05-06-2023, 03:29 PM
Not dead.
Not dead, not dead, not dead.
(How many had the thing encountered in the Underworld who had no place there at all? How many had been impervious to her manipulation? Precious few. And so this creature who was like her but not like her should stand out in her mind as something worth remembering.
Because it angered the thing, certainly, when they did not bend to her will.)
“How?” The thing asks and tilts its head, bleeding, so that a river of that bright red blood spills into the corner of the patchwork mouth. But she does not swallow it, she has no taste for blood. She does not hunger for much, Miseria, because the dead want for nothing at all. The dead know neither feast nor famine. These worldly things simply do not matter.
It is a fair question. Why is she here above ground? Why is she here in the Chamber? Why is she a thing that exists at all? Each version of the question has a different answer.
Above ground because the Creator had set her loose there, summoned her from the depths of hell to unleash her on the world. (He had not understood, though, that her power would be weak here. Barely there at all. Someone cheap facsimile of his own power.) Here in the Chamber because she had set out without any real direction at all, moving simply for the sake of moving. Because it was what he’d programmed her to do.
Why is she a thing that exists at all? Because the Creator is greedy and cruel.
“What reason would most please you?” she asks, tilts that ugly head, grins.
Not dead, not dead, not dead.
(How many had the thing encountered in the Underworld who had no place there at all? How many had been impervious to her manipulation? Precious few. And so this creature who was like her but not like her should stand out in her mind as something worth remembering.
Because it angered the thing, certainly, when they did not bend to her will.)
“How?” The thing asks and tilts its head, bleeding, so that a river of that bright red blood spills into the corner of the patchwork mouth. But she does not swallow it, she has no taste for blood. She does not hunger for much, Miseria, because the dead want for nothing at all. The dead know neither feast nor famine. These worldly things simply do not matter.
It is a fair question. Why is she here above ground? Why is she here in the Chamber? Why is she a thing that exists at all? Each version of the question has a different answer.
Above ground because the Creator had set her loose there, summoned her from the depths of hell to unleash her on the world. (He had not understood, though, that her power would be weak here. Barely there at all. Someone cheap facsimile of his own power.) Here in the Chamber because she had set out without any real direction at all, moving simply for the sake of moving. Because it was what he’d programmed her to do.
Why is she a thing that exists at all? Because the Creator is greedy and cruel.
“What reason would most please you?” she asks, tilts that ugly head, grins.
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Set