Work Text:
Title: Miasma
Fandom: Dice Camera Action
Characters: Diath Woodrow, Strix Skizzicks(mentioned)
Ships: [Diath Woodrow/Strix (hinted)]
Rating: E
Summary: Diath wanders the miasma. He's been dead before. This isn't the same. (VERY loose form poetry)
#100Waffles
Word Count:
AN: I really wanted to do something introspective for Diath's #100Waffles, and so here is this. It's another word prompt and I think it worked out all right. When I saw this prompt I immediately thought of the Crew's time in Borovia. Please give me feedback! Comments greatly appreciated! I write fanfiction for fun, if you have a problem with that, file a complaint with Larry (the void outside my window).
Miasma: n 1: a vaporous exhalation or emanation 2: an atmosphere that depletes, corrupts, or obscures
It was easier at first. He'd been dead before. Floating in inexistence. Choked away from life. Losing air and hope in equal measure. But here.
Here was different.
Gray shapes drifted through fog. The colorless sky pressed down on his mind, a heavy weight of discomfort. He didn't see the others. Only vague forms that quelled in him intense fear. Curling in his chest like some sort of feral beast, heavy and wild.
Diath couldn't struggle against that weight.
He was alone. Vastly, inexplicably, (perhaps only mentally), alone. His thoughts drifted in and out occupying the emptiness with joy and fear. With hatred. So much hatred.
He was a ghoul, eyes sunken and devoid. Another gray being in the miasma.
Even Gutter's dark voice is silent here. The only echoing pleas Diath heard were the voices of children and slaves, charred and burnt after he released the demon. Those were there when he was alive though. The same small voices calling out for help.
Here was different from last time. Strahd made sure of it.
---
He didn't know how much time had passed. He barely fathomed his surroundings now. The fog stiff and gray. The air stagnant and unmoving.
Sometimes, when he could remember, he missed the cool ocean breeze of Waterdeep. Cool sea swept air tousling his locks, hissing through the streets filled with vendors and adventurers alike. The harbors. The taverns. The back alleys where he met...
Strix
She was his tether. A constant thought in the endless white. He couldn't always remember what she looked like. Didn't always see her rare smile in his head. But when he did. Then he remembered it all.
When they met: dank alleyways and trash bins. Pies left out in the rain every day. Her dark robes and small horns nestled in a bird's nest of hair.
His trust. He realized he trusted her. Every minute. Every second since he met her. Didn't matter how many times she ran away, screaming in infernal. No matter how many times she threw fireballs and the heat swept over him, warming him but not scalding him.
no
she would never let that happen
She protected him. Saved him from the dark recesses of his own mind.
Who was there to save him now?
Who was there in the fog?
Diath lets out a sigh, white hot breathe blending with the ever-present cloud. With it. The memories.
He goes back to wandering.
---
It's quiet here.
It's loud here.
Pressure buzzing against his skull, the lack of life.
He wonders if the clouds will clear.
He wonders when the sun will shine.
It's too dark. But too white
and he's lost in the maze of miasma.
And he can't tell if he's muttering aloud or only thinking, or whether there's a difference since there's no one around to hear his repetitive pleas.
No one except the shadows.
Moving with him.
Standing and shuffling and muttering.
The buzzing is too loud.
It's too quiet.
He wants out.