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Astaroth
Starlight Serenade (Update) [3/5]
Ariadne (Profile) [3/6]
Fatima (Profile) [3/6]
End of an Era [3/7]
A Tangled Web (oneshot) [3/8]
Starlight Serenade (Update) [7/15]
Starlight Serenade (Complete) [9/22]
| A Tangled Web; [Ariadne] [Soliloquy] | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 9 2013, 12:20 AM (387 Views) | |
| Astaroth | Mar 9 2013, 12:20 AM Post #1 |
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Epitaph of Shadows
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She felt naked. Moreso than she already was, but clothing as an entity separate from one's form was a uniquely human trait, not one she felt any need to subscribe to outside of the basic rules of the socety she was a - guest in. They were technically even less of a part of her, of what she had been, than the kimono she usually wore, but existing without the arching skittering legs that had been a part of her for so many centuries left her feeling almost vulnerable. Ridiculous, of course, given that they were little more than a representation of the concepts she embodied, simply a thematically-appropriate vector for the exercise of her power. Still, there was little denying the effect that willingly retracting them, even temporarily, had on her. Ariadne considered taking a page from her sleeping companion and swearing loudly, but fell back to her usual coping methods of vindictive silence, sitting motionless against the wall, sheets sloughing off her form; for all intents and purposes little more than a pallid corpse propped up by invisible strings. The anger was icy cold, familiar, and she held to it as an anchor of familiarity in the stormy sea of her mind. It was all she had felt for so long that Ariadne could scarcely remember feeling anything more, but in murky memories of a long-forsaken past she could remember so much more. A symphony of countless pitches and instruments, not a single dark note; the calamity that she had taken into herself, hurling away so much of what she had been in order to encompass the enormity of the betrayal she had suffered. It had become her definition, the concept she embodied in nature and practice alike. A fall, or perhaps a - sharpening. She had believed it the latter for a very long time, but now, Ariadne could not help but question. The ageless woman could not remember when first she had felt that tiny spark of warmth, nor when it had finally flickered into something barely worthy of notice. A seed of - something. Hope. Gentle warmth. ...Emotion. The other seed she could track. Had tracked. She had known the instant its tiny spark first flickered into existence, and carried it with her for over two hundred years, nurturing it even in her madness. It was familiar; a first experience, but who better than she to recognize the birth of a new life, the keening need and selfish desire it first embodied slowly joined by other notes in a chorus so different than her own? Perhaps the first seed had been there the entire time, she tentatively mused, not certain how to react to the thought. When she had been - whole - there had been little need for second-guessing her own actions. She simply embodied her nature, and it embodied her; in equal parts a symbiotic relationship and a literal definition. She had been it, and it had been her. When she was broken, so too was there no question of her existence, no need for thought. She had hated, had become hatred and betrayal in their rawest form, embodying them as they became her. What she had done over the centuries had been in obeisance to her nature, still coming to encompass that which had overtaken anything else within her. Now, though, existence was not as simple. Her nature had been changed once, and in that change had come the very realization that she - that any of her kind - could be changed. That in changing their function, so too did their form, their minds warp to encompass what they had become. Whether it was function following nature or vice versa was something he would likely have found very interesting, but he could not understand the simplicity that had been upset in that war - that their kind could die, that they could change. Or perhaps he would understand better than anyone else. The irony of the whole situation was overwhelming, audacity incarnate in its truth. That the death of Death could bring about change in they who did not was itself ludicrous, something she had yet to truly grasp - but the end had proven itself a new beginning, and with strange aeons, even Death had returned from its own domain. Broken, certainly. They all were. She, Power, Knowledge, the End, Beginnings... and the Guardian. Hatred raged within her once more, bubbling up from the depths of time as she recalled the cur who had dared to assume a mantle that had never been humanity's right and use it to break the world. She had often wondered if he had been right after all; her kind were not so easily brought low by mere power. It was a bauble, a spectre that fools chased after. They simply - existed, and through their existence, their birthright, they had power. One of them had even become what they wielded - Power. They were not omniscient nor omnipotent, but within the sphere of their purview, they had been unassailable. The End came for all, no matter their strength or their wishes; it could be staved off for a time, it could be waylaid, even attacked by those who knew how to sabotage the Chorus itself, but it could not be escaped. Even the most broken and dour of men could not help but feel Emotion bloom within them, no matter how deeply they buried it. Knowledge simply was - even if no man alive knew it, Knowledge recorded knowledge, giving it truth no matter how mortals might seek to taint or purge it. So - had the Guardian been truly empowered to... guard? That the World could choose a mortal had never even been considered; they had simply existed, never once considering if their number could change. But in the end, the Guardian had won - brought an end to the End, and in doing so forged a new beginning on the broken body of old Beginnings. Had they been so blind, so detached from their nature, that they had missed the birth of a new Primordial? And yet in the end, he had proven that he was still beholden by mortal weakness, human failure. They had been brought low, but not destroyed. Not even the End he had engineered had proven permanent; the world - or perhaps the World; she did not know - conspired to bring an End to that Beginning, slowly reverting time into the proper course. She had felt Power stirring, the horrifying might of the Primordials brought to bear on those who had deigned to steal the universe of their former masters. Three dead - beings who themselves represented concepts, bathed in their concepts, utterly broken. Not simply dispelled, reincarnated, but destroyed so thoroughly that the End itself had recoiled even as she did, fortuitously masking her own reaction of the time. That one concept could once again destroy another spoke of change - another shift in the nature of the world, but one she could not understand, much less predict the future course of. The Guardian had not fallen, even in his self-indulgent failure, and yet Power had once more proven herself absolute where once her will wavered. The world had changed, though. In the breaking of its masters, so too had it cracked, despite the Guardian's best efforts. It yet existed, but the strain grew ever greater, more and more cracks appearing in the eternal framework of the world. Even the mortals could see that something was wrong; time, even the world itself rejected some of them, dooming them to eternity - without an End to come for them, they could not cease to exist. Without Emotion, men had gone mad; this plane lived in eternal war, as did even Fields comprised of beings that themselves had been born from change itself. As for where she figured into all of this? Ariadne sighed, musing with some detachment on the curious need for oxygen that mortal bodies carried with them. She hadn't even noticed until one particularly impertinent - or courageous, she could never tell the difference - summoner had deigned to clue her in on the matter, and learned to do "breathe" in order to better fill the deception. Unnecessary for her continued existence, but there was some value to measured respiration to cycle through one's rebellious thoughts, something she had learned as that particular problem grew into an actual issue. She brought one hand to her stomach, moving with silent grace, as if to cradle both seeds. Each was - more of a metaphor, a concept, than a physical existence, but the motion felt inexplicably right nonetheless. Fondness, perhaps. Her lips twisted, unsure of whether to arrange themselves into a grimace or a smile; she could offer no conscious input. Emotion was coming back to her, and with it came fear, hesitation, uncertainty; of her path, of her future, of what all of it meant for the world itself. Could it be fixed? Could she? What would one mean to the other, and perhaps more pertinently, what might she become after yet another alteration of her nature? A test subject, perhaps. The thought seemed perversely sacrilegious, something that he would say shortly before creating carnivorous flying toast or something equally ridiculous. She was surprised to realize that the quiet giggle in the room had come from her, barely certain what to feel - while familiar in theory, it had been so long since she had felt anything else that even her deadened feelings were alien once more. Irony at its finest, and yet a path she could no more refuse to walk down than she could change the past. Still. She leaned over, tousling the mop of silvery-white hair without any idea what she was actually doing, trying to remember how to live in the moment; more had come back than she could categorize, but there were things that even she could remember, their primal nature as strongly a part of her as they were written into the fabric of reality. Envy, greed, happiness; they were all transitory, composite emotions. Others were more fundamental, two more than the rest combined. Hatred was one, one she had known all too well for so very long, one that was still part of her definition, but the mere nature of duality ensured that an opposite force also existed, equal and opposite. Perhaps the spark that had brought life to the dormant seed within her. Love. |
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1:26 AM Jul 11