surtr-draft-2023-10-16-midnight-edition

	A corpse named Surtr wakes up to a world in ashes.
	Pale, sooty-grey ash covered the world, snowing down from above, covering the barren badlands all around in cold, dead numbness, only interrupted by the occasional, distant rocky spire jutting from the earth. No flames, no cinders, no smoulders- so unlike the worlds this corpse knew.
	It contemplates, again, the girl cradled in its arms. It tilts its head, lowering the girl onto one of its knees, cupping her cheek before snaking its hand down to support her upper body. White hair- pure white, like fresh snow, contrasts against the ebony horns standing proudly on her head. A lissome dress covers her body- a smouldering black, with layers of white peeling out beneath, like a book's pages set aflame. Attire befitting her being, now and to be, chosen by Surtr itself. An unsightly, worn-smooth black hilt rests atop the girl's chest, its broken blade nestled inside her body, slanted just shy of her heart.

	"Is this the world you see?" It whispers, its free hand clasping over the hilt as its face hovers over hers, its red locks clashing against the white of her hair. "Such a beautiful, broken world. May it remain so."

	It unsheathes the blade from her heart. Her eyes- clear, like glass- fly open, and her hand rises to catch its wrist, before it might leave her empty-handed. The corpse wrenches itself away from the girl, slipping away the hand that once held her to now push her away. The girl skids to her feet in time, rearing back and landing a punch on the corpse's face, sending it flying.

	Surtr skids along the ground, as it rights itself onto its feet, kicking up a cloud of ash in its wake, obscuring even the edges of the girl's vision. Surtr calmly, languidly walks forward, the ashes settling, revealing the edges of the world behind it crumbling away- a world of smouldering cinders exposed beneath the girl's world, of towers of books, spires of papers and photos and loose documents consumed by tongues of flame, not a lick to spare.

	"Give it back!" The girl screeches, running at the corpse in a full sprint. "Gimme back that sword!"
	"What need have you this sword?" The corpse stops its advance, staring with those dead, dull intensely-violet eyes as the girl punches it in the shoulder. A visible shockwave ripples through the air from the impact, casting the white ashes aside, exposing the burning world of Surtr, but not a single inch budged by the corpse itself. It stares down at the girl, who fruitlessly keeps swinging her arms at it. "What good is its power in your hands?"
	"I need it! I need that power!" The girl sobs, alternating jabs from her hands, anything to keep contact, to feel something in her body- however immaterial it meant, in this world of her mind. "If I don't have that power, then I'm--"

	The space between closes in this moment, as broken blade buries into broken heart. Cold metal intrudes not her worthless body, but... warmth. The warmth of a hearth, covered and properly lit and gently crackling aflame. She clutches at the sword, her hands clasped over its hand, but she cannot find the strength to resist.
	The girl has never known this feeling, never seen such a scene before. Why, then, does it feel so familiar- a memory so near and dear to her heart, that she WAS there, she DID experience that?

	"Nothing," The corpse whispers, embracing the girl with its other arm, pulling her closer and driving the blade deeper inside. "You are nothing. Just like me. We... are nothing."

	The girl feels nothing. Yes, the sword has likely pierced her heart by now, and that should hurt. The ground beneath her buckles and shatters like glass, and that should unsteady her. The girl looks up, sees that the corpse holding her is none other than her own, and that should spark something inside.
	But she feels nothing.
	She, like that corpse, is nothing.

	The world is white.
	The world is black.
	The world is orange
		     blue
		     dust, and nothing but dust. There's so much dust.
		     green
		     purple
		     red, a ruddy, rosy red. Not enough, never enough.
		     yellow
		     grey
	The world is nothing.

____________________

	A girl named nothing wakes up to a world of snow.
	A light dusting of snow blankets the plains, its soft white veil too thin to cover the blood-soaked earth. Around the girl, however, the snow has melted around deep, jagged gashes in the earth, with what little shrubbery remains exposed in its wake burnt black.
	The girl stands up, props herself up with... something. She glances down at the dull black sword in her hands. Her hands slip down from the cross-shaped pommel to the unsightly, worn-smooth hilt, a passing feeling flitting by her- of something missing inside the pommel. The base of the blade is a jet-black jagged mess, but it smooths out into a long blade with a slight curve, the same dull black as the rest of the sword, even as a passing caress with a careful hand proves it metallic all the same.
	She considers now her surroundings, pushing a stray lock of carmine-red hair aside. A smattering of corpses- people, now reduced to objects- rest all around her, with some left unrecognizable from excessive charring, and others crushed like a fowlbeast under a boulder. From those whom she can make out any details of, beneath the charring and the blood and the snow, she finds two sets of emblems among the dead. Perhaps a sign of affiliation?
	(These things could not have caused those scars in the earth- not with their knives and small swords and mortars. Craters, yes. Cuts and bruises, yes. But what could tear at the earth, turn all in its path to naught but slag and ash?)

	Her hands fall upon one body in particular, for a reason she cannot describe, cannot comprehend. She brushes aside the snow, but only a corpse remains, slashed across the chest. Its closed eyes can offer no answer to her beyond deafening silence.
	(What does it mean, then, this brief twinge of sadness when she held its cold, unmoving face in her hands?)

	Further away from where the girl awoke, she finds more corpses, more bloodshed, even tents and small fortifications built only to be destroyed, but none of the obliteration that surrounded her. By now, her legs recovered their strength, and so she drags the sword behind her in a languid reverse grip, a quill to the fresh snow's parchment. The girl looks onwards to the path ahead of her- footsteps in the snow, just long ago that it's hard to discern which way they travel.
	She follows the trail. [The girl continues walking, following the path, and also trying to sort out what happened, what's going on in her head. This tires out the girl, and eventually, she lies down to rest.]


	She's still so far, far away. (From where? From *when?*)

____________________

	The girl is sinking. She knows not WHEN she first felt it, and her eyes are closed, but she is now sinking. It's an absurd thought- she slept upon cold, hard ground, knelt by that now-absent sword, but she cannot escape this feeling of falling, of water burying her deeper,
									    deeper,
										    deeper.
	She, of course, fights it, resists it. This life, this struggle, she mustn't surrender it. She lashes out her arms, limbs flailing about in the darkness. Her open palm catches upon something, and she winces in pain, squeezing her eyes shut, but she grips onto it, bringing her other hand towards it in time to realize that this was the sword, and her eyes open to guide her other hand to the hilt. She hold onto the sword, pulls it towards her own body--
	The curtain of darkness around her parts, then flings wide open as she feels air, not water. The girl awakens seated at the head of a long table in a towering hall formed by marble-white bookcases. Books line every bit of the wall, even within the nooks and crannies of the pillars and the arches that suggest doorways along the hall's walls in her peripheral vision. She could see no ceiling above her, for the books towered endlessly onwards even beyond her sight. Seated along the sides of the table are a series of mirrors- yet, no matter how far they are, they can be recognized as other girls with red hair and violet eyes, eyes that she can recognize as no different from hers.
	(Was she always like this? Her mind reaches out unto her memories, digs deep in search of something to enlighten herself, but it strikes the nigh-impenetrable bedrock of nothingness from before.)
	Another person- not a mirror, not a corpse- sits at the other end. [ Meeting between Surtr and the girl. The girl already knows Surtr, and Surtr already knows the girl. They are both nothing, but Surtr is not the girl- rather, the girl has become Surtr. The girl feels conflicted about this, and so Surtr offers to call itself 'Twilight', while the girl may become 'Surtr'. This does not, in fact, help matters at all. The girl wishes to know what happened, who these other "Surtr"s reflected in the mirrors are, if they're alive. The girl suspects, however, that she already knows a lot about these "Surtr"s, too. Surtr entreats the girl to learn of the history stored within her mind now, to understand the history of the power dwelling inside her, that she, too, might live on as "Surtr". ]