, Roland had absolutely no hope of resisting as he was manhandled onto his back by the pair of distortions still holding him. It didn’t stop him from trying, but all his weak-limbed flailing managed to achieve as he was briefly hoisted into the air was amusing his audience, even more so when his impact with the ground again made him grunt in pain. “Hard to believe this guy’s the one who caused us all so much trouble, seein’ him like this,” came Greta’s booming voice in his ear, insult sprinkled on top of injury, as she moved to keep his legs pinned while Tanya held his wrists.
He couldn’t even summon up the strength to try and bite his tongue. Stretched out like so much sacrificial meat on an altar, the most noncompliance Roland could muster was trying to turn his head away as Elena lifted his neck to direct his vision to where Jae-Heon stood with his prized puppet. He should have closed his eyes– should have blocked out the sight of the Puppeteer sliding his hands down the sides of that amalgamation of bone and corpse-flesh, should have blinded himself before the vision of another man’s hands caressing his wife’s dead thighs seared itself onto the insides of his eyelids. But all he could do was watch.
“I think she’s been waiting long enough,” Jae-Heon said. “Have fun, Angelica.”
Like clockwork whirring into motion, some semblance of life returned to the puppet’s still form as its master flicked his fingers, lifting its hands to run them up the front of its body and cup its chest in a crude imitation of seduction. Bremen’s shrieking laughter filled the room again as it began to move forward, pelvis rotating in what would have been a sensual sway if the movements weren’t so stilted and stuttering, an awful creaking accompanying its every step. Bile was rising in the back of Roland’s throat.
He wouldn’t break. He wouldn’t beg. He wouldn’t give them the fucking satisfaction. But he nearly did, as the corpse of his wife stepped over him and began to lower itself to sit against his bare skin, cold and clammy and giving him unpleasant goosebumps as dozens of unfocused eyes rolled around and stared down at him from where they’d been crammed into Angelica’s skull. His legs twitched, every nerve in his body telling him to get away runrunrun– half-rotted fingers settled themselves around his cock and tightly squeezed.
As determined as he was to endure, Roland threw up then; with her grip on his hair Elena turned his head to the side to let the contents of his stomach splatter against the library floor rather than clog his throat and choke him, which he was pretty damn resentful of as his audience hooted and cackled. He tried to focus on the leftover burn of stomach acid rather than what was happening to his lower half, but it was impossible to block out; the puppet was shifting its weight up, holding him steady, lining him up with some hole in the bottom-center of its pelvis that Jae-Heon must have put there, the sick bastard–
There was no gentle lowering, no tender reunion between man and wife. The puppet slammed itself down in a single motion, forcing Roland’s cock into a crevice far too sharp and dry for it uncaring of the ripping tendons inside itself, and Roland screamed.
His body burned with the force of the violation as his voice petered out and the puppet dispassionately began to gyrate atop him. Every motion made it feel like he was being cut into, sharp bony edges digging into his hips and scratching along his cock, pain so great it was nauseating as he twitched in the Ensemble’s hold. “Look, I think he likes it!” Tanya jeered; somehow Roland was still present enough to notice the hungry excitement in the way her big hands squeezed tight around his wrists, as if his stomach wasn’t already churning enough.
The puppet’s cadaverous hands slid their way up his torso, coming to press sharp tips into his nipples and make him jolt again, hot new flashes of pain making themselves known to him with every tiny movement. His eyes were glazed, unfocused, but Angelica’s body on top of him stayed crystal-clear even when he closed them, all exposed bone and stitched-together flesh rubbing itself against him in a parody of the closeness they once shared. Her fingers trailed higher, higher up, splaying themselves out against his neck and thumbs beginning to press down…
Oh, thank fuck, he thought, half-hysterically. They’re gonna kill me after all.
“Jae-Heon,” Elena was saying chastisingly as his wife began to strangle him, leaning forward to apply more pressure as she bounced on his dick with such violent fervor he had genuine concerns it might get ripped off before he could die. His pulse was rushing in his ears, toes curling and hands trying fruitlessly to ball into fists, anything he could do for some distraction from the torture. With the bloodfiend holding his hair he couldn’t bare his throat any further, but already his breath was labored, head growing lighter and lighter.
“Come on, the show’s barely started!” Greta added plaintively.
Jae-Heon didn’t respond; though he was nothing but a blurred figure on the edge of his swimming vision, Roland was sure he could feel his glowing red eyes burning a hole right through him as the world started to go dark at its edges.Of all the people gathered here, the one controlling the puppet atop him would have the most reason to want to see Roland dead. Surely, surely–
The pressure on his throat abruptly released. Roland’s traitorous lungs instinctively sucked in fresh air, sputtering and hacking and almost sobbing with the force of the pain radiating through him from the bottom of his feet to the roots of his hair. “We should end this quickly,” he heard Jae-Heon’s voice say, echoing and distorted as solid footsteps approached. “Our conductor’s waiting for us, after all. But I wanted to see that look of despair on his face at least once before we set him free.”
Angelica stilled for a moment with hands wrapped loosely around his neck as Jae-Heon stood over him, and Roland’s attempt at a growl towards him came out more as a broken keen. “Would you like to beg me for your life, Roland?” he asked, not bothering to lower himself to the other’s level this time.
Speaking through all this pain was a tenuous prospect at best. But this might be the last act of defiance available to him. Roland wet his lips with the tip of his bloody tongue, and wheezed, “G-go ffffuck yourself.”
Jae-Heon chuckled, and roughly prodded a bruised section of his ribs with his foot, sending him into a whole new world of agony. “I thought as much. I trust no one else has any objections?” Elena sighed slightly in disappointment, but didn’t speak; the rest of the Ensemble must have indicated their agreement somehow, or else their silence was answer enough. “Let’s hurry this up, then. It hasn’t been a pleasure, Roland. Burn in hell.”
“See you there,” he choked out before the flow of air through his windpipe was cut off once again, Angelica’s thumbs pressing in ruthlessly and this time not letting up. She was grinding herself into him again, inflicting further aches and scrapes where he was already rubbed raw, and the thought of relief from the pain was no longer cathartic at all– with every cell in his body he wanted to live, to fight back, to make every being in this room pay, but he’d exhausted everything he had dueling Argalia. His rage was impotent with nothing left to power it, suffering at the hands of those he had once made suffer himself.
Maybe this was the end result of trying to wash blood with blood.
His vision went dark one last time. With a last strangled gasp as the puppet pressed her misshapen forehead to his and stared at him unseeingly, Roland burst into pages of light.