((So, yeah. IC post here detailing some mental work between Ralerian and Annabelle. It'll probably be a few posts in total. Expect trippy, pretentious symbolism, so I forgive you if eyes are rolled. Transcribed from Skype RP, so the flow probably sucks. Feel free to post feedback/opinions/lamentations!))
Balance
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
--Plato
In the Catacombs, safe within the elven room...
The odd little human priestess, called a heroine by many, remains in her coma, though she seems to be somewhat improving. Little flickers of consciousness across her neuronal pathways cause a twitch now and then. Her head turns to the side in response to a flash of an image. Violet eyes flutter under her closed eyelids.
And that's just the outside.
Inside, her mind is--well. A certain Guardian plans to discover the deeper patterns whose ghosts flicker across her waiting nerves.
The Guardian floats over from his perch, cupping a hand over the newly-robed woman's forehead. He would, from an outsider's perspective, simply seem to be checking her temperature. Within Annabelle's mind, however...
A shock of shadow slices a clean cut through her already ravaged mental fortress, and through that newly-created postern, an eight-legged beast skitters in, fangs twitching.
Chaos. Utter chaos, rendered loose by the damage of her death. The sheer power and complexity of the little human's mind is laid bare, the finely tuned walls that usually keep it in check destroyed by her death.
A vortex of experiences, their pieces tossed about, some slowly coming together, knitting.
The feelings associated with them all a miasma on the ground, if there is such things as
ground and
solid here. Electric arcs of betrayed rage spark in the misty darkness. However, the baseline seems to be a grand love. So deep, so open, something only born through experience and pain. So much pain, no naive fairy tale infatuation with the world is this.
Somewhere in this mess is the Little Lantern, the wick of her essence still flickering. However, the unleashed shadow it casts towers. As if to match the hope she brings, the love, this shapeless towering
thing with its shouldered guilt, betrayal, sorrow and rage towers.
The arachnid that is Ralerian skitters into the fray, looking with four, bright green eyes at all that surrounds him. He tests the waters about the area with each of his eight feet, as if seeking some tactile response to her mix of emotions. He taps each foot before placing it down, seeking and avoiding any weak spots born of indecision.
He would make his way up to the shapeless mass, inspecting it thoroughly while keeping his distance.
Ralerian's support seems to come from that love again. Always present, despite the chaos, its pieces in this mess are constant enough to provide solid footing and guidance. The remnants of a web upon which everything else is built.
Up closer, the shapeless mass isn't so shapeless. A towering figure with vague limbs reaching into the infinite, its body a swirl of dark.
Somewhere at its base is an androgynous little figure. Its flat body dressed in a simple white sack-cloth robe to its knees. Only the shape of its cheekbones and large violet eyes hint at femininity. It seems Annabelle has little use for symbolic shapes.
She reaches up to the towering thing, as if trying to comfort it, battered and knocked aside by the chaos periodically. The ground at Annabelle's feet seems to be quite verdant, strange flowers hiding her feet.
The spider soul of Ralerian spins a thin web, the steel-strong thread reaching to latch on to the monstrosity and prevent it from harming the woman. The web of supression would reach each appendage, to still the giant beast.
In silence and the shadows of her own mind, he makes sure to avoid the woman's cognition in her broken state. In this battle of inner conflict, he implores the Shadow to hear the Light's plea. For balance.
As the behemoth figure is stilled and bound, the 'sky' above it starts to clear one star at a time. Annabelle's younger looking self still reaches to the abomination, arms wide and up for an embrace.
The behemoth starts to curl in on itself. Its infectious despair seeps down Ralerian's web threads right toward him.
Ralerian holds strong against the influx of emotion, doing nothing to defend himself from the onslaught of melancholy. If he were at all affected, he kept that from the girl, his spidery visage offering no signs of weakness.
He pulls harder and harder still, attempting to bring the beast down, to calm the storm to a manageable form, with which she might find some resolution to this inner-conflict.
It seems this thing doesn't really want to fight, it's 'attacks' of infectious despair just a side effect of contact with it.
As it lowers and falls in on itself, Annabelle's more recognizable form jumps a bit to wrap her arms around it in her comforting embrace. Slowly, the thing changes form as its pulled down. Gnarled, twisting, branching. Indeed, it seems to be taking the shape of an ancient Elwynn oak tree. Obviously a more stable containment for the source of this chaos. The gnarled twists on its bark have patterns, but they are indeciphrable. A swing drifts back and forth from one branch.
The younger Annabelle seems to have vanished. The damaged miasma from her death is still present, pieces of memory renogiating with each other. A few more stars in the (usually) constant night sky wink into existance.
Ralerian cuts his webbing, leaving it to fade away. He skitters about the Glen, chittering out a call to Annabelle. He seems to seek to communicate with her.
Eventually, from behind the tree peeks the boyish girl. Violet eyes blink twice at the frightening creature, though she doesn't seem all too afraid of it. She doesn't seem sure why either. She watches it--him--skitter through the slowly appearing flowers. Golden pollen puffs up from a few flowers, the innate love in this human's mind dusting other visitors as well. A hidden defense perhaps, as well.
Ralerian drops to a laying, unthreatening position. His voice comes in the smooth baritone she probably doesn't recognize.
"Annabelle." He sounds relieved.
Whether she recognizes it or not, she likes the sound. She watches the spider-thing lower itself. The leaves on the tree rustle in an unseen wind, though it doesn't seem threatening.
She vanishes behind the tree again, then comes around from the other side, bare feet padding over to the arachnid. As she walks, more night-blossoming flowers twirl up from the ground and open. Before the mind-spider now, she crouches and hugs her knees. She peers at it with utmost curiosity.
"Annabelle... Do you remember what happened?" He sounds urgently insistant, and perhaps a touch exhausted. Legs sprawled out, visibly huffing through his spiracles.
Annabelle blinks at the thing and its exhausted demeanor, spindly legs sprawled. She stands and goes about adjusting two or three into a more comfortable position. She thinks. She looks to the tree. She thinks again.
"...Do you mean why I was like that?"
"I mean," Air whistles in and out of his spidery airholes.
"Do you remember what.... those men did? The ones in the armor? Do you remember who they were?" He seems to grow more and more exhausted by the moment.
She watches him, pausing, looking down in thought.
"I..." She folds her arms tightly. A sudden shiver from the tree, corresponding in her as well.
"N-...Betrayed me. I was going to help my friend, and--...he betrayed me." Another shiver and she suddenly yells out,
"I hate paladins!" at no one in particular.
Ralerian nods,
"Paladins, I thought so....". He looks up at her with all four of his frontal eyes.
"Be well soon, Annabelle. We have much left to do."
Annabelle peers down at those four eyes, blinking, calming. She reaches out, perhaps at last a building spark of recognition forming in her core. Somewhere, pieces of memory realign in the night sky, a constellation taking form--
He soon shatters into hundreds, if not thousands of teeny tiny little spiders that flee the glen.
--But, then he shatters and she withdraws her hand, quickly turning to peer at the fleeing army of arachnids. She tries to follow, but can only go so far away from her center. Saddened, she steps back to the tree and sits on the swing.
Ralerian draws back from Annabelle's would-be corpse, taking a deep breath and rolling down his sleeves. Wiping sweat from his brow, he heads to the table to pour himself a tall glass of milk. He takes a few deep swigs from it and turns to look her over, something between intrigue and spiteful hatred washes over his face for the shortest moment.