Return (back dated)
Posted: 26 May 2014, 21:00
It was tiring. She had her strength; what was left of it after centuries of the Realm picking away at her as it attempted time and again to break her down into one of its mindless minions. Her strength had helped when she had been alive, but there were times since dying where she found it to be more of a curse than anything. How long did it take the average vampire to finally succumb and fade away, leaving nothing behind but their wraith like essence that was content to lash out at anything that drew near? How many of them were able to withstand the Darkness for a year? A decade? A century?OOC Note: This RP takes place back when Revyia was first Returned to Flesh
Revyia had long ago realized that none of them were meant to survive. Through the blood of their sires they had been gifted the powers of long life. Through the power of the Darkness everything was stripped from them. It was the cost of their gifts. Even in believing like she did, she still found herself resisting the pull of oblivion.
She'd often contemplated that perhaps the Darkness allowed her to resist its will so it could continue to feed off of her misery. Her awareness that in the end there was no other answer; that the price would be paid, making her a juicy meal for the power that controlled the Realm. She had tried to force her mind into oblivion - but it had not been effective. It had reminded her of training for new powers, all that hard mental concentration towards something for hours and hours to no avail. It was just as draining on her wraith like existence as it was on her as a vampire. Still, that did not stop the madness from overwhelming her to the point she was willing to try near anything to find relief.
She was not alone, though her trust for most of the souls she knew to roam the Darkness with her was not anything to rely on. It made the Darkness a lonely place. A confusing place. A wretched place. A place where you had all eternity to relive every moment of your very long life. All eternity for delusions to set in.
Over half a millennia and the madness was so thick in her mind that even the hope of a new world was not enough to fight away the tangled webs in her mind. The strength of her mind was enough for her to join the others in projecting to the magical place allowing her to talk once more to living beings. Vampires who still roamed the world untouched by the Darkness. The knowledge that that would likely never be her was enough to make her spirit cry out in a deep pain.
Even after she started hearing words of return, she knew better than to truly let hope grow inside of her. Vampires came to her seeking knowledge that she did not have. Returns were not something that she had ever heard of in her time. The dead did not return from Shadows. Even when she began to feel something growing, she still kept the hope at bay.
The delusions were back. She looked down and saw slender fingers where nothing but silhouette should be. She expected her surroundings to be the familiar landscape of her life - it always was. The lack of hope in a Return kept her delusions from taking the form of her body walking around Harper Rock in modern day. Instead, her delusions had her reliving the past.
Sometimes she was human again, wandering the Master's dwelling. Others she was newly turned and trying to adjust to her new life. Particularly bad delusions took her back to before she was one of the Master's. Or when she went back to deal out her justice. Her least favourite by far was always the night she was delivered to the Shadows, for in her delusions she always managed to survive and for the briefest moments it was as if all her time in the Shadows was no more than a nightmare.
This delusion was different. She recognized the surroundings even though they were far from the familiar. Her projections had spent enough time in modern day Harper Rock that it was not unrecognizable to her, but somehow the objects that she recognized still seemed odd. As if she was not seeing them the same way she was used to. It was a delusion after all, so strangeness was to be expected.
She moved towards the alleyway where the dark and shadows could surround her. Even when she was nothing more than a projection she had always hated being out in the open. The ground beneath her feet felt cold and the texture strange. It was similar to some things she had walked on before, but the sensation was not an exact match. It was disturbing. As was the fact that when she finally had a moment to take note of herself she was without proper attire. Without any attire at all.
The act of being without clothing was not disconcerting on its own. It was more the fact that her knowledge of modern times led her to believe that it was not acceptable in public, so why would her delusions not furnish her some type of attire? Nothing good could come of trying to determine what this fallacy held for her, so instead of playing along like she had a tendency to do she hunkered down and waited for it to pass. They always passed.
Time passed slowly, oh so slowly, but she was used to the utterly slow passage of time. The infinite time in the Darkness was good for teaching one the patience to sit still and not move for a very long time. It was not, however, good practice for ignoring the sounds of drunken village people walking passed full of cheer, or the loud sounds of the new age transportation that filled the night. Still, her patience and her ability to almost fold into herself mentally were enough to keep her there. Eventually the sounds quieted as the night made its way to a close.
It had been so long since she had seen daylight; even her delusions would disappear before the fateful rays could blister her skin. Still, the knowledge that the sun was about to rise was as sure in her as it was back before she had been fed to the Darkness. Lifting her head up towards the skies she closed her eyes, though she was not sure if she was glad the delusion was about to end or saddened by the fact she was about to be forced back into reality. Both options were equally bleak.
Pain. Blistering hot pain that ripped unexpected screams out of her throat. She had not been prepared for that. She painfully lifted her blistered lids and surveyed the damage all over her pale skin. The blisters were multiplying with each moment that she sat there and there seemed to be no end in sight. Centuries of instinct kicked in and she was activating a power she had not used in so very long. The ability to put herself in the ground as if a corpse had come in handy before, both in battle and out. It would come in handy now as a place to hide from the unbearable rays of the sun and try to puzzle out the meaning of this delusion.