⇨ A SONG IN THE SILENCE

[ringleaders]

Who: The Harbingers
When: Just after midnight, Day 13
Where: ????
What: The new Harbingers have an out of body experience.
Warnings: Ego death. Some generally upsetting content, most likely.

ONE WAY OUT↴ You don't fall unconscious so much as you find yourself completely slipping out of this reality, the meaning of everything you left behind becoming increasingly abstract and hard to hold on to. You're lost in a void, surrounded by whispers that fall just out of range of hearing, in the presence of something so vast that you feel crushed by its presence. On, in this case, lack of presence. Like they say: the abyss stares back. It isn't someone, it is an emptiness, and everything about you feels like it bleeds away in the face of it. A hole that has no bottom. Every attempt to pull yourself together makes this vertigo feel worse, until existence itself feels terrifying or reprehensible. How precisely this existential crisis manifests will depends on the individual, tailored to your own unfulfilled desires, disappointments, frustrations. You find yourself faced with all of the things about reality that fill you with despair and disgust, and while you can attempt to fight it with thoughts of the things you hold dear, it feels unrelenting. Eventually you will break under the weight of it. It's only then, when you find yourself desperate for any kind of escape, that you are finally given the opportunity. The void speaks to you without words, but instead with a simple understanding. It can give you what you need to take control of this despair, of this heartbreaking necessity. Of every lost soul in this world, you are the one that has been given the chance to be the one to end it, to take control in the universe's final days. You will be creation's judge and executioner - and having witnessed this evidence, you know what you must do. This can't go on. This can't be fixed. The only hope left is for the end, but it will be an end at your hand. For once, the power is yours. Only when you are willing to accept this gift will you awaken. You find yourself in your body again, your senses painfully acute, as if you've been reborn. Is this the first time you've truly lived? Every pain, every worry you had prior to this moment seems so small in comparison. The path ahead is clear and unburdened by complication. You are in a dark space, surrounding by the specters of creatures you can't quite make out, like things just barely forgotten. You find that you aren't alone, as others have awoken in the same space. In front of you, floating above your chest, you will find a black light, like a small inverted sun. You know it's a part of you, but that it wasn't like this before. Though fear and a distant sense of disquiet may linger, you can't bring yourself to distrust your new location, or the change in your Spark. You have reassurance, now. It will all be over soon.

Comments

[starseedling]

Steven frowns, crossing his arms around his gut. So the others weren't useful enough, then? That doesn't really make sense to him, but he guesses it doesn't matter anymore. He'll see them again before the end, even if it's not how they expected.

He looks at the card in Childermass's hand, realizing what Childermass has done. Can he do that, too? He looks at his own darkened orb, and closes his hand around it as well. If Childermass can do it, he wants to be able to do it, too.

He closes his eyes, and in the next few moments, the ball of dark energy has changed its form. He opens his fingers to reveal a tiny seedling, growing in his hand.

"There," he says, satisfied. He's useful, too.

[atouts]

Well, he may be biased. It doesn't help that the Void's done a fine job of reminding him how often he does all the work and so many other people just screw around (back in England, at least, but why not apply that here as well?). Regardless, that isn't being questioned, which means he won't explain it further and instead raises an eyebrow at the seedling Steven's managed to turn the energy into.

"Interesting choice," he comments, neither approving or disapproving, just... saying it. "I suppose plants really are in your area of expertise these days."