2018-02-25: Memento Mori
- Cutscene: Memento Mori
- Cast: Cassidy Cain, Vorthuzahl
- Where: ???
- Date: February 25, 2018
- Summary: After Wayside's destruction, fickle Fortune proves once again that it is simultaneously Cassidy Cain's greatest ally and worst enemy. This cutscene was written in collaboration with Vor's player.
The last thing she heard was her name before she fell, and apprehension and relief followed her; not at her plight, and certainly not because of her seemingly inevitable demise, but at the dim knowledge that someone cared enough to scream for her.
If her pain-numbed body had the room to feel it, there would be amusement, too, at the idea that even now in what could be her final moments, after a decade's worth of trouble and adventure, the world could still manage to surprise her.
This, too, was a surprise. She expected that once she hit the bottom, that would be the end of it. This time, the darkness would last forever. It wouldn't be like the first time this had happened to her, whole pockets of Time lost to sheer physical trauma and copious amounts of magic and herbs, spectral faces flitting through the mist as they took up equal responsibilities of comfort and rebuke.
She rebelled against the thought, if not just because rebellion was intrinsic to her nature. From the moment she was born, there had been shades stronger, more powerful, more influential than her who tried to dictate her destiny. That she had no choice but to follow their way. His way, in particular. But she wasn't done. Something had been taken from her, and she could never rest until she got it back.
Though now, it may not be up to her.
The cold, rushing damp shocked her nerves when the impact finally came. It engulfed her broken body and filled her mouth, washing away crimson and the taste of copper and for a moment, she felt like she was floating.
That was familiar, too.
And like with everything familiar, Cassidy Cain sank into it, and let it carry her away.
Why not? Wasn't she always the sort who went with the flow?
~ * ~
She was flying.
Her world was reduced to a blur of color, like paint haphazardly spilled over a blinding white canvas. Her journey over deserts, mountains and skies was almost a spiritual affair, and whatever it was that made off with the tattered tapestry of her soul kept a firm grip. It felt like metal - bladed, dangerous and unyielding.
She didn't know what was happening, but it was the first indication she received in what felt like an eternity that she wasn't dead.
And she couldn't be dead. Absolutely, utterly, couldn't be, because it felt like she was being flown to heaven, and after the life she has led, she was pretty god damn sure that there was no way she was headed there.
~ * ~
The term was 'chasing the dragon.'
She used it often whenever she was inclined to self-medicate and throughout her life on the surface, she had pursued them in different colors depending on the herb or substance: green ones, red ones - especially potent gold ones in the time she perched herself on the edge of Jude Moshe's death bed in the aftermath of Adlehyde's destruction, though even they had brought no relief by the time she was roused from the haze they delivered. Blue ones had been the most recent, with subtler effects...they made everything around her pulsate with a faint sapphirine aura and left her feeling light in the process, like drifting through a sea of stars.
It was very much the same now.
Confusing images swirled into her delirious mind and if she thought about it hard enough, she would be able to detect strange scents in the air, thick with the emanations of exotic vegetation that she didn't recognize even after her many extensive travels. Glimpses of floating plateaus and the view of a distant mountain range that strangely looked very close....
...glass, steel and living metal, splattered over her skin, feeling it twist over her limbs and hold her in place. Her ears vibrated with the hum of ancient technology that would have made the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end, if she was conscious enough to react.
She wasn't moving anymore.
And even then, the most disconcerting fact of it all was that she knew, somehow, that she wasn't alone. Within the thickening cotton clotting her mind and rendering her still and silent, she thought in the midst of the strange fever-dream, she saw a single eye - large, lidless, its pupil slitted like a reptile's, its iris a burning gold...
...watching. Waiting.
Cassidy closed her eyes and slipped back into the glittering sea, and its motes of light that reminded her of pearls.
~ * ~
The voice was distant. A crushing weight upon the mind that had retreated to the sea of unconsciousness. Molten destruction, rippling the waves she had sought for comfort, it emerged in the dreamscape like a new island formed beneath her feet. A voice that could inspire, but only if someone hated it enough.
"Yes. Rest now. Then we will have our final conversation, you and I."