09-04-2020, 07:18 PM
<p align=justify>There is eternity and then nothing.
There is the gnawing and then nothing.
There is the horizon that swarms - that lengthens and loosens, that swirls and tangles - and then nothing.
It feels unkind, the way all the sensations leave her hanging. Leaves her waiting.
It is like the bated breath of a predator, something that lingers on the back of the neck and raises all the hackles. It is one heartbeat and then two. It is that moment of knowing she is prey, a time beneath tremoring heartbeats that is infinite, before the beast strikes. It had originally been a child - <i>her</i> child - but the sound of the singing (<i>chirping?</i>) tells her there is more than one, now. They chime in a chorus and while this sound isn't grating like the one before, while this reality doesn't gnaw the way the one before did, there is more than one. Her ears flicker nervously and Mae shifts her weight, trading her worries from one silver hip to another. (Does it matter? It - they - are like her; gray, dull, without color).
They sing. Like the sound of summer nights, like the hum of hummingbird wings. An ear twitches again because there is something to sound, the way that it rings in her ears. The trilling and calling suddenly stops. The eerie silence is the only thing that fills this realm. It is deafening and something in her says <i>run</i>. It warns her to flee. She <i>will</i>. She will turn tail and-
Mae blinks. That is all it takes. In an instant, they are on her. She thinks she might have been bloodied before, from the fall. From the void. If she had looked down, maybe there would have been pools of black blood streaming down from her shoulders. Maybe she had been cut along her back and the blood wept like tears from the small shallows of her ribs. Maybe she was already marked on her legs, on her knees, on her neck. Maybe there were scars she never saw and she won't now because the shape of a thousand things borrows a few.
They continue to chirp as they lunge. They tear and shred. Mae cries out and starts to plead: <i>Stop!</i> comes the first cry. <i>No! I have-</i> already died, she would have said. <i>I have already died.</i>
She can't cry because one finds her throat. It tugs and with it takes her ability to try and survive. The chirping starts to take on a sound, she thinks. There had no rhyme or rhythm to the sound it made before. But as the false-blood runs and she bleeds out in a place that doesn't exist (and what happens to those who die in a place where death might not exist? Another realm?), the chirp becomes more of a <i>chant</i>. Her dark mouth opens again but no sound comes, nothing rises to greet the creatures that have started to devour her. <i>False.</i> She hears it. The word hums, it bleeds, as she does, into two. <i>False.</i> They delightfully trill again, growing excited by the banquet laid before them. One tears and Mae raises her head from where she has fallen, a faltering attempt and brief glimmer of life left in the blood-splattered carcass.
It animates them and as if they know, the trilling becomes louder. <i>False, false, false.</i> It seems to delight them, this anguish that spreads within her and gives them something to savor. <i>Falseheart.</i> One breaks, a solo that rings against the choir. They - the monsters, the demons, the devils - brighten with this. <i>Falseheart, falseheart, falseheart.</i> They all echo.
They repeat the word over and over; they chant it with a fervor that would make even the most religious of souls jealous. It knells in this realm and tolls so many memories. (Abandoning her children. Being abandoned by Pawn. Trying to love Coca-Cola and dying instead because that had seemed easier kinder than living a lie.)
One becomes two and two become three. There had been shapes before - hazy things - but the protestations, like her, are dying and the Monsters are instead taking shapes from her flesh. They never leave her tongue but they <i>know.</i> They borrow Pawn's shape first. One bites her legs, another tears at her haunch. The third just smiles, a shape that stands alone. It had been the instigator. <i>Falseheart. Falseheart.</i> It tells her even as the beats in hers have started to fade. The monster does not and because she thinks of Pawn, she thinks of Penninah. And so there stands the former Dalean queen beside him. The dark mare shreds into her, claiming a piece of Mae.
Her vision swarms and suddenly there are so many more. She can't tell all of them but her mind recalls a few: Craft. Coke. Shiprah. Kuriosake. Texas. Allana. Asylum. Arabelle. Jacob. Milky Way.
<i>This is it.</i> She thinks. <i>This is the End.</i> Everything deepens before it grows dark. <i>This is the price to pay for loving a black heart.</i> She thinks. (Because what had Pawn ever done besides create devastation? He had wanted to prove himself a worthy heir to Desecration and tried to live up to that namesake.)
And then amidst this desecration, there is a tug that is not the creatures. There is a pull that doesn't come from Kings or Queens, from Dogmatists or Opposition-members. It doesn't come from children, grandchildren, from great-grandchildren who might have learned better from this sorrow-filled tale. (And to this day, the Magic in Beqanna still weeps through the descendants of Mae.) <i>No,</i> she weakly thinks. <i>No, let me go. I will pay it. I will pay the price.</i>
<i>Isn't that what love is?</i> She thinks in delirium. <i>Isn't all-consuming?</i> Somewhere along the line of hallucination and this alternate reality, she is ready to welcome it. <i>Isn't it everything?</i>
It's a pull that comes from the back of mind first, that stirs in the place where only dark thoughts and Gods could dwell. It pulls - <i>rips</i> - shreds her away from the hungry mouths that had been so eagerly feasting before. If there is anger or fury at being stripped of a meal, she doesn't know it. She is stripped of this realm (and the ones in-between) until she comes to the world that she had known before. Carnage brings them back to Beqanna and suddenly, she is there.
All in the blink of an eye.
All in the workings and machinations of a God.
They are back at the beginning.
This world doesn't swirl. Nothing stirs. Mae blinks and nothing changes. This world - this Living one - remains gray, devoid of all color.
OOC: Mae is now color-blind from the Carnage-palooza quest :|
There is the gnawing and then nothing.
There is the horizon that swarms - that lengthens and loosens, that swirls and tangles - and then nothing.
It feels unkind, the way all the sensations leave her hanging. Leaves her waiting.
It is like the bated breath of a predator, something that lingers on the back of the neck and raises all the hackles. It is one heartbeat and then two. It is that moment of knowing she is prey, a time beneath tremoring heartbeats that is infinite, before the beast strikes. It had originally been a child - <i>her</i> child - but the sound of the singing (<i>chirping?</i>) tells her there is more than one, now. They chime in a chorus and while this sound isn't grating like the one before, while this reality doesn't gnaw the way the one before did, there is more than one. Her ears flicker nervously and Mae shifts her weight, trading her worries from one silver hip to another. (Does it matter? It - they - are like her; gray, dull, without color).
They sing. Like the sound of summer nights, like the hum of hummingbird wings. An ear twitches again because there is something to sound, the way that it rings in her ears. The trilling and calling suddenly stops. The eerie silence is the only thing that fills this realm. It is deafening and something in her says <i>run</i>. It warns her to flee. She <i>will</i>. She will turn tail and-
Mae blinks. That is all it takes. In an instant, they are on her. She thinks she might have been bloodied before, from the fall. From the void. If she had looked down, maybe there would have been pools of black blood streaming down from her shoulders. Maybe she had been cut along her back and the blood wept like tears from the small shallows of her ribs. Maybe she was already marked on her legs, on her knees, on her neck. Maybe there were scars she never saw and she won't now because the shape of a thousand things borrows a few.
They continue to chirp as they lunge. They tear and shred. Mae cries out and starts to plead: <i>Stop!</i> comes the first cry. <i>No! I have-</i> already died, she would have said. <i>I have already died.</i>
She can't cry because one finds her throat. It tugs and with it takes her ability to try and survive. The chirping starts to take on a sound, she thinks. There had no rhyme or rhythm to the sound it made before. But as the false-blood runs and she bleeds out in a place that doesn't exist (and what happens to those who die in a place where death might not exist? Another realm?), the chirp becomes more of a <i>chant</i>. Her dark mouth opens again but no sound comes, nothing rises to greet the creatures that have started to devour her. <i>False.</i> She hears it. The word hums, it bleeds, as she does, into two. <i>False.</i> They delightfully trill again, growing excited by the banquet laid before them. One tears and Mae raises her head from where she has fallen, a faltering attempt and brief glimmer of life left in the blood-splattered carcass.
It animates them and as if they know, the trilling becomes louder. <i>False, false, false.</i> It seems to delight them, this anguish that spreads within her and gives them something to savor. <i>Falseheart.</i> One breaks, a solo that rings against the choir. They - the monsters, the demons, the devils - brighten with this. <i>Falseheart, falseheart, falseheart.</i> They all echo.
They repeat the word over and over; they chant it with a fervor that would make even the most religious of souls jealous. It knells in this realm and tolls so many memories. (Abandoning her children. Being abandoned by Pawn. Trying to love Coca-Cola and dying instead because that had seemed easier kinder than living a lie.)
One becomes two and two become three. There had been shapes before - hazy things - but the protestations, like her, are dying and the Monsters are instead taking shapes from her flesh. They never leave her tongue but they <i>know.</i> They borrow Pawn's shape first. One bites her legs, another tears at her haunch. The third just smiles, a shape that stands alone. It had been the instigator. <i>Falseheart. Falseheart.</i> It tells her even as the beats in hers have started to fade. The monster does not and because she thinks of Pawn, she thinks of Penninah. And so there stands the former Dalean queen beside him. The dark mare shreds into her, claiming a piece of Mae.
Her vision swarms and suddenly there are so many more. She can't tell all of them but her mind recalls a few: Craft. Coke. Shiprah. Kuriosake. Texas. Allana. Asylum. Arabelle. Jacob. Milky Way.
<i>This is it.</i> She thinks. <i>This is the End.</i> Everything deepens before it grows dark. <i>This is the price to pay for loving a black heart.</i> She thinks. (Because what had Pawn ever done besides create devastation? He had wanted to prove himself a worthy heir to Desecration and tried to live up to that namesake.)
And then amidst this desecration, there is a tug that is not the creatures. There is a pull that doesn't come from Kings or Queens, from Dogmatists or Opposition-members. It doesn't come from children, grandchildren, from great-grandchildren who might have learned better from this sorrow-filled tale. (And to this day, the Magic in Beqanna still weeps through the descendants of Mae.) <i>No,</i> she weakly thinks. <i>No, let me go. I will pay it. I will pay the price.</i>
<i>Isn't that what love is?</i> She thinks in delirium. <i>Isn't all-consuming?</i> Somewhere along the line of hallucination and this alternate reality, she is ready to welcome it. <i>Isn't it everything?</i>
It's a pull that comes from the back of mind first, that stirs in the place where only dark thoughts and Gods could dwell. It pulls - <i>rips</i> - shreds her away from the hungry mouths that had been so eagerly feasting before. If there is anger or fury at being stripped of a meal, she doesn't know it. She is stripped of this realm (and the ones in-between) until she comes to the world that she had known before. Carnage brings them back to Beqanna and suddenly, she is there.
All in the blink of an eye.
All in the workings and machinations of a God.
They are back at the beginning.
This world doesn't swirl. Nothing stirs. Mae blinks and nothing changes. This world - this Living one - remains gray, devoid of all color.
OOC: Mae is now color-blind from the Carnage-palooza quest :|