Echoes of Madness [Open]

music | 471 | groggy

You are done, Ito. Done. Finished. It is over. Death awaits you. Death. Death. Death. Done. Dead. Done. The madness would eat away at him, the madness would attempt to take him. It washed over him, gnawing at his very existence, the very things that made him want to continue. That selfsame thing which denied his existence also attempted to justify it. Justify. Exist. Reality. Madness. Madness is existence. Life is pain. Suffer well. Everything tried to pull him away from his path that he'd set upon, trying to do everything it could to take him away. The shrill laughter of the demon witch above him, the light of the Truth, the feeling of warmth being overtaken by a deathly chill, he recalled it all. He recalled that very moment he died, that moment he felt his life slip away - did you know how it felt to die when you felt as if you were truly unstoppable? Unstoppable? No. No. No. Foolish. Mad. Madness. Defeated. Death. Dying. Dead. The madness continued to gnaw away at him endlessly, even as his life force ebbed away.

And yet that same life force would continue to surge and resurge, building up inside of him as a centrifuge would spin, trying its hardest to continue to exist. It could not, yet it had a way to do so. It just had to take that power. Everything. Away. Away. Away. Normal once more? No. Can sacrifice some. Remain most. Deal? He did not wish to make such a deal with such a foul ichor, yet he knew that if he did not his life would be forfeit. It was not his time to die here. He knew that much already. So he fought, and the Angel fought alongside him. They fought off the encapsulating darkness side-by-side, eventually cutting through. Yet battle is not without sacrifice. Mine. Taken. Gone. Normal. The ichor struck down the Angel, cutting it away from him. With it it took the power of his king and protection, leaving behind but a wall, yet a wall besmirched with Madness no longer.

And so it was on this day, over four years since the battle for Madness concluded with the washing away of peace, that his eyes opened. A resurgence came forth as the mud was shattered around him, and a beacon of energy threw up into the sky - a beacon thrown up without thought, without consideration - he did not even understand that he had done so until he was too late. Yet he did not know. Was this a land of friends, a land of foes, both, neither? He would not know. He simply knew that, as he slowly sat up, he was awake. He did not know how long it had been.