>>5275123When you finally open your eyes, it’s a ragged thing floating in the dark. A cloaked figure, bony and impossibly thin, whose tattered shawl barely hides the slender, shattered exoskeleton underneath. Gone is the presence that’s larger-than-life. Gone are the powers of an Administrator, wielded at her spiteful whims. She looks how you feel. Raw and ragged. Shattered, struggling to stay whole.
She barely feels real, floating only a few meters away, and when she speaks it sounds as though it’s a voice carried on an errant, fleeting breeze.
“It was a good letter.” She says, softly, regarding you with a tilt of her head. “Well-spoken and well-read. A potent combination for your kind.”
You let the back-handed compliment wash over you, the question she really wants to ask tugging at her throat until it finally breaks free.
“Is this really the last cycle?” She asks, as though she can’t quite believe it. “It’s almost over?”
You nod.
She’s quiet, floating silently in the void before you as her shawl billows like a restless shore…and there, just beneath her shoulder.
An ethereal FuzzBuzz, gently tucked into the crook of her arm.
“Good.” She declares, finally tilting her head to get a good look at you. “Tell me what you want, Defiant. Tell me what you need to end this, once and for all.”
“But…what about Charon?” You ask, taking a step towards the Ozmas’ wraith-like form. “She wants to-“
Ozmas holds up one hand to stop you, and even that simple, errant motion causes bits to flake off the ends of her fingertips, the chitin crumbling away to naught but ash and dust that tumbles into the void.
“She will be rid of me soon enough…and so will you.” She intones, allowing the hand to gently fall to her side and slip between the folds of threadbare cloth. “We’ve wasted enough time, Defiant. Ask me what you will, and I will do what I must.”
“Ozmas, Charon wants to speak to you. There are still things they need to-“ You begin, but Ozmas cuts you off as the void around you pulses with an all-too-familiar rage.
“I
want
to
FINISH
this.”
A flash of her former power, a fleeting glimpse of the yawning, bottomless chasm that is her hatred of all that is, that was, and will be.
“So tell me what you need to put me out of my misery, Defiant. Let us not waste each other’s time more than we already have.” Ozmas groans, hairline cracks forming as she leans closer to you from where she floats, suspended in regret.
“For we are both so very, very tired.”
>>Fine. You’re not going to fight her on this. Ask what you will, you just…she’s right. You’re so tired.>>No. No, fight her on this. Charon deserves an audience with her friend, it is the *least* Ozmas could do to honor that after everything she’s done.>>Start with a tactical dialogue, but veer it towards Ozmas, personally. You’re not letting go that easily.>>Write-InYOU ARE IN CONTROL
