⇨ 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

[tacosgay]

"Can we just take a second to stop pushing each other around like children, and pay attention to what's actually important here?"

And, in this moment, it's actually not him-- it's CY-Ren. The sexual aspect of her attraction might be useless on him, but the more subtle kind of draw, the need to serve her... that sinks right in, and it's something Taako, as an individual, has never felt before, not even in the presence of the goddess he does serve back home.

How would Istus feel, seeing him mindlessly moving towards this false god, his gaze planted firmly on her visage, his mind swaying, dark and thoughtless, along with her song?

[npcarnival]

CY-Ren pays no attention to Mari and Herbert's squabble - whether or not Herbert ever made it to her just isn't important. Instead, she stays focused on the portal she's opened up - she spreads her palms and coaxes it open further, gradually opening a gateway back to the real world.

"Of course..." she says softly, moving through gate without looking back. It leads to the interior of a extremely lavish penthouse... hers, naturally.

"With some practice, you'll all find yourselves able to use your Sparks to summon the powers of the Void... and with that power, it will be your duty to keep the forces of Creation busy while I finish perfecting my Requiem... The performance you just witnessed was only a test run."

She opens her coat, and pulls out two palm-sized, perfect jewels - the gems of the fallen Amethyst and Lapis. As Steven and Connie come to join her, she will hand them off to them.

"As a Harbinger of the Void, you'll find yourself able to claim familiars of your own... servants to aid you in your tasks. It can be any beast under your power, or one willed together by your Spark." She smiles to herself.

"It should all come to you quite naturally."

The night sky shimmers through the plane-glass windows, the ocean rolling far below them.