DAY: 011

[zerkalos]

[ It begins in drum beats, louder and louder over itself, begins like eyes opening out of childhood nightmares, begins like a mother waking to her child's crying in the night, between Sam and Zhukov and something that is the sea - something that is a river in full flood. Out and out to where there is no difference between them. Through the hive and through the void in a space that is not space and like any waters, the void takes the path of least resistance, eager to expand in every direction.

Finds Sam first, of course it does. Wraps about him like a sycophant. It beats itself out against him, demanding, demanding, wanting and pushing and clawing and gnawing at once. Looks for a crack, any crack, just one simple divide, and as Sam splits his mind. It slips in stiletto blade thin between ribs and cracks apart at the edges. To take and take and take, to carve on the edge of a knife a way forward and engulf.

Not in words, but it speaks:

( a city, a city overrun in gnawing creatures, rats, thousands of them, their fur wet and spillery smooth as nails try to pry their teeth out of supple muscles, between fingers as they crawl, of flies, loud and buzzing, sickly honeyed hives that are corpse sweet and they nestle like lovers into flesh. Of something older than modern lights and inventions that sits at the back of the tongue and is suckled out by empires as oils. This is what the flesh of the sea looks like, this is what the water tastes like free of everything and full of nothing. Of cities under the earth, forgotten. Of the rot and the festering and the piling: this is what happens to a body that is on top of another body, this is what happens when the flesh is stripped away in salt and dried to air. Lovers that are in sewers and together, together, together. Looking up is to look down to the depths. There is no left or right, there's only a deep, deep breath and coughing up the taste of blue and violet and dark-light. This is the sun through the ice, reflected over and over again until it sears the skin in its reflection. Objects that float like they never knew the ground, or that they exist and don't exist and forget where to walk, paths that overlay paths that overlay paths,

and black - black eyes. There is nothing, nothing so black as those eyes. Nothing so beautiful as them as when they stare down into these oceans of you. Above and below and no where at all. Crawling in the sewers, through grand mansions, not welcome here but oh, so very, very wanted. Come, come, you are its lover, and it wants to carve purpose in bones. You are so beautiful, it wants to lick the marrow out of your bones, and it will call you pure for the broken parts of you, it wants, just give in, just give it everything.

these waters will never give back what they have taken. )

It takes Sam, where they are a half beat apart, and when he slips, it rushes over the top of him, holding to him tightly and then the everything stops. Expanded as far as it can go. The healing on his body is nothing but tinder, something new to be devoured.

And then, there is nothing but the dark and a naked flame.

Out of mind and body, Zhukov starts screaming as he burns. ]

( ooc: this is the continuation from this thread here, and is open for anyone to feel and react to. I am also happy to have the void reach out to touch whoever wants to from him. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a plurk to @aeneia or send me a message here! )

Comments

[miscreant]

[The Void is a creature even beyond the ken of the Scourge, and thus beyond the ken of Seviilia. It is familiar in its own way, but the white noise and silence that death had brought is not granted by the noise of the Void.

She feels the way it seeks to devour her, her presence sits like a bear too heavy to move, occasionally taking lashings and grumbling with agitation.

The heat, she meets with cold. The heat is more irritating than anything else. The dark that had put her on edge the first time is easier to understand at this intensity. She takes it, because she must -- few others will be equipped to handle it, she thinks.]

( Enough. )

[erbier]

[ There is someone else resistant to the creep of the void. Like a cataclysm on the horizon, Ilde burns up with an entirely different kind of light, a fetid inner pyre, a phosphorescent white. Her rejection of the Hero of Tyvia's sickness presses on him from one side. Sevilia, immovable, from another. Ilde's presence moves closer to fill the gaps, to make a dam that will stem the flood for as many of their Hive as they are able. ]

( Hello, Death Knight. Will you stand with me. )

[ They are not words, it is an incantation older than either of them; the witches' call to coven, to a shared victory. ]

[miscreant]

[Her knowledge of other magics had left her when death came, but for some reason, she is unsurprised when the presence of Ilde joins her own in such a form. Liquid, adapting to fill what the frozen wall does not. Seviilia accepts the onslaught of the Void with the focus of a trained animal, of a dragon bid to protect its hoard. Bone and sinew, woven into a nightmarish giant, pacing behind the wall, daring to be set free.

She thinks of Murphy, so bullheaded and so determined to protect himself from the tide of the Nest , and how this curse might break him and cripple her in turn. She thinks of Shepard, a kindred spirit in her own way, how humans unaccustomed to the sort of magic that desires to costume everything -- like those monsters she once spoke of. She thinks of The Darkling, how his darkness sought to empower instead of costuming all, and she thinks of herself -- armored to the teeth, Deathlord if the Ebon Blade, risen for the sole purpose of destroying her enemies in death.

Frostreaper and Icebringer leak their own corrupting whispers in her hands, urging her to devour and dominate. She sheathes one of them to hold a hand out for Ilde without blinking.]

( By your will. )

[erbier]

[ The kinship Ilde feels with both ally and enemy is strong. Corruption. Decaying inside. She has known a long time now, that she is accursed, but has found power in its acceptance more than its denial, much like with the symbiote itself.

There is Sevilia, the frozen creature whose existence is suspended at the agonizing edge of a wintery abyss. Then there is Zhukov, lost in the depths, a phantom of death and delirium. And what is she? Handmaiden to a mad god, carrier of his tortured love, a tender gift and a corrosive curse. Spirit alight beneath the burning eye of the flames.

The disciples join hands, join rites. Fire and ice: standing against the waves, unmoved by the ugly way reality swirls within the loathsome waters. ]

( Back, back to your apostle. )

[ It is not so much Ilde's voice as theirs. ]