Greed and Despond (Ban x Sin!Reader)

10

"Why do you think King wants to go to a place like the Capitol of the Dead?" Hawk asked as we walked through the village, attempting to find the entry point the two children had told us about.

"I'm sure we'll find something out once we get there," Meli shrugged.

"What I want to know is why he ran away from us. More specifically- Diane," I said, furrowing my brows in thought. "I mean... that was weird- even for him."

Nobody answered, and we continued walking in silence until we reached the rear of the village, where there was a large clearing surrounded on three side by cliffs. The ground was extremely bare- there didn't seem to be a living thing anywhere near here. I guess that makes sense for an entrance to the afterlife...

"This looks like the place they told us about," Diane said, looking around to make sure it met the description the kids gave us.

"Yeah, but how do we get there? It is the afterlife..." Hawk pointed out.

"How about we kill ourselves?" Meli suggested; Hawk squealed.

"I'm down," I shrugged, looking around for any physical entry point.

"I can't tell whether you two are crazy or stupid!" Hawk shrieked, his ears shooting upward in protest.

"Probably both," I laughed, to which Hawk groaned.

"Well, they also told us a precious memory with someone deceased would open the gate," Ellie chimed in happily. "If so, I would love to meet my mother. She died before I was born- so I never got to meet her."

"Well that won't work," Meli said bluntly. Could you be any more insensitive?

"Oh, right..." Ellie muttered sadly. "I don't have any memories to share with her."

"Huh?" Diane said suddenly. I turned toward her to see what was the matter, but I noticed it almost immediately after turning my head.

The entire, once barren, clearing was now full of light pink roses. They covered every inch of the ground up to the large cliffs and the beginning of the village. It was a beautiful sight- breathtaking, even. This must be the entrance to the Capitol. That must mean someone 'shared a precious memory with the dead'. But who...?

I looked around, almost immediately finding my answer. Ban was standing in the center of where the flowers spread, staring up into the sky, looking as though he was lost in thought.

"Flowers...? But where...?" Ellie asked nobody in particular, staring around in astonishment.

"So what? They're just flowers. No matter how many you eat, they'll never fill you up," Hawk huffed, looking at Ellie. As soon as he released air from his snout, petals flew upward, detaching from flowers and beginning to swirl around us. An unseen source of powerful wind surrounding us, causing what seemed to be a whirlwind of flowers.

It was probably one of the greatest things I had ever experienced.

The wind swiftly began picking up its pace until the world around us went out of sight, and all we could see was unending pastel pink. I covered my face, not wanting to be struck in the eye by one of the petals.

As soon as the flowers had begun swirling around us, they stopped, and disappeared from sight. When they left our vision, however, we were not met by the sight of the forest or the village we were originally in. It's hard to explain what was around us, it was so odd that it seemed to be unreal.

There were large, jagged crystal formations surrounding us- all of them a vibrant, translucent green color. Several of the green objects formed pathways around the foreign area, like the one we were standing on. Yellow particles floated around through the sky, which was a tie-dye of a sickly yellow and green. It was an ethereal plane, clearly not one of earthly origin.