I will show you fear in a handful of dust; PHASE IV

[Carnage]

lord, I fashion dark gods too;

She follows some of them. She does not follow others. Time is strange. There are timelines where she dies – where they all die – and ones where she lives. But this Gail – the one we follow – is in the wormhole. It’s not like last time. Last time, it was a blur, a rush, her stomach dropped out from under her. Last time she only heard whispers, a susurrus of voices that could not quite be made out. This trip is slower, and gives them time to see images as they move from future to present. She sees glimpses – smoky, ash-choked air, and a great beast rising from the sea, fires raging unchecked. Wars, between nameless horses, clashes for reasons she doesn’t know. Diseases. She wonders why she came back, why any of them did. There are six of them left. Six acolytes. Time merged back, rivers to the ocean, so they travel this wormhole together. But it’s slow. “He’s struggling,” she says, amazed she can speak as they crawl through time. It’s because of her. She is his anchor. She has always been unreadable to him, his magic has not worked on her the way it did others. He’d taken her there, to the end of the world, and it had been easily because hadn’t she helped, on some level? She’d wanted to go. Now, she is not so sure. Part of her wants and needs him, to be reunited with such a vital part of herself. The other part misses the beach, and wonders what the world sounds like between the langoliers’ teeth. ***** He can feel them. They are close, and they have her. But she is a weight, leaden in his wormhole. Gods do not take kindly to failure, ***** The others spill out first. Back on the beach, where it began. Where it all began. She is the last, and when she comes to the wormhole’s opening she does not spill out. It’s like hitting a placental wall. There is give and stretch but it does not want to let her through. She can hear him saying her name, the dark god who was once a black little boy she loved so dearly. “Carnage,” she says, and presses against the membrane. It thins and she can see him. The membrane snaps and for a moment they embrace, him smelling of smoke and blood and she of the end of the world, and oh --. And then the beach breaks beneath them. A chunk of the beach breaks off, spits the dark god back onto further shores (and when he surges forward he finds he cannot). It takes Gail, and the six, and there is another wormhole. This trip is not so long. For they have not traversed through time, not exactly. Instead, it is another realm – both part and not-part of Beqanna. A land of the dead, its own personal Hades. The spirits come out, emboldened to walk among them by the queer power this piece of the beach (now an island, adrift in its own realm). Some of the ghosts she recognizes as her own children and her knees go weak. “I’m sorry,” she says to the six, who were brought with her by association, “I wasn’t supposed to live and now I’m here, now we’re here, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” For she was not. She is a woman drenched in the apocalypse after spending so many years there, when the dark god tried to draw her back into Beqanna the land rejected a woman so thoroughly dead. The compromise (reached, though subconsciously, by the dark god and his blood land) was this – an underworld, a realm of the dead where the old kings and queens and children and everyone in between could walk, crafted of Beqanna’s own beach. And they should not be here. Already they are aging, gray flecking their muscles. The children – and some of the six are children, still long-limbed and scrawny – grow and fill out and turn into lovely adults, but they will soon droop and weaken. She does not. She is protected, ageless. The idea comes to her. It is desperate, but so is she. She followed so that they would not die, and here they are, dying before her, proof nothing can be saved. “They can help,” she says, looking to the horses around her, the spirits, who have gathered, curious at their own existence and at that of the living, “I think. Find someone. Find someone you loved, who loves you. Ask them for help. Your magic doesn’t work here, but theirs might.” Rules: LAST PHASE! Beqanna wouldn’t allow Carnage to bring Gail back into the land of the living, so as a compromise, it carved off a piece of the beach and sent it through the wormhole to create a magic-imbued ‘afterlife’ where all Beqanna’s dead horses may rise and interact among themselves. Your goal is to find a dead character of yours who has some connection to your quest character (if you don’t have one, ask permission to powerplay someone else’s who they were connected to but died, or make one up) and ask them to help get you home. Your traits don’t work here, but the ghost horses’ do, because reasons. You can encounter more than one character, but don't go crazy. In your post, please include a brief note of who you encountered and how they’re connected to your character (and if you, say, played your horse’s ex-lover who was actually played by someone else in life, make sure to note you got permission) because my reading comprehension isn’t really up to par. Posts will be judged on style and creativity. I’ll probably inevitably end up being unable to decide and will end up randomly rolling a die or something, so have fun with it. I won’t have reliable access to a computer until next Tuesday (May 26th), so take your time! If you have any questions please email me at acmrshll[at]gmail.com also this post might be heavily edited later when I am less sad and using writing as a form of escapism so double check it before your post. or i might have given up, idk.