Blah, this arc is taking too long to write
Dear Musashi,
Phoenix idly trailed a finger on the walls as she walked past. Applying just the smallest amount of heat caused a thin line to burn outwards from the line her finger had been. Like Jason, she thought. And the minotaur, circling and circling in the labyrinth, tracing his way.
She lifted up her finger and returned her hand to her side. I’m not going home. I don’t need to find my way.
These calm moments of walking the hallways filled Phoenix with untold pleasure. Any tracer the scientists put in her body burned away when she shifted to fire- even the ones that were supposed to be immune to Excess. They wouldn’t burn, they’d just drop out of her body, immobile. And for a few moments Phoenix was almost free. She could do as she pleased without being monitored, and that was exciting.
Of course, the walls had eyes. She sincerely doubted there was anywhere she could go in the Facility without being watched. But that was Ok- sort of. It wasn’t as bad.
“Helllloooo?” She called out in a sing-song voice. “Is anybody there?”
Glimmer. A small dancing light, a will-o-the-wisp, pranced around her head and shot off into the grey and disappeared. Phoenix blinked.
Following random lights made as much sense as anything, so she stalked forward into the direction that the small light had disappeared to.
She didn’t really worry about whether or not she was doing the right thing, that wasn’t her way. Having long since realized that bad things would either happen or they wouldn’t she stopped analyzing her actions.
Instead she thought about Cassandra’s prophecy, and what it would mean for the Excess. But even that got boring after awhile, so she settled for just thinking about Cass. She thought about all of the clairvoyants, Cassandra and Tiresias being the strongest. She realized now that it seemed silly to try and revolt when the Fortune Tellers did not because obviously they would already know the outcome, right?
Still, Phoenix reasoned, who says the impossible can’t happen? Who made that rule? And besides, Cass and Tir were Andromeda, and loyal. They hadn’t wanted to leave. Fucktards.
All the while she was thinking, unusual affects on the atmosphere helped guide her to wherever she was supposed to be going. The wall would suddenly start jutting out, rippling and leaving trails. Bubbles started coming from one corridor, so she knew to turn left. On one occasion daises started sprouting from the ceiling and Phoenix figured that meant she should go up.
Phoenix took this with great calmness. As if it was all perfectly normal and not really something worth spending too much time thinking about.
By the time she reached the dead end she had absolutely no idea where she was and couldn’t even began to decide how to find her way
back. And while she had already acknowledged the fact that it’s not like she had a “back” to go to, she glared at the wall creating a dead end with so much offended dignity that had the wall realized what she was doing it would have apologized for being in her way.
“Well?!” She demanded after a short while. “Is that it? No lightning bolt? No lava?” She snorted. “What a crappy finale.” She placed her hand on the wall and let it burn.
It hit her before she could even stem into the room. Heavy and dense, but void-like, and impenetrable. The room was filled with
anti-Excess devices, and it repelled her more than anything else could.
Their Excess is what made them, that’s why anything that served to limit their Excess was so damaging. Excess wasn’t just some power, or ability, it’s who they were. Even the scientists knew the caution of how much limitation they could put on Excess. They wouldn’t dare use too much- for fear of permanently damaging the specimen in some drastic and fatalistic way.
Phoenix thought at first, that there must be something in the room that the scientists wanted hidden from those with Excess. That was certainly intriguing, but she wasn’t sure that was enough of a reason to cause her to venture into that room.
But then she saw it- the broken form of an angel, wilted in the corner of the room. And against everything probable and logical, Phoenix realized that the room wasn’t made to keep Excess out, it was made to keep an Excess in. This Excess.
That was even less of a reason to go inside the room that would have weighed down her soul, but it was strangely compelling. Against anything that might have been considered better judgment, Phoenix steeped inside towards the broken figure.
“Hey,” She called out, in a quiet voice, rather unsure of herself. “You dead?” The room already started to enclose around her, penetrate through her shell of flesh and start boxing in the spark that resided within her.
Ignore it, she thought. Just ignore it. It’s just another sort of cage.
The figure stirred, slowly, and began to prop itself up against the wall in dead-like jerks of corpse body.
Phoenix got a clearer picture now, it was a boy. An almost tragically beautiful boy that looked so strange, and alien, that she wondered if this was what the scientists had been cooking up in their labs.
He was thin, and small, and looked (if you were being generous) to be not a day older than fourteen. But she knew that if he was an Excess he had to be at least fifteen, because there simply wasn’t anyone younger than fifteen in the Ward. He had pale, white hair, that hung listlessly over his face, and eyes that you could get lost in. Soft blue eyes, with an odd discoloration in the left one.
He blinked. Tilted his head and looked at Phoenix. But Phoenix got the distinct impression he wasn’t looking at her, but through her. He frowned. Shook his head like a dog then blinked rapidly and looked at Phoenix again. And this time, he seemed to focus on her.
They looked at each other like that for the span of several centuries. Then the boy’s face brightened up like sunshine. “You came!” He said joyfully, his voice the path roads to new dimensions. Without warning he flung himself around Phoenix and wrapped his arms around her.
Phoenix yelped, and tried swatting him away. She fell to the ground because of the unexpectedness of it. It should be noted that it was the unexpectedness that caused her to fall, because the weight of the boy alone wouldn’t have been enough to do it- he couldn’t have been more then ninety pounds.
“Youcameyoucameyoucameyoucame! You shined like hurricane and you came!” He nestled his head into Phoenix’s breasts- which she would have found incredibly forward of him if he wasn’t giving off the impression of an abused kitten.
She wasn’t quite sure what to do. She had stopped trying to swat him away, mostly because it seemed like he was already bruising from her earlier attempts and she was starting to feel bad. But what else could she do? Hug him back? She’d forgotten how.
She let her arms rest at her sides, neither encouraging nor discouraging the affections. She looked around the room, which was remarkable small. It was empty too, it didn’t even have a place to lay on. It was empty, but that wasn’t unusual. What disturbed Phoenix in deep, awe-filled sense, were the images painted in the walls, in the only material that the boy would have had access to.
They were smudged onto the walls, and rather precise despite the medium with which they were painted, and the brush strokes would have been his fingers. The strokes were mostly thick, but they were precise. There was a landscape of trees that looked like trees, and Phoenix was surprised that she could recognize them for what they were. There were birds, and small animals. And on the opposite wall there were depictions of slaughter.
“You brought me here.” She said, not asking a question.
The boy nodded his head.
“With your Excess?” That couldn’t be it. For so many reasons that couldn’t be it.
“Like breadcrumbs.” He said solemnly, lifting his head up to meet her eyes. He looked happy, if there was such a thing as happiness in his life. “Follow the breadcrumbs you and I left them.”
“Right.” The boy’s crazier than I am. Phoenix thought wildly. Then she gave an internal shrug. Well, that only made sense, really. “But there are so many anti-Excess devices in here.”
He let out a giggle, almost on the verge of hysterics. “Inside. Inside there are many but they couldn’t put them outside, could they? There wasn’t anything stopping me from putting my Excess outside now was there?”
She opened her mouth to try and argue his logic, that the devices and Excess just didn’t work that way. But she realized that would have been a moot point anyway.
Phoenix sighed. “Hey kid, what are you called?”
“Eiros.” He answered. “They called me Eiros.” He let out a sigh of his own, soft and fluttery like a dying bird. “Hast thou forgotten me? I am your child. Once I was beautiful, when I sprang from your head when you first thought to oppose your creators. They recoiled from me, and called me Sin, cast down into darkness by your incestuous desires. I never meant to do anything wrong, they perceived me all wrong. Bad conceptions.”
Phoenix nodded through all of this like it made sense, but inwardly she thought about what the boy had done. If he really could make his Excess work outside while inside a room fool of Limiters than he must have been more powerful than any Seraphim. But the power worked in too many different ways, using light and bubbles and flowers. There wasn’t anything connecting those three things, unless they were illusions. Yes. That must have been in. No one has more than one Excess.
“Come!” The boy, Eiros, said excitedly. “There’s so much to show you.” He jumped up and tugged at her arm.
Phoenix nodded her head and followed his command to stand up. Yes. There was much to be seen.
It's not that good.
Phoenixeiros
Phoenix idly trailed a finger on the walls as she walked past. Applying just the smallest amount of heat caused a thin line to burn outwards from the line her finger had been. Like Jason, she thought. And the minotaur, circling and circling in the labyrinth, tracing his way.
She lifted up her finger and returned her hand to her side. I’m not going home. I don’t need to find my way.
These calm moments of walking the hallways filled Phoenix with untold pleasure. Any tracer the scientists put in her body burned away when she shifted to fire- even the ones that were supposed to be immune to Excess. They wouldn’t burn, they’d just drop out of her body, immobile. And for a few moments Phoenix was almost free. She could do as she pleased without being monitored, and that was exciting.
Of course, the walls had eyes. She sincerely doubted there was anywhere she could go in the Facility without being watched. But that was Ok- sort of. It wasn’t as bad.
“Helllloooo?” She called out in a sing-song voice. “Is anybody there?”
Glimmer. A small dancing light, a will-o-the-wisp, pranced around her head and shot off into the grey and disappeared. Phoenix blinked.
Following random lights made as much sense as anything, so she stalked forward into the direction that the small light had disappeared to.
She didn’t really worry about whether or not she was doing the right thing, that wasn’t her way. Having long since realized that bad things would either happen or they wouldn’t she stopped analyzing her actions.
Instead she thought about Cassandra’s prophecy, and what it would mean for the Excess. But even that got boring after awhile, so she settled for just thinking about Cass. She thought about all of the clairvoyants, Cassandra and Tiresias being the strongest. She realized now that it seemed silly to try and revolt when the Fortune Tellers did not because obviously they would already know the outcome, right?
Still, Phoenix reasoned, who says the impossible can’t happen? Who made that rule? And besides, Cass and Tir were Andromeda, and loyal. They hadn’t wanted to leave. Fucktards.
All the while she was thinking, unusual affects on the atmosphere helped guide her to wherever she was supposed to be going. The wall would suddenly start jutting out, rippling and leaving trails. Bubbles started coming from one corridor, so she knew to turn left. On one occasion daises started sprouting from the ceiling and Phoenix figured that meant she should go up.
Phoenix took this with great calmness. As if it was all perfectly normal and not really something worth spending too much time thinking about.
By the time she reached the dead end she had absolutely no idea where she was and couldn’t even began to decide how to find her way
back. And while she had already acknowledged the fact that it’s not like she had a “back” to go to, she glared at the wall creating a dead end with so much offended dignity that had the wall realized what she was doing it would have apologized for being in her way.
“Well?!” She demanded after a short while. “Is that it? No lightning bolt? No lava?” She snorted. “What a crappy finale.” She placed her hand on the wall and let it burn.
It hit her before she could even stem into the room. Heavy and dense, but void-like, and impenetrable. The room was filled with
anti-Excess devices, and it repelled her more than anything else could.
Their Excess is what made them, that’s why anything that served to limit their Excess was so damaging. Excess wasn’t just some power, or ability, it’s who they were. Even the scientists knew the caution of how much limitation they could put on Excess. They wouldn’t dare use too much- for fear of permanently damaging the specimen in some drastic and fatalistic way.
Phoenix thought at first, that there must be something in the room that the scientists wanted hidden from those with Excess. That was certainly intriguing, but she wasn’t sure that was enough of a reason to cause her to venture into that room.
But then she saw it- the broken form of an angel, wilted in the corner of the room. And against everything probable and logical, Phoenix realized that the room wasn’t made to keep Excess out, it was made to keep an Excess in. This Excess.
That was even less of a reason to go inside the room that would have weighed down her soul, but it was strangely compelling. Against anything that might have been considered better judgment, Phoenix steeped inside towards the broken figure.
“Hey,” She called out, in a quiet voice, rather unsure of herself. “You dead?” The room already started to enclose around her, penetrate through her shell of flesh and start boxing in the spark that resided within her.
Ignore it, she thought. Just ignore it. It’s just another sort of cage.
The figure stirred, slowly, and began to prop itself up against the wall in dead-like jerks of corpse body.
Phoenix got a clearer picture now, it was a boy. An almost tragically beautiful boy that looked so strange, and alien, that she wondered if this was what the scientists had been cooking up in their labs.
He was thin, and small, and looked (if you were being generous) to be not a day older than fourteen. But she knew that if he was an Excess he had to be at least fifteen, because there simply wasn’t anyone younger than fifteen in the Ward. He had pale, white hair, that hung listlessly over his face, and eyes that you could get lost in. Soft blue eyes, with an odd discoloration in the left one.
He blinked. Tilted his head and looked at Phoenix. But Phoenix got the distinct impression he wasn’t looking at her, but through her. He frowned. Shook his head like a dog then blinked rapidly and looked at Phoenix again. And this time, he seemed to focus on her.
They looked at each other like that for the span of several centuries. Then the boy’s face brightened up like sunshine. “You came!” He said joyfully, his voice the path roads to new dimensions. Without warning he flung himself around Phoenix and wrapped his arms around her.
Phoenix yelped, and tried swatting him away. She fell to the ground because of the unexpectedness of it. It should be noted that it was the unexpectedness that caused her to fall, because the weight of the boy alone wouldn’t have been enough to do it- he couldn’t have been more then ninety pounds.
“Youcameyoucameyoucameyoucame! You shined like hurricane and you came!” He nestled his head into Phoenix’s breasts- which she would have found incredibly forward of him if he wasn’t giving off the impression of an abused kitten.
She wasn’t quite sure what to do. She had stopped trying to swat him away, mostly because it seemed like he was already bruising from her earlier attempts and she was starting to feel bad. But what else could she do? Hug him back? She’d forgotten how.
She let her arms rest at her sides, neither encouraging nor discouraging the affections. She looked around the room, which was remarkable small. It was empty too, it didn’t even have a place to lay on. It was empty, but that wasn’t unusual. What disturbed Phoenix in deep, awe-filled sense, were the images painted in the walls, in the only material that the boy would have had access to.
They were smudged onto the walls, and rather precise despite the medium with which they were painted, and the brush strokes would have been his fingers. The strokes were mostly thick, but they were precise. There was a landscape of trees that looked like trees, and Phoenix was surprised that she could recognize them for what they were. There were birds, and small animals. And on the opposite wall there were depictions of slaughter.
“You brought me here.” She said, not asking a question.
The boy nodded his head.
“With your Excess?” That couldn’t be it. For so many reasons that couldn’t be it.
“Like breadcrumbs.” He said solemnly, lifting his head up to meet her eyes. He looked happy, if there was such a thing as happiness in his life. “Follow the breadcrumbs you and I left them.”
“Right.” The boy’s crazier than I am. Phoenix thought wildly. Then she gave an internal shrug. Well, that only made sense, really. “But there are so many anti-Excess devices in here.”
He let out a giggle, almost on the verge of hysterics. “Inside. Inside there are many but they couldn’t put them outside, could they? There wasn’t anything stopping me from putting my Excess outside now was there?”
She opened her mouth to try and argue his logic, that the devices and Excess just didn’t work that way. But she realized that would have been a moot point anyway.
Phoenix sighed. “Hey kid, what are you called?”
“Eiros.” He answered. “They called me Eiros.” He let out a sigh of his own, soft and fluttery like a dying bird. “Hast thou forgotten me? I am your child. Once I was beautiful, when I sprang from your head when you first thought to oppose your creators. They recoiled from me, and called me Sin, cast down into darkness by your incestuous desires. I never meant to do anything wrong, they perceived me all wrong. Bad conceptions.”
Phoenix nodded through all of this like it made sense, but inwardly she thought about what the boy had done. If he really could make his Excess work outside while inside a room fool of Limiters than he must have been more powerful than any Seraphim. But the power worked in too many different ways, using light and bubbles and flowers. There wasn’t anything connecting those three things, unless they were illusions. Yes. That must have been in. No one has more than one Excess.
“Come!” The boy, Eiros, said excitedly. “There’s so much to show you.” He jumped up and tugged at her arm.
Phoenix nodded her head and followed his command to stand up. Yes. There was much to be seen.
It's not that good.
Phoenixeiros