#doomweaver

Mordheim: City of the Damned (2015/Windows/MATURE)

Composer(s): Stéphane Primeau

FREE via GOG until 28th January, 2024

In the end, she didn't have time to drown. The rolling green wave slammed her into the rocky side of Meneltarma with a force that was too great to be felt, much less endured. One last whiff of cold and salty sea air, and the roaring encompassed her and bore her body away.

The snap of spirit cleaved from flesh was brief but utterly shocking. Buoyancy pulled her beyond and Tar-Miriel found herself before a jackal-headed being and a set of scales. She endured the proceedings with a tremulous confusion, speaking only if spoken to, and took what followed with an uncertain acceptance.

There was a door and something beyond it that smelled like her father, lemon verbena and sweet olive and leather polish. She stared at it, then turned away without knowing why. Miriel moved through the Halls, seeking nothing and finding it, but too restless to stop.

She was in front of a tapestry of Eärendil the Mariner taking to the skies in Vingilot. The seas rocked below the crystalline ship and it was so real that she tried to trail her fingers through the water.

It brought up a memory of a recent scene from another harbor where sails snapped in the wind and a massive fleet sailed west. Sickly green crackles of lightning traced over the white and pale blue of her unhoused Self. Her people were gone. Her home was gone. Beyond the doors of Death, Miriel shook with unbridled rage.

"PHARAZÓN!" she shrieked, a protest that tore from fëa and not throat and was all the louder for the lack of a muffling hroä. She felt that even her limitless surroundings could never contain her hatred of the very word that meant him. "You goddamned fool! What have you done? What have you done?!"

Her tattered thoughts turned frantic and murderous. She was in Mandos. The Halls were in Valinor, weren't they? Her cousin had been in Aman when the cliffs tumbled onto him and the Army. There had to be a way to get to him. She was only a ghost now, surely there was a way out of here? Miriel had nothing left to lose. She would somehow find him and erase every last trace of him. He would not endure, no single part of him, not a breath nor word nor dream.

"Where are you?" she snarled, seeking some realm of up or down, left or right, anything that she could grasp that would help her in her now very purposeful journey. This place made no sense with its quiet corridors and peaceful rooms, but she didn't care. Miriel bolted away, darting this way and that seeking an exit, not caring where she flew as long as it somehow brought her closer to his destruction. 

((There have been a couple anons, likely from the same person. One was about the hijab. Another was specifically about color and body image. It's about race and also religion, possibly, but definitely color is part of it.

Ossë sat on the floor, his back against the wall beside the balcony doors. The view had become too upsetting, and he found himself restlessly frustrated with no way to let out his pent up energy. So he let his head thud back against the wall repeatedly, his eyes closed against the dull ache that bloomed, his elbows propped on his knees. He didn't even notice the extra presence until Vairë spoke.