From Atlantic Roleplay Wiki

The Unraveling

Dealthagar lay at the bottom of his tank, staring up into the darkened laboratory. The small hours of the night were the hardest. Drayek had been in the house when he went to sleep in the vats, but the servants assured him she had not slept there.

Their disagreements, their bickering, their betrayals..it had lead them down separate paths, and she would never be content to walk parallel to him, rather than at his side. Her emotions betrayed her. She wanted more from him then he was willing to give her. His heart, his essence, belonged to another.

His thoughts drifted to Ceinwyn, and a smile crept across his face. Had so much happened in such a short time? Was it reality or a fevered dream? She completed him, filled him in ways he had never thought possible.

Strands of the infinite wove before him, the paths of the multiverse, the potentialities, the possibles, the paths of the infinite. The Vision of the Void was more than a simple perception of entropy. It allowed him to watch the minute infinite strands of possible reality and play them out, each to their ultimate conclusion while he sat in the midst of the web of surreality.

A lesser mind would be driven into unrelenting comatose madness, babbling incoherent nonsense strung upon the frayed threads of its own unsure yet infinite experience.

But his was not the lesser mind.

Allowing his mystical essence to unravel further, the potentialities of the infiniverse danced in his sight. The destruction of Umbra. The casting of Malas into the void. The death and destruction that followed the wake of madmen and warmongers. The devastation of the broken heart, the abandoned spirit, the lost soul. Pain, suffering, torment...betrayal.

The human heart was a fragile thing, full of weakness and imperfections that allowed one to find those hopeless desired chains of hope, companionship, devotion...and love. Even the blackest of souls still had a shard, a fragment, a thread of that mortal seed. It was what drove men to conquer and destroy, to take and dominate, to usurp and discard.

Crimson tears floated and dispersed into the embryonic solution. Had she already betrayed him for the loss of trust? He could not know...but he could see all the threads spiraling into the same void. Eventually she would. He wondered if Unity's endings with Drayek had been so full of needless pain. It didn't really matter, because in the end it seemed all of Drayek's paths ended in the void. He could only hope she did not drag him in with her.

His hands reached out and parted the strands, changing the point of his focus. Drayek was a heart a beast, a fiend, a monster. If she saw his change to her as him spurning her affections, how would that affect his beloved?

He smiled sadly. Anything she did, no matter the outcome...ended in her own suffering. It didn’t matter, Ceinwyn's hand, Dealthagar's hand, Darrien's hand or her own...she would not find peace. The poor creature had been nurtured so poorly, no path would set her free from pain. It was the nature of her existence. Even as the Great Devourer, devoid of all final threads of humanity, she would still find no solace from her suffering. In the infinite, other paths were possible...but hers would need strands not in play to pull her from her hurling spiraling path towards the void.

Yet as dark as it all was, the path laid before with Ceinwyn showed endings, some happy, some sad, many unexpected. Existence was fraught with pain, but both of them had learned how to shoulder it and endure. Survival against all odds, against all foes. She was a remarkable woman, formidable. He was thankful for their relations, as other paths showed them at odds, and he did not relish the thought.

He dared to love her, no matter the cost, no matter the burden. That was the price of his frayed threads of humanity. To the world-weary soul, it was a price well accepted. Infinite possibilities....infinite joy.

He released the threads and allowed the universe to reform in his mind's eye. The burden of an Oracle was not seeing the future, but seeing all of them, and picking the best way to get to the future one wants.

Umbra.

Malas.

Sosaria.

Waystations along a path. Points along a line. Order in the midst of chaos.

The Great Gear was turning, and soon he would need to choose his path. Heaven help anyone or anything that got in his way.

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Original Post Date: Fri Jan 15, 2010