Chapter Text
It takes a second to realize you’re still here. Not dead. Not eaten. Your body feels strange, loose and detached compared to how it felt when you were a curator or
- I don’t want to -
Your mind draws away from the thought like human fingers from flame.
Do you still have eyes? Can you open them?
Breath . . .
Eyes crack open before suddenly widening. Power pulses, then wanes. Looking from the outside, seeking gold slowly bleeds out of cloudy grey.
Is this home?
No. It’s too dark down here. There’s no light, no stars, no Judgements. And the world
presses
down.
Are you in the Neath?
Are you still alive?
Did Veils come back for me?
Push the hope down. You know better.
Your face twists. It takes you a second to realize that this is an expression of rage. Mostly rage, anyways.
You left me. You betrayed me .
But you’re not dead, are you? You feel strange, but there is a . . . presentness to everything. You must exist in some way.
It’s dark in here. Like the Neath was before you started bringing light into it; curators, and humans, and everyone that came after.
You miss the light. You don’t want to be alone in the dark. At first you were confused, but now you’re starting to get scared, just a little. Something in your mind reaches. Please, let there be light. And suddenly, there is .
It doesn’t hurt your eyes. It should, moving from total darkness to this all encompassing light. This light is wrong. Not the glow of candles or fires or lamps. Not the searing power of the Judgements.
You were floating in a sea of black. Now you glow in a sea of brilliant white.
Where am I? What is this place?
There is nothing around you. Just a strange cold light illuminating nothing.
This isn’t the Neath. The humans - and your fellows, don’t forget - complained enough about the lack of light.
Veils used to . . .
They would have been ecstatic with strange, cold, hard, light.
But you can’t be home. Home never tried to drag you down to the center of the planet.
You remember what brought the light. Experimentally, you reach into your mind, think - I don’t want to be held down- and pull . . .
You feel the strange relief of your bones finally moving from where gravity had pushed them. It feels . . . wrong. Like a memory of a feeling, not a true one. Like something you dreamed about. Are you really feeling?
Your mind reels from your train of thought. You’re not ready yet.
You wonder what else you could do here, if you willed it. This is a strange place.
You could find your friends, ask them for help. You could . . .
But they betrayed you, didn’t they? They sold you to die.
Not just to die, to be eaten.
It occurs to you that you haven’t looked at yourself, not once in the time you’ve been in this strange place. There’s some kind of mental block keeping you from even registering your own claws.
You know it’s a bad idea. There are some things you cannot know.
You force yourself to look down at your flank, the edge of where your wing rests.
It’s not . . .
I’m not . . .
The screaming stops eventually. Arguably, the crying never will.