#demacore

there was a wonderful structure to the city that put my cares to rest…

ask me about anything Bishop/Dema related

ah, the towers. to preface, I think the towers are super important. I think it's where the Bishops are at their most powerful. I think all Glorious Gones occur in the in the towers, along with many other horrible things.

The interior of the towers manifest differently depending on the Bishop. Sacarver's is one ornate spiral staircase, snaking its way through the tower. Sometimes it's wide and cavernous in the center, other times it narrows so much that a person's shoulders barely fit. It's dizzying, one doesn't know if they've been circling up the tower for minutes or hours. The staircase stops wherever the person climbing it needs to be. No other hallways. no other doors. It just seems to open at the top...or what appears to be the top.

Lisden's tower is full of Escher-style optical illusions, upside down staircases, doors to nowhere, rooms along the way tilted on their side. It's disorienting, exhausting, and never the same twice.

Vetomo's consists of impossibly long, straight, narrow hallways. This should be impossible, the towers are round, but somehow the hallways appear completely straight with only a slight incline to let you know you're climbing. Sound dies in the halls, there are no footsteps, no echoes, everything is stale. There are doors along the hallway, but most are locked. Some aren't if you're brave enough. Who knows what you'll find.

Residro's tower is seemingly normal, typical stairs with stories and landings, except for the fact that the climb begins in sweltering heat that progresses to frigid cold. There's no way to prepare, beginning the ascent with warmer clothes guarantees heat stroke but beginning it with less promises hypothermia. Sometimes the stairs stop at dead-end walls that must be climbed to ascend further.

Nico's tower is full of mirrors, like some terrible funhouse. But the mirrors don't always present reality. This effect worsens as one journeys higher and deeper. Mirrors that expose fears, mirrors that expose sins, mirrors that accelerate age, mirrors that show death...people forced to spend long periods of time in Nico's tower don't come out the same.

ohhhhhh this is so good. It’s so…corrupted divinity.

The suggestibility of the human brain and my shaky hands that hold your shaky hands. Electricity, static, transatlantic accents and blood in my mouth. An old rabbit ear tv sits on the floor of your room and it plays you the truth and you cover your ears and it still seeps in. it comes in through your teeth, you're sure of it. The camera watches you let me through your window and touch your hands. Caked in blood. Tacky. Blood. It's yours, you tell me. You're an awful liar. You take communion like its arsenic and I take you to the spot they killed you last time and you cry and cry and I still love you anyway even if you're dead and I'm not. Your apartment is shrinking like your alice and then that must make me the cat because I'm smiling at you as you rip your hair out trying to stay put well the building is burning down. I’m tired of this. The city grows like a creature well we aren't looking and the smell of dying rats is back. The smell of decay and death and the dead. The way you smelled when they brought you back the first time. Vomit maybe? I can't remember. My head hurts. I don't remember you passing out, I just remember that at some point carrying you made more sense and now your home again for the night and i'd like to keep you here please. Please.

neon makes sound. a dull, constant sound. a buzz that permeates the city. a hum that resembles a chant, a voice you can never escape.

contrast with Trench. the first time you stop running long enough for your breath to steady. And…nothing. No hum, no buzz, no sounds from next door. Just stillness. Quiet. Silence that seems heavy, oppressive, even. The chance to hear your own heartbeat. The chance to hear your own thoughts. And where do they go?