Chapter Text
Monomon leaned against the windowsill, looking out into the palace yard. She’s tired. It has been a few weeks of… of whatever it is that’s happening to Quirrel, and she desperately wants someone else to see what she is seeing. Because no-one else seems to notice anything odd at all. But he’s different, colder, and it almost seems like his proportions have changed, like he doesn’t fit into his seams anymore.
She needs to speak with the King and Queen, needs someone to explain to her what she is seeing. Because she’s worried about Quirrel and his well being, and something about it is telling her that it will not end well if she doesn’t bring it up. There's a feeling of fear in the air, the faintest trace of great danger forming a pit inside her.
“Lady Monomon?”
She turned towards the Royal retainer approaching her, tearing her eyes away from the window.
“They will see you now.”
The Throne room opened beautifully into the palace garden from a balcony behind the thrones, so that the light and greenery of the cavern outside let in its warm glow into the whiteness of the room. Monomon could see the King and Queen on their thrones, quietly conversing, waiting for her. She did her best to let the nervousness within her settle, to make room for her more typical state of being.
Monomon bowed her head, “Your divine Highnesses, I am grateful that you agreed to see me on such short notice…”
“Lady Monomon, it is good to see you,” The White Lady said, the jewels within her branches making the softest of ringing as she turned her head.
“You are a trusted advisor and a great friend of our family, Lady Monomon. Your concerns are ours. Now tell us, what is behind your visit?” the Pale King asked, a slight worry in his voice even though he looked completely composed.
“It’s Quirrel, your highness… He has been acting odd, lately, in a way that seems completely unlike him. He worries me, and not only because no-one else seems to notice that anything is off about him. He seems too large for his frame, too cold, too much the opposite of how I’ve learnt to know him. Like he has become something else entirely.” Monomon sighed. “Everything is wrong. And I feel fear, around him, but not from him, but as if there is an aura of fear around him that clings to his shell. A danger that I cannot see, a power that I do not understand. And I fear what happens if I do nothing, If I let this go on for much longer.”
The King looks progressively more worried as Monomon speaks, sharing a look with his wife. Perhaps he knows the answer to what is going on, or perhaps he just pretends that he does.
“That all does sound rather worrying…” He says and the White Lady agrees. They’re not going to tell Monomon everything, to not worry her more, but they do wonder…
Someone has been killing off high ranking people in the hierarchy of Hallownest, each body left behind just as gruesome as the last, every single one decapitated cleanly and effortlessly, and each one picked clean of their usable insides. Every single body had been left without a heart, most without lungs and most with considerably less muscle mass than there should have been, their leaking blood leaving suspicious markings on the floor. Symbols in a language long forgotten and markings for something yet to come, a creature, a beast, growing in power, living undetected somewhere within Hallownest.
The King and Queen couldn’t help but wonder…
“Perhaps it would be good, that you brought him to see us as well, let us examine him..” the White Lady hummed, her branches clinking as she moved her head in thought.
“If this is something we can help with, we will gladly do so. For your sake, and his.” The King agreed, gently placing his hands around one of Monomons tendrils. “When the next good moment arrives, we will let you know, and you can bring him to us.”
Monomon sighed in relief, “Yes, your highness. I will let Quirrel know that you would like to see him.” She knew that letting them know of her worries had been the thing that would ease her mind. At least for a while.
“Do you think it’s possession?” The White Lady asked after the door had closed behind Monomon and she was once again left alone with her husband.
“It’s too early to say, but for his sake I wish it is not.”
“But what if it is him?”
“Then we will have to do what is to be done. Whether it ends well or not.”
・．━━━━━━━━━━━━ † ━━━━━━━━━━━━．・
Quirrel hummed to himself as he walked through the empty front hall of a fancy townhome somewhere a bit outside of the City of Tears. The floors were beautiful dark wood and polished to perfection, with a long and soft rug running down the middle of the room. The windows in the foyer were all stained glass, with depictions of possibly the owners history and the soft light of the night trickled in quite beautifully through the coloured glass. Everything was unnaturally quiet, the sound muffled into near nonexistence by Their presence.
No light in the house was on, except for the second floor bedroom light. The bedroom door was locked, too, and held the terrified owner inside. He had made sure of it all.
“You are taking your time tonight,” The God whispered, simultaneously inside his head and right beside his ear.
“Oh are you in a hurry somewhere?” He asked, marvelling at the beautiful carvings on the handrail of the stairs, all made from the same dark wood as the floor. “And here I thought, that you love spending time with me?”
The God laughed, a terrifying, deep sound that made Quirrels knees weak and his stomach to tie itself to knots. “I do, but looking at the decor is not the fun of having you here…” They said, the ghost of their hand gently running up his spine.
He sighed, climbing the stairs near silently, coming face to face with the long and dark hallway at the top. “Then what is the fun part?” he asked, a sly smile on his mouth.
“Watching you work, fast, deadly and efficient. This part of you that no-one besides me could see hiding within. And part of the fun is having you to myself after. All mine,” They whispered, their bared teeth against his neck. “Speaking of after,” The God continued, “The study of tonight's prey had a quite beautiful, one of a kind writing desk in it and I think, that you’d look lovely sprawled on top of it…”
Quirrel shivered, feeling the way Their consciousness merged with his and he could very clearly see the image of himself that They had in their head.
“I’m not letting you fuck me on the crime scene. It’s an unnecessary danger no matter how nice you think it’d be.”
“Mmh, your loss,” They said, letting go of his mind.
He stopped outside of the bedroom door, given away by the light shining from inside. He could see that the key was still inside the lock, which would make things considerably easier. Not that a locked door could have stopped him anyway. With a simple, quiet call upon the God's name who currently possessed his body, the key in the lock began turning on its own, clicking quietly as it did so. The lock opened in no time at all, and the door even pushed itself open with a creak, letting the light of the room bleed into the now pitch black hallway.
The man he had driven into hiding was standing behind the bed, against the far wall, holding a loaded crossbow. His hands were trembling, and Quirrel could smell his fear all the way to the door.
“You will not take me, you unholy abomination!” The man shouted, redying himself. He sounded just as nervous as he had in the study, when Quirrel had walked in the first time
Quirrel laughed, his mouth full of sharp teeth that someone of his species definitely should not have, his eyes dribbling inky black tears, telling that someone else was also looking through his eyes. The Man aimed.
And Quirrel, driven forward by the hunger of a God, leapt forward, a weapon of void in his hands, passing the bolt from the man's crossbow and easily vaulting himself over the bed. The dagger he was holding sunk into the man's neck without much resistance, the divine blade much more sharp than any mortal weapon. His other hand was buried into the man’s wig, apparently very sturdily glued on wig, holding his head up and in place.
The man let out a pitiful gurgle as blood sprinkled out of his mouth with his last breaths, his eyes trying to keep focus on Quirrel. With one amused hum and a practised movement of his hand, the head separated from the body with a disgusting squelch, blood spraying everywhere. The body hit the edge of the bed first and then the ground with a thump, continuing to bleed as it did so.
He held the head in his hand from the wig, a few intestines now hanging off the bottom and the eyes continuing to move for a few seconds before the brain ran out of air. As he waited the body managed to form a growing pool of blood at his feet, not that he wasn’t already covered with it anyway. The Man dies alone and sad and pathetic, bleeding out into the carpet. The stain is never coming out.
The dagger dissolved from his hands.
“Well,” The God said, their cold hands cradling his face, their likeness overtaking his reflection on the window. “He was very wrong about that,” They snickered.
Quirrel nodded with a smile, using his free hand to turn the headless body around. He could see the blood already form markings on the floor, moving in a way it naturally shouldn’t have. Only a few more bodies, and They’d be in full power again. “Perfect,” he muttered, before kicking the crossbow under the bed, and taking a few steps back to seat himself on the armchair that was in the corner of the room.
As soon as he sat down, he could feel the Gods form separate from him, becoming more corporeal. They were breathtaking as always, too tall to properly fit in the room, with a maw full of too many and too sharp teeth, with white eyes that pierced you right through your soul and clawed hands large enough to take a grown man apart with one swing. But their form was still shadowy and even a bit see-through, with the tips of their horns almost as if dissolving into the air, their state weakened by the presence of Pale beings that ruled Hallownest. They were a hungry, ravenous, merciless God, borrowing his body to grow in power, trusting him to lead a cult in their name.
He watched them tear the man open, cracking the carapace and ribcage like eggshells, cutting cleanly and still somehow getting blood everywhere. The God tore the heart from the chest, drinking down what blood was still left, Their mouth open wide, small trickles of blood running down their chin. They let out a lewd, pleased sound as They pulled the heart into their mouth with Their tongue, enjoying it like a delicacy. The other parts of the insides interested the God far less than the heart, but they were starving, so they ate whatever they wanted, indulging in the blood and the flesh of an unwilling victim. And Quirrel watched them near bury their entire head inside the body, listening to the sound of their teeth easily pulling apart the dead flesh.
The decapitated head was resting on his lap, staining his thighs with blood. His hand was still buried in the wig, petting mindlessly as he watched Them drench Themself in blood and pick everything clean around the ribs. To say he was captivated would have been understatement. There was simply something about Them that made him unable to tear his eyes away, something in the way They carried Themself that made his stomach turn in the good way every time. The thought That they could just as easily kill him, if they wanted to.
Eventually They became full enough for the evening, their form now more solid than before. Quirrel followed their fluid movement as the God crossed the room in a single step, now looming above him. He could hear the quiet drip drops of the blood running down their body and falling onto the carpet.
“Are you using his head to hide your indecency again?” They asked, pressing one of Their hands against his face, running Their thumb against his cheek.
“No,” He said quietly, not lying about it. This time.
The God hummed, amused. “Hungry, then? There might still be something left, if you want it…”
“I couldn’t, really. You know that I eat a mostly plant based diet. Too much meat will cause me problems and indigestion,” He hummed in answer, placing his own hand against the Gods.
“And yet you chase their taste from my mouth every time…” They said, voice low and knowing.
He didn’t deny it. He couldn’t really, when he had allowed Them so freely inside his head. Because They were everything he wanted, because They never made him feel ashamed for who he was, for wanting the things he did. He met their eyes as he planted a kiss on their palm, licking off the blood still on their hands.
The God chuckled, throwing the head off his lap about to the direction of the rest of the body, pressing their other hand against his thigh. “Ready to go, then? Get cleaned up and have some fun, hm?”
“Yeah,” He said, feeling them draw small circles against the inside of his thigh with their thumb. “If you don’t make me walk all the way to the archives, maybe I’ll let you fuck me against my own desk..” he continues, just a little coy.
They laugh, lifting him from the chair, pressing their mouth against his neck, dragging their teeth and tongue against the sensitive parts there. “Deal,” they mumble, their breath cold and sweet on his shell, before darkness swallows the light in the bedroom too and a picked clean, decapitated and miserable body is the only one left in the house.
Later in the night Monomon can't quite figure out why one of the hallways in the Archives smells so much like blood.