Re: The Wretched Rite - Round Two - Inferno Alpha
01-28-2012, 09:34 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Akumu.
Taelia withdrew her blade with a flourish, spattering the Library’s threshold with the lifeblood of Fiorella Gucci. The goddess crumpled to the ground as her attire flickered through an entire catalog of haute couture. It settled on a tasteful black dress with a wide-brimmed, veiled hat as Fiorella gave a last shuddering breath. The Omen watched through Taelia’s eyes with great satisfaction, putting a smirk onto her youthful face. When the last life drained out of his victim, Taelia turned to leave.
From all around, tendrils of silvery energy erupted out of space and wrapped around the young swordswoman. They pulled, and Taelia was ripped outwards to the void between universes. Across the village, the other remaining competitors were also reclaimed, and all seven of them found themselves once again in the presence of The Unborn.
Things had changed. What had previously been a realm of order and light had fragmented and grown back together in grotesque forms. Rings were twisted into knots; pillars pierced into each other, or were consumed by each other, the distinction being hard to draw. They still caught the unearthly light of The Unborn and refracted it back to illuminate its realm, but in shifting and chaotic ways. Splashes of color and darkness strobed across the faces of the remaining seven. Those closer to human thought to wince and look away, but found their bodies once again bound by the rule of Restraint. They were all forced to look perpetually inward as they orbited the gestating god. The perfect maelstrom of power and potential had coalesced into a sort of sac, with a membrane separating self from other, showing the first inklings of identity. Within the sac of light, dark shapes swam, occasionally pressing up against the membrane in the shapes of faces, howling in agony or ecstasy.
“Sex and death! Hunger and pain! Is this what life is, sacrifices of the rite?”
Barabbas Poe clung to one of outlying protuberances, his attempts to maintain the Structure of this place crumbling before the onslaught of base emotion from The Unborn. Barabbas's ragged suit jacket whipped around with the force of the power pouring out of The Unborn, trying to flap off of his wiry body like a wounded bird. Barabbas scrambled out to the edge of his tower and his stare pierced into the competitors as they swung by, mere feet away at their closest approach.
“That is what you are showing this new being, this is what you are teaching it, with your strongest actions. What will it become, drowned in a sea of id? Memento mori, sacrifices! Remember that you will die. That, you can not change. But what you can change is how your lives echo into eternity. You, far more than most, must remember that.”
He made a sharp chopping motion back towards The Unborn, as if severing a rope. The light pouring out from it increased to a gale force, crushing Barabbas down against his perch and sending the rest spiraling out into the void. As their trajectories took them into the deep blackness, consciousness became impossible and they slept the sleep of the dead.
They awoke, each in their own time, to their own individualized hellscape. Their guide’s voice filled their minds once again.
“Welcome to Inferno Alpha, the first completed Hell World. The makers of this place had an overwhelming preoccupation with eternity. So much so, that in the fear it did not exist they created it themselves. All those judged as sinners are recreated here upon death and shuttled to the level befitting their sins, and when their bodies cannot take further torment and give out, they are recreated again and again for torture everlasting.”
Deep in the weightless center of the world, a little used subroutine of the Satan System pinged on. Intruders.
Taelia withdrew her blade with a flourish, spattering the Library’s threshold with the lifeblood of Fiorella Gucci. The goddess crumpled to the ground as her attire flickered through an entire catalog of haute couture. It settled on a tasteful black dress with a wide-brimmed, veiled hat as Fiorella gave a last shuddering breath. The Omen watched through Taelia’s eyes with great satisfaction, putting a smirk onto her youthful face. When the last life drained out of his victim, Taelia turned to leave.
From all around, tendrils of silvery energy erupted out of space and wrapped around the young swordswoman. They pulled, and Taelia was ripped outwards to the void between universes. Across the village, the other remaining competitors were also reclaimed, and all seven of them found themselves once again in the presence of The Unborn.
Things had changed. What had previously been a realm of order and light had fragmented and grown back together in grotesque forms. Rings were twisted into knots; pillars pierced into each other, or were consumed by each other, the distinction being hard to draw. They still caught the unearthly light of The Unborn and refracted it back to illuminate its realm, but in shifting and chaotic ways. Splashes of color and darkness strobed across the faces of the remaining seven. Those closer to human thought to wince and look away, but found their bodies once again bound by the rule of Restraint. They were all forced to look perpetually inward as they orbited the gestating god. The perfect maelstrom of power and potential had coalesced into a sort of sac, with a membrane separating self from other, showing the first inklings of identity. Within the sac of light, dark shapes swam, occasionally pressing up against the membrane in the shapes of faces, howling in agony or ecstasy.
“Sex and death! Hunger and pain! Is this what life is, sacrifices of the rite?”
Barabbas Poe clung to one of outlying protuberances, his attempts to maintain the Structure of this place crumbling before the onslaught of base emotion from The Unborn. Barabbas's ragged suit jacket whipped around with the force of the power pouring out of The Unborn, trying to flap off of his wiry body like a wounded bird. Barabbas scrambled out to the edge of his tower and his stare pierced into the competitors as they swung by, mere feet away at their closest approach.
“That is what you are showing this new being, this is what you are teaching it, with your strongest actions. What will it become, drowned in a sea of id? Memento mori, sacrifices! Remember that you will die. That, you can not change. But what you can change is how your lives echo into eternity. You, far more than most, must remember that.”
He made a sharp chopping motion back towards The Unborn, as if severing a rope. The light pouring out from it increased to a gale force, crushing Barabbas down against his perch and sending the rest spiraling out into the void. As their trajectories took them into the deep blackness, consciousness became impossible and they slept the sleep of the dead.
They awoke, each in their own time, to their own individualized hellscape. Their guide’s voice filled their minds once again.
“Welcome to Inferno Alpha, the first completed Hell World. The makers of this place had an overwhelming preoccupation with eternity. So much so, that in the fear it did not exist they created it themselves. All those judged as sinners are recreated here upon death and shuttled to the level befitting their sins, and when their bodies cannot take further torment and give out, they are recreated again and again for torture everlasting.”
Deep in the weightless center of the world, a little used subroutine of the Satan System pinged on. Intruders.