Visits To The Mad Bleaker's Wing

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*Xndar
Posts: 282
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am

Posted by *Xndar »


An azure fiend with a tousled mane of curly white hair tentatively stands with one hand pressed against the door to the Mad Bleaker's Ward. The shimmering red glyphs that orbit her body flicker and twitch, beating out the tempo of her inner anxieties as she recalls her last experience with the ward.

She is stronger now, her mind more secure. She wills herself to believe this, and the glyphs slowly regain more of their usual serenity.

She hesitates a moment longer, then pushes the doors open, her jaw set.

The dimly lit hallway that crawls away into the distance is both shabby and sterile. Silent, save for the occasional fit of laughter, sobbing, screams of rage, or hysterical song. Not so silent. She stands in the doorway, her mind sifting through the sounds for...she isn't sure what she's looking for really, until she hears it:

Her own voice, babbling senselessly from an empty cell to her left. She trots over to the cell and peers through the barred window in its locked door.

Empty.

Then suddenly it isn't. She sees herself, flickering in and out of reality, crouched in a straight jacket and staring back at herself with wide-eyed madness. Slowly the room begins to fill. All of the possible outcomes of millions of decisions, thoughts, and words...past, future, present all merging into one room filled with projections of an inevitable outcome.

She is outside looking in, then she is inside looking out. A body beside her, a part of her, rages and weeps as she does at the figure standing in the doorway. She tries to look, to see and hear what torments them so, but the harder she looks, the more indistinct the figure towering over them becomes.

"You are not ready for this...not yet." A serene, but stern voice whispers in her ear.

She stands alone now, outside the empty cell. She knows it waits for her, and will have her in time, but that it will be a comforting refuge when that time comes. No more, no less.

She gives the cell a wan smile and turns to leave, content that this is enough progress for one day.
*Xndar
Posts: 282
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am

Posted by *Xndar »


The azure fiend returns after a few cycles of brooding, drinking, and recovery. Shouldering her way through the doors to the Mad Bleaker's Ward, she barely spares the empty cell to her left. Today isn't about her; whether past, present, or future.

She picks up a water pail and ladle from one of the caretakers and slowly begins to make the rounds, making sure the barmies within have fresh water to drink. Occasionally she stops, taking a moment to fortify her mind against the continual barrage of madness, sifting useful (and occasionally mundane) thought-crumbs from the heaving psychic waves.

It's a little enough thing really, but she knows that her talents are nowhere near potent enough yet to begin attempting to ease the suffering of the inmates in any substantial way.
*Xndar
Posts: 282
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am

Posted by *Xndar »


In making her rounds with the water pail one cycle, the azure fiend stops in the middle of the dismal hall, the tenseness in her body emulating a hound that's just caught a peculiar scent.

Its not a scent, nor a sound, but a psychic signature. A trace of something that is less than a thought but more than nothing, lingering on the edge of her consciousness. It is a signature that Kunoga instinctively loathes but also recognizes as kin, and it is a signature that draws her off her usual route through the ward and over to a particularly noisy cell.

She finds the cell occupied by a young human boy, barely older than a toddler. Most of his sobbing and shrieking is unintelligible, but a phrase crops up repeatedly, like the refrain of a terrible song.

'No, no, no, I'm sorry!'

She knows then, without even needing to read his fragile mind, what he's done and the source of his suffering.

'Cerebrilith', she mutters to herself.

Her consciousness slips into the boy's mind, wading past the trauma burned into his psyche. Past the feel of the knife in his hand as it plunged into his father's heart, past his mother's mutilated body, and past the sensation of being trapped in his own body, unable to stop himself, until she reaches the gaps in his memories that she knew would be there.

The cerebrilith demon had excised itself from the boy's memories of course, so he'd have no one to blame but himself and have no memory of being psionically compelled to act. Restoring these memories was beyond her capabilities at that moment, and she wasn't entirely sure it would help.

Turning back toward the traumatic memories that remained, she carefully wiped them from his psyche with a 'Mindwipe' power. As her mind slipped out of his, it struck her that his sobbing had diminished into a sniffle or two.

Alas, it would not last, as the wipe was far from permanent.

Still, it was a small comfort, however futile. She knew she'd be back again the next cycle, and the cycles to follow until her abilities had progressed to the point of providing a more lasting solution.
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