The Mindscape, Pt.12 - Final
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The force of your shout sent a shockwave tearing through the beast. Feathers fanned and tore from it along its neck and shoulders, its own maw opening to mirror your actions. Its screech is drowned out by the overwhelming pounding of your words and the beast attempts to scramble backwards, coiling over itself and slapping the ground with its hands as it scurries.
Eventually it meets the lip of the stone with its fingers and flings itself into the abyss, catching wing and fleeing towards, what you could see, was the final island. You raise into the air and follow it. This beast could not be allowed to harm anyone or anything here. You knew in your core that it would destroy this place if you let it, and you certainly weren’t about to allow that.
There’s what you can only assume is a barrier when you fly above the boundaries of the island. Everything around you suddenly changes and you find yourself in a city. It is not a new city. It is old, and decrepit, and dilapidated. Few of its tall towers still stand. The ones that do are husks, windows broken and walls falling apart down its sides. You feel a Nostalgia for this place though you can’t actively remember where you know it from.
You navigate its twisting streets. It is far more expansive than any of the other Islands had been. You wonder if you’re even still on the island or not. The skies had clouded over and all you could see was a deep, crimson glow from behind them. It could’ve easily been the stars shining through but you had no way of confirming.
A rumble splits the silence of the dead city, the ground cracking moments before the waves of its noise pass over it like the shockwave to an explosion. The buildings groan, some submitting to the pressure of the blast and toppling sideways. You catch a glimpse of something behind one of the shells. It is a bright Scarlet being, taller than anything you’d ever seen before.
You duck into one of the ruined structures, hiding in the shadows so whatever it was wouldn’t find you. Fear and curiosity battle it out inside your body, rocking it with trembling breath and shaking hands. Your back presses against one of the dust covered slabs of broken wall and you gather yourself.
Outside, beyond your safety, you can hear the Beast. It is crushing buildings beneath its power and searching for something. You can hardly imagine what. This place was empty, long since abandoned. No one had lived in Azarath for nearly a decade.
Azarath.
Your eyes widen as pain splits your head. Hands shoot up to grip at either sides of your temples, pushing against the sharp agony as you fall to your knees. You can’t help but cry out. The pain is too immense to stay quiet. Behind your eyes flashes glimpses of Universal Strings. You don’t know any of them. You didn’t. But the lives of billions, trillions, countless people flicker at speeds too fast to comprehend. You feel their agony. You feel everything. Your stomach rises to your throat and all you can do is scream at the overwhelming waves threatening to burst the confines of your skull. You have never been in this much pain. It is so intense and so overbearing that you can’t imagine ever not feeling it again.
Time seems to forever drag on as you relive the mass deaths of beings you had never seen before. You’re barely cognizant. You’re barely aware of what’s happening outside of your head, but you see the movement. You see the impossibly large fingers as they curve into the opening of the cracked wall and tear it free. You see the hand coming out to reach for you. Your eyes meet with a pair of the monumental ones housed in the face of The Demon King before you.
“Don’t give up on me yet, sis. We didn’t come this damn far to-- --do that now.”
A voice, unfamiliar to you, breaks the white-noise roar of terror deafening you and the scream tearing through your chest. It’s as though, all at once, your body becomes incorporeal and the world falls away from you.
>You are becoming Raven.
--Which is something you haven’t been for some time.