09-29-2026, 03:35 PM
you'll bury me again, you'll say it's all pretend;
She is meant to stay in her place.
She, for whom the Afterlife was made, part of some grotesque love story. She, who once waited on the shore at the world’s end, time repeating and folding over on itself.
The forces that condemned her to the Afterlife were supposed to be impenetrable – something beyond dead, because she is Gail, she is the dark god’s queen, she is full of her own strange powers.
But magic is an organism, in its way, and it adapts. It changes.
There are things that can slip through whatever prison was made for her, new magics, infecting the world as a virus might.
The waters stir, and roil.
Above the noise of the water, though, is the noises – the macabre symphony of death. She is used to such noises, of course, but is aware their volume has risen. She turns her attention back to the water, and gasps.
She watches as the veil that had so long precluded her from Beqanna suddenly parts.
She moves toward it, telling herself this is some joke. A cruel trick played by Carnage, a punishment for some slight he perceived, and she will be stopped by the veil, just like every time.
(She doesn’t try to escape – not often, at least. She likes the place well enough. Or maybe this is merely what she tells herself.)
She steps out into where the sea had been moments before. Her hooves sink in the damp sand, and a fetid, damp stench hits her nostrils. But once she has begun to walk, she does not slow.
She does not look back, either. She is not Lot’s wife, she will not turn to a pillar of salt, she will walk and any moment she will find that edge again, that thin, maddening membrane that keeps her here.
She moves on still and the parted waters soon tower above her head. Something wet and slick thuds against her again, she spares a glance down and sees a dully colored fish, thrashing in the strange, deadly place it has found itself.
Not that Gail knows what that’s like.
Enough time passes that finally, she stops, and she looks back. The water has closed the path only ten feet or so behind her. She cannot see the Afterlife.
She knows she should probably feel fear. At any moment, this strange path could cave in, bury her under crushing pressure.
But she is dead already, is she not? Dead women are so terribly hard to drown.
The end to the path comes sooner than she’d imagined – she is not a woman accustomed to having much of anything quickly – and she finds herself almost disappointed. She hadn’t had much in changes of scenery, lately.
As she fixes the rocky shore in her sights, the sea finally gives. The water crashes around her, sand suddenly swirling upward. Saltwater fills her lungs and she sputters, churning her legs forward, hooves finding purchase in the sand. She pushes forward, head emerging first, stepping out into this place dripping wet and salt-stained.
Would you like to play a game? asks a voice, and she chokes out a wet laugh.
She is very used to a devil’s game.
“I’d love to,” she says, “let’s begin.”
Gail
(this is late but Venge nicely let me enter late THANK YOU. or you can eliminate me for being late that's okay)