#second dream

my entry for the anniversary showcase ^^

thoughts below, warning for a new war spoiler

You need to understand that I think my Operator is the best looking child monster in the entire orokin system. Like, hands down, I am so perfect I can't stand it. If you get up all close and snuggly, my eyes are coals about to explode into inferno. Titania is also perfect but I don't feel as compelled to beat you over the head about it. Either you have a murderous butterfly in your heart or you're wrong. /happysighlookatmybabies!

...this dream again... the world that could/should/would have been theirs, except that it never was, and never would be. the place their forest should have grown, their tower should have been built- the one that had never been touched by such tainting, corrupting forces as those that had born their own magic. where they were the thing wrong, twisted, unwelc-

and then it glitches around them. faint at first, no more than a flicker- then a massive convulsion seems to violently wrench the entireity of existence up, back, to one side... and then just, drop it, several inches.

in addition to knocking them roughly from their feet? obviously this does literally nothing good for the fabric of reality. for an instant, it feels like they can see the gaps between every last bit of code, every last one and zero on full display as glinting lines of data are wrent from their place in the program, and replaced by something... else.

and as reality settles again? now, it feels like home...

just... a version of home that had been terrifyingly warped, beyond any twisting their own time-line had ever known.

...the tower was there now. or, had been there. what remained was most closely described as a shattered mountain, graced with chunks of boulders, several mounds worth of finely grained sand, with twisted doors and grates and steel bars-

and, writhing things of what seemed to be mostly liquid, seeping and wriggling, squeezing through cracks and oozing back into what might be itself, or more creatures of the same, it was impossible to tell.

the sky was a sickly shade of yellow/green, a chartreuse edged by grey on all sides. and as for the forest that had been here... well, it wasn't anymore. the half melted remnants drenched in something that still sizzled and hissed in meager light. reality burned along the edges of broken wood-

basically the whole world looked like something that might have been found, half digested, in an errored-out wyrm's intestines...

...and it reeked of death's corruption, of death twisted into something deeply wrong...

-and at the faint not-sound, buzzing and clinging to their skin, their surroundings, like wet static? they already knew who would be behind them, before they turned around. knew who they were finally about to come face to face with.

...but, that creature? it wasn't them, not really. and as the... not-them, smiled, so widely that the very code around them seemed to distort in order to accommodate the expression-

that... that was a new kind of fear...

ᵢₙₜₑᵣₑₛₜᵢₙg․ ᵢ wₒₙdₑᵣ, wₕᵢ𝄴ₕ ᵥₑᵣₛᵢₒₙ ₒ𝆑 ᵤₛ ₐᵣₑ yₒᵤ, ₗᵢₜₜₗₑ wₐₙdₑᵣₑᵣ?

the lich wakes up before the dream can carry them any further, before they can attempt an answer. slowly they sit up in the darkness, without a sound, and just... sit there. silent. thinking.