Re: Inexorable Altercation [Round IV - Hezekiah]
05-05-2012, 11:16 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
Annaliese was wrists-deep in twine and beads, and she was happy. It was the sort of moment she'd always treasured: no-one was around, giving her sidelong looks or pointedly not commenting on her progress; she was working magic, but hadn't yet gotten to the point where it didn't work; and it was simply satisfying to watch a mundane tangle of parts coalesce into something mystical. The fire behind her was warm, and the crystals and scrying spheres and metal-infused paints that spread across the walls and shelves of her cottage glittered in its light like a warm, starry sky. It was as perfect a moment as the bedraggled witch ever really experienced.
For a time, there was no sound but the crackle and pop of burning logs, the swish of cord on wood, and the occasional mournful cry of a Weeping Owl. It was very peaceful, and it was the perfect way to take her mind off Gias. After all...
Annaliese blinked. Who was Gias?
She looked up from her work, straight into the too-many eyes of an insectoid creature awkwardly perched on a chair that didn't fit her physiology. She started, sending her own chair crashing backwards and her half-finished project tumbling from the table. This wasn't right at all! And Mother Alsmas would be here later to see how she was dealing with Lora– no, see how she was dealing with the outbreak of pig plague. There was no Loran, no battle. Just a quiet night. Normal.
But it was too late to try to save the memory. Annaliese's lovely warm cottage was beginning to melt at the corners, replaced by cold steel and dry stone. Sigils and books were spread haphazardly among futuristic devices and nautical navigation equipment. With a rush, everything that had happened came flooding back, and the moment was gone.
"I see you've begun to recover, then."
Annaliese gulped, choking back a sob. "Don't talk to me! Just... Just take over my body and leave me behind, or kill me and be done with it!"
The Vorlon queen didn't move from her chair as it gradually transmuted itself to a granite throne. "Your panic is understandable, but I–"
"No! You got your freedom now, don't torture me anymore! I just... I can't take it. I can't take the fighting and killing, I can't take the monsters, I can't take you. You can have my stupid body. I never liked it anyway. Just. Just let me forget this battle and live in the past, or let me die."
The queen's mandibles clicked with a forced patience that didn't come easily to her. "I could have long since done that, if that's what I wanted to do. The Cage was based on a device for uploading one's consciousness into a blank body: it would have no trouble overwriting your own personality and memories and replacing them with mine."
Annaliese leaned against a wall she wasn't even paying enough attention to to consciously absorb whatever it looked like at the moment. The details were fuzzy, but the queen's general message had been clear enough. "Well?"
An unspoken why haven't you then hung in the air despite the timid witch's inability to steel herself enough to let it out.
"Well, I chose not to. I stand to gain nothing by your essential murder. I have no intention of usurping your life or body, and not simply because of its distasteful form."
Annaliese didn't respond. After a brief pause, the queen responded to the questions she assumed a less-defeated person would probably have been asking.
"I realize that my actions may not have made that obvious." Even the queen realized what a ridiculous understatement this was, but she plugged on. "But as it was, I didn't have time to ask your permission or simply advise you. After an eternity of solitude and constant reminder of the foe that had crushed me, I saw an opportunity to strike back against what I had long thought beyond my grasp."
As the throne sank back into the floor and became a tree in the thicket that Annaliese's muddled memories were currently making of the cottage, the Vorlon finally stood. She folded her hands demurely and continued.
"I have a fairly good grasp of your life by now, Annaliese Nibbs. I cannot draw a parallel between anything you have seen or felt and my own struggles. You simply have not experienced anything that compares. But I ask you to attempt to understand: imagine that at the heights of your greatest victories, an entity far beyond your own understanding or abilities came to you and told you that everything you had ever accomplished had somehow been..." The limited facial control afforded by a chitinous exoskeleton did little to mask the queen's expression of disgust. "unfair. As though life was a game, and by winning it you had cheated."
"I don't really..."
"But this being, this cosmic referee, this self-appointed guardian of a balance that had never existed did not intend to see your cheating go unpunished. So, rather than merely taking your victory from you, he slaughtered your family. You watched, shackled and terrified, as your children died, one by one. Watched as your lover was torn from you and entombed. Watched as your entire culture and species was wiped from the universe for being too powerful. As your last kin died, the being came to you, all smug self-righteousness and unbridled power. It told you that everything it had done, that the ocean of hemolymph it had spilled, had been fair and righteous, and that every death was on your own head because you had dared to stray outside of rules that had never existed until you broke them. It sealed you in the darkness, unable even to die, and it left."
Annaliese opened her mouth, but realized she wasn't expected to respond yet and closed it again.
"You languished there, wracked with guilt and fury and grief, with no company but your own for ages beyond dozens of your own lifetime. And then, with no warning, not only were you freed, but the being that had murdered everyone you had ever cared about had appeared. And it was vulnerable. All you had to do was briefly incapacitate one strange alien for a short time, and you could have your vengeance. Could spend one last moment with your consort. Could escape the darkness forever. Would you have done that, Annaliese Nibbs? Would anyone not have?"
"Well... It all seems..." She sighed. "I don't know. You apparently know everything about me, you know I can't really..." She waved her hand vaguely, having a hard time bringing the word she wanted to mind.
"No, you can't. Perhaps it was foolish of me to expect understanding. Your life has been too disparate from mine."
In spite of the terror that still pounded in her chest, and a suspicion that wasn't so much lurking as menacing that the queen was simply putting off taking over for some reason, Annaliese finally contributed something to the conversation.
"So, uhm, now what?"
The queen paced on ground that couldn't decide what it was. "For me? I'm unsure. I can never return to my home or life. I'm a digital relic of a long-forgotten era and a longer-forgotten species. I've accomplished the last goal afforded me by the universe. I'd spent so long trying to find a way out of the Cage, but now I have no reason to. Perhaps I will seek a way to deactivate it, and grant me the release Gias thought I never deserved."
Despite her own begging for death only moments ago, that struck Annaliese as rather... Sad. Nobody deserved to feel like that. The same gentle affability that had let her care about a bunch of peasants who always resented her was already working its magic towards the queen. It was already hard for the witch to see her as a monster, and deep within the fear and resentment she'd developed, a seed of pity and comradeship was developing. Annaliese was not a woman to whom hate came easily.
"Until then, though, we're stuck with one another, both trapped in the same situation and indeed the same body." There was a pause for several beats, then the queen continued. "A situation that reminds me painfully of my own in many respects."
Visions flashed across Annaliese's mind of being trapped in the dark forever with the likes of Loran and Greyve. She blinked them away and tried to focus on the queen's actual point.
"Well, I guess, yeah. Kind of."
With a swish of blue fabric, the Vorlon stopped pacing. "As long as I remain in this false life, I should like to provide what aid I may in resisting those that would toy with mortal life as though for sport."
Annaliese had heard better offers for truce and cooperation – well, okay, she hadn't. Not personally anyway. But it's not like she couldn't imagine what they would sound like – but she got the picture. She supposed it was better to have the horrifying bug-woman in her head on her side than the alternative, even if "fighting against people who could kidnap herself and some powerful people" sounded maybe even more frightening than being possessed by an angry alien ghost. She reached out a hand to shake and got a confused cock of the head for her troubles. Awkwardly, she rescinded it and started stammering.
"What, uh... What should we do then?"
With a sweeping gesture of a chitinous claw, the queen indicated the entire fluctuating scene.
"Our first priority is to awaken you, of course. You cannot survive or fight back if your body is prone and unmoving."
"Oh." Annaliese paused. "Actually, I'd kind of assumed you were doing all this. Can't you just stop?"
The queen twitched her antennae in the negative. "No, you are currently inhabiting your own memories of your own volition, likely as a result of the side effects of experiencing a blast from the Memory Converter and your own fra– and to protect yourself."
"Oh."
"The Cage informs me that your senses are detecting the approach of another being or beings. Hasten yourself."
"... Oh."
Annaliese was wrists-deep in twine and beads, and she was happy. It was the sort of moment she'd always treasured: no-one was around, giving her sidelong looks or pointedly not commenting on her progress; she was working magic, but hadn't yet gotten to the point where it didn't work; and it was simply satisfying to watch a mundane tangle of parts coalesce into something mystical. The fire behind her was warm, and the crystals and scrying spheres and metal-infused paints that spread across the walls and shelves of her cottage glittered in its light like a warm, starry sky. It was as perfect a moment as the bedraggled witch ever really experienced.
For a time, there was no sound but the crackle and pop of burning logs, the swish of cord on wood, and the occasional mournful cry of a Weeping Owl. It was very peaceful, and it was the perfect way to take her mind off Gias. After all...
Annaliese blinked. Who was Gias?
She looked up from her work, straight into the too-many eyes of an insectoid creature awkwardly perched on a chair that didn't fit her physiology. She started, sending her own chair crashing backwards and her half-finished project tumbling from the table. This wasn't right at all! And Mother Alsmas would be here later to see how she was dealing with Lora– no, see how she was dealing with the outbreak of pig plague. There was no Loran, no battle. Just a quiet night. Normal.
But it was too late to try to save the memory. Annaliese's lovely warm cottage was beginning to melt at the corners, replaced by cold steel and dry stone. Sigils and books were spread haphazardly among futuristic devices and nautical navigation equipment. With a rush, everything that had happened came flooding back, and the moment was gone.
"I see you've begun to recover, then."
Annaliese gulped, choking back a sob. "Don't talk to me! Just... Just take over my body and leave me behind, or kill me and be done with it!"
The Vorlon queen didn't move from her chair as it gradually transmuted itself to a granite throne. "Your panic is understandable, but I–"
"No! You got your freedom now, don't torture me anymore! I just... I can't take it. I can't take the fighting and killing, I can't take the monsters, I can't take you. You can have my stupid body. I never liked it anyway. Just. Just let me forget this battle and live in the past, or let me die."
The queen's mandibles clicked with a forced patience that didn't come easily to her. "I could have long since done that, if that's what I wanted to do. The Cage was based on a device for uploading one's consciousness into a blank body: it would have no trouble overwriting your own personality and memories and replacing them with mine."
Annaliese leaned against a wall she wasn't even paying enough attention to to consciously absorb whatever it looked like at the moment. The details were fuzzy, but the queen's general message had been clear enough. "Well?"
An unspoken why haven't you then hung in the air despite the timid witch's inability to steel herself enough to let it out.
"Well, I chose not to. I stand to gain nothing by your essential murder. I have no intention of usurping your life or body, and not simply because of its distasteful form."
Annaliese didn't respond. After a brief pause, the queen responded to the questions she assumed a less-defeated person would probably have been asking.
"I realize that my actions may not have made that obvious." Even the queen realized what a ridiculous understatement this was, but she plugged on. "But as it was, I didn't have time to ask your permission or simply advise you. After an eternity of solitude and constant reminder of the foe that had crushed me, I saw an opportunity to strike back against what I had long thought beyond my grasp."
As the throne sank back into the floor and became a tree in the thicket that Annaliese's muddled memories were currently making of the cottage, the Vorlon finally stood. She folded her hands demurely and continued.
"I have a fairly good grasp of your life by now, Annaliese Nibbs. I cannot draw a parallel between anything you have seen or felt and my own struggles. You simply have not experienced anything that compares. But I ask you to attempt to understand: imagine that at the heights of your greatest victories, an entity far beyond your own understanding or abilities came to you and told you that everything you had ever accomplished had somehow been..." The limited facial control afforded by a chitinous exoskeleton did little to mask the queen's expression of disgust. "unfair. As though life was a game, and by winning it you had cheated."
"I don't really..."
"But this being, this cosmic referee, this self-appointed guardian of a balance that had never existed did not intend to see your cheating go unpunished. So, rather than merely taking your victory from you, he slaughtered your family. You watched, shackled and terrified, as your children died, one by one. Watched as your lover was torn from you and entombed. Watched as your entire culture and species was wiped from the universe for being too powerful. As your last kin died, the being came to you, all smug self-righteousness and unbridled power. It told you that everything it had done, that the ocean of hemolymph it had spilled, had been fair and righteous, and that every death was on your own head because you had dared to stray outside of rules that had never existed until you broke them. It sealed you in the darkness, unable even to die, and it left."
Annaliese opened her mouth, but realized she wasn't expected to respond yet and closed it again.
"You languished there, wracked with guilt and fury and grief, with no company but your own for ages beyond dozens of your own lifetime. And then, with no warning, not only were you freed, but the being that had murdered everyone you had ever cared about had appeared. And it was vulnerable. All you had to do was briefly incapacitate one strange alien for a short time, and you could have your vengeance. Could spend one last moment with your consort. Could escape the darkness forever. Would you have done that, Annaliese Nibbs? Would anyone not have?"
"Well... It all seems..." She sighed. "I don't know. You apparently know everything about me, you know I can't really..." She waved her hand vaguely, having a hard time bringing the word she wanted to mind.
"No, you can't. Perhaps it was foolish of me to expect understanding. Your life has been too disparate from mine."
In spite of the terror that still pounded in her chest, and a suspicion that wasn't so much lurking as menacing that the queen was simply putting off taking over for some reason, Annaliese finally contributed something to the conversation.
"So, uhm, now what?"
The queen paced on ground that couldn't decide what it was. "For me? I'm unsure. I can never return to my home or life. I'm a digital relic of a long-forgotten era and a longer-forgotten species. I've accomplished the last goal afforded me by the universe. I'd spent so long trying to find a way out of the Cage, but now I have no reason to. Perhaps I will seek a way to deactivate it, and grant me the release Gias thought I never deserved."
Despite her own begging for death only moments ago, that struck Annaliese as rather... Sad. Nobody deserved to feel like that. The same gentle affability that had let her care about a bunch of peasants who always resented her was already working its magic towards the queen. It was already hard for the witch to see her as a monster, and deep within the fear and resentment she'd developed, a seed of pity and comradeship was developing. Annaliese was not a woman to whom hate came easily.
"Until then, though, we're stuck with one another, both trapped in the same situation and indeed the same body." There was a pause for several beats, then the queen continued. "A situation that reminds me painfully of my own in many respects."
Visions flashed across Annaliese's mind of being trapped in the dark forever with the likes of Loran and Greyve. She blinked them away and tried to focus on the queen's actual point.
"Well, I guess, yeah. Kind of."
With a swish of blue fabric, the Vorlon stopped pacing. "As long as I remain in this false life, I should like to provide what aid I may in resisting those that would toy with mortal life as though for sport."
Annaliese had heard better offers for truce and cooperation – well, okay, she hadn't. Not personally anyway. But it's not like she couldn't imagine what they would sound like – but she got the picture. She supposed it was better to have the horrifying bug-woman in her head on her side than the alternative, even if "fighting against people who could kidnap herself and some powerful people" sounded maybe even more frightening than being possessed by an angry alien ghost. She reached out a hand to shake and got a confused cock of the head for her troubles. Awkwardly, she rescinded it and started stammering.
"What, uh... What should we do then?"
With a sweeping gesture of a chitinous claw, the queen indicated the entire fluctuating scene.
"Our first priority is to awaken you, of course. You cannot survive or fight back if your body is prone and unmoving."
"Oh." Annaliese paused. "Actually, I'd kind of assumed you were doing all this. Can't you just stop?"
The queen twitched her antennae in the negative. "No, you are currently inhabiting your own memories of your own volition, likely as a result of the side effects of experiencing a blast from the Memory Converter and your own fra– and to protect yourself."
"Oh."
"The Cage informs me that your senses are detecting the approach of another being or beings. Hasten yourself."
"... Oh."