what has sunk may rise, what has risen may sink;

[Carnage]

lord, I fashion dark gods too;

It began like this. They’re lovers, and have always been – wed in sickness and health, poverty and prosperity. There are no such legalities for their type, of course, and their romance has been riddled with infidelity and even blood, on occasions. But still, they are lovers. Ever since first meeting, they have haunted each other. He has tried, and tried again to love her like she loved him – but his kisses felt only her pulse and the promise of blood, and those images were more erotic than anything else. Still, there is a fondness for her that he has not felt for anyone else. “What’s another word for love?” he asked once, lips in her hair, to which she replied, “passion.” “Still not right,” he said, to which she replied, “we’re indefinable.” ********** It falters like this. Maybe they are lovers (indefinable) but words do not change the fact he has been gone for a long time, long enough for her love-ragged heart to begin its forgetting of all the ways it shouldn’t love him. Long enough for her to pine, for her heart to begin its aching on endless, lonesome nights. Eventually when spring comes, and brings with it her heat, she finds another sort of solace. Shiv has not left her, not ever – he has been the loyal son, giving her company when he should have left a long time ago to find a life of his own. He is a devoted, good son who loves her unabatedly and does not know much of the world, so even though the pit of his stomach tells him it is wrong, he complies when she presses into him. She sins with him, her dear son, and knows the wrongness of it, but the warmth and love of him overcome her inhibitions. She does not know he watches. The dark god does not judge as he observes his morbid angel and their son come together. He’s been in her spot before – they are sinners, the two of them. He waits to show himself until she has sent Shiv off; only then does he creep forward, touching her. Neither one speaks – she burns hot with shame, but it does not damper the passion in her kisses. She lets him into her, an old act they both know all too well. He leaves again, after, giving her only a breathy sigh that she can’t quite decipher. ********** It gets better like this. By now, she is no stranger to labor. When her stomach begins the rhythmic clenching she finds a space and lays down, letting what will happen, happen. It’s not long before the child comes, sliding from her and leaving her with a strange emptiness. She looks, as she always does, for its face – for the sweet expressive eyes, the look of confusion and love. Instead, there is only a stretch of amnion over its head. She has given birth to a stranger. She shifts to remove it, and is startled by his voice. “Don’t,” says her grim king. “Carnage, I don’t know whose it is,” she confesses. “I know, Gail. I know.” He doesn’t know either – the child is like her, unreadable. Neither of them will ever know, perhaps. “Leave it,” he says, and touches her shoulder gently, “come with me.” She rises, legs weak, and casts a final glance back at her child. “It has a caul,” she says numbly, “a bad omen.” With that, she follows. ********** It gets deeper like this. She follows and for a while they are quiet. She is the one to break the silence as the forests thin out until there is black sand and blacker water. “The beach,” she says, trying to keep the waver out of her voice, “are you going to kill me, finally?” She’s begged for death ever since he dreamed her back, but now – now, she finds she’s not sure if she wants to die. “No,” he says solemnly, “no one’s dying here.” “Then what? Why here?” “Because, my dear, we’ve been here before. Come here.” She walks obediently to his side and presses close, as if they could melt together. “To us,” he says, the ghost of a smile on his face, making a toast to them. “To us.” After she speaks, she feels his body grow hotter and hotter, so hot that she fears she might burn if she stays this close – but she doesn’t move. She’s told him before that she would burn for him, and she wasn’t lying. A white-hot explosion echoes across the beach, and in that moment, the black sea boils. Bones are charred and flesh cooks. When the light fades, they are gone. ********** It begins again like this. There is a sense of drifting, of falling. There is a hush of voices, words she can almost make out. Everything is blurry, soft – an image can be caught for a second, but then it fades and something else appears. Eventually the voices quiet and things slow down. They are still once more. “What was that?” she asks before even looking again. Her heart is racing. “Now?” he asks, and laughs a little, a low sound in his throat, “it’s history.” Around them, the air is still. There are no sounds except their voices and their heartbeats. They are on the beach but it is not the beach. They’ve come a long way since the beach. She looks around. There is nothing. Only an expanse of space: flat, dead. There are no bones – they have long turned to dust. The air is scentless and still, no breeze changes the array of her mane. She breathes in deep and thinks the air tastes odd in her lungs, like plastic. She also thinks that she can taste smoke in her throat. “Where are we?” she says, her voice hushed, although there is nothing to disturb anymore. “We’re at the end of the world,” he says, speaking normally – his voice should boom in the still air, but the same air seems to stifle it instead. He gestures to a place behind him, a slight shimmer. She looks at it and knows, without knowing how, that if she pressed her ear against it she would hear the susurrus of history’s voices. She knows it’s the way back. “Go, if you want,” he says to her, “I won’t stop you.” “No,” she says quietly, “I want to see how the world ends.” ********** It ends like this. They begin to walk. Distance falls behind them but nothing changes, it’s the same flat landscape, the same plastic, smoky air. She looks for flames but can find none. He pauses, suddenly. Focuses on a spot in front of them, just another flat patch of earth like all the others – there is no distinction here. As they watch, the ground smolders, and there is a brief moment of flame for it falters and dies. “Used to be, that patch would have burst into flames, the way I was trying,” he says, “my magic’s not the same here.” She is quiet. She has never known him without his magic. “Last chance,” he says, “I don’t know if the hole will stay without my holding it open.” “I’m staying,” she says. The air has begun to seem hot, and she doesn’t know if breathing will stay easy. She has started to hear a faint noise somewhere, a sound like radio static, like teeth chewing down on aluminum foil. She wonders if he hears it too. “What do you think happened?” she asks. “I like to think I did it,” he says, “and that’s the reason why I don’t have much magic anymore.” She can’t help but smile. They’re standing at the unknown and there is no real change in him. Because she knows this, she is quiet. She does not tell him she loves him. He knows. He is the one to break their silence. In the distance, the chewing sound has grown louder. When he speaks, he has to raise his voice to be heard above it. There is no doubt that it’s real anymore. With his lips against her neck (an old position, how many times have they been here before?) he says only a single sentence. “We don’t have long now,” he says, and so, together, they wait for the world to end. **********  It starts with the dreams. The dreams of the flat land they walked, years ago (years closer, too, always closer to the world’s end). The dreams filled with that sound (he had a name for them, later, when he returned and she did not - langoliers), one of the few things that has scared their dark god. It shouldn’t matter. He’d come back, not entirely on his own accord (but ah, hadn’t some part of him wanted it, had not resisted when he was pulled back, grateful to be away from that godawful noise?). He’d come back and Gail hadn’t. For all his powers, he does not know what’s happened to her. He tried to go back, once, but had found himself unable. He can go anywhere but there, back to her, back to the langoliers. And he wonders if he’s because he can’t, or because he won’t? Because there is a thread of fear there, slick and hot. The langoliers had been unknowable, a strange force, and though he is their dark god, their skeleton king, he fears the unknown. He thinks of time, too. Is Gail frozen there, on the cusp of the world’s end? Did time continue to pass there as it does here? They both always knew he’d kill her, but he never wanted it to be that way – unknowable. Never a slow, unsure ending, but an explosion, a climax of everything they’ve shared. He’s had his distractions, of course – he’s been summoned in the Valley by that wretch of a daughter, he’s painted a generation with stars, he’s entertained himself in his wasteland’s pits with a mousy brown girl (and now, her daughter, his own little Persephone). But through it all Gail persists, the black slip of a girl who was there for every iteration. His lover, (indefinable) as much as anything could be to a thing such as he. Does he miss her? It’s hard to say, hard to parse out the difference between his want for her and his frustration at being frightened of the langoliers, at coming back without his consent, at not controlling the situation. So he thinks. He has years and decades to think, to make a plan. He knows he himself cannot go back – paradoxes or fear or something else altogether keep him from it – but he thinks he has a plan. He’s never been at a loss for followers, after all. So he will choose a select few, send them in his stead. Send them after her. And if the langoliers find them? It’s no loss of his. He summons them easily enough. "Come to me," says their dark god, "I need you to find her." TL;DR: Congratulations! (I guess). Carnage is sending you forward in time to the end of the world, where he once inadvertently abandoned his lady love, Gail (the italics post was their original goodbye and was provided solely for context, Carnage later returned to BQ thanks to another magician). For reasons, he cannot go himself. This is a writing/elimination quest. On the way to Gail, you’ll encounter several worlds and must act accordingly. This is (I think) a four stage quest. There’s no limit for entries, but eliminations will be proportional to the number of entries (meaning if only three people enter they’re probably all getting to the end, if twenty people enter, I’ll eliminate 4-5 per stage). Not sure yet. Anyway! - No limit on entries, but one character per player. No prior activity requirements.  - To enter, post an IC reply here of your entry responding to the summons and basically agreeing to go - Failure to respond within the time limit in subsequent stages will result in automatic elimination and a defect - Defects may occur regardless in the quest, and may or may not be genetic - Prizes for this quest will be genetic - You have 24 hours to enter, the first stage will be posted tomorrow at or around (depending on work) 1:30 CST. - I also recommend you at least read a Wiki summary of Stephen King's novella The Langoliers, as parts of this quest heavily rip it off were inspired by it. Do not watch the movie, which is horrible.