ATTN:
@Polaris North
{In the beginning, there was naught but Darkness, The Principal Setting. It stared for some, unblinking, and unerring. And, then, one day, It blinked. It erred. I was. The Mother Darkness. The Maiden Abyss. Eater of Knowledge. Ever-hungering for more and more.
"Gah!"
An explosion of bone and flesh...
{Brothers were born. Sisters were born. Siblings, mine. In blinks, like I. I cared not for one. For I sought only to learn, infinitesimal.}
"It hurts!"
Molten hot blood sprayed wild...
{To learn the most, experience is needed. This is the Truth. By opening the door, you have availed yourself to It. Now, open your eyes -- }"Scarlett! We're heading out!"
Eyes of liquid scarlet snapped open, as the sleeping beast of their namesake was summoned by her self-appointed caretaker. It was not the decision of the recovering cannibal to be overseen by anyone but the guiding hand of Death, itself, while serving her chosen punishment to be eventually destroyed by a bigger, better monster than herself.
...disappointingly, that had yet to occur.Still, Shavis was not so bad...
Dragging herself out of bed, Scarlett sat before an installed mirror, and started to brush her hair - the beige strands were thin, cut into a choppy mess that curled against the curve of her jawline... hiding the scars that streaked and carved the lower half of her face.
Such was the price to pay to boil blood to the point of smelting iron.
Finishing her hair, Scarlett would stand, and strip out of her sleepwear; changing into fresh linens left by her hovering caretaker, but ceased dressing at her small clothes - putting on a heavy, burlap clock of adobe red to afford herself any sense of modesty.
Such was the price to pay for embracing the bestial darkness.
It would be the pap-pap of her bare feet that would serve to alert Shavis to her arrival - the silent Mage of Alchemy did not announce herself; like a housecat, she came and she went, as she fancied; staying only to be doted on by an permissive mistress.
"Excited?"
No. Yes? Maybe. Scarlett wasn’t certain. On the one hand, she was closer to her punishment becoming reality. On the other hand, she was losing her, honestly, pampered lifestyle. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to atone for her sins, her greed and gluttony, but at the same time...
Shaking her head, Scarlett wouldn’t bother to answer; slipping through the opened door before Shavis could do the unthinkable thing of making her decide on a “yes” or “no” binary. Fortune would find her, and pit Shavis’s Spirit Animal against the tigress’s attention, so Scarlett could continue to go without answering.
It wasn’t like she couldn’t answer, if pressed, or wouldn’t answer, at some point, but...
Gritting her teeth, Scarlett muttered under her breath, "
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5. 8, 13..." as she walked forward. It was the perfect sequence of numbers, as each one made a square, then another, and another, and another; each, nice and neatly, subdivided by an ever-growing spiral. A massive, infinite, ever-expanding spiral that calmed her down by reminding her of one, significant fact:
She was insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Her worries were pointless.
So, why stress?
Relaxing, Scarlett didn’t even know the amount of time that had passed, before --
"This tower looks so fucking old."
Jolted into reality, Scarlett looked up at the “fucking old tower” and took notice that it was baring the burnt of the rising sun upon its exquisitely carved masonry that stood out against the mundanity of its surroundings - it was the centerpiece, the pièce de résistance, the crème de la crème.
It also looked like it got really warm.
As they approached, Scarlett’s stride would fall out of step with Shavis, as she focused on the tower, and suddenly leapt forward onto all fours like a beast; springing off her fingers and toes, before her right arm swept forward - morphing into a strange tube of iron and galvanized blood where scarred flesh and bone once were.
A “fwoop” echoed the stunned silence, as a harpoon fired out of the tube, and latched into the stonework before Scarlett was reeled up several feet of metal chain. Hitting the side of the building with her left hand to brace, and her bare soles to steady, she wrenched the harpoon out, and fired once more as gravity tugged her down.
Ascending the tower in such inhuman fashion...
...just to reach the sunny top, lay her cloak upon the sun-worn stone, and settle down for a nice, comfy nap.
Phase,
PaulHaynek,
Lucid Dreaming,
AzureKnight,
The Otter,
Kronshi,
JewelSerket,
NoriWasHere,
Abstract Proxy,
The Irish Tree
