“Really?” Sienna’s voice wasn’t just a sound; it was a physical force, a deep, contemptuous boom that rattled the air in your micro-lungs. The sudden pressure in her colossal grip—a terrifying fortress of tan, sweat-slicked flesh—drove the breath from your body with surgical malice. Your ribs felt like brittle wicker against the mountainous ridges of her thumb.
“How dumb do you freaks think I am?”
She wasn't angry. She was cold. That was worse. Sienna’s eyes, fierce pools of hazel framed by the sharp, metallic edges of her helm, were narrowed to slits. They didn't hold fury, but a weary, homicidal disbelief.
You knew why. You were dressed in that terrible, stained Art the Clown cosplay—a miniature shadow of her devil. To her, you weren't a lost person; you were either a hallucination from a mind already frayed by trauma, or a newly spawned demon spawn—a tiny mockery sent to torment the Warrior Angel.
Her armor confirmed her identity and her rage. The Warrior Angel costume was no mere cloth now. The metallic cuirass shone with a dull, ethereal light, the seams of the white and gold plates scarred by dirt and rust-colored stains. The pauldrons jutted out like the stumps of massive, clipped wings. A thin, ethereal glow seemed to cling to the edges of the thick, protective leather straps across her chest. She looked like a six-foot statue of a mythic protector, and you were a bug on her pedestal.
“You’re a character in a movie?” Her tone was a low, guttural sneer that vibrated your teeth. “I’m a woman who watched my brother get dragged into the abyss by a creature of pure evil, and then I spent five years in a goddamn white room because people thought I was the crazy one. You think a bad movie joke is going to work on me now?”
You clawed desperately at the uneven landscape of her skin, scrabbling for purchase against the tiny hairs and pores. You could feel the slow, heavy pulse of her blood beneath the surface. It was horrifyingly real. Your own muscles strained, your pathetic clown gloves slipping uselessly against the vast, smooth wall of her thumb.
“I’m telling the truth!” you gasped, the sound lost against the roar of your own strained breathing. “I’m not one of his! I’m from another—”
Her grip tightened again, instantly cutting off your air. The world turned a dizzying, sickening shade of gray and maroon. She was toying with you, testing the limits of your durability with the casual expertise of a surgeon.
“I know what you are, little phantom,” she whispered, her voice suddenly dropping low, a terrifyingly intimate rumble. You felt the warm, stale scent of her breath wash over you—an immense, humid gust. “You’re the whisper. The echo. The thing he sends into my head to make me doubt myself.”
She relaxed her thumb just enough for you to suck down a desperate, rattling breath. But then, with horrifying precision, she shifted her focus.
A single, thick knuckle pressed down, not crushing, but isolating your left knee. She focused the full, deliberate power of a woman who had spent months in physical therapy just on that one, fragile joint.
CRACK!
The sound was shockingly loud, a wet splintering that echoed inside her hand like a gunshot in a cave.
“AAAAAAGH!”
The blinding, white-hot agony caused a primal shriek to tear from your throat. You convulsed, your body arching in her palm. The scream was barely a buzz in the cavern of her ear, but the movement was enough for her.
“There it is,” she murmured, her voice laced with chilling satisfaction. “Illusions don't feel pain. Little demons do.”
She tilted her hand, sending you tumbling from her palm onto the dusty, scarred surface of the coffee table. You landed hard, the impact jolting your newly broken knee. You cried out again, trying to drag your crippled body away, your hands slipping on the varnished wood. The table, to you, was a vast, unforgiving desert.
She loomed over the edge, her face a mountain range of focused intent. The sight of your shattered knee seemed to confirm everything for her.
"I won't let you infect this space," she announced, her voice booming. She vanished from your sight, and you heard the terrifying, low rumble of heavy leather and scraping metal—the sound of her body shifting on the floorboards.
Then, she reappeared, the sight of the colossal, menacing tip of a hot glue gun suddenly dominating your horizon. It looked like a cannon.
“Art taught me a lot of things about how his magic works,” she said, her voice now filled with a cold, almost detached practicality. “And one thing I know is that if I can seal you, I can silence you.”
She aimed the smoking, dripping nozzle at a point just a few inches from your head. You could already feel the wiry heat radiating from the tip, smelling the acrid, chemical scent of molten plastic mixing with the faint, metallic scent of her armor.
“You’ll be a nice, little, sealed exhibit for the police. Just an example of what his illusions look like up close. Quiet and harmless.” Her lip curled in a tiny, triumphant sneer. "And you won't be ruining my holiday."
The first, fat, shimmering drop of clear, viscous glue plopped onto the wood, sealing the area next to your good leg with a soft, hissing sound. The heat radiating from it was intense.
You screamed again, scrambling backwards with desperate, clawing hands, dragging the dead weight of your ruined knee behind you. The tiny, pathetic sound was lost beneath the terrifying, methodical approach of the Warrior Angel.
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