[Event] Freezing of Haense | The Second Plague

[Werew0lf 24181]

 

“PENANCE. . . FOR YOUR. .  SIN - . . .”

 

The land was plagued by the after-effects of the fleshbound cave; a ritual so sinister and evil, a divinity so cruel and heretical. Spikes of ice and snow ripped out from the ground of Haense, besmirching it in a blizzard so terrible that skin and flesh pinched like feral teeth, and the winds cut like swords.

 

Yet again - was it GOD who punished them? Or was it something else? Those sick and old who could not walk fast enough, met by the fury of hypothermia; their blood, skin and muscles frozen, popped and boiling. 

 

And all those in Haense would scream tonight. Nightmares fuelled red-flesh, eyes, and white-feathers in bright, radiant clouds. The veilwatchers felt this the worst, a stinging headache wherever they walked for the next four days. 

 

[ET will be at the region to do emotes for hypothermia / effects of the cold if people are not appropriately dressed. Please message me for any clarifications]. 

[PrimnyaQuorum 4008]

Haus did not recall his exact words - he remembers trumpets and angelic chorus, a holy symphony that threatened to drown out his shouts, a torturous encore. Heralds of something more vile, beyond simple words and expression. A face gives it shape, but he knows it is a lie - given to men to feed into their despair and pious hearts.

 

He struggles to recollect his actions. He remembers feeling untempered fury as the howling blizzard silences his shouts, and golden flames erupt around him - a attempt to stave off the cold, and provide heat to the damned who marched towards death. It's not even worth the description of futile - the frozen rage of the north consumes it in a blink, and he withers under the brunt of the biting and clawing cold. He doesn't remember how he escaped, or what drove him to endure what he knows is well beyond him.

 

The screeching, chilled winds deafens him as the enduring need to live guides him. When he finds himself thinking again, he's underground - frozen, his skin as dangerously white as the snow towered outside and his breath shaking - but alive. 

 

As he is mended, and he searches through the icy fog that clouds his mind, he understands. It is not the searing pain behind his skull, or the co-existent absence of sensation and white-hot needlelike pain that exists across his skin that saps away at his very being - nor the torment that lies in his sleep, the theatrics of red-flesh or eyes beyond reason. 

 

It is that throughout it, he was alone. Not a soul stood by him - heeded his warning, took his guidance, worried for him until it was too late. He should be beyond anger - but absences gnaws at his heart, and the remaining embers that defined his spirit suffocate under the weigh of truth. His Heart, worn too freely upon his sleeve, freezes over and he wonders:

 

What is he enduring for, anyway? A home that only exists in his dreams, a people that only exist in his hopes, a kindness that only he carried - a fiction he no longer illuminates. His heart aches for what he knows is lost, and yet - the truth that it never really could exist.