Post by Oberon Gault on Nov 19, 2013 16:44:05 GMT -8
Survivor stories were always interesting things. Everyone wants to know what happened in the worst places to those that made it through. Two men spoke of that very topic, each trying to find items of value in the expanse of grey rubble. A young man and an old man. Both their own experiences to share, both a unique outlook on the events that brought them here.
"Where were you when all Seattle came crashing down?" Something that the new man might ask of the old man, many years from now.
"Oh, I was down by the docks. Did you see the demon approach?" Inconsequential small talk from the old man, really. They could have been speaking of either of two malevolent entities, in truth.
"Yeah. Jimmy lost himself to his shadow a few months prior, fell to the bigger one not long after that." The new ones had more friends than the old, but theirs meant less. Too many don't make it, really. More losing their very identity to the servants of Oblivion, only to rise as one of their number shortly thereafter.
"So, where were you?" Interest from the old man would be predictable. Every survivor is interested in another survivor's story, and something that leveled their very livelihood was something of great interest to survive.
The younger man hadn't actually been dead when the specter-borne explosive had detonated. He had still been mortal when the tempest opened above the city, intent on consuming everything and everyone beneath it. No, the young man was younger than his appearance would've suggested as far as his new society suggested. He was one of the living innocents who lost their life to the very real reaction in the skin lands.
Maybe he was one struck by the violet lightning. He could have been working in the power plant. Equally likely was the possibility of being yet another lost life in the harsh world's normal affairs. But his crossing over was something different. He had seen the other side in his last moments of life, when the shroud was nothing at all. When an entity devoted to usurping Hell's leadership engages battle with one of its chief Archdukes, the processes of reality don't always function the same.
"Oh. I was sitting down to dinner with my wife and daughter. Mary and Cindy." This caused the old man to drop his makeshift shovel in realization, the black remnant of the soul-steel bomb whispering a moan at the sudden change in location.
"I -- I didn't know." The old man had lost someone close to him some time ago as well. They don't all seek to control the other. Those furthest away from their shadow, away from Oblivion's nothingness could still feel for one another.
Survivor stories are different for those who are capable of perseverance and death at the same time. Death and a harrowing, slipping closer to losing it all while fighting to maintain everything. Fighting to maintain nothing. They fought for the sake of being able to fight sometimes.
But none of these deaths mattered. Not the old man's slip towards oblivion. Not the young man. Not Cindy. Not Mary. Not a one of them mattered when beings too self engrossed in their own power, too wrapped up in their own vision battled one another.
