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You can feel her arms supporting you, holding you tight to her chest as you slump weakly. Your Thorns lay on the ground, broken and sparking with black electricity. Your wands are the least of your concern. You’re barely conscious and terrifyingly lucid at the same time. You messed up. You messed up big time.
You don’t know if it’s a hallucination, a projection, or if the monstrosity is actually there, but you’re surrounded. The God’s tentacles and beaks and mouths and thousands of eyes encircle the two of you. Your breathing comes in ragged gasps as you pant and gurgle. Your skin is dark and gray tendrils of light rise off you like pillars of smoke. If you could see yourself you would see your eyes glowing the same light green as the horrorterror’s.
Kanaya stubbornly stands her ground, supporting you as you gurgle something in eldritch tongues and then suddenly you’re retching out a mouthful of tar. It’s painful. Your chest feels like fire and acid and like your ribs might snap from the effort of your coughing. Then something is breaking loose and you’re heaving a mouthful of tar out onto the ground. The grimdark phlegm hisses and spits as it hits the ground, decaying anything it touches.
kill it smother it rip it tear it kill it smother it drown it
D E S T R O Y I T
D ES TR O Y IT
The Gods are screaming in your head. Your brain feels like glass about to shatter while they shout and caress your tattered sanity. They keep up the din, commanding you to take action. Your body is limp and can’t reciprocate what they demand. It just makes them more furious and shout even louder.
SEER K I L L IT
You groan and try to move. You can’t and instead weakly vomit. Instead of bile, it’s salt water and more of the eldritch phlegm.
The God’s tentacles are slowly snaking closer to you. It wants to pluck you from Kanaya’s grasp, but she isn’t having it. You hear her give a primal, animalistic hiss and then you can see her weapon in her hand. It’s not prepared, still only a masquerading as a harmless tube of lipstick. You doubt her willingness to use it. Chainsaws are unwieldy with just one hand and you know she would rather let the horrorterror kill her than let you go.
A stray tentacle snakes closer and you feel it brush your ankle. You shudder. Kanaya, hyper alert, doesn’t miss it. In the blink of an eye she’s got her chainsaw drawn just long enough to swing it at the God’s encroaching reach. The cut is clean and the rainbow drinker promptly returns the chainsaw to the tube to avoid having to use her second hand. The Gods are furious now.
KIL L IT SM O TH ER IT RI P I T TEAR I T K ILL IT SMOTHE R IT DROWN IT TEAR I T
Suddenly you’re surrounded by light and all the encroaching tentacles withdraw as if burned. The monstrosity is screaming and hissing. You vomit more salt water and heave up more tar and the Gods are screaming and pounding at your skull. You look down at Kanaya’s arm which is still supporting you. She’s glowing and you’re not sure if it was a conscious decision or something to do with the stress of the situation, but in spite of the pain you find yourself grateful for the rainbow drinker’s light.
The Gods are screaming but they’re no longer words, not words that you understand. They sputter and snarl and the longer you’re exposed to Kanaya’s incandescence, the fainter their voices get. It’s like slowly driving out of range of a radio station and at first the words are lightly garbled by the range. Then it slowly devolves into clipped audio and then static. As the last voice dies out, your eyes close and you completely go limp.
You can feel a hand in your hair, gently stroking along your scalp. Slowly, very slowly, you open your eyes and blink blearily up at a face. Your eyes are slow to focus but you feel peaceful. You realize there’s a hand holding yours and your fingers are laced.
Finally your eyes focus and you see Kanaya resting with her back against the wall and her eyes closed. You glance around. You’re not in the shadowed pit where the horrorterrors had found you and surrounded you. You’re in your room on the meteor, careening through space at the speed of light. Your head is rested in Kanaya’s lap and she is glowing softly.
“Kanaya?” Your tongue feels thick and your words feel clumsy and you wonder how long you’ve been out. The sound of your voice makes the troll snap her eyes open and she looks down at you with first surprise and then relief. Her expression softens and she manages to smile down at you.
“Oh Rose, you’re awake.” You can still see the fainter details of her worry leaving her expression. “I’m so relieved. You’ve been asleep for days and everyone’s been terribly worried, especially Dave. I should let him know you’re awake. Are you alright? Would you like anything to eat or drink?” She’s rambling and you let her ramble as you slowly manage to sit up and turn to look at her.
Your body feels sluggish as you reach your hand out and managed to silence her by simply caressing her cheek. The rainbow drinker stops almost instantly in her nervous tangent and focuses on you. You manage to smile at her before you lean closer to her and she’s leaning closer too. Your lips meet and you can feel all tension flee her as you do. She’s reassured, reassured of your well-being and your sanity and that you are still you despite almost losing you to the horrorterrors. You card your hand through her hair and she wraps her arms around your torso.
The two of you stay that way for a while, kissing lazily and holding each other. If you weren’t tired to your bones, you would have perhaps pursued more than these kisses. But breaking free of grimdarkness is apparently a very exhausting process, even when you have help.