An odd sense of calm has come over me, I can almost hear Quinn talking about shock, self systems and the mechanics of dissociation, but between the restraints and the system enforced [Mental Lockdown] we've only been able to share a few half baked feelings between us.
I trace my fingers along the collar, a sleek metal band, featureless except two hair thin seams on the sides. After years of living in a world made of plastic and pleatherwrapped foam, the collar has an unreal weight to it, a presence that makes reality undeniable.
The room feels surreal in it's size, but I can feel the solid metal floor under my soles, the beanbag I am sitting in is made from real canvas, slightly worn around the seams and in the middle.
I place my head between my knees and try to slow my breath, but that just shows all the different scuffs and scratches carved into the floor by decades of use.
The sedation is light enough that the curses warp my senses with hallucinations, but compared to the heavy industrial realness of the room, it's obvious what is real and isn't. The screams and whispers quiet compared to the echoing silence under the dome, the nails scratching my skin feeling empty contrasted by the complicated weave of the cloth under my palms even the piles of rotting corpses and the packs of stalking abominations seem ethereal compared to the solid metal floor.
I can feel the mass of curses testing my mind, little tendrils and needles testing my defenses, hungrily seeking weaknesses to exploit.
"[Entropy Furnace] prepped and ready", crackles over a hidden speaker, snapping me out of my thoughts, "Transmitting three factor deactivation signal along EM, Mana and Astral channels".
I try to say something witty, but I'm interrupted by two small snaps just under my ears as the collar falls away from my neck and suddenly I can feel my flame again. The collar clanks on the floor, my system starts vomiting out updates and warnings, but I ignore it all as I burn.
It sparks alive behind my diaphragm, drawn into my lungs as I haltingly breathe out and fanned into a warming smolder when I breathe in, singeing my lungs clean of build up rot. The smoke in the back of my throat tastes like burning hair and salty licorice and I have to force down the need to cough as I breathe out. Fire follows the smoke from the base of my throat to my mouth and nose, making my eyes tear and I breathe in again. It's the first breath in months that doesn't smell of mold, copper and despair.
Warmth bleeds back into my belly as the curses begin to burn, the claws tracing my spine flinch back with a screech and the visions disintegrate into sparks. The mass of dark bullshit, suddenly scared, amasses all it's magic in a desperate counterattack, enough to start rusting the floor around me, the beanbag decaying into poison dust, the Astral plane bubbling with hatred, but all for nothing.
Before I created and guided the flames, but now I am the fire, burning, dancing and consuming. It doesn't matter if it's the offloaded grief of a dead pet or the concentrated essence of a dozen battlefields, it all burns the same, effortlessly destroyed and consumed.
I spin with a cackle as I feel my tar like blood thinning back to normal, igniting the last few fumes of cursed mana in my fingertips. Except they're no longer my blood or my fingertips, I have become the flame and my body screams in pain as it fuels the fire. My blood starts to boil and vaporize, my skin bursts open as fat deposits explode, bones carbonize and I burn. Both the fuel and the flame, my mind rings with pain, but even that starts to burn, everything turns to flame. My flesh, my thoughts, my mana it all erupts into one fire, blending my entire being into one singular flame burning my entire universe for a short but eternal moment.
And then the moment ends, every part of me burned away, even the system interface disintegrates into sparks along with everything I am until there is only nothingness remaining. With sudden clarity I realize I'm dying, again, but this time there is no fight left in me. With all my feeling, memories and thoughts burned away it's easy to accept and the last thing that burns up is my need to live, a mass of instinct easily turned to ashes. But among all I am, there is one thing that doesn't stop burning, I am aflame with want, a fire of pure desire that is it's own fuel and in that brief moment where I am nothing, I continue to burn.
The nothing that is also fire that is also desire is something completely new and also intimately familiar. Nothingness ignites first into chaos and then plasma dark as sin, instead of warmth it radiates hunger and primordial sin. Fueled by the infinity of the void, the flame has no need to spread, instead slowly becoming denser and denser until it condensates into a single obsidian drop. The nothingness that is a flame that is now also a liquid continues to burn and concentrate, nothingness slowly becomes somethingness and I begin to take shape again.
The drop concentrates and crystallizes into a single atom of metal, as it forms I feel it filling the infinite void between matter until it rips into existence, destroying the nitrogen atom there. And still it continues to grow. The flame catches and leaks into the nothingness surrounding it and as it begins to condensate and then crystallize, its weight rips apart matter and mana. I continue to grow, lost in the sense of burning until I reach the floor and feel the metal rip apart with the same ease as the air before it and some part of me remembers the shape of reality and I realize that if I continue I will consume until there is nothing left of the world.
I panic, but all I am is a flame and all I can do is burn, I've already eaten a apple sized hole into the metal floor and I'm only speeding up. Flailing for anything I can do, I hit upon a well trained instinct and burn away the darkness, fed by the inky nothingness instead of industrial grade curses, my flame thunders and rages with a blinding yellow hue. I put everything into burning away the black flames until I feel like I burn with the power of the sun, but it isn't enough. No matter how much I burn the darkness, the black always grows faster than the yellow can consume it.
The floor is long gone and I can start to feel my fire reaching the outer walls, but before they can melt I am enveloped by a cool wind. It drains away the heat from my flame into a deep pit uncovered when the floor melted. For a moment I think the crisis is over until I notice the winds lack of effect on the black burning metal at my core. All that is taken away is the excess heat from my yellow flames, but it does nothing to stop the black from growing and I can't burn it away fast enough to keep pace.
Everything I am is burning, all I am is concentrated in a desperate burning scream to keep pace. I am unsure if the scream lasts seconds, hours or an eternity, but when it is done, I am alone in the void. I smile before I fade, safe in her care.
Scarlet's fingers dance over the console as she listens to Esther explain the situation to the person in the chamber. There isn't really a need yet, but as long as she's working her [Expert Safe Intent] and [Master Poison Handler] passives keep her calm.
This was the first time [Expert Safe Intent] was activated by a person, but she managed to stay detached enough to consider that a professional curiosity for now. Curses were always unpredictable and keeping the harm levels below 5% of [Standard Medical Atmosphere] took most of the concentration otherwise used on anxiety.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
She was so focused on the readouts that she completely missed Esther leaving until she was startled out of her trance by [Grand Sage] Virabell softly placing a hand on her shoulder, "It's time."
Scarlet swallowed the lump in her throat and started the furnace, "[Entropy Furnace] prepped and ready", she spoke over the mic, "Transmitting three factor deactivation signal along EM, Mana and Astral channels", she couldn't stop her finger from shaking when she turned on the transmission.
The clang of the collar falling echoed through the silent furnace and for a moment, it remained silent, nothing except the sound of a deep raspy breath. Years of experience keep her concentration from wavering, so she's ready when her console starts showing the unsealed curses. Curse levels quickly peak beyond the max of her equipment, she moves to initiate emergency purification, but another raspy inhale sounds across the speaker and just as quickly curse levels drop again. The wave of purified mana sets of a few minor alarms, but the shielding remains stable at just under 47% tolerance and sensors suddenly show almost 0% [Standard Medical Atmosphere].
"Oh shitballs, what in the everloving fuck is that!", [Grand Sage] Virabell suddenly curses. Scarlet's sensors aren't showing anything, "This is fucked up", the tiny pixie wails while gagging.
"What are you talki-", [Queen] Titania begins, only to be cut of by emergency alarms going of and the roar of the furnace suddenly ramping up to full power. Spatial disjointment activates when every shield suddenly and catastrophically fails because the furnace is overwhelmed by the heat output equivalent of a small stellar mass.
Scarlet looks up just fast enough to see the blindingly bright light be swallowed by a wave of darkness, sensors suddenly showing zero mass and energy readings from the inside.
The alarms cut off after a minute of two and people start to mutter to each other trying to figure out what just happened as Titania sighs, "Gods, these things are always so much drama".
But Scarlet doesn't join in, instead she looks at the pool midnight black that swallowed the fire in recognition, she had spent years at it's shores within Ember's dreams.
Scarlet was knelt next to the pitch black water, in the distance she could see the illuminated figure of Ember floating face down in the lake, under the canopy of the small glade of trees that grew out of the water in a cluster close to the middle of the basin.
The first time this happened she had been worried sick, but after a couple of nights the sunlight girl had been back to normal and explained it was just how she recovered. She hadn't told her what she was recovering from and she hadn't had the courage to pry further each time it happened.
She had been staring at the lakes surface, Ember's aura was enough to scare of most nightmares and the surface always reflected a beautiful clear starry night sky. Idly tracing constellations along the Surabhi nebula, she had made a hobby stargazing during Ember's "naps" when she discovered it was an almost accurate replica of Even's view of the stars.
Like always she was mildly curious as to the nature of the lake, dreamscapes, especially ones as consistent as Ember's usually reflected aspects of their dreamers mind, but Ember had less than zero interest in astronomy and mostly just used the lake as a way to put out the fires she made when taking care of nightmares and worse. The way the water swallowed all those flames without a single ripple across it's surface made her careful not to touch it, but the reflected stars had become valued companions during the nights without Ember. So she had been completely relaxed lounging on it's mossy shore when the entire lake suddenly went black.
Ember was floating in the middle same as she was the entire night, she didn't realize the reason for the water's change until she looked back and saw movement on the outskirts of Ember's dream. A tarry figure stalked closer from the forest of dead trees on the outside, as it got closer she saw an antlered skull and ribs poking out of the dark rotting mass, it's body resembling a giant moose and when she saw the rotting moss on it's bones she realized what it was. Not a nightmare but the dying curse of a nature spirit, a creature of rot and poison and she was carrying 3 days worth of astral toxins since she hadn't had Ember to burn them for her.
A [Poison Nymph], even just a dreaming one was way beyond anything she could handle, she wasn't even sure Ember could. The creature stalked along the edge of the dream and for a short moment Scarlet hoped that it wouldn't cross the threshold, but the monster quickly dashed her hopes. Flames burst to life across it's form, but it didn't seem to notice them as it started moving straight towards her, hungry for the poison needed to sustain itself.
Scarlet screamed in desperation, "EMBER! EMBEEEER! PLEASE EMBER WAKE UP!", but the figure in the lake didn't even twitch and then the [Nymph] was almost on her, carrying a cloud of rot and bellowing a screech of despair. Scarlet stumbled back into the water, but instead of a lake bed, her foot only found more water, she only had a moment to realize she was falling before her head dropped under and the world got swallowed by darkness.
For a long minute she was in complete sensory deprivation, no sounds, no sights, only the feeling of sinking deeper. She was an experienced enough dreamer not to worry about drowning, but she still began to panic, struggling to swim up, but her arms and legs were like lead. The water draining not just sight and sounds, but also taking her strength and as a chill ran up her spine, she realized it was also quickly devouring her heat and mana.
But before the situation could sink in, she was suddenly caught in an upward current, dragging her back up on the shore. She quickly swiveled her head around, even while coughing up the freezing water from her lungs, expecting to see the monstrous moose pouncing her, but she could find no trace of the creature.
She sat there on the shore coughing and scanning the forest the [Nymph] came from for it's shadowed form for what felt like hours, before she regained her senses. She looked back towards Ember and while her sunlight maiden was still floating face down in the basin, it was the water that had changed. Her face, magnified a dozen times, was reflected on the dark waters, she looked like a drowned cat, completely drenched and with a crazed look in her eyes.
She took a deep breath, scanned her surrounding and seeing nothing, closed her eyes to re-imagine and ground herself. When she opened them up again, instead of a zoomed in portrait, it was a normal sized reflection of herself in the pool. She was dry and decent again, though her eyes still had a frantic edge to them.
She wavered in indecision for a moment, before she knelt down to take a better a look at her reflection, careful not to fall in again. A closer inspection showed her reflection to be completely normal, only a bit odd due to the unnatural stillness of the lakes surface. In a sudden impulse she reached down and touched the water with her fingertips. This time the water didn't feel cold or draining and for a moment she thought she felt a soft flow pushing back against her fingers.
She sat on the shore staring down at her reflection for a while, but nothing changed and after what happened she could use some actual rest, so she gestured out a sloppy [Dream-Tether Ritual] and returned to her own dreams.*
When Ember had woken two nights later, she told her that the lake liked her with a pleased smile she was only starting to understand now.
