Okay, So, I Normally Drop of the Face of the Earth on Thursdays . . .

[tanarill]

But today sucks. The suede is, after all, in Arizono.

I wanna RP instead. And I've decided that this is a conversation that really does need to be RP'd for it to be the rigt one. Therefore, if Emmy will oblige:


Title: On the Shattering Maze
Fandom: -_- Why do I bother disclaiming anymore? DP (C) Butch Hartman
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Dan talks

Dan could be pushed a very great deal in a few directions, but even he had limits. Heres Tanarill had finally reached them.

“Why the hell did you decide to become a Walker, if you hate it so much?” he asked.

“I’m sure I’ve answered this before.” Her tone was discouraging, a fact which Dan totally ignored because he was curious.

“I don’t remember.”

“Two weeks ago.” There was note of annoyance. Dan ignored this too. He annoyed people all the time, and never let it bother him.

“Was this when you gave me that alcohol disguised as fruit juice?”

“You mean the coelar? Yes.”

“Yeah, see, I don’t remember things that happen when I’m drunk. The last thing I remember was you saying, ‘Sip, don’t chug, it’s stronger than it tastes.’ And then I chugged it. And the next thing I remember after that is waking up, but apparently I fell asleep fast because no one remembers me being drunk.”

“You fell asleep right after you finished your second glass. You said you loved me.”

Dan was about to retort that that was what he did when he was drunk when he realized what she was trying to do. “Nice try. Now answer the fucking question.”

She sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“No.”

“Fine.” She was quiet for a moment, considering where to start. “All right. You know about Jan and Sol and Rodig, right?”

“Jan and Sol belong to each other so you went off to fuck Rodig. And Rodig raped you.”

“Essentially true, if you sort out your tenses. Rodig is raping me. When he . . . wouldn’t stop when I said so, and even after I started to fight, it broke me. My soul, I mean.”

“So you became a Walker?”

“No. I went to the Shattering Maze first.” Seeing his expression, she quickly continued. “The Shattering Maze is like . . . if someone’s soul is broken, not just torn at the edges or hurting or cracked a little, but completely shattered into ten thousand glass-edged pieces, none of them big enough to regenerate even the tiniest amount but all sharp enough to cut the rest of them to ribbons if they let it . . . and if they have a strong enough will to survive . . . the drive to force the energy of their own soul breaking to get them there, then they will go to the Shattering Maze. It hurts. I hurts a lot. The only language that even has word to describe it is Maze Common, because it can’t be described to someone who hasn’t experienced it . . . "


Dan's turn to ask a Question!

Comments

[scribe-protra.livejournal.com]

(Heh. sure!)

Dan nodded and sat crosslegged on the air, "Okay. So what happens once you get there?"

'Why didn't I go there?' he asked Pas.

'You're shattered bits could regenerate on their own.'

[tanarill.livejournal.com]

(Hee. Ninj4 RP!)

"One of two things. If what got you to the Maze was not just instinctive survival drive, you'll start putting your soul back together. If you don't, you'll . . . drift. Become less and less until you're nothing at all."

She looked away. "That nearly happened to me."

[scribe-protra.livejournal.com]

"Well considering you're before me, that couldn't have happened. That when you got your demon? Or did you get the angel first?"

[tanarill.livejournal.com]

“Demon. I–he–there was the man in white. He must have told me his name a million times, and I never remembered it. He was always just the man in white. The demon in my heart was in his head. And he–he’d–the man in white was insane. Because the demon in my heart was there. His mind had been broken, his soul shattered, just so that the demon in my heart could get to the Maze . . . Time breaks around the Maze. If he did it right, he could be there to catch me when I arrived. And he was.

“Ironic, isn’t it, that a demon was what kept me from destroying myself, even before he was the demon in my heart? But it’s true. He gave me something to push against. I hated him. He wasn’t an ally then–but he was the best damned enemy I’ve ever had.”

[scribe-protra.livejournal.com]

"Yeah I get that. Did that for Val and Clockwork did that for me. So if you hated him then what changed to you not hating him?"

[tanarill.livejournal.com]

“Persistence,” she said softly. “Lots of it. For more than thirty thousand years . . . this is a very big worldset, and I’ve spent a lot of time here; I read this poem once, ‘To His Coy Mistress.’ It was like that. I hated him and he adored me, and told me so at every opportunity. After I told him to shut up, he stopped talking and eventually figured out to tell me without words. Constantly. It’s like a counterpoint to my heartbeat, now. It would take an angel to stand up to persistence like that, and I should know. But I got her before I started believing him, because I didn’t believe him.”

[scribe-protra.livejournal.com]

"Heh. Go him. So what happened after meeting him?" Dan asked streching. this was interesting.

[(Anonymous)]

“A lot. Putting a soul together in the Maze isn’t as easy as finding the pieces.” She rolled her eyes. “Like finding the pieces is easy. But the Maze is made of a lot of different worlds, all at once. If you took small, unnoticed bits of the spirit of each world and built them into another one, you’d have something remarkably like the Maze. It wouldn’t hold without all the broken souls, but it would, while it existed, look a lot like the Maze.

“And because all of the soul shards are, technically, in different worlds, they don’t just mesh. There’s a lot you have to do o mesh them over two worlds at once. It’s called the Melt, and it takes fifty years at a minimum, but I never managed it in less than seventy.” She paused and added, “Oh, and I went crazy for a while.”

[scribe-protra.livejournal.com]

Dan scrowled and flicked her forehead, "Girl don't you know this universe's rule? I am the person who has the most mental truama. Everyone else is supost to have less."

[tanarill.livejournal.com]

She snorted. "Well, obviously. Have you not been paying attention to a word I just said? Yes, I wouldn't have gone if I hadn't been so broken-but I couldn't have left without being fixed. Currently, my soul is as healthy as anyone's, possibly healthier. It's never been proven that people who have been to the Maze have significantly stronger souls, but given the things that Wild Walkers can do . . .

"My point stands, though. I'm not going to get into a pissing contest of who has the most mental trauma with you. You'd win, hands down. But I'd win if it were who has recovered from the most mental trauma. And I still have lot of emotions to work out, just for myself."