Falling From Grace

[TreeSmoothie 4897]

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Please do not metagame any of the events below.]

 

[Listening to the song in the spoiler is a must as you read! The white quotes are lyrics. Enjoy.]

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Act I

The Climb

 

♫♩ "Some might say we're released,
pushing daisies, deceased!
But we all know the worms must be fed.

There's just one lingering fear ... Oh my soul, is it here?
Or is it rotting somewhere with my head?" ♫

 

A figure stalked into the chasm below as the earth gaped apart to coerce her forth, 

singed by flame and flattened by new footsteps - its rooms were all trashed and

ransacked, and so it seemed, now abandoned by its past inhabitants. 

 

Yet not entirely. As she went further into the depths, a familiar figure

welcomed the woman -- a newly risen Gashadokuro, lingering in the

decrepit halls they'd all gathered in not a whole saint's day before.

 

She was to claim her bounty for her zealotry and success in that battle.

Yet, what the bounty was, was unknown to her.

 

♫♩ "Oh no soul, and no name,
and no story, what a shame!
Cruel existence was only a sham?" ♩♫♩

 

Her robes still marred from the Siege of the Shattered Skies, the

memories of the slaughter fresh in her mind, she recounted the fateful day

to the Lich as she clambered upon the slate as it'd asked her.

She questioned not, even as she watched it pull a 

curved dagger from its pocket and ready it before her.

 

AZAKRIVEL. VEVODROK. KHORHADTVITZ.

 

Awful memories rose as she spotted the weapon.

A phantasmal sword, spectral chains, the endless wastes of Ebrietaes.

What bounty awaited her but death? 

Had her luck finally run dry?

Was this revenge, for those hundreds of souls?

 

♫♩ "Oh Saint Peter, let me in!
You must know where I've been ...
Won't you tell me at last who I am?"♩ ♫

 

Pain erupted from every pore, every strand of muscle and fiber of her being.

"AUUUGH! STOP! STOP!"

 

And her consciousness plummeted,

far,

                    far,

                                       far

below through a winding and writhing

tunnel of black.

 

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Act II

The Descent

 

♫♩  "And from the ground, beneath my feet

I hear the anguish of the street:

A CHOIR NEVER COMPLETE!

And like an old, forgotten tune, a song that 

no one knows ..."  ♫♩

 

The warring, warping world contorted as she fell,

images scoring her mind of great deserts,

pits of writhing undead, battlefields of

endless conflict. The fear of death struck through her

like a rod of lightning, and she felt her soul crack --

 

Charring,

smoldering,

burning, 

incinerating 

it as webs of sickly black tore it in twain.

 

Where had she gone wrong?

Why had she gone off her path of redemption?

Like a feverdream, colors swam in her vision like a sea of

colorful lights, eyes and skeletal claws watching and 

grasping at her falling figure. Hallucinations from the

pain plagued her mind: upon her back sprouted broken

and horribly crooked Owl's wings, and from her head

sprouted halo-like horns now shattered.

 

 

---

Act III

The Reckoning

♫♩  "I’ve got no celebration,
just this consolation!
Time eats all his children in the end." ♫♩ 

 

"I can't die yet! It isn't my time!"

 

Silence.

And then all at once, screams erupted around her and cold

wing billowed her hair, brushing the soot from her garbs and

stinging those fresh wounds of her's. Ichor smeared across her skin.

 

♫♩  "Another sad, forgotten tune,

another song that no one knows!

No one to sing, no one to sigh,
a melody floats through the air -
When silence falls, does no one care?" ♩ ♫♩ 

 

Someone once so convinced they were immortal

now felt their first wound of centuries, and

the first bleed of many moons.

Yet her first death lay still unclaimed.

 

♫♩  "Like John I’ll be eternally
a forgotten name, some lost refrain ...
Just 'Jane Doe'." ♫♩