THE HORRORS OF OBLIVION | [@]MERIDIAN

[damnpire]

[D's communion into Meridian aligned minds is like a very polite knock at the door, except when the door is finally opened, a rush of icy wind blows in. No warmth or mirth can be found in the space of his mind, though it's a surprisingly gentle, dark void despite the chill. It's familiar for anyone who has had a communion with him, but probably kind of eerie for those who haven't.

It's also pretty quiet now actually.]

I made an attempt to Reincarnate the late Tribune. [He delivers this all very clinically, very factual.] It failed, but not because he hadn't been willing.

Something else had been inside him. [Can Nothing be something?] It had cleaned his soul out, if he had one at all, and left him as a husk. There was no soul to shift into another body.

It spoke through him. It said, "We never would have been able to Enter without the Choices that have been made."

[:wooper:]

Comments

[warmare]

[Other people have been latching on to what it might mean, that D had seen and felt what he had when he tried to... to "reincarnate" the slain Tribune, what it could spell for their future or what the being had been, but Hayame-

A surge of disgust and anger roils in- but it's not... it's not solid or strong, a wave that begins large but breaks and crashes weak on the shore, like the sender isn't actually awake or sober, something about their state rendering them weak in the mind. But despite that-]

You made an attempt to what?

[damnpire]

[Oh........ Hi, Hayame. (sweats)]

When I Harmonized further, I learned an ability which lets a soul inhabit a former or new body, whether they are a Shard-bearer, or a native.

I tried to transfer his soul into a new form, but there wasn't a soul inside him.

[warmare]

[D, what did you do???? She can never fall unconscious again, look what happens- !]

A new form?

[The sensation bleeds through of something like someone struggling to stand but being unable, trying to rise, but being too weak. She has to get up- What are people out there doing-]

The Tribune died, D, he is dead, you cannot just-

[Gods... damned... magic-]

What were you thinking? The dead are supposed to stay dead-

[damnpire]

[IT'S FINE... THIS ONE TIME... IT DIDN'T WORK OUT...]

They are, but rarely do the rest of us follow that natural order anymore. Not here. Unless his soul is somewhere else now, he is dead, and will remain so.

[warmare]

Just because we are cursed-

[Why won’t people just die when she kills them, and stay dead? Why do her enemies come back again and again? Why had everyone refused to let her shatter them, when now look—]

You would damn the rest of them to suffer with us?

[damnpire]

[Everyone else is worrying about the abomination in Cyrus, and maybe this is actually the reason.

The shift from the natural order of dying and staying dead. Of your husk being kept alive by some hungry, dark force--maybe.]

I understand. You don't have to worry. I don't plan to use the ability on everyone who has died, not us or natives.

His was a special case as a Tribune who had been killed by the Zenith.

[warmare]

So we kill Zenites-

[... Look, alright, supposedly they maybe did? Set's plan apparently worked, but she was unconscious for that and just heard about it in the aftermath. If Yima wasn't fucking dead, then-

That same sensation, of someone struggling to get up, to think better, fast, but being unable. Pathetic, how pathetic-]

We do not... try to defy nature...

[Ironic, of course, because there were people in this world who were apparently gods, but-]

We do not play god... !

[damnpire]

[Whatever stifling, suffocating curtain is in the way around Hayame, something like D's arm mentally brushes it aside. A steadying sort of metaphorical hand is offered out to her across the caverns of their minds.]

There is no nature in this place. It's very existence defies the nature we knew. Even my world would defy some of the nature of the one you knew, too.

[He defies some of the nature order of the world, being powerful, living eternally if left alone.]

I hear your warning.

[Playing god is something he is against, but he does not try to argue his actions.]

1/2

[warmare]

[D, stop, she doesn’t want you in here!!! Or anyone in here!!! She’s been unconscious for like two days and everything hurts and while she was out the Tribune… and the godsdamned gun thing… and-]

It’s wrong-

[Her resistance to his presence, however, is about as effective as you might expect from someone who’s been bedridden and injured, her physical state bleeding into mental. Weak. Ineffectual. Even as she rages against him and what he’s done, the truth of the matter is, her true issue-]

Should Amos Burton not be dead already? I myself put an arrow through the skull of that rat Silco weeks ago, so if they just— !

[If that crowing idiot Voryn had just grabbed Silco’s shard before it fell from their reach, if she’d been able to get her hoof on it, if people just stayed dead when they died and people stopped reviving them- !]

[warmare]

[If she’d just managed to shatter Silco… he was the one who sent the drugged up thugs and monsters from Kowloon that helped create the distraction for the assassin, wasn’t he? The one who shattered that sun goddess, who Hayame might not have liked but whose power was an undeniable boon to Meridian? So if she’d just been able to kill him properly then, if she had shattered his shard in the dark of the Harbinger Oracle trial before any one of those fools who cried about the sanctity of a soul could get a hold of it—]

None of this should ever have happened!

[Her rage and shame crashes like a powerful wave against steady breakwater, terrifying but ultimately useless.]

[damnpire]

Hayame.

[The tone of her name pours ice down through her, along her spine, cold and shocking. But not angry. Refreshing, steadying. He stands in her storm like icy steel, accepting it rather than trying to get rid of it.

He doesn't try to move into the privacy of just her mind. He's not embarrassed by a very natural reaction, and she shouldn't be either. Silco? No one makes him more mad than Silco raving and ranting. He gets it.]

It shouldn't have.

[Meridian traded wins for getting shit on apparently.]

There isn't much point in justice or revenge in a place like this. Trying to destroy them completely is exhaustive. I know you understand.

[warmare]

[She might need it- that shock to her system. It freezes her in place, trembling with anger, glaring at... not at him, in particular, but everything and everyone... But she has always been vulnerable to this type. The type that stood steady in the storm, who respected it... who did not try to force her to stop or force their way through it, forging some middle ground.

... What is she supposed to do with those people? (Well, one she took as a lover and the rest are her "friends".)

The anger lashes, boils, rages, because he agrees, it even agrees, this shouldn't have happened, she shouldn't have let it happen, but it doesn't... It doesn't do anything. And with D just standing there... it eventually begins to die down.

But what is she supposed to say, in that new failure's wake? He had now been cowed, or abandoned her, or suppressed beneath her will. So-

She's just standing there now, too, like a mare exhausted from attempts to break her to the saddle, panting and ready to lash out and sink teeth into anyone who came close... Even if that's what she might need the most.

And this is what will later make her realize she needs to wait before making her own communion post, but.]

[damnpire]

[YOUR COMMUNION IS A LIL UNHINGED, HAYAME... but he is a soft squish on the inside.

The silence with full presence doesn't bother him. He is often silent, standing, staring with no conversation. He lets her have some peace, waiting patiently as always.]

You don't have to move forward alone, [he finally says.] Do you still consider us friends?

[warmare]

[Look it helped her realize she shouldn’t communion until she could get the emotion and memory bleed aspects back under full control… not that she should edit her word choices…

She hates this.

D sounds like Liem did. In that space between worlds before Horos.]

You said we were, did you not?

[Hayame… has never been able to think it first. “I want to be his friend”. Or “we are friends”. Others say it…

And she either trusts them or not. Decided they are lying… or aren’t.]

[damnpire]

I did. [He will be the first, that's alright.] I still consider us friends.

[So far, nothing has happened to make them not friends. Though that may not be true for Hayame after he made the decision to slap a hand on Cyrus's forehead.

It would be alright if she changed her mind; he will let her have the autonomy to decide that.]

I'd like to investigate those who have died whose body may have been infiltrated by what spoke to me. To do so, I will have to look inside them for a soul with Reincarnation. Is that okay with you?

[warmare]

[...]

You are just looking for their souls?

[She finds it unnatural and wrong, the thing he has done. She is angry at him, for doing that to a man like Cyrus, who no matter how she might have disagreed with him... she did not doubt he wanted the best for his people. But...]

Not trying to bring back those already dead?

I couldn't bring myself to double-tap your inbox, so here I am

[sterngaze]

[Liem doesn't jump in in the middle of their conversation. Though he glances their way, he leaves their discussion between the two of them, until a little later, until her horror and rage have abated some. Then he reaches out, gently.]

Hayame. It is not damnation to be given a second chance at life.

;3;!!!

[warmare]

[It was perhaps wise, that he waited. That Hayame has been put back to rest by a few very annoyed nurses, and is genuinely tired when she receives...

Well, she is still doubtful. Non-believing. But at least she is half-asleep when she manages the attempt at snapping,]

This is not forcing breath into a man who swallowed water in a river, Liem-

[Right????]

[sterngaze]

I know that. It is not the same.

But it is also not like what has happened to us as Shard-Bearers.

[He knows well enough how unnatural their new lives are to her, how disturbing it is to her that "death" for a Shard-Bearer is not the end: For her enemies. For herself.]

We were not given a choice in becoming what we are. The spirits of the dead—the truly dead—are.

[warmare]

[Everything is painful. She's so tired. They keep trying to heal her and claiming it's not working, magic this, field that, and-

Ah. Her head hurts.]

I don't understand...

[What does he mean- choice?]

[sterngaze]

[Of course she doesn't understand. When would she have learned? Even most people in Liem's world did not know how resurrection magics worked, rare as they were. And for Hayame, whose only experience with such things is the shard-bearer's regeneration, of course it would be alien.]

Dee said his spell did not succeed because there was no soul to find, yes? When magic is cast to restore a body, or form a new one, the spell calls the departed soul and beckons it to return.

But it is an open hand, not a snare. Those who have found happiness in the afterlife may choose not to heed the call. I recall such things from my own country.

[Part of the reason for Taldor's civil conflict was because the Grand Prince's only male child had died as a boy, and had not heeded attempts to bring him back. Presumably his pure soul had been content in the celestial realms.]

[warmare]

[It takes her too long with her muddled head to decipher what it is Liem means by what he says. It would perhaps be some time even without her current state in hospital, just because she has so little understanding of how magic should be expected to work, but...

But...]

You mean... Cyrus must have chosen not to return... ?

[sterngaze]

[Oh, uh...]

Well... From what Dee said, not in this specific case. The magic cannot succeed if the soul is trapped and cannot return... or if it has been destroyed utterly.

It is worrying that Oblivion has begun to worm its way into Kenos in this way—but the soul is just as much a part of the world as any other thing would be. I always assumed that our afterlives had been devoured along with everything else. It is part of what makes our task so urgent.

[warmare]

[The hope born from her misinterpretation is snuffed out as quickly as it had been lit. There is no comfort to be found here from the possibility that Cyrus had been given an actual choice and simply declined, content to pass on to the gods or whatever afterlife existed her.]

Ah.

[Of course not. Her presence pulls away, like someone who had eagerly tried to rise giving up and falling back into bed.]

So he is still damned either way.

[He just... might not be in Liem's world?]

[sterngaze]

We knew this already, Hayame. Zenith’s leadership had him killed for a reason; perhaps Yima knew something like this would happen.

[She seems to know more than anyone else in Kenos. If anyone might anticipate the fate that had befallen Cyrus’s soul, he’d wager she could.]

But… not because of Dee’s magic.