Judith dragged Arthur to the corner as John snapped the chain connected to the shackle around his other foot. "I knew it. I knew there was something wrong with you. Arthur's too much of a softie. If I'd shown up too late, he would have let you out, and who knows what you would have done."

"Yes," John cooed, "Keep justifying my mistreatment to yourself."

"I don't need to. I know I'm right, and that's what matters."

John laughed, a sound like nails on a chalkboard. "Of course. You're a skeptical mind, Judith. You're smarter than you think, anyway."

Judith scoffed. "I feel pretty stupid letting things escalate this far."
"That was stupid of you," John agreed. "But it's too late for regret. I want to make you

hurt for trapping me for so long."
"We weren't even the ones who trapped you!" Judith argued despite herself. "The Talons

are the ones who brought you here!"

"And yet, the Talons aren't the ones in front of me at the moment," John's eyes, under the mask that was his face, intensified as they stared into her. "They are not the ones who filled me with rage, and they are not here to suffer the consequences of it. Not even Arthur is here right now. It's only you, Judith."

With a final clatter, the last chain broke. John dove at her. Judith narrowly swerved out of the way, knocking over a few chairs and falling to the ground, her baton scattering loose from

sight. As he changed his trajectory to strike at her again, she hastily picked one up and swung it at his head. John staggered, nearly snarling as he reached up to touch his face.

She swung again. With a flash of sharp teeth, he snatched the chair midswing and stood to his full height, lifting Judith off of the ground with it. "I'll be sure to take my time tearing you to pieces."

He grabbed her side with a hand with fingers too long and crooked and squeezed. Judith screamed, letting go of the chair to wrap around his wrist in a rabid attempt to pull him away. His skin was tight, its weight like a limb of some kind of machine, unyielding and rigid, wrapped in leather. If he squeezed any more, she was sure her stomach would pop like a balloon-

"Your holiness. I’ve arrived to aid you."

John turned to look at the back of the room, and there was the Old Man. Judith was dropped, the height and force of it stunning her hip as she landed roughly.

The Old Man smiled and walked forward, his steps the only sound in the otherwise quiet room besides Judith's labored curses.

Once stony and emotionless in its mask-like appearance, John's face broke into a more thoughtful expression, though one equally as chilling. It was the look of a being that was aware of something Judith was not, and aware of something Judith could never hope to comprehend.

John held up a hand. "Stop."
The Old Man froze. Judith compulsively froze, too, the sudden conviction in John's tone

freezing the blood in her veins. John smiled. "Kneel."

The Old Man buckled to the ground in a way that Judith was sure must have been bad for his knees. John towered over them, his hair floating around his head like a dark halo, a strange undercurrent of divine power radiating past the horror. Judith scrambled, trying to stand up. This couldn't be real. Surely John wasn't actually a god?

At the exact moment that she had that thought, John snapped his head towards her. He smiled, his expression holding no true joy in it. "Tell me. What do you think I am?"

The power of his words gripped Judith's mind like a set of jaws, squeezing her brain until she was forced to answer. "You're a monster."

John's expression did not change. "Perhaps. But it doesn't really matter what I am, does it? Monster or not, I rule your mind."

The Old Man gazed at John, a look of adoration and awe in his cataract-ridden eyes. "You're perfect. Soon, you will rise to even greater heights than this. You will remake the world into something new. Something better."

"Perhaps." John tapped his chin thoughtfully. "But to do that, I must leave this prison. Although... I don't want to. At least, not quite yet. I still want to make you pay for trapping me here."

John's eyes remained laser-focused on Judith, and she couldn't even pull her gaze away. He looked at the Old Man and pointed to the long-forgotten blade on the ground. "Old Fool, take that blade and cut your own throat."

The Old Man gulped. “But.... but your holiness... I-"
"Did I stutter?" John said, a hint of annoyance present in the otherwise calm response.

"Prove your devotion to my apotheosis. Slit. Your. Throat."

The Old Man grabbed the knife. The movement was forced and janky. The Man's hands trembled as he slowly, inch by inch, began to lift the blade closer to his neck, his cheeks turning bright red with the effort to resist.

"If your devotion is absolute," John asked, "Then why do you resist your god?" "I-I didn't know you would ask this of me, I-" The Old Man began to plead, tears

streaking his cheeks. "Please... I don't want to die. Please, don't kill me."

"I'm not killing you." John's smile fell. "You're doing it all on your own."

The knife plunged. The Old Man's mouth opened in a silent scream, blood spilling from his mouth as he dragged the blade from left to right, the sounds of slicing gore and metal scraping against bone as he cut his neck open.

"Stop!"

As if a spell was broken, John's head snapped to the side, breaking his connection. The Old Man's hands dropped down, and he collapsed, steaming blood pooling beneath him. Judith

dragged her eyes away from the gory display, terrified into silence as she looked in the same direction.

Arthur stood in the corner, swaying as he struggled to keep his balance, trying his best to ignore the Old Man's body and steeled his resolve. "'A creature of perception and persuasion.' That's what you are, isn't it?"

John stared down at him, and a soft light twinkled in his eyes while his expression remained cold. A look of acknowledgement. "What do you think?"

Arthur swallowed, unsure of himself. "I-I think that you only become what others perceive you to be. I think everybody in this room has been incorrect about what you are at some point tonight. And I don't think you're a monster."

"Are you serious?!" Judith said incredulously. "Fucking look at him!"

John didn't bother giving her a backward glance. "What makes you so sure?"

"I had a hunch. You don't actually have any secret ulterior motives, do you? Your earlier nonsense was just smoke and mirrors. You just want to leave, plain and simple."

John said nothing. Arthur continued. "Other people get ideas about who or what you are, assumptions based on their first impression of you, and you have no choice but to play the role of whoever they perceive you to be. You become what others think you are."

"Stop," John said, his tone sharp but lacking in the intensity from when he was chasing them down, or when he was ordering the Old Man to kill himself. "Do you think you can humanize me, make me small and manageable, so I fight back less when you call for backup?"

"It must be hard to never be in control of what you are. To never have the full range of free will. You were afraid, weren't you? Afraid of our doubts and opinions turning you into something you couldn’t control? That we’d use it against you?"

Again, John did not answer. Arthur adjusted his glasses. "All of the secrecy is because you want to control how you change, right? Offer us enough answers to come to certain conclusions, but also give yourself enough mystery to give leeway to your actions. You don't want to make our perception of you so rigid that you can't act in your own interest. Am I right?"

"So what if you are?" John asked, his tone bitter. For the first time in a while, he looked as tired as Arthur assumed he felt. "What does that mean for us? For me?"

"I still want to keep my promise," Arthur said, finality in his tone. "I want to get you out of here. I want to help you."

Arthur held out a hand.

John stared down at it, a moment of sincerity passing between the two men. John still looked terrifying - he stood far taller than he should have, a divine, haunting energy orbiting around him. Despite this, Arthur tried his best to focus on the part of John that he could understand and sympathize with, and he knew that this crumb of humanization would be enough. Judith saw John as a monster, the Old Man saw John as a god and whoever hurt John in the past saw him as a helpless doll. If Arthur could just see John as a human, as a person, it would be enough.

The Old Man on the ground at that moment let out a final, shuddering breath. Judith stared down at him. "I think he's dead."

At that exact moment, John changed so imperceptibly that Arthur almost couldn't believe he hadn't always been that way. He stood less tall, less imposing, less divine, his stature accommodating Arthur's humbling perspective, but Judith's tinge of distrust and fear still kept him from shrinking entirely back to the more harmless form he'd held earlier that day.

John took his hand. Despite the earlier terror still permeating the room, the moment is gentle.

His eyes gazed down softly at Arthur, and despite the apparent difference in power, he shrunk away as he spoke. "There's no way for you to know who I really am. For all we know, I'm only acting the way I am right because it's what you think I should act like. Am I really some poor victim of circumstance, or do you only perceive me that way because of your own guilt coloring your perspective of me?"

Arthur paused as John leaned in, eager for an answer. "Honestly, I don't know, okay? But that's not something I can ever know for sure, is it? Or if it is, it's something we can figure out with time. Together."

John smiled. "I suppose that's as good an answer as any."

"This is insane," Judith spoke up, and the other two turned to look at her. "Arthur, help me up."

Arthur let go of John’s hand and walked around him. Letting Judith lean on his arm, they both stood to full height. Judith scowled, eyeing John suspiciously. She looked back at Arthur. "Was all that shit you were saying true?"

He nodded. "Yes. I'm sure of it."

“So, all this time, all that suspicious shit he was doing was because I was suspicious of him first?” Judith sighed. “That’s annoying. So we basically wasted a bunch of time investigating this shit for nothing.”

“Well,” Arthur said coyly, “I wanted to free him from the beginning, just an FYI.”

“If we had, then we would have just let him run rampant without any context,” Judith corrected, her gaze narrowing, “Which means it would have been a disaster regardless. Although, one with maybe less of a body count.”

She looked down at the Old Man’s corpse.

Arthur smiled. “Agree to disagree. I know this isn’t easy, but let's just trust him, Judith. He’s only as trustworthy as we perceive him to be.”

"I won't," Judith said. She sighed. "But I do want to trust you. So, as hard as this is to wrap my head around, I'll believe you."

Arthur smiled. "Thank you."

Judith frowned even deeper. "Don't push it. If he turns out to betray us because you were wrong about your hunch, I'm holding you accountable."

She looked back to John. She scowled. "Are you going to hurt people if we leave this building?"

John smirked. "Do you think I'm going to hurt people?"

Judith stuttered. Arthur sighed. "No. He won't. As long as we decide that he doesn't."

John tilted his head coyly. "There’s no way to know for sure, really. I guess you're just going to have to take a leap of faith."

Judith frowned. She hated this.