==> AP: Finish up the tale.
Your name is Kaeri, and the most important thing in the world, the only thing you haven’t let the shadows take away from you, lies dead before you—under you, you suppose, since you’re weaving around in the air like an invisible madwoman. An apt descriptor, that. It’s a good thing you have never claimed to be particularly sane. Indeed, your brand of madness is partially why you and Darien came out here to begin with on this foolish suicide mission.
Your name is Kaeri, and, at the moment, you are a Queen. The Void Ring’s powers keep you hidden from sight, you think. You would look down to see, but unfortunately, that process requires the eyes you ripped from your own face long ago, and again in a particularly bad fit of madness shortly after you’d Ascended a god. The Whispers come to you all the time, now, but you remember after Ascension there had been one blessedly brief moment where you were free- but that matters not now, for you are being a savior Queen, letting the shadows tear you apart from the inside out as you struggle to wield overwhelming power you were never meant to have.
You’re giving yourself over to the madness in order to take the power that gives you and thrust it through the Ring burning hot on your finger, to fight off the devastation the Red Miles would cause, the devastation you See in so many timelines when your resolve wavers (you lose what remains of your ever-shakier control) or you die. The girl, Alex, is to take the Ring from you if you do, and you hope it won’t come to that before the monster who killed your world has died. You have never been important. Never gotten the chance, not really, to protect and shield Darien the way he always would you. It is admittedly selfish of you to want to protect him through this, in the only way you now can, by making sure the cause he died for isn’t torn apart by Miles. You cannot attack effectively and still wield the counterpoint power, you are certain of this, and so you stick to evading attacks that have stopped coming—you can’t focus enough to See why. You’re concentrating utterly on the Ring and the powers fighting inside it, and that is good, because it makes the yawning, tearing, terrified void inside of you be less noticeable, at least for a bit.
That all changes very suddenly with two words one word hyphenated you hear even over the Eldritch voices. “MIND-BREAK!” the monster howls; you think he is dying, but cannot spare the Time to See. Suddenly, you cannot spare the Time for anything anymore, as a rush of ideas decisions terrible horrible choices is brought inescapably to the forefront of your mind, and you smile through the tears you haven’t realised are soaking through your bloodied blindfold.
A Seer, in your experience, has to live through a multitude of terrible futures every single waking moment (you haven’t let yourself sleep, or dream, in so horrendously long). You are well aware of how greatly the most insignificant details can throw everything off-course. And more importantly, you are well aware of all those hideous things you’ve ever done wrong, because you See them all the time, and much worse besides. The horrorterrifying monsters you gave yourself to grant you what you ask, now: you are numb, completely all over numb, except for that ache where Darien being alive should be (you felt him die, you swear you did) and that hollow sort of scared rage against the world.
You are able to function only because the world currently needs you to fight against the visions you have all-too-frequently anyway and stay alive. And yet that functioning does not necessarily mean you need to be moving, and it is quite possible to be kneeling in midair for the simple reason of you don’t trust your legs to support you even when they aren’t, the tears of ashes and ink you haven’t cried in so long spilling through the cloth that binds your ruined sockets, so painful. So strangely calming.
Your hand hurts, and you don’t know why. It feels as if there is a strange sort of fire creeping its way up your arm, burning you alive, and oh- that would be because there is, you think, but it stops all at once and your name is Kaeri and you’re no longer a Queen, just a pathetic, broken little girl who built up her mind around one thing and no longer knows how to function with that thing gone. A common theme, except in this case it wasn’t uncaringness that will kill you.
Curling into yourself, you fail to notice the loss of most of your arm. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Someone is trying to shield your mind, and there are many people talking, but your mind is an Eldritch wasteland horrorscape that was broken beyond repair so long ago, and you don’t quite understand the language they’re speaking now anyway. Everyone has something they care about, you think you pick up on. And oh, isn’t that true. Hang onto that something, protect that something at all costs, and oh, again, you have that, you do. It’s just that he’s lying dead beneath you.
The universe will be exploding soon, and with that knowledge, you are able to sit up and toss a little broken dreamer girl the Ring that fell from your nonexistent hand. That sick fire is still eating away at you, and your blood is shadowed and thick, but you don’t mind. Better to die here and now, a monster, than spend one more day in a world your protector and love (you hate that word, you always have, it’s so confusing and painful and you don’t like those sorts of things, but you can say it now that there’s nothing to stop you, even yourself) is gone from. You say a few things without paying attention to what you’re saying, and then…
Once you’re certain the other Players have evacuated the area, or at least are no longer paying any sort of attention to you whatsoever, you reach up and pull your blindfold away. You’re not leaving Darien’s side, come what may, because once he promised you that you would never have to. That you would never again be so tearingly alone. You decide to hold him to that promise, and so you sit at his side, blood dripping like tears and real tears both choking your voice. But he loved your voice, your weak, soft, wavery voice that can’t hold a pitch for more than a few seconds without breaking, the moment he heard it. He always wanted to know what it would be like if you sang.
Now, he cannot hear, but you pretend he can somehow. And with the Eldritch whisperings thick in your throat, you force your voice out, force it mostly under control, and raise it in song. An elegy of sorts, as you sit and burn and wait to die. The universe itself will be your funeral pyre, and this dangerously codependent relationship really is turning out like Romeo and Juliet in the end, isn’t it? How funny. How very, very, oh-
Your name is Kaeri, and now, you are just waiting to die.
