Username: Baneful
Prompt response: Tracey hadn't asked to be sent on this mission. If there was one that he could have refused, this was it. But you didn't refuse Direct Orders. They hadn't received any big orders in millennia, suspecting that the Overseer had long abandoned them to their free will. They said it was asleep, but sometimes Tracey suspected it was dead, that after birthing the universe and everything in it, it had served its purpose and left them all to their spiralling madness, surrounded by nothing but the chaos of the Abyss and destined for ultimate dissolution.
But the words had come, and as the only one who could survive hearing them, Tracey had been the receiver. The order was clear, the aim unmistakable. Striking a blow so profoundly into the heart of the world would herald another war, one that would never settle into a tenuous ceasefire but which would burn everything down. The Abyssals merely awaited their chance to strike, singing songs that drove those who heard them utterly mad.
Getting here had been easy. The two souls were tethered together by an invisible thread that made every moment apart a kind of agony. Moving towards his goal had been as easy as an exhalation. And he was powerful, beyond the comprehension of the choirs or the legions, a realm unto himself.
The Overseer knew what he was doing and what this would wreak. Heaven and Hell would unravel immediately, spilling their denizens into the other realms and throwing all balance aside. And yet the words had come, and for so long, Tracey had followed them unquestioningly.
Down and down, circling down and down he went, his six wyngs spread wide against the darkness. The gates could not stop him, and the hounds bowed their heads and whimpered as he crossed them. No longer was he clad in simple guise but had thrown it aside, a mighty and unfathomably giant celestial beast.
He'd been sent to slay a dragon. /The/ dragon. The dragon who had defined all others. It didn't align with the prophecies or anything, and he wasn't sure why things were unfolding the way they were.
He alighted on Hell's lowest frosty layer and turned his head to seek out his prey.
"You've come to kill me." a voice said calmly, and Tracey saw him then for the first time in uncountable years. He was small, still in his humanoid guide, a mirror of his own, pale and as brilliant and beautiful as the last time they'd met. "Because He told you to," he said. "But you know that it's not what is right."
He stood, unafraid, before the writhing mass of Tracey's form.
"You know that this is all bullshit. It's all a test. It has always been a test. This test is just the last one. He did it to Adam, and he's doing it to you. Playing games."
He spread his arms, welcoming, as if inviting an embrace.
"Will you win or will you lose, brother? Will you kill us both, kill yourself for the sake of an order? This moment is where you choose."
Tracey could feel the choice looming before him. No one but the Overseer and himself were capable of this act, and the crossroads reached forever. Whatever he chose here, the repercussions would be eternal and felt across all realms forever.
He'd been patient, and he'd been Patience itself.
And maybe he was finally tired. He was tired of enduring, turning the other cheek, and taking orders unquestioningly. He'd been beaten down a hundred thousand times, but this ask was too much. By all accounts, it was a sin. Self-destruction was a sin in humans; it was the obliteration of a divine vessel.
But they were not divine in the end, were they? Had they ever been?
"We are more than the humans." his brother said. "We are made of the same stuff as the Overseer and always have been. He needs us to fight, divided and at odds, lest we finally turn our many eyes upon him."
"Join me," he said. "Finally."
Tracey shrunk down to his smaller shape until he was eye to eye with his other half, able to look him in the face as he made the ultimate choice for both of them.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Across from him, his brother closed his eyes, and Tracey knew that he feared only one thing in the entire universe and everything beyond it.
He embraced him. "I'm sorry," he said.
"And I'll never leave you again."
You were sent by those above you to kill the mighty dragon. But when you get there, you realize you don't want to.