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It’s a pitiful way to go, a perfect stamp on the end of his sad and cowardly life.
Philip doesn’t look at the sword raised above his head. He doesn’t have to. He can already feel it happening- his skin turning into blood-soaked paper beneath his clothes. He’d failed his mission- of course he had. If Salvador and Yuna couldn’t do it, then why the hell would he be able to? He’d been a fool to try and challenge this infernal place.
Though, perhaps now, he is the infernal one.
His sword, summoned from nowhere, lays abandoned next to him, red beginning to crisp and burn on its fiery edge. His armor- the one small piece he’d been able to pull from the depths of him- is cracked, useless against the weapon coming down over his head. It only protects his arm, and though it had deflected a blow or two, couldn’t stand against the constant onslaught of these so-called librarians .
Librarians. Ha. He’d been thrown around like a ragdoll by a couple of book-keepers.
Could a man be any more useless than that?
The color red pulls him from his spiraling thoughts. Here, from his place on the ground, the puddle of blood next to his head serves as a lovely mirror- yet another view of the incoming sword. It’s silver, he thinks, but in this view it’s a lovely rose color, blackened with soot from all the places he’d been hit before. He can feel the bruises through the malaise and sorrow- hundreds of them layered on top of each other, each trying to compete with the gaping hole in his side as if his attention were some sort of grand prize.
It’s not.
His attention is barely worth a glance at the best of times. He wonders what Yuna would say if she were still here-
A yelp sounds from somewhere above him. The sword never comes down- instead, he feels compressed for a moment, as if his entire body is being stuffed into a bag three sizes too small. He gasps, trying to uncurl and search for air, only for the sensation to cease as quickly as it started. He looks to the puddle to assess the view, but the puddle has been replaced with clean, polished wood.
“Damn,” a gruff voice says. “Good thing I thought ahead with that teleporter.”
A shadow falls over him as a hand touches his shoulder, the voice grunting in surprise and recognition.
“What have you done now, Philip?” Oscar asks, his fingers dancing around the spots where Philip’s fire still burns, chewing through the oxygen of the office lazily in an effort to stabilize.
He wants to answer, he wants to tell Oscar what happened- his failure- but the hole in his side throbs again as the puddle of blood is created anew, and he slowly fades away into oblivion.