08-23-2020, 09:18 PM
Where has it gone?
Mae keeps listening for it. Her ears keep straining, flicking forwards and back. All her other senses seem useless here. What is the point? The grating is stronger but it's shifted somehow. It came from all around before but now it seems to come from below. No, not below. From <i>within.</i> She is on her knees, shaking. Mae shakes and this world - the After - shakes with her. Almost as if it is grieving with her for this forgotten child. For the one she hadn't bothered to live for.
The child she had accused (and now wonders if she executed).
The Afterlife feels as if it could topple - as if it could all fray apart from the loose threads unraveling in her mind because her heart is still dim. The heart that Carnage had shattered seems to have done something else as well. They can't bleed the same way they might in the Land of the Living. Mae can't bleed out so she bleeds within. Those shards in her chest are dull but they continue to cut and carve, slowly draining away what little color there is in this world. The fog in front of her swirls and sways on an existential wind - a breeze bent by the whim of a God. Master strokes, really, revealing a glimpse of <i>something</i> below her. She'd pay it no heed because her immediate focus is the grinding in the air, the way that it rattles now instead of shrieks. The gray mare shakes her head once but it does nothing. It alleviates nothing and then He commands.
<i>There</i>, orders the voice. Carnage.
She obeys and looks down again, where the circle beneath her shimmers. Her dark eyes watch it because sometimes it comes into view and sometimes it doesn't. It comes in and out of focus and she wonders what <i>There</i> is. The thought doesn't remain alone because one that isn't her own follows behind it. <i>Through there</i>, the Dark God commands and Mae stiffens. There? The thought jars and she shakes her head, obscuring the last part. But she hears it. <i>It's hungry.</i> The mirage below her widens and grows, like it is feeding of every moment she delays. That for each second she doubts Carnage, it - <i>There</i> - grows.
Beqanna's history is littered with tales of Carnage. He had been Mortal once, the horses of Old had murmured (before the colors and magic mutated, when they had only had their horns and their wings). But what happened between those generations and this moment is unknown to Mae. What the Man might have been isn't worth recalling when the God commands her to jump. <i>I don't think you have much time.</i> Isn't that all they have in the Afterlife? Isn't it made up of all the minutes and moments that will never come?
It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't-
The world crumbles.
It runs out of time.
The world topples and Mae falls down with it. The ledge she had been tucked on gives way and the mare gives with the cliff.
There is nothing. There is nothing but the weight of the fall and she knows that is wrong. There can't be anything right with descension in the Afterlife.
And she's right. When she blinks, the World is all wrong. She struggles to stand here where she had been sure-footed before. She rises and looks wildly around. Her head jerks back and the whites of her eyes show, almost rolling in the back of her head. It's what those eyes see is all wrong. There is no color to the images that shift and swirl before her. Some things haze in and out in the distance, like the fog. There is something, she thinks, that shimmers on the horizon but everything she sees is gray. The sky is a variety of silvers. The colors that have made up the living world are gone, stripped clean from her sight. All she sees is the bare bones of this Everafter; the bleaching and blanching of shifting perspective.
A certainty gnaws in her bones. The only thing she can do is wait.
Mae keeps listening for it. Her ears keep straining, flicking forwards and back. All her other senses seem useless here. What is the point? The grating is stronger but it's shifted somehow. It came from all around before but now it seems to come from below. No, not below. From <i>within.</i> She is on her knees, shaking. Mae shakes and this world - the After - shakes with her. Almost as if it is grieving with her for this forgotten child. For the one she hadn't bothered to live for.
The child she had accused (and now wonders if she executed).
The Afterlife feels as if it could topple - as if it could all fray apart from the loose threads unraveling in her mind because her heart is still dim. The heart that Carnage had shattered seems to have done something else as well. They can't bleed the same way they might in the Land of the Living. Mae can't bleed out so she bleeds within. Those shards in her chest are dull but they continue to cut and carve, slowly draining away what little color there is in this world. The fog in front of her swirls and sways on an existential wind - a breeze bent by the whim of a God. Master strokes, really, revealing a glimpse of <i>something</i> below her. She'd pay it no heed because her immediate focus is the grinding in the air, the way that it rattles now instead of shrieks. The gray mare shakes her head once but it does nothing. It alleviates nothing and then He commands.
<i>There</i>, orders the voice. Carnage.
She obeys and looks down again, where the circle beneath her shimmers. Her dark eyes watch it because sometimes it comes into view and sometimes it doesn't. It comes in and out of focus and she wonders what <i>There</i> is. The thought doesn't remain alone because one that isn't her own follows behind it. <i>Through there</i>, the Dark God commands and Mae stiffens. There? The thought jars and she shakes her head, obscuring the last part. But she hears it. <i>It's hungry.</i> The mirage below her widens and grows, like it is feeding of every moment she delays. That for each second she doubts Carnage, it - <i>There</i> - grows.
Beqanna's history is littered with tales of Carnage. He had been Mortal once, the horses of Old had murmured (before the colors and magic mutated, when they had only had their horns and their wings). But what happened between those generations and this moment is unknown to Mae. What the Man might have been isn't worth recalling when the God commands her to jump. <i>I don't think you have much time.</i> Isn't that all they have in the Afterlife? Isn't it made up of all the minutes and moments that will never come?
It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't-
The world crumbles.
It runs out of time.
The world topples and Mae falls down with it. The ledge she had been tucked on gives way and the mare gives with the cliff.
There is nothing. There is nothing but the weight of the fall and she knows that is wrong. There can't be anything right with descension in the Afterlife.
And she's right. When she blinks, the World is all wrong. She struggles to stand here where she had been sure-footed before. She rises and looks wildly around. Her head jerks back and the whites of her eyes show, almost rolling in the back of her head. It's what those eyes see is all wrong. There is no color to the images that shift and swirl before her. Some things haze in and out in the distance, like the fog. There is something, she thinks, that shimmers on the horizon but everything she sees is gray. The sky is a variety of silvers. The colors that have made up the living world are gone, stripped clean from her sight. All she sees is the bare bones of this Everafter; the bleaching and blanching of shifting perspective.
A certainty gnaws in her bones. The only thing she can do is wait.