ORIGIN - Rest in Peace.

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Belladonna was deep asleep in one of the many crumbling buildings of Orion, her disease raven tucked up against her. They had no intention of meeting with Vazi and his useless, pathetic whining and groveling, and she had no interest in seeing her son with him. Their child would be safe under Vazi's fanatical, obsessed eye, and Bella just spat on his fanatic ways, how he seemed to aggrandize and raise up the child more and more with each passing day. Belladonna could care less. No, they had better things to do together, and they were only stopping for the night.

Every single morning when Belladonna or Clover woke up, they had no memories of dreams, no unraveling remnants that clung to them as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes as it did for the rest of Origin. All they ever got, either of them, was the leftover feeling of absence, of a void, and thought it suited Belladonna just fine, it ate away at Clover each morning like a sore toothache that never went away until she remedied it with her stories.

Clover was obsessed with her stories as Vazi was with their child, and Belladonna always mocked the both of them for their weakness. Bella could care less,

Neither of them could remember what they dreamed...

"......."

@Dark

He had gone to Leon, first, and now he wanted Bevy.

He was dying... he knew he was dying. Not in a vague, transient hunch sort of way, no; his magic had shown him, shown him rotting away, or his stone shattering. He had felt Bevy come for him, or he assumed it was her.

Something touched him. Fluttered over his mind. His mind, which lay unhinged from his body, untethered, drifting on the silent wings of sleep and mysterious magics as he sought the one who had been present when he had suffered.

He thought she was Bevy. That's what she had sounded like.

Behind him, in tunnel J, his body lay still. He barely breathed, his heartbeat faint, and had he been awake, the agony would have wracked him. His flesh burned, his head ached, the thirst for water swelled his drying tongue to a painful state.

But he wasn't awake. Instead, he reached out, searching. The magic had shown him two things: Bevy trying to find him and take him away (or so he thought) and, second, a warning he'd had to deliver. He hoped Leon understood. But if not... If not, he had to tell Bevy.

Even if she were dead, she'd know what to do.

He didn't think all of this out logically, though. It was a feeling, a fleeting series of sensations and instincts.

Pain. Fear. Freedom. Worry. Determination.

Finally he felt his consciousness flutter over a mind he recognized. There she was, the one who had been present--but was she Bevy...?

Suddenly, Dark was unsure. Like the touch of a feather, the faintest brush, he tasted the mind before him. His magic faltered, and he did not show himself yet--but perhaps he could catch a glimpse of the thoughts that lay before him.

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@Belladonna

The owl delved down, down, down, into the mindscape of Belladonna and Clover, and at once he was shown a room with marble walls, glorious architecture, like a temple for the gods with sunlight beaming through the open archways. The ceiling was covered in gold-leaf, manipulated into painstaking details of stories merging with many others, each with a part to play in another. Looking up, it might take years to decipher and understand each and every one. A throne rested where the altar should be, placed directly in the sun's warm light. Soft music played, as if beyond the archways, there were windchimes, and one could smell sweet perfume that lilted on the breeze that played the chimes every now and again, just a small, gentle breeze that would tug on the hem of a skirt, would play with a few strands of hair on a cheek with an kind caress. It spoke without words of a place of peace.

But if you looked closely at the winding columns, you could see the desperate marks left in the stone, like fingernails scoring the artwork, trying to climb back. You could almost hear the echoes of fresh screams, like the owner of those hands had been dragged down, down, down against their will. Over. And over. And over again.

And if one looked down below, at where the floor should be, one would see a twisting, oil-filled, monster infested, nasty, disgusting black ocean with hands that occasionally reached up, trying to grab at anything that might reside in the temple, and from below came the sounds of hundreds, thousands, if not millions of screaming voices all residing in the pit of hell, and endless eternity of torture by each other's hands, each one ripping and tearing and spitting upon and consuming the one they were piled on top of or next to or underneath. Each and every one was a piece of guilt, hatred, regret, and remorse that Clover had been force fed from Vazi that gave birth to the monster that was Belladonna.

Once, before Bella was conceived, Clover would retreat down into the inner temple every night to dream, and every night she emerged to wipe the slate clean before she awoke.

Now, Clover spent all her moments, waking or not, underneath that dreadful sea, and every night Belladonna had control she would slip underneath to the inner temple to dream with Clover.

The owl would have to traverse the sick-filled ocean to meet with the minds deep at rest.

"......."

He stood watching, not involved, not yet. First he gazed down, his free-floating mind untethered to any reality, instead soaring over a sea of churning wretched black, with limbs reaching and flailing.

It filled him with horror.

He hadn't intended to fall in; he'd wanted to press, here and there, to delve into the fluttering black-and-white mind, and find Bevy. But... Bevy wasn't here. At least, he couldn't see her.

Is this where we go, when we die...? This isn't what my magic showed me.

Dark looked up, as he flew, and he could see--he could see?--columns of gilded white, a ceiling carved with intricate pictures, carved to tell various tales.

Maybe when we die, our stories go here.

He could almost ignore the faint screaming that came from far below.

Beyond all of this, he could see a throne, white and awash with golden light, and he felt a gentle awe take him. He'd never seen sunlight, never seen orb-light, even, being blind; his whole life had been spent in the darkness. Dream-wings tilted, his shifting half-there "body" arcing and soaring toward this throne.

Suddenly the black oily sea was too close, the screaming abruptly deafening, rising to fill his mind with the pain and horror of a thousand broken minds. Guilt, agony, fear, misery loved company and it wanted him, and before he could react, it had surged upward and engulfed him.

His magic had tried to guide him safely into, and through, the dream, but as he opened his black beak and tried to scream, all he could do was choke on Clover's rage, and pain.

It engulfed him, and everything went black.

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@Belladonna

Clover and Belladonna knew of nothing that went on above them, above the inner temple. They were safely dreaming. But the sea knew, it knew of this intruder and wanted nothing and everything to do with it. Hands gripped his wings, held still his legs so he couldn't move, fastened around his neck so he couldn't scream, and when his beak opened, fingers kept it open, greedily so, one or two of them slipping down, gagging him, before being pulled away by another selfish hand that wanted him.

The sound of many voices screaming in endless torment blared in his ears like raucous music turned up too loud, and it hurt his very eardrums till they wanted to bleed. There were no words in this sea, there were too many voices, but a meaning was pressed to his beating heart, one that wanted him to suffer, as she suffered. His beak was pried open, and slithering snakes that hissed and bared their fangs poised, at the ready, to force feed him in exactly the same manner that Clover was.

Let him have a taste of poison, the sea demanded, let him have his own belladonna beating within his breast, if only till it stops.

The guillotine rested at his neck, ready, waiting.

"......."

Dark had known fear, off and on, his entire life. In death, it was no different: he could feel it filling him, making his mind quake with the terror of being trapped, of this nightmare engulfing him so wholly.

He had, however, never known hatred. The agony he'd sustained, the cruelty he'd endured, none of it had ever pushed him into a rage, into anger, aside from a brief flare of temper now and then. But this... he could feel the injustice of it slithering into his mind, into his soul, could feel himself rebel.

This isn't fair.

Whatever had happened to Bevy, this wasn't her. If it had ever been. This was something dark, malicious, something made of injustice and resentment and all the depths of fury that he had never felt. It resonated, it filled him, and the gentle-hearted owl felt his fear bleed away to fury.

Back in the tunnel, his body twitched, a fever flaring, a new warmth shrouding him; but it wasn't the warmth of health, of life. It was the warmth of fire, the heat of anger, the kind that burned you out and left you a charred husk.

The owl's mind fluttered and struggled as it sank into the black. All he could feel was hatred. Rage. This wasn't fair, it wasn't fair that he'd never hurt anyone, that Bevy was dead, that he'd been crushed and burned and filled with sickness. It wasn't fair that he was good, and kind, and was dying anyway--alone and hurt.

There were few ways this could go. His body might die, before his mind reached his destination; or his mind might rot here, his individuality falling away as he became nothing more than the hate and misery and pain that he was drowning in.

________________

@Belladonna

Down below, where the two dreamed, something piqued at Belladonna's ear. She turned away from the games they were playing, the two of them, her face showing calm interest as she looked up above.

Clover noticed this, and frowned. Her adversary looked back at her....and slowly smiled, a motion dripping with malice and ill intent. Fear gripped Clover's heart, and she immediately bolted and rushed for the sea, gathering her light as her protective armor with her weapons close to her to battle away the dark. She had no inkling of what Belladonna wanted, on the assurance that as the shadow dogged at her heels, she had to get there first.

Belladonna just laughed and berrated and teased her for even trying while she enveloped Clover before she even reached the sea up above them, pulling her back down and kicking her to make her fall for an advantage in reaching the struggling bird caught in the spiders' web. She made it there first, grinning in immense pleasure and satisfaction as she saw the sea poised to stuff its sickness down his throat.

"Well, what do we have here?" She said, her voice slick and sweet in its disgusting, twisted version of Clover's pretty voice. "The little bird I left for dead. How is hell suiting you?"

"......."

Dark felt himself drowning, felt the black fill him, felt the rage and hate and pitiful frustration as it overwhelmed him. Talons kicked out, snared by viscous vitriol, wings flailing uselessly in the... yes, the "hell" that had taken shape in his mind. Or... in her mind.

The voice spoke. Hell.

He wanted to ask who was there, but the oil poured down his throat, into his eyes, his nostrils, his mind. Even his ears were filled with rage, a ringing deafness that only infuriated him further. He railed against it, he beat his wings, and he realized, suddenly, that this was who had been present at his... not his death, exactly. But he had been seeking Bevy--or what he had thought had been Bevy--as a bird had touched him, as someone had crushed his foot. He had sought the mind present, and here it was.

Was it another of Bevy's personalities? ...Maybe. Maybe not. Did it matter? He was too angry to think straight. His rage engulfed him, and for once, he fought back. It only seemed to feed the darkness around him, but he didn't care; he let it embrace him, he took it as his own, he screamed rage into the choking void. That was his answer to the stranger.

Impotent, agonized rage.

Back in the tunnel, wings spasmed, and eyes fluttered. The unconscious owl didn't have all that much time left.

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@Belladonna

Belladonna could taste his pain and his frustration, and she just shook her head. This was nothing, nothing compared to the others she had sampled, to Vazi, to Booker, to even sweet Clover's pain. She had tasted true madness, and she mocked this little one's rage with a soft shake of her head, watching them try to pull themselves away. What was he hoping to accomplish? To lose the restraint of one hand was to gain four more. There was no escape.

The shadow leaned in close, smiling. "Just give up." She whispered in his ear. "Let it take over. Fall. Death is already coming for you. What do you have left to lose?"

"Don't listen to her!"

Came Clover's clear voice, and Bella turned, her face pulled back into a grimace as she watched the veil pierced by rays of sunlight.

"You can't save him," Bella screamed back, clutching onto the bird. "He's already dying, he is already mine."

Clover came through, and all the sickening monsters illuminated by her glaring pure white light hissed and tried to move away them. Belladonna had to look away before she too was blinded.

"That's not for you to decide,"

Clover bit back, and she prepared her sword against Belladonna.

"......."

The dark-snared owl thrashed, hissing and screaming and full of fury. The hell around him was now inside him, and he fought it, his soul filled with frustration and hatred. He fought it, he shoved against it, he kicked and beat his dream-wings until suddenly it parted around him.

The warm and golden light of the Throne behind him filled the air, pushed back the darkness--but the owl was still shimmering black, his eyes opening. Two orbs of blazing emerald fixed on the deer before him, and Dark exerted his force, his rage, his power, harnessed with hatred, and rose up, a black phoenix rising from the filthy void. Made of it.

He hovered there, above them, safely out of reach now. His feathers were no longer a dusky brown, but jet black with the "oil" of Belladonna's anger, of her hell.

Yet it was tempered; his anger was not blind, not as he had been. Instead it whetted and sharpened his mind, taking the pain and confusion and binding it to a sharp point. He had come with a warning, and this monster wasn't going to stop him.

Black wings beat a blurred rhythm in the air, and the owl gazed down upon the twin white deer--one pristine, pure and filled with light, as the columns of marble above; one filthy with black, as the roiling sea of pain below.

"Who--who. Who, are you," the owl hooted, and the barely-contained, righteous rage made it almost a command.

He had come very close to being lost to Belladonna's madness, but now he remembered why he was here.

And he felt stronger.

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@Belladonna

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