imeeji_frontstage | Flowers of Heaven II: Star of Bethlehem

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Flowers of Heaven II: Star of Bethlehem

Who: lost(?) idols
Where: ???? a mysterious courtyard
When: day 490

[ You awaken to the feeling of cool stone at your back, and a night sky overhead.

All around is a courtyard—a wide circle of marble tile, alternating black and white, interspersed with stone benches and flowerbeds and ornamental trees, all lit by the lambent gleam of strangely vivid starlight.

It is beautiful. And it is decaying. The stone is cracked; the flowers wild and overflowing between the cracked stone; the trees bent and twisted with age, the ground around them littered with fallen fruit. There is a fountain in the center of this space, but it too is broken-down: the water sits stagnant, and nothing remains of the design except a basin and the shattered base of a once-golden sculpture.

—And surrounding it all are not walls, but dense mounds of kudzu, climbing over itself until it towers as high as any watchtower.

How did you get here?
The last thing you vaguely recall is a sudden fit of drowsiness. There’s no sign of any guide or host around, and your powers don’t currently work either. In fact, if you have any corruptions, whether mental or physical, they too are … gone? No, perhaps that's not quite it; you can still feel them—faint, like a phantom limb. Invisible, and unable to affect you.
But there is one notable exception to the rule: all wings, corruption-induced or not, remain in place, as natural as the starlight.

There are other idols around you, all waking up the same way. Is this meant to be some kind of game…? ]

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[ there's no fungus, here. if there were plants, it would be more kudzu, wouldn't it? that feels right, although there's none down here.

it's evident that there's plenty of the gold, though—especially once she comes across a shattered sword strewn in pieces across the steps, the metal rusted and brittle and the ground and wall beside sprayed with gold. ]

[Hhhhuh. Surely it's already dried?

She will continue further down the stairs--much faster, if the gold is somehow wet]

[ it's dry; it seems old, in fact, caked on and flaking away where her shoes step on it. whatever happened here is an old wound.

the further she descends, though, the more signs of past battle (and past loss) there are, even though it becomes darker and darker—surely, there is no entrance to this tower at the bottom, is there? the air becomes thicker, almost humid; her limbs start to feel heavy and sluggish. ]

[There probably is no exit... But that doesn't mean there isn't anything else down there--that doesn't mean there isn't reason to find the truth. She grits her teeth and keeps going]

[ this place is less and less like a shrine, and more like a mausoleum. or perhaps there was never any difference between the two.

it is as though the air itself is growing heavier; thickening with despair, with loss, with pointlessness and emptiness. it's almost enough to bring one into their knees—and it might, if she doesn't keep pushing on with all her might. if she falters for even a moment.

here, in the dark: who is she? who is she, alone? ]

[This at least she's had plenty of opportunity to contemplate--every night out while transferred--every time she'd woken breathless and sweaty and searching blindly for a companion who may or may not be right there--just the other day, purifying herself in the fountains of Heaven, not-so-different from the ones just up these stairs.

So even here alone in the dark, she knows who she wants to be--who she is.

She is Nemesis, knight of Avante and protector of Blitz--stubborn and abrasive and sworn to help her team succeed.

She is Xia, inadequate daughter and loyal partner in crime, awkward and imperfect and somehow loved by someone she trusts to always have her back.

It doesn't matter how much or how little else she is. For the people she cares about, she'll be whatever she needs to be--she'll figure out how to be better. For the people she cares about, she won't just give up and cry in some dark depression basement--at least, not this basement, not this time.

She lifts her chin, defiant; calls out to the darkness]

--If you think this's gonna keep me out, you're outta luck this time. Or--or if you're just stuck down here waiting for somebody to come give you a kick in the ass... Get ready, 'cause I got my good boots on.

[And she wraps the memories of all the powerful and supportive things her Jacob or her team or her friends or fans or anyone have ever said about her up like the flourish of a cape, and presses forward, to see this place through]

[ and so she does not flinch from this, or turn back. sometimes a blade is reforged stronger for having been broken, and sometimes scars are marked with gold.

she continues the climb—for it is a climb, despite the fact that the stairs continue spiraling downward.

at last there is a sound like a drop of water—drip, drop, falling into a pool, and sending ripples tinged with light out from a center point somewhere ahead of her, roughly illuminating the shape of a circular body of water. ]

[The first thing she thinks is, why would water have light when it's so dark down here?

The second thing she thinks is of the sheen of gold on the walls and the floors above, how bright it was to catch her eye.

The third thing she thinks--the constant thing since she'd shown up here--is of Mehniel, who almost certainly is not captured here and yet what if they are?

So there's an almost frantic clench in the pit of her stomach as she rushes forward, less looking towards the water as above or around it, to find whatever the source of the dripping is]

[ standing, moving—suddenly feels strangely light; almost too light, like she's in a space with no gravity. the space between worlds, except there are no stars.

great gashes like scars are carved into the walls—if they can even be called "walls," still, in this strange void. they no longer bleed gold, but are inlaid with steely ice. only the path to the pool (again, if it can even be called that) is unmarred. and on the surface of the water—

well. intuition is a strange thing, isn't it.
in a place like this... wouldn't it be better to be wrong?

every time a drop falls, there's a fleeting glimpse of a face, partially obscured by bars of darkness. across the pool is an empty chair—a throne, really—of polished dark horn. ]

Elly!

[She'll figure out the gravity later. For now, she leaps towards the water, attempting to get through? the bars? Or--hell, just to make any sort of contact. She'll figure out that part later, too]

[ the water is clean, and pure—even though it looks ink-black, like a mirror surface in the dark. and just for a moment, the face mirrored in the surface seems to turn toward her, looking surprised— ]

Nemesis, you too are—!?

[ but then the ripples on the water's surface twist into rising tendrils like kudzu. they wrap around her arms—and pull her beheath the surface. ]

[ darkness.

—and then, when she finds herself surfacing again, she's at the top of the stairs once more, somehow bone dry, with the courtyard just at her back. ]

Wait--shit--

[But before she can even properly freak out over being grabbed and pulled under, she's at the top of the stairs once more, looking around for how in the world she just got here]

No--no! Elly!

She was so fucking close--

[With a frustrated grunt she makes back for the bottom of the stairs to try again, before it's too late]

[ It only takes a few steps down the stairs before it hits her again: that too-heavy emptiness. If anything, it is more oppressive than before.

This time the swords are missing from the rack on the wall. One seems to have fallen a ways down the stairs—and where it hit the stones, it shattered, leaving a jagged edge at the hilt and a spray of gold across the wall nearby. As if the blade itself had become no more than a wound. ]

[She doesn't give it more than a moment's notice. It's been the better part of a year since Mehniel had sacrificed himself for for hers--there's no way she is going to give up on them now. She pushes past, taking the stairs two or three at a time]

[ In a way, all this feels almost dreamlike. This time, the stairs are more worn; there are more gouges in the wall. Torn fabric, scuff prints. Nothing pristine; everything slashed or seared or crumbling. (However hopeless the fight seems... it can always, always get worse.) And even though she still knows she's walking down—just like she did before—the walk still feels like climbing a tower. Maybe it's something about the nature of climbing, about reaching for something...

If Nemesis thinks hard enough—something about the environment might remind her of past ventures into other people's hearts: the way the world seems to be more grounded in symbolism than nature. ]

[Right...right, why the hell not. Well, she can climb up downstairs into somebody's soul just as much as a little piece of Heaven in Hell, and she does, even more determined to push her way through--to not be too late]

However hopeless the fight seems, it can always get better, too.

[Which feels way more something Cross should be saying than herself, but it's still true, and if somebody's gotta hear it, she'll make sure it's said]

[ As she goes down, down, down, that aching melancholy and emptiness keep building. They seep into her bones. They gnaw at her convictions; at her will to continue; at the will to care about anything at all. After all...

It will never ̦͇̩͚̞m̪̯̙̯̼a̗̟͎̬̘̪t̲͓t̪e͈͚̹͕͇̯̮r, in the e҉̯̰̕͞ṋ̢̦̮͖d̬̟̪̥̞̖̥͢ͅ.

Maybe it's just a trick of the dim light, but it almost seems like oily black liquid is weeping from the stone walls. ]

[For now, she attempts to avoid it--the fountain upstairs was bad enough--the Invader she had punched into was bad enough. But she is more than used to this--knows what and who she needs to concentrate on to keep focus and that she'll always want to care about. So she keeps rushing down those stairs, attempting to bring some of that lightness with her]

...You don't know that. You gotta live through it if you wanna find out.

[ What if she fought, and fought, and fought—against worsening odds; against slaughter and defilement; against hopelessness—
What if she fought, and sacrificed, and watched those she cared for sacrificed, and it all came to nothing?

What if it came to worse than nothing. What if the ones she fought for—who all had fought for—had never cared at all?

To live through it... would something as pathetic and lonely as that even matter? The answer as meaningless as the empty fight.

The space around Nemesis feels vast and cold and thick, like the air itself might turn to that dark sludge. ]

It only ends bad if you let it end now. So long's you're still fighting, it ain't over. You can still turn it around.

[By the end she sounds closer to pleading than anything. Xia of all people isn't going to discount that much fighting and suffering and loss and loneliness.

But by that same token, she forces herself to keep going. If not for people pushing through darkness for her, Xia wouldn't even be here. She should owe as much to others.]

Hey--c'mere. It's too dark to be hanging out in here alone.

[ But there isn't any answer.

Just the fathomless emptiness. And it's so dark—like she said: too dark to be in this place alone. The liquid seeping up the legs of her trousers has the too-familiar consistency of old blood and the too-familiar smell of rancid oil. It feels like nothing so much as irrelevance.

And if she really is alone—if everyone is gone; if the cause itself never even fucking mattered...

Is there even anything left? Why continue. Why not just let it all be done? ]

Because--

[She takes a long breath, voice serious]

'Cause if none of it mattered, ain't that even worse?

Don't it feel better to at least know you went out doing what you felt was right, corny as it sounds? Ain't there at least one or two people still worth fighting for--worth making a space for yourself for?

That's what I like to think, anyways.

[She splashes on further through the blood and oil and who knows what else, looking around again for any signs of light. Or signs of anything, honestly]

...I don't like the dark much. So I wish you'd come out.

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Flowers of Heaven II: Star of Bethlehem

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