>>6285318>>6285391>>6285421You don't let go of the connection. You can't. Not yet. You feel yourself on the precipice of something big. You feel the cracks in your own focus being filled with Vic's thoughts.
Savior. Killer. Hero. Filth. Conflicting exclamations of purpose underlined with guilt that drips from every syllable. But you've tapped into forces deeper than this within your shivers already, you know how to keep your sense of self amidst the foreign thoughts that try to worm their way in. But you can still taste the stale air of the supply closet as you inhale and exhale with slow controlled breaths. You feel the wriggling probing force retreat as the darkness gives way to the faintest glow. A deep red.
Everything around you is still inky black, with tiny flecks of silver and white sparkling, but straight ahead you stare at an orb of violent red. Flame or gas or something entirely unknown to you spouts from the planet like water from a fountain, it's brilliant hues of orange, yellow, and red being absorbed by the muted cool tones of the dark around you as it shimmers into black again. Even from here you feel the heat, searing your eyebrows like looking into an oven, even from here you can feel something or someone watching you. You turn and see not a person or a figure but more like a jagged stream of broken light and smeared perception. Just like the root of Shivers. With a breath you reach out and touch it.
That's when it hits you fully. Your skull rattles and the vibration shakes your molars like tuning forks. Beneath that familiar orgy of sensation is a single word, a single phrase, direct and pointed like an red hot splinter burrowing directly into Vic's brain.
Anti-Life.
It's not a thought, not really. Nor is it a belief. It just... exists. Like a disease that taints all it touches, you can see from the stream as faint shades drift up your arm like tendrils. You can feel it's wicked influence twisting every act of cruelty and violence into something that fuels a savior complex. A complex that will never be satisfied. But it doesn't want you, the tendrils don't invade, rather, you feel them tighten and try to push you away. Is it scared of you? Or maybe it's just territorial over it's prey. Either way, you know that if you're tapped into whatever is feeding this delusion into him then that means you have a chance to influence Vic just the same...
>Focus and try to implant something into Vic yourself. A memory or something that can push back against this torrent of hate and pessimism. (Such as?)>Grip the tendrils and rip them away. If they feed his delusion then maybe you'll make him see the monster he's become. Even if only for a second.>Cut the connection before anything else happens. You can already feel something sticking to you...>Try to amplify it. Take a note out of John's book and pump his psyche until something gives, put him on his ass for 3 days... or more.>Write-In 