Topic: Metamorphosis

Alysia Skye

Date: 2009-11-09 23:57 EST
Once is enough to have beheld the unlovely realm of Hell, once to have gone across the stream of Styx.
--Ovid, Metamorphoses

The storm spun around me.

The elemental might of it was dizzying. Intoxicating. Once I would have sought to tame the power of this maelstrom, but it was far beyond me now.

Amidst the twisting tumult of shrieking wind and black water and salt, there was a gasping moment of agony and a strobe of lightning, then I could see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing except an endless moaning roar. I was reduced to a mote of consciousness, quiescent at the center of the darkening tempest. The voices in my head which had whispered at me since childhood were silenced. The centuries of memories over which I brooded disintegrated, and I had no past, and no future.

I simply was.

Time passed, in a place where time was meaningless.

Alysia Skye

Date: 2010-02-01 11:44 EST
There was nothing but numb silence now; it lasted for what could have been hours or could have been decades. The awareness of time and place was incomprehensible to me, but I was certain I was no longer within the maelstrom of the Sea of Turmoil. I thought I was no longer even in Rhilshen, for I could find no ley lines to orient myself.

What was I? A mote of consciousness? A thing reduced to thought? A ghost? A memory?

I wondered - whatever I was - if this was the eternity I faced now, bodiless and silent.

Then, my senses awoke. I heard the gentle movement of water, felt it moving slow and cold over my body. I inhaled sharply, felt my lungs painfully seize the damp air. It was rich with the smell of minerals and murk. It smelled alive.

It was the only thing that smelled alive here.

Alysia Skye

Date: 2010-02-01 22:07 EST
Have you forgotten?

I don't know what there is to remember.

That is as it should be. You have traversed each of the five rivers and drunk their waters and found your way here. This is your home now.

Where is this?

This is my domain. It goes by many names, none of which will mean much to you. It is the world under the world, under many worlds, in fact. A heaven or a hell to each soul as we judge. It is a nexus.

This is your domain? I cannot see you. Who are you?

There came the sense of laughter. Like my domain, I go by many names as well. I am the Rich One, the One Who Guesses. I am the Unseen One. You may call me Father.

Then who am I, Father?

Laughter again. Once, you had many names. You are my child now and those names are gone. You are Lady Styx. Alysia Styx, for the river that flows behind you. Are those names familiar to you?

I felt the damp mud under my toes, felt the patient waiting for my response. Cold mist hugged my ankles as I thought, and answered. No. I do not know those names.

You will learn them in time. Again.