Kasparova DT Visions

An empty hand, reaching out...

You are running, heedless, through the jungle. Things catch at your feet, at your clothes. Vines. Stones. Logs. Claws. Nameless horrors of the deep places between the ancient trees. They tear away ragged streamers of cloth, ragged strips of flesh, as your feet pound on the unforgiving soil of the New World.

A fallen sapling catches your shoe, and you go straight over forwards, planting your face in a small, rocky stream. As you lift your dazed head, you see your reflection in the water.

The symbol burns on your forehead, a silent accusation.

You had to do it. You had to! You could not afford to fail. You cannot afford to fail. The circumstances of your death are hazy, but the time you have spent undead is crystal clear.

You appeared at the nearest ritual site and you started running. They were waiting for you, of course. Your retinue. Kasadyenka. Asquirl. Petrov. Morton. Lana. They have encircled the site, but Morton is a weak point and you cut him down with your terrible claws.

You run. You do not look back, but somehow you know that behind you Karen has got in the way, that you are free and clear for a moment.

You know they will never stop chasing you. You can hear them now, just behind you, the tireless pace of the facet, the exhausted but determined cadence of the paladin. You pick yourself up from where you fell and you continue to run.

It is only after you have gone another quarter of an hour into the forest that you realise a branch had snagged your Sanction on the way out of the stream, your precious artifact lost forever in the endless unforgiving jungle.

At least the canopy keeps you from the accusing, terrible eye of the Sun.

You run. Forever. Endlessly. You run.

----

An empty hand, reaching out... and the Sanction falls into its palm.

You are kneeling on a great, blasted plain, a cracked and barren wasteland of clay. Stretching out beside you and before you, an entire army kneels.

They are your army. They are Marcus Al-Tora's army. They are the great army at the end of the world... and they have come too late. They have failed. You have failed.

The demons stride up and down the ranks, picking and choosing those souls they would consume, those promising young soldiers they would force to learn more and more until their souls were fattened for the slaughter, those who would serve eternally by their side as their undead lieutenants and commanders, and those whose souls are fit only for spending in massive projects, their bodies forever marching as footsoldiers for the cause.

They do not know, yet, that you are one of the few that are strong of will, that could stand and fight once more, if it could be of any use. You kneel by choice, not compulsion.

One of them approaches you. They look you up and down. They are pleased by what they see. They bend down to inspect you more closely, and look into your eyes.

You could strike. You could move ever so quickly, ever so suddenly, and slice them clean in half.

You do not. You listen to what they have to say. You find yourself nodding. Agreeing with them.

You give them your Name as they lead you to the ritual site. You will become their minion. Better to serve in Hell. Better to keep that freedom of choice, that future hope, in any way you can...

They begin to cast the ritual and you scream and you scream, because now you are held in place, now you can feel their icy touch invading your mind and spreading throughout your body, locking your will, your hope, your limbs to their power and their command.

There is no future. There is no hope. There is an eternity of screaming agony - and then there is only the silence, the darkness.

And then there is nothing at all.

----

An empty hand, reaching out...

You stab her several times in the chest and throw her overboard into the waves.

You stab her several times in the chest and throw her overboard into the waves, into the storm.

You stab her several times in the chest and throw her overboard into the waves, into the raging storm of eerie blue lightning.

The first time; the first ten times, the first hundred times; she is Natalya Ivanova Kasparova, and this is a scene from your memories.

Then she begins to change.

She is Lydiena Kasadykena. She is Lana Bogdanova. She is Karen Perkins. She is Morton Kermolla.

She is everyone you have ever used and discarded in the pursuit of your goals.

She is Ramesen Astartes.

She is Marcus Septimius Felix.

She is Carmina Septimia Mallea, as you were in Midden Point, freshly consumed with ideological fervour. She spits in your face. "How could you betray me like this? How could you get caught up in all the worthless Fidelian politics that we'd left far behind us? How come you have made so little progress, Milena?"

She is Milena Vasilynevna Volkova, so terribly vulnerable and young, looking up at you with eyes full of hurt and bewilderment. "Why did you kill me? Why did you abandon all that we stood for? Why did you abandon all we were taught?"

You stab yourself, several times, in the chest, and you dive overboard into the waves.

It is not the end.

The cold of the deep ocean seeps slowly into your empty veins as you begin the long walk, the stygian depths lit only by the faint, silvery light from the symbol you now bear.

The ghosts follow you, shouting their accusations in distorted, underwater tones.

----

The terrible visions of failure and death and undeath follow you throughout the season, often striking at inconvenient moments, and the irrational conviction that you have somehow died and joined the ranks of the undead seizes you from time to time even when you are not directly hallucinating. You should continue to roleplay bouts of these visions and delusions throughout the upcoming event.