Rockette

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

G I L G A L A H A D / / A M M A C A H O R S
G I L G A L A H A D / / A M M A C A H O R S

_{Location: Ünterland}

Human #5.092 Reunion

---

_{Interaction(s): N/A}

"So Autumn was just a patsy, after everything she did?"

Gil shifted uncomfortably; this was PRCU and HELP's history, and he wasn't as in-touch with it as he should have been. He wanted to do right by Abelle, answer her cliffhangers, but he was conscious he still had large gaps himself. The events she had lived through - the questions that still lingered in her mind - they concerned circumstances from nearly half a century ago, things that had occurred before Gil's very lifetime. Hyper-humanity had always felt incidental to his experiences, a gimmick to take advantage of. Talking about Abelle's history, he realised how ignorant of the context he had been, how privileged he was to be able to dissociate himself from the zeitgeist. He swallowed his shame and tried not to let it show to the pillar of history sat before him, re-awakened and in search of answers.
"I think 'patsy' downplays her own crimes. As far as the record shows, she was unstable, imbalanced - dangerous, all by herself, without Yakob's encouragement. Her ability rewrote her mind, her biology, on the fly, every minute of every waking hour. He wasn't anything more than the proverbial gust of wind to set a teetering stone rolling."
"But Yakob was there the whole time. We didn't see it; didn't stop it. We couldn't even have guessed. He had us all hoodwinked."
"You subdued the Crestwood Killer, for gods sake! As a group of high-school kids, no less. Christ, we dedicated a whole season and the entire cast to that storyline...it took Yakob another four decades or so to set his plans as Hyperion truly in motion, and when he made his move, he was taken down as well. You- the Crestwood Seven- did the best you could with what you had, and you saved lives."
"Eight." Abelle said, correcting Gil.
"Eight?"
"There were eight of us. Eight that survived Autumn's rampage, although we nearly lost Summer too. Myself, Summer, Minnie, Rita, Emma, Viktor, Seb, and Aiden. Eight of us stopped Autumn. Eight of us, together. God, that would have been the last time we were..."
"There were only...the records and classes - everything says seven. Those names are mentioned but...I know all of those names. But I've never known yours."

Abelle didn't respond. Her face made a wide variety of micro-expressions and her antenna and mandibles clicked and twitched, but she didn't respond. But her eyes: even those full-black, compound-segment eyes betrayed the settling of puzzle pieces into place, the sense of a sudden and terrible realisation. Not for the first time since knowing either Hornet or Abelle, there was an aura of deep sadness pooling around her kneeling figure. Not for the first time, Gil held her hand in his.
"But I know you now." He said softly, and Abelle smiled a small but grateful smile.

There was to be no further time for compassion and reminiscence; they both felt the ring throb around Gil's finger with a violent heat before they heard the roar, but when it came it was a cacophony of discordant wrath and hunger that shook them to their bones and brought them low. It was worse than before - more intense, fuller with dark power, louder by way of proximity; as soon as it was over, Abelle and Gil both sprung up and rushed from the barrow to find its terrible source.

Across the decrepit treeline near the barren coastal cliffs, a beast of drastic proportions and cruel intentions hovered in silhouette against the ever-present blood moon. Gil and Abelle were rooted to the spot by the sight of it; even in a place like this, with all the otherworldly creatures and denizens, this represented an abhorrence and might they'd not dared consider.

There, in the sky above the coast, in all its terrible power, flew a dragon.

The ring throbbed.

Gil began to run.

- - -

The forest ground pounded beneath their feet, creatures beginning to worm and writhe past their legs as they fled the very flames and destruction that Gil and Abelle pursued ferociously. The roars continued, the dragon circling and snarling, spiralling ever-closer to an unknown quarry; with every bellow the ring grew hotter and hotter still, trembling with a vicious keening that swelled in parallel to the dragon’s cries.

A sudden kaleidoscopic burst of colour erupted over the treeline, obscured by the desiccated trunks but slowly creeping up over the horizon ahead. It billowed up and into itself like some ethereal shroud pulled up by strings, the edges knitting and sewing together where they met in the climb to form a single seamless cover; finally, the remaining borders met completely at the apex and sealed up - and then it was gone. Gil searched for it, knew that was their destination, but he couldn’t grasp where it had been anymore, found his eye skipping involuntarily across the horizon in search of something he was quickly struggling to remember. The dragon screeched and the ring pulsed and any idea of the dome was put out his mind entirely. The beast was clawing and snapping at something beneath it, gouts of fire spewed from the depths of its throat at something that darted around its legs.

Without a word, Abelle launched herself into the air, the droning buzz of her wings dulled beneath the din of the distant commotion. She kept speed easily with Gil’s running pace, carefully picking his way across the dense, criss-crossed vines and roots that covered the forest floor; flying up above the desolate branches, she had a better vantage on the carnage they pursued, and delivered reconnaissance to Gil from her airborne position.
"It's fighting something - being lead a merry chase. Some kind of...wolf. An absolutely huge wolf!" Abelle cried, raising her voice over the looming thunder and screeching of the dragon as she zipped around fledging columns of smoke beginning to rise from burning forestry. Below her, Gil single-mindedly followed the ring's guidance, his resolve unquestionable.

Red lightning exploded from the sky around the beast and lanced through the air, striking cliff and ground and ocean alike; more fires, more shattered debris littering the landscape, dead trees now splintering into countless myriad shards. The battle between drake and canine raged on, talon and fang alike bared equally and no quarter given to or by either combatant; the wolf found its opponent's throat and delivered a ragged maiming, but in the same stroke the wyrm's tail - thick and powerful and barbed and ever so fast - smashed into the body of the beast and sent it careening through the air, a wounded whimper the only sound the wolf made as is tumbled toward the dirt. The body crossed a line in the earth, imperceptible at first but quickly brightening, pulsing and throbbing as it grew and grew in intensity toward an inevitable eruption - Abelle only managed,
"Something's ha-"
and then the world exploded in white.

Gil saw it before he felt it; in a micro-instant his vision was pure light, the world flash-blinding him, and then the shockwave pulsed through him so forcefully he could feel his heart shudder and his lungs fail to expand against the pressure. Above him, Abelle screeched as her compound eyes burned in the light, all vision removed; she threw her arms across her face, wavering in the air - and then a singular arc of red replaced the all-encompassing blinding white, and lightning lanced through her belly and out of her back, burning her carapace and exploding a wing into a thousand iridescent splinters. There was no breath to spend on agony; she simply gasped, and plummeted toward the ground.

Gil heard the crack of lightning and the impact afterwards; desperately rubbing his eyes free of the spots the flash had left behind, blurred vision revealed Abelle's yellow figure crumpled against the dirt, remaining wings fluttering weakly alongside the stub and her breathing heavy. She tried to push herself up out of the soil, one arm clutching a scorch mark on her stomach, but pain rushed through her and she collapsed again.
"Abelle!" Gil cried, rushing to her side and once more lifting her to her feet. He discarded the blade strapped to his stump completely, leveraging himself better beneath her to support her fragile frame. The chitin was chipped and cracked around where the lightning had struck her, and he could see gray, burnt flesh beneath. Her breathing was ragged, but steady - she was in a lot of pain, but Gil surmised that if it was going to kill her, it would have done so before she hit the ground.

There was another roar, and Gil looked up, his eyes finally clearing enough to see the dragon flying up and away. Repelled, for now, though he couldn't help but wonder at what cost. In the same breath, the horizon shimmered again, and the opalescent barrier once more faded into view, dropping away in a mirrored movement to its fabrication; they were even closer now. Whoever was there had fought the dragon and won, even if temporarily. Abelle wheezed in his ear. There was no other choice.

They limped steadily on.

- - -

Kylmie worked tirelessly to reforge the runes. She wove with trembling hands and aching palms, realigning the stark, white lines that blinded her with every stitch of essence; her conduits shuddered and cracked, sapphire jewels she'd once manifested traded anew for emeralds and shards of gold, bleeding into her gestures. Others of the coven assisted, and she instructed them well for more runes and talismans to be spread throughout the Blackwood, for the lines of their territory to be reworked; expand the circumference of knowing, she would whisper, though none would ask knowing what - there was only one thing left to know. The return of the beast. It would, Kylmie knew, as they all knew, for once woken it would not slumber again until complete satiation; but this new hunger was unlike any previous. It bordered a manic, feral desperation of appetite, a fanged void that churned and roiled upon itself as a myriad of chaotic, malicious stars that would swallow their world whole. It was a creature birthed from the roots of creation: the before, the evermore, the unknown spirals of chaos that lay as the foundation of all worlds, branched into a damned tree.

The ley lines Dain had crossed were now charred remnants carved through enchanted soil; the lingering vestiges of ancient magics a mere husk of what they had once been. Wards burned through, runes shattered - as a finalized sanction of power, it had worked, but the cost was immense and the currency could not be spent again. Expended here, it was now lost elsewhere, as all things are when bound as one.

As they thrust and pushed and spoke spells unto the ground, pocketed palm-sized jewels and stones into hand-carved ditches of earth, they felt something other approach: not quite whole; neither splintered nor lost; fragmented pieces of something different. White lines tugged and spun outwards, wards pulsating with familiar trespassers following the rumble of a fleeing storm. Everyone was on high alert after the attack, working to rebuild their defenses in what little time remained. One of the wolves halted, immediately snarling at the curtained shadows that now parted to reveal a limping pair. The hound's golden eyes narrowed in their piercing glow, hackles raised, muscles bunched: ready to launch. A companion flanked from the right, tongue rolling from a frothing maw as it near-enough roared at the well-recognized and much-loathed body of dull yellow chitin and clicking mandibles, iridescent wings and grappling arms unmistakable in their form...her trembling, vibrating body as she screeched; jaw unhinging to gorge upon frail, scaled bodies; fang and talon in harmony ripping through feathers and fur alike. Visage of murder; scent of death. The pack remembers.

"Help! Please! She needs help!" Gil cried ahead, his voice hoarse and faltering as more wolves clustered and the witches at the village's periphery ceased their weaving ways to watch their approach. None moved. Abelle stumbled and gasped in pain; desperation for a friend fueled his cries.
"Please! She's hurt!"
"Hornet." Came the witches' whispered gasp, wet and shuddering, both frightened and weary. Were all their old enemies bent on visiting upon them in their weakest hour? How much more could be endured at the revelation of just a simple girl?

They noticed Gil accompanying the creature, but promptly ignored him for the inevitable threat Hornet represented, even in her seemingly-injured condition. She, like many in Unterland, was a seasoned predator; the wounded gambit was not unfamiliar to any who resided here. The coven saw her as a beast unhinged, alien to their ways and their realm, discarded and cast-off from wherever she had come from. Glances were exchanged; subtle nods mutely given. It was a risk, no matter what state she appeared to be in. Gil halted their limping approach as wolves began to growl and wall them out, and then the witches moved in behind them; with imbued stones clasped in weary, muddied palms, they surrounded the two travellers quickly and easily, casting a shimmering net of uttered spellwork over them, quickly looped through aching fingers. The wolves snapped in worn frenzy, clamoring inches away from Abelle and Gil as glittering power blanketed both in intricate silver knots, gleaming and morphing into interlinked chains that immediately pulled and tightened and took both as captured quarry; luminous threads hummed taut as the wolves paced in tight circles, enchanted strings taking hold betwixt their fangs, standing firm as their captors. Abelle cried sharply as she collapsed in the dirt under the spell's weight, and Gil found his arm snapped to the ground as he tried to reach her from his forced-prone position.

"What are you doing?!" He yelled, frantic indignation blooming from his throat. "She's wounded! She needs he-"
He was cut off abruptly as one witch, braver than the others, stepped toward them fully, sweeping her arm with delicate fingered signs to wrap chains across his mouth and prevent further noise. She stopped in front of Abelle, watching her heaving breaths, looming above her.
"We warned you once before," she uttered quietly, studying a mangled wing and a stricken belly, avoiding those compound eyes carefully. A second witch now stood above Gil, analyzing his armour, placing its similarity, as well as the remains of his stumped arm. There was a glimpse of sympathy across her expression; perhaps the Hornet had devoured it.

"I think he's with the other one," the second witch mused with a whisper. "The copper-headed girl."

"Maybe," came the simple acknowledgement from the first, but it didn't permit freedom. "Kylmie will know for certain. She seemed to know that other girl. She's connected to... the other one."

The second one hummed atonally, musing. She knelt beside Gil.
"I am sorry," she muttered, standing and taking slow steps as the wolves began to pull, guiding them back toward the encampment, "but we can't risk the Hornet. It's for our safety and her's alike. The Familiars would tear her apart in the same breath as seeing her...even with her wounds."
She stopped, stepping aside as the wolves began to pull in earnest.
"Can you manage?"

She didn't wait for his answer, nor did any of the other witches; they simply went back to their work as the wolves picked up their strides, setting a merciless pace that dragged them across the ground as necessary.

- - -

The fires sputtered and sizzled out - the cauldrons of precious gems dwindled - the entirety of the encampment gradually waned and fell. All was smothered in the symphony of an esoteric storm that fled on dragon wings. Thunder rolled away distantly, ashen clouds of wrath dispersing quietly with their lolling rumble as the black-shade crimson of nightfall dimmed and blanketed the remaining destruction. The majority of what was Dain's pack had left; some had chosen to remain, others muttered of their return once his passing had been properly mourned, and others still growled of their allegiance to the Jarl. He'd want to know, they said. He'd want to select another Alpha.

But we choose for ourselves.

The coven began their return in small waves, exhaustion weighted against their bodies as they all eventually retired. There was nothing else to be done, no more preparations to complete as the dread of inevitability smothered the camp in choked silence. A few sought to repair the trees, attempting to breathe life anew through their shattered branches, whispering words of a forgotten language, the haunting lyrics of their spells in the shadows. Kylmie stood in the center as if she had never moved from summoning the barrier and holding it in place, her fingers interlocked as she counted every return and received news of their newly crafted wards and freshly woven runes, jewels and stones given to ground to expand their magical reach with the assistance of their Familiars. Kylmie's, in sync with her myriad drifting thoughts, settled over her shoulders once more, hidden into the thickness of her hair as one of the last groups returned...

Bringing their prisoners with them.

"What's this?" She demanded. "You bring the Hornet into camp?"
Kylmie studied the captive carefully, the viper woven across her body lifting its wedged head, tongue flickering with a deep, corded hiss in answer to her inquiry.

"We found them; or they us. We thought it best to bring her - them - to you."

Kylmie stilled her mind, eyebrow crooked as she regarded the pair. Hornet was injured fresh, belly and wing.
"Wounded. Struck." She noted with a whisper, the wolves pausing a few feet away as glimmering threads fell, still bound to their prey but given slack. Kylmie turned her eye to Hornet's apparent companion, silenced but anger burning in his eyes; he was injured old - arm, and something deeper. A quiet shock rang through her to look at him. After Aurora's arrival with Cassius, she was surprised to see another so soon with such an equally monstrous companion. How many had come looking for her granddaughter? What exactly did she mean to them, to invite such a risk into this hell unsought?

Each possessed a similar, eclipsing swath of forsaken power, an energy that wove through their bodies lost and forgotten; taken, or better yet, smothered in the light of the sanguine moon above them. There was a subtle, faint difference between what she felt within Gil compared to Aurora, and even Amma (the name she had overheard) who slept fitfully some feet away in her home, fallen to the wrath of another nightmare that Kylmie couldn't break her from, no matter how hard she had tried to comfort her. In him, she felt the frail essence of an intense, keening sorrow, turned black at the edges from a self-directed hatred that yet paled beneath weakness and a desperate, all-devouring yearning for something. For someone.

She heard the pained whimpers and wheezing struggles from Hornet, difficult to ignore in her intense agony. Kylmie's eyes dropped once more to the wound on her abdomen; greyed flesh and jagged lances through her body, courtesy of some caliber of lightning strike by the branching of black that festered underneath her burnt and shattered carapace. There was something different about her - something more in tune with a mortal nature that she could not place as she turned and instructed for a salve to be brought to her. The shredded wing was a lost cause in its twitching, fluttering remains, but the coven could at least assist with her pain; Kylmie was not without empathy for a wounded creature, even one with Hornet's tumultuous history. With a quick, flourishing gesture, she broke the spelled net linked over them, and regarded Gil carefully as silver-white dust descended from their bodies. She pinned him in place with her stare, eyes darkened by the severity of clipped words and a tone carrying a ragged, ancient threat, as she asked aloud:
"Who are you?"

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

Amma Cahors has never seen a movie, nor has she ever attended a play; she has never participated in mundane activities, the first ever having been a shopping trip into town. Something of a novelty, to filter amongst those dresses, to pick and pluck against silk and chiffon, to don it as something precious.

To don a mask.

To conceal the wavering spirit within that felt unworthy of its grace, for Amma knew she belonged in latex and chains, in soft, gossamer capes and bisecting mesh to conceal the hideousness of her scars whilst accentuating their severity. Just as she wore now. Even the tattoos adorned to her skin were achieved through curious means, sometimes privy to contraband (or what could be considered as such, with The Foundation’s harsh reality of stripping one bear) and done under shadow, sometimes someone would come along, bearing intriguing powers, and would mark her skin under commission. Sometimes, when she was unleashed, when her name was spoken, she would tally the deaths on her flesh, mark herself the sinner, to know their bereavements as eternity but also reclaim just a tiny sliver of self. To allow the needles to pierce her skin.

To allow herself moments of reprieve where none could ever be found or had.

Red velvet caresses against criss-cross lines of raised ink and silvered skin, cushioned against her trembling palms, and the scars worn over those scores of fate, as before her yawns the brass inlaid woodwork of a stage. Draped in thick, heavy curtains lined with scarlet embroidery and yonder the capes of blood, there lay the silver screen.

And before it stood Gil.

Just one, a man, eclipsed in black, maybe some years younger, but it was unmistakably him as she had never known him to be, but felt by the pull in her chest and the cavity in her stomach that lurched at the sight of him. Her lips parted, her throat convulsed as her voice rose, but all she met was porcelain, a mask summoned to cloak her entirely in frigid ceramic. Were she to look upon it, it would not be her face mimicked onto it, but rather a blank slate, a would-be woman, a could-be figure of a place holder for all the women in his life. They came and went, all those who stood before him with heavy hearts; they played into his vanity, filled that gaping hole with just enough words and just enough yearning that it placated him long enough to conjure another Gil, another mask, another script of self that he would hide behind. Just so he could escape the truth, the reality, that he could never be what they wanted. That his acting could only carry him so far. The man they thought they saw, the man they thought they needed. Wanted. Craved. Only for so long did they feed the lines into the shell of his blackened heart, a riddled stone of nihilism that whispered sweet nothings into the darkness of his insecurities.

They all wore a mask, from the beginning, unto the end.

Another Gil steps forward into the light, even younger than the first, and then another, all dressed in familiar clothing and others not, the silver screen flickering to static with every copy that trudged forth from either end of the stage. Some were whispered versions of a husk, a shell, a wax-like figure donned in fine clothing and punctuated with blue eyes that gleamed hollow. They were an echo of the man that suddenly came to life on the screen, a more recent version of the Gil she knew, bandaged and wired, bedridden. Bruised and bloodied, he lay there alone until more static shifted across the screen, one of his clones announcing the new scene, the numerical act, and the name affixed to the interaction as Amma recognized Calliope now sitting there beside him.

A Gil from the crowd steps forward into the spotlight, suave, cool, and collected. A smirk carves bloody slick through each cheek, punctuated with a too-wide smile and too-white teeth and mouths around the words she cannot hear. Their conversation was muted on the screen, but the looks exchanged in their eyes told her everything, from the guilt, the tension, the pain. The mutual gain of simple, easy conversation to assuage the emptiness in either shallow basin of a person.

How she knows this, she doesn’t know; there’s no audio to discern, only their faces, and the buzzing of something lingers behind the screen. As if a myriad of insects pooled behind the projection, clamoring to break free, or electricity that hums too loudly and too keenly for her to decipher much else beyond its continuous droning. Her nails bit deep into the velvet armrests of her seat, a sudden audience of faceless individuals cooing and sighing at the couple ballooned to life. Darling light pools over the Gil on stage before the scene alters once again. Her breath shudders against the scrape of porcelain on her lips, moisture pools on her skin, and comes hot and heavy in her gasps. She tries to look away. Why was she here, witnessing these intimate, personal moments?

Amma sees Harper next, sitting there in a familiar chair, the warmth in her eyes, the uncertainty, the tension of their exchange. Hands held, eyes met, the Gil on stage transitioning to another form. A little more delicate, purposeful, perhaps a tad desperate to connect to the woman at his bedside. He mouthed around the words too, pursed his lips, coiled his hands, flicked his fingers, and stepped into the role, the mask, that would validate the niceties exchanged. The audience adored them, their waxen visages morphed into sad smiles that bled wax around cavernous maws. These weren’t her memories, they couldn’t be.

They were his.

They were glimpses into the void of his soul, the scene carefully flexing under a lamplight of amber, the spotlight shifting to pool golden hues over each Gil as they spoke in turn, reciting lines from scenes, movies, commercials. Until they began to clamor over each other, voices rising into shouts and screams. The audience gasped and moved, whispered among each other, their vacant expressions twisted, carved into scowls and ridicule that the actors recognized, and now, frenzied and panicked, continuously recited their scripts over and over again. The scenes alternated back and forth, scenes with Lorcán coming through, the Gil there struggling to remain composed, to keep himself contained as their friend. Gil standing with Rory, Gil on the beach, tantalizing exposure of his torso that she had caressed with the flicker of a lash. Gil with Banjo, Gil with his fans: a girl with messy ginger hair, posed for a picture with her arm stretched out so far to capture the moment on her phone camera. Amma could perceive the cracks in the veneer as the screen flickered and came up static, glitches flashing colors periodically in bright flashes of magenta, lime, and yellow, but who was she to dismantle the many Gils seen when she was no better off to be withheld in the mask that pressed hard against her cheeks?

One of the Gils suddenly fell, collapsed, and the others simply stepped over him, crushed his body, the sickening crack of bone alarming the audience in cheers. Action! Someone yelled, and another Gil fell too, disappearing quickly under a wave of bodies which pinned her down with their blue eyes. And as more bodies fell, and as more Gils perished, the screen suddenly buzzed, screeched, as if a tape chewed through a record player, and the audience hushed and the bodies on stage stilled.

And then she saw herself, recorded so carefully, in Gil’s eyes.

A mystery draped in shadow, an enigma, an outcast. Beautiful and tempting. Amma knew how she looked; she was a vain creature, but there was a peculiar shade that fell over the reflection of herself on that screen. Alluring, intimidating, all these things she suddenly felt and knew, discovered under the amalgamation of their powers on the night of the dance, delivered in a kiss that sealed their tangible energies as one. The hazy smoke of clove filtered out from the sides of the stage and perfumed the theatre as their conversation on the eve of the Trials played out before her in intriguing detail. Though muted, she remembered the exact words exchanged.

“He’s a good actor, isn’t he?” A soft, careful voice uttered next to her, the velvet seat at her right suddenly occupied by a delicately pretty brunette she didn’t know. She, too, wore a mask, but it only covered her eyes, her mouth was left unrestrained. “You’d think it was all real, the way he pulls it off.”

“He’s always been like that, though. Hard to pick apart the real him from the fake. Well. Fakes.”

Amma couldn’t speak, but the piercing shimmer of her gaze answered for her.

“Comes with the territory. With his hype gene, I guess. But it makes you wonder if he has ever been real with anyone. With me.”

“With you.”

The screen flickers and pans to the night she came to him during his nightmare, the way he had taken hold of her, the way he had looked at her. The way their hands touched. Through Gil’s eyes, she was seen as something other, just a girl, lost and broken, taken under by her insatiable need for vengeance. They were shared pains and trauma, both undone by terrors in the darkness of their hearts.

“In the end, he’ll just end up using you. He’ll use you till all of you is gone up and dried and done, to make himself feel just a little bit better.” She faces Amma entirely, her eyes rounded out wide and pleading, tears lined in silver on her lashes.

“He won’t come for you. He won’t chase after you.” She points to the stage, the scenes shifting in and out, over and over, playing on a rewind and fast-forward, each Gil displayed there a different him that also stepped into the spotlight to perform alongside the projection.

“He can’t love you. He won’t. He only loves himself.”

Amma’s grip on the velvet suddenly turns lethal, small sparks of red rising up and up from her trembling palms. Crimson tendrils fuse through the space, coils suddenly blooming to life as across her mask a vicious crack forms, splintering through the porcelain with ease and bleeding out from the edges of her mask. Harsh lines paint up and over her features in fissures of gold, the mask crumbling into ashen remains with bits and pieces falling into her lap.

“I don’t need Gil to love me.” She snapped, the lights on stage flickering from amber to red, and then back to gold.

“I don’t care if he uses me. I know all of it.”

The act on stage shifts to something sacred and intimate, to the pleading woman at her side as she begs a younger Gil to come away with her.

“He can throw me away tomorrow, so what?” She laughs. “I don’t have much left in this life, not many choices that I’ve had the opportunity to make.”

“But I did choose him. The real him. And that’s enough.”

The woman flinches, the entire audience goes silent and Amma tears away the remaining pieces of her mask and curls her fingers around them, slicing the ceramic into her palms, willing the blood to flow as up on stage the curtains pull away, the screen drops, and the entire threatre fades away into shadow, now replaced with dewy blades of grass. Darkness descends, and the wet, loathsome splinter of bone pulls her from her reverie. Underneath craning spotlights, every Gil suddenly turns on one another, fists scramble, feet lash out, teeth pierce and pull and rupture flesh. Amma watches as they fall, the one Gil adorned in an augmented suit falling under the mass where she is helpless to stop the immediate break of his leg, or the rupture of his lung as a rib punctures through it so easily, like paper.

“Stop.”

It’s much too real in comparison to her recent fears, watching as a booted heel comes down on his jaw, immediate blood staining the grass in repugnant swatches of red and black. Amma moves closer, shoves around the bodies, but none of them stop, none of them reconsider her presence as she pushes around them. An elbow catches against her brow and she hisses, blood flowing into her eyes and clung to her lash as she blinks away the pain and launches back into the mob. Another Gil falls, but they continue to assault the one now at her feet, his face nearly unrecognizable as a coiled fist launches down, fractures his nose, and smears cartilage across a mutilated cheek.

“Stop it.”

They ignore her, they continue to attack.

“Stop!”

A gargoyle suddenly descends, lands among them all, and pushes out with its massive wings, the stone-like appendages shoving many of them aside before it reaches down and snatches up what pieces of Gil remain.

“Stop!” Words she couldn’t spare then as he was torn viciously apart, words that had lodged within her chest that fractured and splintered around the sorrow of his death and the pain of her name.

But he’s not dead.

In vain she lashed out, hands poised to pull him back to her, but the gargoyle was too fast and too quick as it ripped Gil apart. Again. There was nothing she could do, all the power in the world for naught, all the power in the world to save him, to save them, that now crumbled as ash in her hands.

Again.
And again.

“STOP!”

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

Amma woke up sharply, her breath ripped through her lungs and deflated against her ribs, a wheeze pursed from her full lips as her belly hollowed out, a void therein churning with a sickness that shudders white-hot through her entire body. She immediately pivots and dry heaves against the blanket of furs beneath her, clutching the ebony hide against her salivating mouth as she struggles to breathe through her nose. Panic blooms and lances through her nerves, rapid-fire signals that leave her scrambling and clawing against the obsidian walls shorn up against her heart. A rasp tears from her bloodied throat as images coil and writhe betwixt her ears, Gil’s broken, battered body left lifeless at her feet time and time again.

She finally breathed his name, let it ricochet against her teeth and coil against her tongue. Was this how he discovered her name? Pulled through the deepest, darkest recesses of her fears and hate to speak it aloud in hopes of what? To save her from herself? Amma laughed bitterly and pulled the furs away from her body, mindful of Aurora sleeping some feet away. Was this to be her fate from now on? Cursed to eternally live through nightmare after nightmare, never knowing rest so long as that loathed moon haunted her- taunted her. She pulls through her mane of black hair and coils it into a messily done braid. She knew she wouldn’t get any more sleep, not with death languishing through her mind as the reaper that encumbered her life tenfold. Her movements were hastily done and careless, a cloak immediately snatched from where it rested by the hearth, her steps stumbling in the shadows as soft, red moonlight played against her profile and bathed it in ruby tones as she stepped outside.

She immediately spotted Kylmie, her coven gathered around her, and then there, barely seen, barely felt, just a glimpse through the gap of bodies…

“Gil.” His name plummeted from her lips, echoed into a ringing, palpable silence that demolished her pit of a soul as she clutched the cloak against what she was certain to be a wailing, screeching announcement of her heart burst forth from the recesses of her nightmarish hell. Anger. Pain. Anguish. The emotions fled through the crystalline shade of her eyes, sparkling from dread and into life as near cerulean, akin to the waves of the sea that thrashed and swept against the shore. A storm banked there and rolled through her, smarting in washes of rage. She didn’t run to him, she didn’t do anything, she couldn’t. So stricken and rooted in place that she just simply stared at him, his name once more spoken aloud, but this time caressed into a whisper that broke at the realization that he was alive.

From his prone position, poised and frozen mid-movement from picking himself up from the dirt at the sight of Amma, Gil could only smile as his heart screamed and just manage to mutter out:
"Hi, Supernova."

alkaline.

_{DAY 018 ◆ C H A P T E R O N E}

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The fires had been dampened and order had been obtained, but at what cost when another Soldier had gone missing? It was going on weeks now, and she wasn’t quite sure what that meant when time was this inevitable circumstance of fate and destiny that rode her subconscious mercilessly through every day, every second, every beat of her stoned-walled heart that flagged behind her rapidly accelerating thoughts. Scenarios, possibilities of what went wrong, the bitter seed of could-have-been plaguing her countenance into a drawn tight-lipped frown when a courier had arrived, delivered the news, and carried on as if the coiling thread of impending death hadn’t been loosely scrawled through curling penmanship of a lazily hand-written letter. As a mere whisper of, by the way, here lies Sergeant Alex Meyer, host of Buvelle, a forsaken hero who rose and fell and smiled cruelly every time he descended. Or ascended, for that matter. He was an eccentric man who bore stubborn teeth lined rigidly through a smirk, a defier, a rebel, a wild sort of Ace-up-the-sleeve in a game of cards when their reality was mocking lines of a chess board. Serviceable pawns and dashing knights, stalwart towers and rounded bishops, and above them all: a King. And then, the Queen. Shadowed in the crown of the almighty, but far more ruthless in the regalia of her darkness. Elowen curled a lock of red hair over her finger, tugged, and ignored the smarting sting of nails sliced into her palm; ruby smiles that would glare back at her, wounds of a complex, her anxiety, her tethered and secured emotions, that fluctuated and fluttered whenever he was near. She hated him for it. Even so, there was none else that could slither through the veneer of her unwavering justice, the stoic warrior traded for the soft dame of a woman, a lift of a smile to charm her features even when bathed in blood. Yue rumbled through her soul, igniting the light of her dark, coal eyes with a hidden sheen of a holy surge, a pinprick in the void of her ruthless cunning as another day passed and still no news came of Alex’s whereabouts. Elowen wakes with the dawn and coils her copper hair into a braid as she often does. She had been assigned to the barracks near eastern command, private quarters a forgone luxury until she resumed her post at Junon near the central tower: a sky-piercing, gargantuan facility that Palmecia gilded and garbed with the latest technology, and the latest investments of Soldiers to protect its borders. Elowen was such a dominant, even if not the newest generation. However, her connection to Yue (an ancient even in the graces of most Aeons) and her family name of Sloane garnered her a coveted seat and housing unit. It was, as Alex had once uttered, a burden of legacy in the light of her father’s name, a man entangled deep into the political court of Palmecia, their family villa a seat of true pomposity and manipulation under The Agenda’s favorable dogma. Elowen had not seen him in years and denied all invitations to their soirees hosted through every interchanging season, it didn’t do well that her father particularly loathed Alex either, for whatever reason. It certainly did not assist that they had been paired together for such an extended time, a partnership that glided outside normalcy with Soldier delegations and duties. Pairs came and went, but Elowen and Alex had always been different, even when rotated through solitary stations, sometimes being sectioned to opposite ends of Palmecia, they had found their way back to each other by grace of command or the unnatural magnetism of their selves that was in a constant ebb and flow. She poured into her uniformed leathers with ease and grace, laced, buckled, and secured, weapons slid into place, suspension units weighted into her armor that allowed long, twin daggers down her spine, not quite the length of short-swords, but forged into elongated extensions that defied traditional measurements. Dirks, Alex had called them, double-edged, straight blades that tapered to wicked points. They weren’t uniform or regulation, and she had more strapped and hidden into the bands around her waist and the fortified armor on her ribs. Elowen carried exactly seven blades, an eighth weapon, hidden in her braided hair, was a sliver of a weighted stick, melded into a point and often mistaken for an adornment. None ever saw it coming. Today, she was patrolling the southern districts again. She had already scoured them all before, and she had done so many times over. However, a recent report of red-robed figures patrolling decommissioned warehouses (and there were at least fifty of them) had been graciously submitted to her review, and without leave, Elowen had delegated herself to the hunt. It’s not like they could stop her anyway. His disappearance was now her problem and as the holy blade of All Law and keeper of balance, Elowen had devised it to the need for order, an order she maintained religiously and Yue’s unyielding influence that sluiced through leagues of blood and bone, as a creature of unfettered worship, that demanded things be put back into their place. Or was it Buvelle that Yue hunted and craved, the trickster Aeon having avoided its dominion as its polar opposite for all the years they had been paired? It was a peculiar thought as Elowen boarded a private transport, an unassumingly designed carrier remotely operated (as most tech was designed for now, all computerized artificial intelligence, and that didn’t even entail the scope of Artificial Aeon intelligence) that dropped her off close to the southern districts where she resumed on foot, crossing through one of many gates that were no longer manned or maintained, abandoned posts like these were scattered betwixt districts and streets, only the most pivotal now mandated that marked various hold-points through the sectioned off city that led towards central that required a certain level of clearance. She ignored the disgruntled pedestrians who hid themselves in shadow, the ghettos were not the most welcoming to Soldiers, having not forgotten traded history even if the truth was redacted from public record. The oldest still remembered and even though it was deemed a traitorous offense, it didn’t stop the cycling rumors that Palmecia sought to abolish, but where one rebellious attempt fell, another rose in place. Elowen carefully moves herself under familiar shadows, the building looming above a decrepit reminder of what it once was with its hallowed out walls and remnants of steel, chipped away and blown to pieces. There was still a pending investigation on the why’s and how, but as she palmed through the dirt and smudges of black, Elowen cared little for the reasoning as she noted fresh boot prints through the refuse. She pressed calloused fingers along the ridges, using the flesh of her palm and length of her gestures to measure each impression, three at least that she could count, no older than a few hours by the soft give-to of mud. There was a strong possibility that it was merely scavengers, but the fine lines she traced over spoke of a unique make, the soles new whereas those in the farthest reaches of this place wouldn’t have been able to simply afford new shoes. Elowen stood and peered off into the distance, following with her eyes as the trail led off into a crevice of blasted stone, chunks of cement and rock left behind, but scrapes of mud marred their soot-blotched surfaces where someone had scaled over them at least once. Which meant they were still there, hidden away in the dark. She was on the right track at least and nodded once to herself before she moved, following the same path. I’m coming Alex. Just hold on.

alkaline.

_{DAY 001 ◆ P R O L O G U E}

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It starts with the bombing of the southern districts; sequestered domiciles stacked on top of one another, foundation and roofs and walls thatched with precious lean-to boarding of cardboard and wood, some bedeviled in shades of red; gaudy penmanship of military slogans engraved into metal, stand-by doctrines of the Govern gnawed on by flame. Tongues of fire wavered and spewed, belching out smog and smoke that coiled sluggishly through ruinations of poverty. It is televised as an accident, one of the manufacturing plants that specialized in steel imports and exports suddenly malfunctions during a routine quality check, the casualties are minimal, but warrant an investigation nonetheless. While Palmecia spares little expenses in its inquiry, the truth is far more sinister and controversial than official statements, the sluicing veracity that undulated through the eclipse of a deserted Soldier under the sullying moniker of The Harlot. Pronounced once as a biblical figure (a religious portfolio marked as forbidden fiction) that had arisen from the conceptional enterprise of shadow clothed in scarlet, origins unknown but cruelty undone from her immediate ascension to a key figure as The Agenda’s rivaling counterpart of complete and total annihilation. The mortal coil wavered in her design and intention. For the past five years, she had been quietly decimating the districts and rebellious fanatics that opposed Palmecia through public denouncement and defacing of well-known Govern property. Red-robed crazed worshippers invaded the ghettos, spreading far her influence, and uttered the word of an apocalypse delivered by her sanctioned hand, wrapt under the keen manipulation of an Aeon deliberate in its bestial wrath. The steel plant is just one of many that fall under her deliverance, combined with Palmecia’s routine decommissioning of various factories under law of The Central Operating System’s gradual screening of these facilities through every quarter of the governing year. Unemployment rates fluctuate and The Social Credit System scutinizes as applications roll in through financial aid. It’s a system, a routine. And she wished nothing more than to eradicate it, disrupt it, foil every plan and intention, and bring forth a new age of death, rebirth. Of life. The fires spread as if a lazy beast that prowled through the streets. It writhes and burns and pulsates with ruby cores and crimson shadows, climbing over buildings, homes, and establishments of small businesses. Palmecia deploys their Soldiers in assistance to the computerized fire suppressors that operate on a remote-located facility to substitute physical firefighters. One Soldier, in particular, familiar with such security runs in acccompiant of Palmecia police that secure the perimeter. But it’s all a trap. A trap that would, unwittingly propel a series of events that would conceptualize the meaning of life and death and the intricacies of fate that surrounded two souls intertwined as both dark and light. As both meant-to-be and never there. As if the inevitable collision of a star and nebula- a cosmic and divine intervention of life by solar design. If only they had not intervened. For the greatest of evils lies not within the soul of a beast but within the soul of Man.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Ünterland.}

Human #5.086: the anguished throne.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s):&}

Previously: the daughters.

It starts at the edge of the forest, destruction purely unaltered and crowned in silver, a gaping maw yields open around a convolting snarl, scaled lips that peel over a fang-riddled mouth blackened and crackling with red tendrils that fissure through the ribbons of death sired on its rancid breath. The Blackwood is appropriately named for its bruise-violet trunks and thick foliage of evergreen; the vegetation is veined in black, having adapted to the carmine moon that gleams above, static and severe and all-knowing, always there and never eclipsed by solar design. Along its perimeter linger deadened vines and petrified trees with skeletal branches bedecked with thorns that form a barrier, they twine and bunch and even coil through the shadows and along the parched soil, looming as perverse guardians of the Blackwood’s queer abundance of life. Betwixt shadowed bark, moths possessed of demented shades of yellow gather and fester, each varying in size, forever marked by looming skulls, they squeak and trill and twitter and fly, shades of ochre bloomed under sanguine hues that glisten black against the flora as deepened shadows that swarm and crawl. Quivering antennae poke and prod, embedding wraiths of black into the trunks where they cluster whilst the ground quakes and shudders. Branches bow and break and snap, thunderous claims through the wood that scatter the fauna of twisted and malformed designs, squealing creatures that burrow through the brush and bolt, rampaging through the gloom. They impale themselves through the thicket, now manipulated mad with fear and agony, frothing heavily through quivering jowls as red tendrils glide through the trees; everything slowly succumbed to rot.

Places and things remember such malicious and cruel history of carnage and hate, of scarlet flame and rage that coils over teeth as deep into the void of its belly a hated glow begins to ascend, lost and forsaken fragments of power churning low and steady before it belches from the deep in crackling plumes of energy that reap red and silver through the trees. Blackened flame erupts, fading away into silver edges as churning cores of ruby pulsate and writhe, climbing up ebony trunks and immediately pouring through splinters of wood and leaves. The moths screech with such horrid sounds of immediate pain that clamor with frenzied wings fluttering into the shadow, only to fall soon after, burnt, dead with wisps of red wavering from trembling bodies. The dragon greedily inhales, those lingering vestiges of a powerful soul fueling the chaotic foundations of its awakened state, gluttonized upon the frenzies of energy scattered far and wide, pieces of a spiritual manifest eternally lost to the rages of destiny. Its pupils constrict and dilate; a secondary membranous film slid over its eyes as an ethereal glow pulses through a critical stare, a loathed blue webbed with obsidian lines that tremble under the might of life it now covets with ravenous hunger. The dragon cranes its massive head back and lets loose a screech, a battle cry, a challenge, a gauntlet now thrown with a symphony of rage that splinters in a roar, the tines webbed along its neck undulating with the powerful call that spears through the sky and summons with it rolling clouds of thunderous black that eclipse the entirety of the Blackwood in shadow.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

“We’ve run out of time.”

From the maternal figure poised before her to the subtle shift of something else that is known to be ancient, wreathed in time, the fallen they were known to be and forevermore marked as. Some that whisper our old name, she had said, and Amma could not help but contemplate what exactly they were; her origins, she had to remind herself, and shuddered at the vague whispers slithering against the precipice of her addled mind: you are more like your father than you realize and maybe that's for the best. The gentleness once proffered is now exchanged for severity as Kylmie snaps her head toward where Amma notices a carved door suddenly bursts open, black-hewn wood echoing as it slams inward. Dain’s pack looms outside, a roiling mass of fur and gleaming, ochre eyes that snarl and yip, hackles raised, and lips peeled over enormous canines. They are a unit of sheer power and frenzied energy, tethered to the man who has prowled even further, encroaching on an unspoken barrier as he moves, blocking their only way out.

“I told you that the dragon is hunting her down. It’s coming after her.”

Kylmie carefully positioned herself near Amma, shielding her mostly from view even as she rose to her full height, and pulled the grey cotton tighter around herself, a frigid glare sheered through her lashes at the imposing forms of fang and claw, directly transferring their ire and fear at her. Shedding the blame as the world yonder their clamoring bodies begins to grow dark, eclipsed entirely in darkness, alive with a writhing appetence that Amma can feel. It’s a palpable emotion that lists through the air, and the fire at her back seems to rise in response, crackling with unspoken energy as thunder claps and booms, shaking through the foundations of the trees.

“Now isn’t the time,” she claimed. Dain laughs with a rough and edged sound that drags through the cluster of teeth pursed over his lips, a shift in his features begotten from the accumulated rage that boils through his body, heightening all senses and alluding to the beast within that prowls upon the precipice of a transformation. Gone from man to something other, he flexes scarred fingers, now elongated into claws. His pack agitates just outside, a cacophony of barks and shrill whines that roll into chuffs and snarls, she recognizes the sounds of their unique communication as they talk amongst each other, the biggest wolves of the pack congested on the threshold but never crossing over. They’re waiting on his command. Dain moves closer as if emboldened by their bestial derangement, crowding over Kylmie and Amma. Here, he seems larger, taller, his breath fanning down as he postures and threatens to tear her apart by the loathing festering in his eyes. Amma looks up, and she seethes at her helplessness as he demands:

“Why are you here?”

“I don’t know.” She snaps, her frustrations bleeding outward, coiling through her voice with an edge of panic. “I don’t even understand how I got here. All I remember is-”

Remember.

Remember that I -

A ringing sluices through her mind, coiling through membrane and bone, pinging away through her nerves over and over again as if a bell. She grimaces around the invasion as scattered memories drag her back to the dance, the looming fog of a nightmare distorting the events through shades of blood and ruin. She tries not to linger over the memory of Gil, the ghost of a kiss taunting her, the heat of his breath, and the eclipse of sorrow and rage that melded to form the construct of a bridge, unified through their powers, amber and red wed as embers through the combustion of yearning and sweltering desire. Through the heat of what was and could be came the grieving sorrow of their last moments, and she was forced to experience his death anew. Still, she cataloged through all that happened and fought to ignore the whispering malice of her nightmares, threatening to drag her back into the pit where she had fallen.

“She said, go to Sheol. She threw something at it.”

“And I - and it. It dragged me here, it grabbed me, and then I fell. I fell through the dark, and then…” Her breath came ragged and wet, gasping and wrent through her lungs and chest; her ribs ached, her body taut and throbbing with pain as she touched trembling fingers over her wounded leg. The bite seared through her veins; she had fought so hard to free herself, and now she fought with the continuation of life here when she contemplated allowing Dain and his pack to tear her apart. Perhaps she would step outside, face the dragon, and welcome the fabled flame.

“Limbo is unkind to all manner of souls,” Kylmie recited, breaking through her morbid revere, and leveled her stare at Dain, the latter having stepped back quietly from Amma’s infringing despair permeating the air. Too many emotions clustering here and there, hazed and wavering and burdened by the weight of fear they all felt on the eve of a tumultuous battle that awaited them in the dark.

“It is a prison. Meant for the most cruel and forsaken. The most heinous of Hellions that cannot be contained elsewhere.”

I am the advocate for the depraved and the unhinged.

“You crawled out of there.” He accused, a hooked claw dangerously close to which Amma closed her eyes. “And then the dragon woke and followed you.”

“We don’t know that-”

“They smell just alike. Like death. Something that doesn’t belong.”

She flinched, the damnation of such a comparison felled deep to lance through her heart where such acclaim rang hollow but true. For years, she had carried that mantle of death and chaos, of destruction, she nurtured it, donned it as a mask, built a chasm around herself, a moat of which none could cross, for none had ever been brave enough to wade through the depths of her malcontent. She had never belonged anywhere, and no amount of wishing or unfettered power could alter that reality. Mayhap in the dark where she was conceived, but even that had been forsaken and robbed when they strapped her to that cold, metal table for hours and hours.

Even days.

It was okay, as she told herself for many years, as she chanted as a mantra through the ear-splitting knell that vibrated as a funeral toll. Loneliness did not bedevil her life in monochromatic discrepancies of a wayward heart. Still, Amma could no longer deny that her spirit had been marked by the others, where breadths of humanity had slowly arisen and shook off the ashen bones marred by slivers of truth. Of hope.

“Enough,” Kylmie commanded. “She is of my blood. It matters not where she came from.”

“If I’m really to blame,” Amma interjected. “Then let me face it head-on, lead it away from here.”

“I’ve brought enough pain into my world, the least I can do is help keep it away from yours.”

“This beast,” Amma tried not to flinch; she did, but the appellations continued to fall, claiming true to words she had heard before, directed at her. “It is one we’ve faced many times before. It’s more than just a dragon. It is something that has lived long before, manifested as the wyrm because it is of hate and pain itself.”

Kylmie spared little custom and gestured outside, her jewels winking in the light. “Make your pack useful, scout out where it’s coming from- where it is now. We can forge a barrier around the coven, but if it destroys the Blackwood and all life within it, we’re done for. “

“What do you mean?”

“Some of the Familiars are born here, nurtured, made.”

The mention of Familiars settled a peculiar weight in Amma’s stomach, a soured note of something forgotten, of a dog that was not a dog of black and white. They walked the beach some nights, and other times, he would find her, a sadness that no mortal creature should be able to project but managed all the same. Amma never questioned how Rothschild came to her at the most random of times, but she welcomed his silent company during the first year when she walked the coast, looking back over waves that ebbed and flowed, trying to find the floating pyramids of her most hellish nightmares. When she was seeking answers to who she was meant to be. And why.

She still did not know, but she could find that answer in the sundering of life. Let it end, she thought, for what else did she have to live for if she couldn’t go back? A continuation of a lie sired by her mother’s unknown fate?

Dain slowly shook his head, but no words fell as he growled and snatched up a piece of black, silken fabric left forgotten, most of the pack instantly scattering, led by a series of yips and barks, rolling into one as they fled off into the shadows in various directions. He was the last to depart, features contorting into something feral and unhinged, the breadth of wildness about him shaped into muscle and lengthening bone, a painful transformation before her very eyes as a massive lupine-forged creature stepped out into the night and howled, challenging the skies that thundered in response.

Kylmie immediately turned and regarded Amma with hands clasped over her shoulders, a stern reproach awaiting, “I will not allow you to give yourself over. That is not an option. I didn’t stop your mother; I refuse to lose another daughter. We get through this; I will find a way to get you back to where you came from. Though we haven’t seen her in some time, there’s a woman by the name of Ellara, a Jäger, who might be able to help.”

Where had she heard that name before? It tolled distantly with familiarity, encompassed and accompanied by heartache shaded in twilight.

“Ünterseele – Überseelen and devour. The concept of heart and soul, the unification of one, as we all are.” She said without little thought, quoting an echo heard and felt as their eyes locked and something pitiful and mournful shimmered across Kylmie’s eyes, gone before Amma could even inquire as she dropped her hands from her shoulders and stepped back.

“We don’t have much time left, but in case this goes terribly array. I know she wanted you more than anything in this world. A daughter, a piece of her soul given part into another. She talked about nothing more than having a child one day. And the name she would give her. The everlasting of love.”

Ammaranthe.

“You are death, but also life. I feel the echo of something in you, fragments and pieces left lost and forgotten, a mortal heart without a mortal soul. A price...”

You paid the price. You said yes.

A piece of Amma slowly withers, stealing away her breath as she trembles, the utterance of her name latching onto the pieces of her memories as if a leech, festering boils of hatred that grew over the shards of obsidian shored against her heart and the blossoming of hope that soothed the barbs of the unknown. Bridges forged, broken, and then risen anew, connections and relationships she had once abhorred and held aloft, refusing to acknowledge them for what they were, for what they asked of her. Here, she coiled her arms around her middle to contain the sorrow of her name spoken and the unworthiness of it.

“What would your teammates say if they saw you like this?" She paused. "Blackjack, right?”

“How do you know that name?”

“You uttered it in your sleep. You spoke their names.”

Quickly, Kylmie knelt before a trunk she had not noticed before, set beside the hearth and a bed close by, covered in furs. She sorted through it efficiently, handing Amma a dress of black, fashioned as a tunic with tightly-fitted sleeves and a neckline that plunged at a vee, the scar over her heart on display as she pulled it over her body in mindless motions as she mulled over the thought of having said their names in her fitful rest. She tortured herself with the inquiry and thought of their lives; if perhaps they were now better off without her- if they even lived. Kylmie passed over boots shortly after and then paused considerably before she stood and proffered Amma a blade next, made of black and as long as her forearm.

“Your mother had one just like it. She had many blades made, but this she left behind, just in case she had said. Maybe she knew one day you’d wind up here.”

Amma took it silently, a kaleidoscope of colors shimmering off the weapon’s surface as she studied it under the light of the fire. In her grasp, it felt warm, harmonized, and humming beneath her scarred palm. Kylmie handed her its sheath next and helped her belt it around her waist. All of it foreign and yet not. She regarded the hearth, the flower set there still, a subtle glittering of red and amber shimmering there. She followed Kylmie outside without much thought or complaint, the flower hidden in her braided hair.

The Blackwood coven was quick to respond, immediate shouts and fires lit through the circling guard of huts: simple homes made of shorn stone and rock, smoothed and curiously marked with painted white lines formed into circles that overlapped, various shapes connected and bound together, runes, Amma is informed of later on. She can only admire them for the quiet tremble of power that threads through each cauldron of flame that ignites upon seated beds of precious metals and jewels. Gold and silvers, rubies and sapphires and emeralds explode with a myriad of colors and shimmer as an aurora borealis billowing in tangible waves of heat. In the distant browse there is a tremor felt, trees suddenly fallen over as clouds of winged creatures take flight and cry out, it is some miles away yet, but already Amma can see the shimmering red of flame that rises to block out the moon, clouds rolling over and booming with thunder.

“Get the barrier up!”

There were beasts and other creatures found here too, some as great winged things half bird and something else, others with colorful plumage and crests that spread aloft, shimmering with the interchanging hue of the flames as they climbed higher and higher with a pale, white light pouring from the runes marked into each home. There were snakes, vipers actually, Amma noted, and shuddered at the similarity of the illusioned manifest of their like that she had felt over her shoulders and chest once. One of black scales and vermillion eyes peered at her from where it coiled next to a ruby ember of a jewel, tongue flickering with every blink of her eyes, as if mimicking her observations before she tore her gaze away and watched as the barrier continued to climb, coming to an epicenter betwixt the trees. Kylmie stood in the center, arms raised, hands towards the sky thought to befall them as scarlet tendrils wove through the atmosphere, shattering and striking as lightning would. Wolves immediately broke through the trees, leaping over the ascending barrier and galloping in their direction before they skid to a halt. A few transformed instantly, the shift from beast to man a raw, unbidden shift of understated power, bone-crunching and skin-molding, some dusted in clumps of black ash and lashes of crimson that coiled over arms and legs. Wounded, they fell, others of the coven rushing to their aid immediately. Soft murmurs in a language unknown, jewels and metals heated by summoning annotations of looping vowels and words, flesh mended at their spellwork.

Dain was not among them.

“It’s coming,” one panted, groaned, and clutched at their ribs, bruised and mauled. “From the North, it doubled back from the East, some of the wood has gone up in flames.”

Shrill chirps and screeches filled the night, a lament, a cry- sorrow ruffled through feathers and furs as they mourned some of their home pillaged under ravenous fire.

“He’s trying to lure the dragon elsewhere. Using her scent.”

The silk…

“He took a piece of my old dress,” Amma realized, looking out to where thunder clapped and rolled, rumbling deep as even the very leaves above them shook.

“The barrier will keep us hidden,” Kylmie stated, “It won’t be able to see us, he knows that.”

“He doesn’t want to risk another massacre.”

Silence fell, and the woods quieted, the fear-laden cries whisked away as an esoteric drone slithered through the forest, it coiled among the ground as an eldritch horror, a writhing mass of despair and appetence. Its abstract manifest of all-consuming energy stained a familiar scarlet color and edged away into silver and black, and she recognized it for all that it stood for, as it called to her, as pieces of herself, of what she had always feared. Amma approached the edges of the barrier and laid her scarred palms upon it as suddenly a massive globe of blue appeared, staring straight into the depths of her very being, a sliver of a pupil expanding wide with veined lines of black fissured through its eye. Its massive, scaled head rose high, crowned with silver horns that glinted with blood and wore ash upon their sharpened edges. Near translucent wings, webbed in crimson, those ebony scales donned in a sheen of red, old blood, new blood, life, and death forged on that hide as it loomed overhead, its void-like essence coiling from its fanged mouth. There was no way they could truly stand against such a thing, and though the barrier did appear to block them entirely from view as its neck coiled in a serpentine motion, undulating, searching, and seeking, Amma knew…

She knew that it could sense her, parts of her, parts of it intertwined and bound as one through the fragments of her powers shorn and taken from her, pieces of her soul lain within the dragon that curled its tongue, the depths of a cavernous maw churning molten before it roared and released a gout of flame onto the ground, more black clouds and smoke summoned as boiling spheres of rot fled around the edges of the barrier.

“It knows we’re here.” Amma breathed and regarded this fabled beast of wrath, this monster that sounded with the demented knoll of her nightmares, a sound she had heard and felt once before. She recalled the trials and the beast of her other self and the looming figure of shadow bound in chains, a prophesied hell born of her dreams, and felt in the uneven breath she took as the dragon suddenly swung its head left where a massive wolf stood. Umber fur, familiar golden eyes, the largest she had ever seen, bigger than any of its brethren with a scrap of silk clutched betwixt barred fangs. A vicious snarl tore through its chest, humming with power and rage, thick, black claws dug into the marred soil as festering lines of destruction swarmed, reaping through roots and punctured by curled, hooked talons that marked each of the dragon’s wings. It balanced on thick, scaled hind legs and wailed in Dain’s direction, an answer and acceptance to his challenge as fire swelled around them.

Once again, she was faced with the realization of her powerless state, helpless to intervene as another stood in place to defend her, to defy the monster, to deny death once more. Dain prowled to his left, the severe draw of his muzzle highlighting the sheer hatred in those glowing eyes, more snarls ripped from his chest that heaved and caved with every sound. The dragon trilled and inched forward, nostrils flaring, a manic sort of quiver following down every tine on its muscled body, the overlap of its scales seeming to clack together with its teeth that snapped in his direction, baited by her smell. Amma slammed her palms against the barrier, but it only warped and swelled out before snapping back into place, the spells worked into the very ground, fending off the chaotic fire just beyond.

“He’s leading it away.”

“No,” Kylmie uttered, her voice a curious echo, seeming to fill every space all at once. “We have spells worked into the trees, one of many leylines that fall here, connected to other places and things. Wards and runes older than I, meant to defend the forest and all who remain.”

Dain moved back, and back, snarling and barking, coming closer and closer to those snapping fangs as the dragon screeched and fed into the fire that threatened to consume everything in its path.

“But if he crosses over those lines…”

Amma dug her nails into the barrier. She couldn’t allow another to step in and take the fall, she couldn’t be that helpless, that weak, but none of her powers worked here, nothing worked. It was all wrong and twisted and malformed, it was hell unsought and she was eternally cursed with it. A price paid thrice over. She was a void of nothingness that clawed against magic more ancient than anything she had ever known and she hated herself for it. Hated herself for not being able to stop the others, unable to save them despite the many times she had before, threads of power tossed into the ether upon her damnation, and for what? So they would not forget her? To be reminded of her likeness even when she had mocked all their hope and dreams and relished in the pain of it? Dain stalked further into the shadows as thunder boomed and with it, a storm erupted, thick droplets of rain that sizzled like static as it fell over the blackened flame. Red lightning crackled over her head and the dragon flared its wings outward, another gout of fire sundered from its maw, a horrid sound that she clutched her ears against, but she refused to look away as trees exploded, another reminiscence of her chaotic power.

She heard Kylmie as she struggled to contain the barrier, her breath coming hard and fast as others began to chant and weave spells anew, palms to the earth as they fed more energy into the foundations of runes. Amma drew her gifted blade and struck the barrier, but it glanced off and fired into her scarred palm where she screamed and stepped back, clutching her ruined fingers. Dain avoided the fire, but barely, chunks of fur gone, flesh singed and black, his movements though strong and never wavering as he stepped back over the rumored leyline and dropped the piece of silk from his jaws. He roared and launched himself at the dragon, fangs pierced deep into its neck where it reared up, a painful screech shattering through the storm’s thunder as it lifted them. Blood ran hot and heavy and it burned, likened to acid as it sluiced and spewed from Dain’s jaws and slid down the paler, silver scales underneath. He drove his weight down, a shrill whine slivered out from his teeth as he dropped and shook his head, the acidity of its blood frothing along his tongue as saliva pooled. He chuffed and barked and launched himself again, but the dragon turned its massive body, a thick, barbed tail swung around to impale the silver tines into his side as it battered Dain away. He yelped, the rest of his pack contained in the barrier responding in kind as he was launched across the shimmering line she now could see, old magic summoned to life as runes marked into the trees began to glow.

White light immediately exploded and expanded outward, a holy sanction of power imbued deep into the earth. It was a righteous conflagration of purity that poured over gleaming, overlapped scales and struck through the membrane of the dragon’s wings. It warbled and trilled, launching more fire into the sky, trees, and plumes of fire that rose and fell. The rain climatized into a deluge, putting out some of the lesser fires, but the damage was done and the damage remained. The dragon pumped its powerful wings, of what remained of them, and lifted itself high above the tree line before it suddenly fled. Lingering, festering pools of its blood burned among the roots of the Blackwood. Kylmie surrendered the barrier immediately and fell to her knees, more of the coven coming to her aide as Amma stared at the remains of the battle, the rain dragging against her hair and clothes.

The dragon had fled, wounded, but the damage was done. Pieces of the Blackwood were destroyed, and sacred homes of Familiars were lost and burned.

...And Dain was dead. The chorus of howls that filled the sky combated the raging storm, drowning out the thunder for the immense sorrow that struck a chord within as Amma wept and willed the illusion of the rain to cover her shame and regret at once again being powerless-

As another died for her.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

She was gone.
Taken. Stolen. Robbed.
Gone. Gone. Gone.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way!

He had sent that thing to get them back, to get her back; whole, pieces, limbs, and parts, it didn’t matter, he just needed them back. More blood, so close, so far, right there on the precipice of what he was searching for, what he yearned, what he deserved. Answers in the blood, answers in the flesh, sewed and plucked and wrought, answers in the membrane of self and the remains of the soul that wept. Answers in the sheering blue that promised nothing but death, and pain. He would see those eyes again, he would feel that power that rose as chaos and wrath, he would taste the anguish and fear, he’d tear those wings apart with his teeth. He would feel as if god and all-knowing again, no matter the cost- the price.

He would have everything.

Though the Chernobog was gone, never-there, taken, vanquished, it still had achieved something. And thus he stood in the middle of destruction and death, the bodies had been taken, and removed, but they hadn’t yet washed all the blood away and the air was ripe with the fear of those slain, there were fissures carved deep into metal and stone, the foundations nearly wrent apart. A wailing echo that lingers, the despair and lament of anguish he would taste and hear like siren songs that plucked at decayed heartstrings. Everything is muddled, torn, decrepit, and forsaken and he kneels in the crimson, worships it with hands that are not his own, where skin carefully rots and peels and shrivels- this body wouldn’t last much longer. He pools the water-washed hue of life through those hands of death and thinks: oh what did she see, what did it feel like when the name of names had been unleashed, the weapon, the product, the end of all made to be so. What did she feel, he pondered, and fisted through shorn feathers, those tawny hues so familiar, drenched and broken, those wings tossed aside so cruelly, hidden beneath drapes in muddied gold and red. He dragged them out and held them as if precious, but all the blood was congealed and dark and rotted, he needed it fresh.

And if he could not have one, he would instead have the other.

From behind, figures approach where steady beeps thrum, light a heartbeat, consistent and steady, flashing periodically in green, a sickly and toxic wash of color that shimmers over the rotted planes of skin worn precariously over a would-be corpse of a man. He smiles.

“Haven.”

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: The Foundation Institute - Atlantic Ocean}

Human #5.079: No Survivors.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): banjo - @Hound55.}

Previously: Unnatural Selection.

There are collective murmurs and mutterings of speculation, bodies quivering and rotating in seats, a sort of stoic reserve lain over some, anticipation seeded through others, fingers clutched and wrung and nerves still irritated and amplified by something that coils through the room, something malicious, something that poked and prodded and slunk through the bodies and invaded through pores and minds and hearts.

Scylla feels it first, Stephen second. Bulbous barbs of shadows tease through the membrane of addled minds distraught over the loss of some pony, before spearing through their collective thoughts, memories cataloged and leered through preciously and tossed aside in favor of hidden answers. The darkness of a room picked apart and shattered, a flashing ring of red with twisted bronze and golds, a first kiss under an uncertain moon of an uncertain future where a promise bloomed through heated lips and content sighs. Needles sunk and hooked, peeling their minds apart before Scylla’s own latent abilities rose, and with violet-pink waves of energy fortified behind them, they shoved those invading tendrils from their minds and stood, nostrils both darkened and bleeding carelessly, copper pooled over her lips where citrus and butter melded together through the final forced-indulgences of her meal. From above, onyx eyes flickered and rose, a figure of red hair standing close behind Stephen who held a once pristine napkin beneath his nose and met Scylla’s searching stare with a shaking hand. Her telepathic abilities (she could link her mind with others, transfer pieces of her subconscious on the waves of thought and emotion, feel and hear and think as they did and sheer through their minds) paled in comparison to what had just lanced through their heads, their hearts and souls connected on the amalgamation of powers, team Raindance having prided themselves on teamwork and blending their HZE’s seamlessly together.

Scylla traded amber for onyx and met those familiar eyes that began flickering around the room as if witnessing the malicious endeavor of whatever had pierced through her mind. A cold spear of dread still lingered between her ears as those around her shuddered and palmed their brows, mutually experiencing the same thing.

It was like static, too loud, too invasive, careless, or perhaps wanton of the damage that remained as it stalked through their minds, searching, seeking, peering through trauma endured and of love lost, the loss of home deeply rooted into some and the ambition of self easily identified in those desiring to fashion a name for themselves. It was hopelessness, vain, and yet tantalizing and those were delicately plucked and pulled aside for later, for when it would matter, for when it would be needed.

Some had left, another test, another failure, those that would remain and those that would not, taking the initiative to move rather than be left to wait. Through these shuffling thoughts, it speared harder, shuffled through those thoughts more carelessly, abandoning delicacy in favor of brutal efficiency to glimpse over particular suspicious natures and those that made meaningless claims to seek the truth. It ended with one man, deemed unstable, a sordid past coming forth to haunt and loom over the present and the shadows of an unachievable future. Talkative, garish, and gaudy and loud.

Scylla moved and stumbled, the pain came and went in nauseating waves as she drank to block out the receptors of her mind, wanting to drown and wash the lingering, festering touch of someone that had plied through her memories and left them scattered and distraught, disjointed and assaulted, left to the toils of perversion that pierced down into her heart at the thought of such power, such intent, that left her askew. She didn’t care whose glass she purchased and drained, she just wanted to make it all stop as figures descended to escort them elsewhere, presumably to their rooms, but more armored and armed officials clamored and came together, gesturing and surrounding a man she didn’t know, but recognized from that night on the beach when she had approached Blackjack with Amma’s ring.

“Andrew Olyphant,” one of them announces, clarifies, and Scylla feels warm hands clasp around her and drag her back, but not before she glimpses a collar, or perhaps cuffs of sorts that are immediately placed and locked and fastened around the young man garbed in tan like she is.

“I’m afraid that you’re a little too unstable,” William Montgomery states, having suddenly appeared, surrounded by more Foundation officials, creating an effective shield of bodies around him. “Further analysis through your rather hectic academic file and recent psych evals reveal some rather concerning factors that we need to… Process.”

“Everyone else is permitted to their rooms,” he announces and leans in close, a sort of pity laced through his voice, but the look in his eyes is anything but, no longer the welcoming patron of The Foundation, but instead the ever-evolving and critical Mind he was known for. “It’s solitary for you again, maybe we can help you, maybe your true potential hasn’t yet been realized.” He leans back, smiles, and says, “Either way, we thank you for your part in the donation, we made sure to put it to good use.”

Groups section off easily, black and tan uniforms a segregated line down the masses as more senior students depart, pointing, laughing, pinning some with eager grins and wandering eyes, all of them predatory, easily marking their targets. Montgomery has Banjo hauled away with little ceremony, but he’s not the only one, others too are taken hold and effectively escorted away, all bound and collared, like animals. Someone mutters about a blind girl, someone who briefly lost their composure, but Scylla is barely able to make some of their mutterings out into coherency from the bubble and fog through all the champagne she had imbibed. It effectively smothered out the audacious sensations through her lobe and with slow blinks, she glanced down at the bracketing hands still on her arms, black leather coming into view before she turned, glancing up into eyes so dark, they appeared to devour all light. They pin her into place before she moves, creating a vast distance before the crowd swarms and pulls her in, more tan-clothed bodies lined up haphazardously. A small smile forms, carving through a severe, pale face, a dark glimmer beholden to an unknown figure of red hair, like a fox, eclipsed in dark leather, a uniform devoid of any rank or housing, but just as imposing from accentuating cuts of hide.

Stephen is nowhere to be seen now, but the man continuing to stare her down gestures towards her upper lip where lingering blood has now flaked and dried, and Scylla wipes it away clumsily, the back of her hand coming away splotched in runny pink.

“Get plenty of rest,” Montgomery announces, hands clasped at his back, a line of guard and students now behind him, the true line formed now with the transfers gathered, and the body of the Foundation standing behind, all poised and refined, strength undulating through every poise of perfection they conform.

“Tomorrow your true trials begin.”

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

The room is dark and stale, sweltering heat pools through the blackened corners as the ocean continues to ebb and flow beyond the glass, what little light reaches within, Jim latches onto it preciously, for he doubts he will ever make it out of here. Alive, at least, his mind shrewdly torn apart, pain eternal as it pounds through his temples in time with his heart, critical and relentless, and made amplified by the bruising of his eye and the blood still awash through his mouth. He spits, and winces, every simple movement inspiring nothing but agony. Summer stands off into the corner, mute and vacant, eyes glazed over, suspended in the throes of something unknown as Yoshi Nakamura observes a wall inlaid with various screens, security footage, Jim figured, fed directly from every nook and cranny The Foundation possessed.

He currently kept watch on the students gathered, leaving space for Jim to watch as well though he tried not to, but try as he might, the concern he had for his students kept him glancing back and forth, more or less forced to witness it all unfold.

“All of this could end,” Nakamura casually stated, a calmness taking over, as one would dismissively converse about the weather. “If you tell me where the deed is.”

Jim refused to answer, with no quip or wit to spare, for every time he spoke, the pain began anew and his resolve was frayed and broken, chewed up and spent and left raw. Summer’s eyes slowly began to glow, arms twitching, an awareness that bespoke of unwarranted misery and power wrought through her stare as Yakamura turned, regarding Jim once again.

“The lives of your precious students could be spared,” he continued. “Though I’ve noticed some of your Blackjack is missing. What a shame,” he noted, and lifted his hand, palm up, counting them down. “Jonas’ heir. The next Daytripper.”

“The sub-class,” he scoffed. “The power mimic, or should I say Hyperion’s heir?”

“The washed-out celebrity. Could’ve used his face, though, Can’t buy publicity like that.”

Yakamura formed a fist, which he dropped shortly after. “And her, our Tiamat. Though we keep her banners up, to welcome her home. Once we get her back.”

At her mention, Summer twitched again, head canted down, eyes aglow still, hands poised and arched, trembling in their suspension, a mere puppet on strings.

“Where is the deed? My patience wears thin.”

Jim refused to answer, but he smiled, split lip pulled taut over his teeth, blood washed over his bite. Yakamura snapped his fingers as Summer approached from the corner, fingers hovering near his brow as tremors worked down Jim’s body. The pain was instant and hideous, his body bowed, threatening to break, to snap, as his screams filled the darkened space, Yakamura’s voice echoing through his shattered mind.

“Death it is then.”

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

It’s a quaint little cabin, tucked back into the woods where it would’ve been the perfect home, a quiet getaway from all the woes of the world and the hatred that spewed from it all. But a steady signal proclaimed otherwise and with a location now known and seen, it was only a matter of time. Shadowed figures loomed from afar, lost in the thicket, the forest hushed and blanketed at their arrival, suspended on the breath of fear as they stalked through the perimeter before scaling back, the signal wavered every so often through the range of trees, but they had it now.

And they only had to wait.

alkaline.

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J U L I A N L E A O N H E A R D T 2030 ...........................................	█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █	A head scientist by the name of Julian Leaonheardt [any formal dossier or record has since been redacted from public accessibility and remains highly classified] lead the experimentation of the Crown Apocalypse virus since its discovery from Aeon Craters and Aeon cells when extracted through traumatic endurance on their limited states of consciousness. Through various applications on unsuspecting subjects taken from the less desirable part of the community, they quickly discovered the unique production of Aeonchrome and its rarity courtesy of a unique gene mutation that was hereditarily exchanged from parent to child in certain family lines. Aeonchrome was modified into applications through serums and enhancements but was difficult to harvest and produce once subjects became older, which quickly convinced Julian and his team to seek adolescents, which quickly inspired the exchange of children into the fostering system of Palmecia to settle large debts or more influential families to exchange their children for pure antidotes of Aeonchrome as payment.	Due to increasing demand, Julian thought to introduce the Crown Apocalypse virus into certain foods, starting with plants and the regulated harvest of vegetables, through genetic engineering to test the hypothesis of gene mutation to help manipulate the rapid production of Aeonchrome, more intense strands of the virus were then carefully selected and introduced into school districts of varying academic standing. The year 2030 saw a sudden and rapid acceleration of children mortality rate, with ages ranging from toddlers at five years old to as old as fourteen, the oldest being a sixteen-year-old from the slums of The Shin district named P'Siyah. The cause was assumed to be uncertain dosages not being regulated during their experiments, seeing to the horrific death of the Crown Apocalypse taking hold of youths and crystalizing their vital organs before their bodies shut down or bled out from crystals puncturing and swelling through the bloodstream and impaling through their veins and even bone.

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T H E R I S E O F S O L D I E R 2032 ...........................................	█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █	Though the experiments on children in the year 2030 introduced mass panic and paranoia, propaganda was quickly introduced in the form of a newly constructed military known as Soldiers; these men and women were unique, advertised as heroes and effectively stationed throughout Palmecia to guard the lesser against their daily woes. Though stoic and donned in black, they provided comfort for a short time, whilst the histories of terror and control were carefully hidden into the backdrop of society. They were an effective tool in distracting those who were left without and even seen as an adornment, an accessory for the upper echelon of civilization. However, it was not long until their different natures were discovered, their powers beside, and all queerly bequeathed strength that saw them as more than heroes, but mortals given the power and might of gods.	Through the discovery of a unique strand of the Crown, a more brutal and volatile infection was utilized to create the first 'breed' of Soldiers, the traumatic experience tempered with the cells of selected Aeons to harness their peculiar powers in a symbiotic fashioned relationship. Soldiers became hosts for these would-be fallen gods, blemished or perhaps blessed with a unique mark courtesy of their selected Aeon. Experiments have been going on in secret for the past fifty years to finalize and harness the Crown and Aeon cells to create the perfect breed of military, all sworn to the government as their weapons and now used to temper riots and those that would oppose The Agenda. It is told that those that undergo the induction of becoming Soldiers, be it willing or not, trade their lives for powers, their mortal souls nearly cut in half and fated to die, the oldest Soldiers have never lived past their forties.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

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T H E F O R S A K E N M A R C H 2036 ...........................................	█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █	The Agenda was slowly becoming more and more realized, and sections of Palmecia were beginning to be 'blocked off,' surrounded by massive metal gates that divided people into sectors and districts, reforming lines depending on their financial standing. This segregated families and further drove the wedge betwixt the lesser and upper; the more predominant one was with wealth, the higher they ascended through the sectors, even going as far to establish estates and gardens; most notable public officials are often gifted these creations, alongside well-known families and older bloodlines long before Palmecia was crowned as the prize of The Agenda, the jeweled city coined from its conception.	This inspired The Forsaken March on the Palmecia govern, a peaceful protest, at first, to curry better living structures and promote regulated sanitation laws through the crumbling ghettos, the pollution saw to eternally blotched skies of smog and ash, infecting the lungs of many and saw to persistent illness and coughs. Medication became difficult to come by, as certain credentials were then required to pass through the gates, dependent on one's social status by the newly established Social Credit System. The March did not last and was quickly halted by Soldiers, seeing to the arrest of hundreds of individuals who were immediately black-listed and never seen again.

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T H E S H I N M A S S A C R E 2040 ...........................................	█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █	Perhaps the most brutal and blackened smudge in Palmecia history, though expunged from public record and all mandated history- as if it never even happened. The entire district has been closed off entirely by nearly sky-piercing gates of metal and emblazoned with scarlet paint, marking it as Quarantined due to chemical pollution and unfit for human stability. Any publicly speaking of it are immediately arrested, black-listed, and inducted through community service with a minimum of ten years if not outright removed entirely. Trespassing is not tolerated and any that are witnessed attempting to cross the barrier are quartered off from exposure and regulated through, what rumors claim, as radical psyche-evals to temper their morbid and unhealthy curiosities. In truth, what started as the whispered conceptions of revolution was the festering anger of P'Siyah's violent death at the hands of those once trusted, the circulating conspiracies that children were being used as experiments stirring anger and revulsion over the years, and the arrival of Soldiers now stationed nearly everywhere: at all sources of public transportation and buildings, nearly every crosswalk did a figure of black loom, even patrolling neighborhoods from the most decrepit to the most elite furnishings- the eyes of the Palmecia Govern they uttered, and locked their doors, no longer welcoming the ebony donned heroes of incredible power and grace.	Wrought with illness and darkness for nearly a decade, the locales of the Shin sector breathed life into the infancy of a rebellion, what started as simple flyers and fashioned signs quickly accelerated into graffiti and public defacing of Palmecia property to expose the truth of their darkened history of bygone morality and mortal limitations. Headless angels and the eyes of god they said, splattered as vicious illustrations of a forsaken time, on a forsaken place, with forsaken souls lost. They told the tale of a Soldier, one of the first and one of many, who took pity upon their plight and swore themselves to their cause. Having then deserted their masters, this lone warrior took sanctuary among the lesser, made to be one of them, whispered of secrets, and told a story of the beast tethered to their soul. This moment of revolution, however, was once more short-lived as Palmecia sanctioned a warrant for their deserted property, a bloody and cruel retrieval of this betrayal of the govern that lasted for only thirty-six hours, a raid upon The Shin District that ended in a massacre, a mass shooting by firing squad that ran the streets red for what seemed like days. It was never mentioned to what happened with the Soldier.

alkaline.

_{M E C H A N I C S}

& The Central Operating System (ctOS) is a computer system designed to manage the infrastructure of a city. The system is a complex interconnection of electronic systems such as computer servers, sensors, and databases that interact to manage a city-wide infrastructure. Many systems, such as subway lines, traffic lights, surveillance cameras, electricity grids, internet access, and communications, are connected and controlled by the Central Operating System. Unfortunately, the system is also the core weakness of a city. It can be illegally accessed and used as a weapon against the city and its inhabitants. The legislative control of the Central Operating System lies with the governing body of a city. However, many tech corporations are heavily invested in the system to handle consumer data and user information. There are many hidden details within the fine print of legal documents concerning the relationship between the governing body, investors, and users of the Central Operating System. & Systems controlled by the Central Operating System (ctOS) include but are not limited to: subway lines, server farms, sensors and alarms, databases, traffic lights, surveillance cameras, facial recognition software, electricity grids, internet access, communication towers, road blockers, gas and sewage lines, ventilation, automated bridges, power transformers, vehicle computers, security turrets and drones, broadcast connections, citizen security profiles, citizen welfare profiles, Solider dossers, Aeon Crater locations, citizenship profiles, universal income profiles, gun ownership profiles, debt and criminal profiles, consumer habit profiles, user data storages, cloud storages, cellphone connections, and remote access, Social Credit System (SCS) profiles.	& The city employs communitarian policies. All citizens are subjects of welfare, food stamps, housing subsidies, and various handouts that puts them in a vulnerable position of control. Regulations severely cripple any financial upward mobility. City-approved rations are Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) provided by major agriculture corporations. The food is modified to boost specific chemicals that promote docile behavior in human bodies. Moreover, history prior to the Central Operating System is altered in all stages of education. Independent thought is actively discouraged by state-approved educators. Boys are subjected to invasive feminization procedures in order to demolish traces of masculinity and promote gentle obedience. Facts that are deemed inappropriate and offensive are heavily scrutinized and censored in all forms of media and education. Pointing out inconsistencies in evidence or arguments, hypocrisy, or corruption will lead to social punishment, fines, or incarceration. & A Social Credit System (SCS) monitors, rates, and regulates the financial, social, moral, and political behavior of all citizens via punishments and rewards. Citizens with high scores enjoy special privileges, while those with low scores are treated as second-class citizens. High scores can lead to priority for school admissions and employment, easier access to cash loans and consumer credit, deposit-free transportation hire, free exercise facilities, cheaper public transport, shorter waiting times for healthcare, fast-track promotions, queue jumping for public housing, and tax breaks. Low scores and punishments can lead to: denial of licenses, permits, and access to certain social services; exclusion from booking transportation; less access to credit; restricted access to public services; ineligibility for government jobs; no access to private schools; public shaming through exposure either online or on screens in public spaces with names, photos, and ID numbers of blacklisted citizens; phone dial tones mandated by authorities that inform people that they are calling a dishonest debtor.	& Energy consumption quotas regulate how much each individual can maintain themselves. The city employs total surveillance of electricity, water, and food allocation. Private vehicle ownership is included in the quota and penalized with additional taxation. All public transit is monitored with facial recognition software and third-party security contractors. All manner of self-reliance has been banned. People are not allowed to own woodstoves, rainwater collection, home gardening, or any other equipment or means that eliminates dependency on city regulations. & Throttling the natural aging process is an obsession. Advanced blood transfusion and harvesting of Aeonchrome is at the forefront of popular medical science. Major pharmaceutical corporations retail serums that can be injected as an aesthetic treatment. The success of the effect depends largely on genetically predisposed factors—some people see great results, whereas others do not. However, premium versions of the serums are only available to the upper echelons of society. The premium serums are produced with much more taboo methods in order to maintain the purity of the aeonchrome ingredient. Absolute purity of aeonchrome can only be obtained from infant and preadolescent humans suffering from Crown Apocolypse. Premium serums are officially labeled as a conspiracy theory. Other such serums are given to Soldiers of the newly constructed military, a differing strain of the Crown that subjugates them to an Aeon of the current governs needs and selections. Soldiers are rumored to be selected at birth from either influential families or those of a lesser background; some parents offer their children over to the military to settle large quantities and amounting dept.

alkaline.

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Y U E

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Yue was one of the first Aeons discovered; their crater was found in the farthest reaches of Palmecia, sunk deep into the mountains of Lullin, where the land remains eternally rapt with snow and ice. It is an unforgiving landscape that gives sanctuary to an unforgiving creature. Forged of white flame and pure, unadulterated power, Yue is an Aeon thought to be a being of complete and unyielding order of life and, subsequently, rebirth. The Law of All its domain of influence, for everything that is as it should be and ever was, that ever could be under its sanction of righteous fury. The means and thought to perform rightful punishment as deemed fit by its perfect judgment upon all life and the souls therein. Law and order their reign with balance sown betwixt white and black. For Yue, there is no grey or diluted solution but a singular path that carves through the existence of every creature, never donned as simply good or evil, but as creatures of purity that burn as the hottest of flame known to man. Yue's demands are harsh, accurate, and unwavering, where no doubt is permitted to eclipse their power or host. They demand total and complete subjugation and worship and accept nothing less.

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^{「 01 」}

alkaline.

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E L O W E N S L O A N E

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The alliance that is of order and balance, the subject of perfected birthright, the burden to be as she should be rather than what she could be: family a smothering mold, the burden of legacy. Elowen has been sanctioned righteously as a holy blade blessed under the might of All Law and the demanding price of purgatory that rivals the foundations of forsaken heavens lost of their Aeons. To be a weapon of these would-be Gods, the vast well of might and pure ruin sired in these eyes of black that peer through the quivering binds of a soul to purge, annihilate, and set aflame with holy conflagrations. The conceptual alignments of rigid, unyielding prowess that glisten near white-hot with her calloused touch, a reputation forged through the military as the Holy Light, a simplistic moniker that guides the impression of a Soldier prepared to do all in the name of success and glory- to what she believes is right. Elowen is a creature that has given all to her govern, her very soul rapt with their cruelty, her spirit forged through the fire and honed as the weapon sent to eradicate their foes and those that would oppress the Agenda, that defy the Law she has upheld most of her life. By the grace of her heart, of what remains of it, she has not entirely lost her humanity, even if half of it is fused with a deathly god.

Elowen has garnered a reputation of severity with her alarming tactics; the forgone morality of bequeathed death and purging opponents has earned her a rather stoic revere, an assumed facade of unyielding emotion that remains even on the decimated battlefield with her at the center of unwavering violence. She does not yield or break, or bend; she merely is, the Mark of her Aeon an amalgamation of scarring that ascends her spine as a pillar of scorched flesh, reminiscent of a blade wreathed in fire. Though the govern chose Yue for her, their intertwined cells have produced such a bond that bellows Yue's voice of wrath through her mind; their influence glimpsed through the hidden white fire that shimmers yonder the black of her piercing gaze and severe brow that wears an eternal glare. Elowen has been with Solider for nearly ten years, taking rank among the infamous military in 2040 when she was seventeen, shortly after The Shin Massacre. She recently gained the rank of Lieutenant in 2048 when she brought down a phalanx of peculiar red-robed fanatics that invaded the Southern ghettos; she's been hunting them ever since.

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^{「 01 」}

alkaline.

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_{ａ ｌ ｋ ａ ｌ ｉ ｎ ｅ}
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^{「 01」-「 02 」-「 03 」}

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I knew you once, long ago, in the wrath of a supernova did I find you. You were born into a nebula, and I a star. In our union did a thousand and one worlds come alive. And though I no longer remember your face, nor you mine, I never stopped searching.