09-27-2026, 08:01 PM
He does not remember his unbecoming, does not remember how many eons he existed alone in the dark. His sense of knowing feels wrong, incomplete in the way he is less tangible than a thought, more brittle than a memory. It is, after all, impossible to persist in memory if you leave no one behind willing to hold you there. He thinks–and even this feels eerily unfamiliar, this sense of growing awareness and the way it binds itself to a distinct lack of understanding, an urgency to know–that he ought to be more than this. More than a notion, than a concept. He thinks, and he is soothed by the way this already feels easier, that certainly he must be real.
When the thrashing tide races away, pulled toward the gravity of the behemoth that rises from it, so too is he pulled from the nowhere. He can feel those fingers wrapped around every atom of his being, feel the siren song in the ache of his mind. He can feel himself, too. He is the dust that lifts and whirls, solidifying into the bleached white bone of a decidedly equine skeleton. He is the coalescing shadows that settle in the eerie dark to drape over bones that bend and groan beneath the weight of flesh made solid once more. He is all the light eclipsed and compressed into fire that spills across his silhouette like burning armor.
He is Sundered.
There are several things that come into focus all at once, and though he should be overwhelmed by it, he is curious to find only a sense of numb acceptance lodged like a weight within the cave of his ribs. Is this familiar? He hears the screams of the many, feels the way they climb into his head and settle there, the way they persist with no notable nexus - and that part does feel wrong. There should be… something. His jaw clenches hard, and he is suddenly frustrated by the pieces that do not quite fit here, by the way it feels so familiar and yet still wrong. He lifts his head and his dark eyes find the sky overhead just as it should be without sun or sky, without star or moon. It is just black, just nothing, and that is right.
It isn’t until he blinks again and the hazy film of death fully sheds from his eyes that he realizes what he had taken to be spires of stone in the near distance is something much, much more. “Demon.” He breathes, and this too feels right - feels wrong in a way that reawakens dread in the pit of his stomach, because it is right.
This is hell.
This is where he belongs.
Dread builds like bile in his throat, choking him until he pushes it back down and reaches for that sense of numbness, of what he now recognizes to be obedience. His eyes, bright despite the shade of them, extinguish with the rest of the light as the demon monolith greets his summoned hounds. Sundered is careful not to stare openly, he knows his place as a dog, knows his role here. But he is certain that this demon is not one he has known before. This thought settles like a barb in his mind, and he acknowledges his own uneasiness for less than a heartbeat before pushing that away too.
It does not matter what Sundered thinks.
Welcome back. It says, and the roar of voices, of sorrow and anguish and torment he is sure he has known before drowns him until even he must close his eyes to shut it out. It is better this way. He does not need to see the faces of the others who have gathered lest he recognize one and become unmade again. Would you like to play a game? And that is new, he thinks, to call such things a game. But he merely bows his dark brindled head in stony obedience.
When the thrashing tide races away, pulled toward the gravity of the behemoth that rises from it, so too is he pulled from the nowhere. He can feel those fingers wrapped around every atom of his being, feel the siren song in the ache of his mind. He can feel himself, too. He is the dust that lifts and whirls, solidifying into the bleached white bone of a decidedly equine skeleton. He is the coalescing shadows that settle in the eerie dark to drape over bones that bend and groan beneath the weight of flesh made solid once more. He is all the light eclipsed and compressed into fire that spills across his silhouette like burning armor.
He is Sundered.
There are several things that come into focus all at once, and though he should be overwhelmed by it, he is curious to find only a sense of numb acceptance lodged like a weight within the cave of his ribs. Is this familiar? He hears the screams of the many, feels the way they climb into his head and settle there, the way they persist with no notable nexus - and that part does feel wrong. There should be… something. His jaw clenches hard, and he is suddenly frustrated by the pieces that do not quite fit here, by the way it feels so familiar and yet still wrong. He lifts his head and his dark eyes find the sky overhead just as it should be without sun or sky, without star or moon. It is just black, just nothing, and that is right.
It isn’t until he blinks again and the hazy film of death fully sheds from his eyes that he realizes what he had taken to be spires of stone in the near distance is something much, much more. “Demon.” He breathes, and this too feels right - feels wrong in a way that reawakens dread in the pit of his stomach, because it is right.
This is hell.
This is where he belongs.
Dread builds like bile in his throat, choking him until he pushes it back down and reaches for that sense of numbness, of what he now recognizes to be obedience. His eyes, bright despite the shade of them, extinguish with the rest of the light as the demon monolith greets his summoned hounds. Sundered is careful not to stare openly, he knows his place as a dog, knows his role here. But he is certain that this demon is not one he has known before. This thought settles like a barb in his mind, and he acknowledges his own uneasiness for less than a heartbeat before pushing that away too.
It does not matter what Sundered thinks.
Welcome back. It says, and the roar of voices, of sorrow and anguish and torment he is sure he has known before drowns him until even he must close his eyes to shut it out. It is better this way. He does not need to see the faces of the others who have gathered lest he recognize one and become unmade again. Would you like to play a game? And that is new, he thinks, to call such things a game. But he merely bows his dark brindled head in stony obedience.
sundered
i'd give anything to hear you say it one more time