"Will you calm down now?" Azrail asked as his eye twitched slightly.

Large chunks of wood and metal pierced Abraham's body and pinned him to the ground. Even in such a state, he let out a short scoff. "The moment I'm free, I will kill you."

Azrail rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he started to circle Abraham. Each step was slow and calculated as his eyes drifted towards the sky. "Since I arrived here, I have felt ill at ease. There is something fundamentally wro...no, not necessarily wrong, but different. Different in such a basic, invisible, and yet profound way. It's..."

"If I promise to stop trying to kill you," Abraham interrupted. "Will you finally shut up?"

"Does the truth make you uncomfortable brother Abraham?" Azrail lowered his eyes to the pierced man's and appraised his expression.

Abraham snorted. "Uncomfortable? More like bored. People like you who go off on asinine tirades about the smallest things. Thinking you're these grand philosophers when you're just idiots that constantly spew garbage. And the worst part? it's always the same thing. never anything new or creative. Don't even have the decency to have an origina...hmmmph!"

Squip

Azrail had grabbed a wooden board that had been broken during their fighting. He slowly lowered it through Abraham's mouth and forced him to stop talking. As the wood hit resistance, he just kept lowering it down. When it was firmly through his flesh with half of it in the ground, Azrail withdrew his hand.

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"You really should work on actually listening." Azrail said calmly as if this was some normal situation and there wasn't a human pincushion at his feet. "If many people tell you the same thing, maybe it is not them who are the fools?"

Abraham rolled his eyes.

Azrail either didn't see it, or he ignored the response. "Now, as for actually important matters, this place is fundamentally different. I am sure it is the same for you. This place should not exist. It doesn't feel solid. It's more like...like it's constantly losing energy. Like a bucket with a hole in it. More and more water is needed to replace what it loses."

"Are you familiar with Hamistagan?" Azrail asked as he looked down at Abraham.

The bleeding man just raised an eyebrow at Azrail in response.

"I see," he said with a small nod. "This place is neither paradise, nor is it the abyss. That much must be obvious to you, yes? Well, it is not the world either."

Azrail knelt down and dug his hand into the soil. He pulled up a chunk and let it crumble apart and fall out of his hand. "There are aspects of the divine mixed into the very nature of this place, but they've been twisted with the physical and the damned. It's an abominable aberration of a world. One that doesn't give, it only takes."

As Azrail went off on his rant, Abraham started to shift himself around. Slowly he tore his limbs off of the makeshift spikes that held him to the ground. As he freed his flesh, it started to quickly repair the extra damage he had forced upon it.

He kept his eyes on Azrail as he slowly tore himself free piece by piece. All the while, he made sure that he stayed in a similar position to how he was stuck to the ground. Thanks to that, without directly looking at him, it'd be hard to tell he had moved at all.

Azrail started to get a crazed look in his eyes as he reached the crescendo of his rant. "Yes, that's it don't you see? A holding pen. A staging area. But the question is for what? How many warriors have come here to die for forces beyond their comprehension? Who is moving these pieces? How many generations have...urk!"

Abraham's arm had moved down to his side instinctually after a familiar wooden staff slammed against him. He stumbled to the side as his legs struggled to hold up his weight.

"Shoot, if I'd waited another moment to heal more, I probably could've knocked more than just the wind out of you," Abraham said gleefully as his bloody body still struggled to sew him back together.