Chapter Text
Soul looks around. Joyful, distorted circus music plays lightly through the back of his thoughts. Where…
Ah, a carousel. Perhaps they might tell him where on earth he’s ended up, and how to leave. He doesn’t like it here. Things feel wrong. He can’t quite place what it is. But it doesn’t feel right. Worth a try, at the very least.
He begins to walk. With each step, things feel slightly more off, more…detached. As though he’s leaving something behind.
He suddenly, with a jolt, remembers his thirds. Where are they? He tries to sense them, tries to summon his trident, tries to summon… anything. But nothing.
Atlas is alone in a land of strangers.
He continues to make his way to the crowd surrounding the carousel. Without him there to break up battles, the thirds will take things to drastic measures, as they always do. This time, one may not miss. He needs to find his way back to them before it is too late.
Soul watches the riders on the carousel bob up and down. The bright, blinding white smiles on their faces are visible even from where he stands. Even though every smile feels just the slightest bit…wrong. Some seem a bit crooked or off-center, while others seem to have been stapled or sewn or painted in place.
Atlas reaches the back of the crowd. He reaches out and taps the shoulder of a tall, middle-aged gentleman in front of him. Soul has a smile on his face, yet it drops instantly as he sees the man’s(???) own face. Or rather, lack thereof.
The man has no skin on his face. All that greets Soul as the man turns is a mess of blood and flesh and gore and muscles and teeth.
<Hello> the man says to Soul. <New here it seems>
Atlas shakes his head in panic. But the man merely nods and makes a strange jerky motion with what could once have been considered his neck.
Soul feels…
Something is wrong.
He? looks down suddenly to find his? upper half attached to the legs of a stranger. The legs are the right size for him?, look like his? legs, but he? is positive they cannot be. And yet they move when he? does…
When who does?
He shakes his head to clear it. I am Atlas, Soul, The Stars. My body is mine. I am me.
But is he?
Soul doesn’t have time to process these thoughts before his face is grabbed by cold plastic hands. And before he can react, they’ve cut into his flesh, and he screams.
Atlas feels his skin being torn from flesh, and suddenly…
??? is the Crowd. ??? doesn’t know what ??? is. Doesn’t need to. All ??? needs to do is wait for ??? chance to escape the Crowd for the smallest of moments in eternity, to regain some semblance of identity that once ??? would have been so frightened to lose, had ??? realized it was happening to ???.
??? waits, watches through lidless eyes, nonexistent even to ???self.
And at last, ??? is pulled from the Crowd, and is gifted a face.
But it is no longer ??? old face. After all, what would be the point of identity if there was nothing of it to lose?
And so, the Thing rides the Carousel. Over and over again. And time and time again, the skin is torn from the Thing’s face and it is thrown back to the Crowd, with an atmosphere stinking of terror. The Thing, who had once been the Soul. Trapped, looping, desperate…The Thing fears losing its identity as much as any other poor soul on this merry-go-round of blood and flesh, and yet.
It has long forgotten itself.
The Soul has been dead for millennia.