PWD #05: The Faithless Death Of Gods
The Faithless Death of Gods
Summary: Afton is given her worst fear - weakness in the face of others needing her.
Date: 31/12/2012
Related Logs: All other dream logs.
Afton Aios 
A Dias of the Afton's Patron Gods/Her Bunk
PWD #5

Cold. Afton St. James could only feel cold. The breeze in the wind penetrated easily through the long, white dress she wore, and the bricks beneath her feet were far from sun-baked. Her path, barely the width of a sidewalk, was beset on each side by a cavernous drop, and with every step she took, the path behind her fell away into darkness. There could be no return.

The path before her ended in a circular dais, and as her feet stepped onto the platform, the shadows around her unfolded to reveal three shaded figures. The two men and one woman with perfect form and health, began to walk around the dais, and although the light behind them framed their forms just enough that their outlines could be made, their faces and their expressions could not be determined. The female bears an owl on one shoulder, and the two men carry staves, one in the shape of a spear and the other with a staff with a slender, writhing mass hanging from it, like a snake.

That chill drives through her like the winds on Piraeus, the winter a brutal presence. Afton took that path, slowly, carefully, heights definitely not a fear but the unknown of the dark is enough to cause skin to pimple and a shiver to run down her back. Fingers grasped, pulled up that long dress to keep it from her path, to keep from tripping, barefeet the only ability to know she has purchase, giving her some confidence on that narrow walkway.

It is the dias that steals her breath and drives apprehension through her. A feeling of awe, of knowing even if she can not see their faces drives through. Their symbols are enough and it is with a step forward that she lowers before them to one knee and dips her head in silent respect and prayer, her hands lifting to find her prayer beads, deep green and worn with those three medallians for her patron lords and lady, to wrap it once around her hand and rub her thumb to the first bead.

"My child yo"
"
u must be prepared f"
"
or the storm that is coming."

The wave of voices blend into each other as each of the three icons stepped around her, observing her like vultures in flight. Her prayers and the pristine white of her dress are for their inspection and theirs alone. They are perfect and she is frail, and the aura of power that comes from the three unmistakably starts to warm the dais that she stands on, providing her with the comfort she has always found in Athena, Asclepius, and Ares.

"Your prayers…the"
"
y are heard, but cry into"
"
darkness, for the storm will overtake all."
"But do not close your h"
"
eart from their cries. The"
"
y are ours, and our will is made flesh."

"My lords," Afton finds her voice in mild surprise as she listens to them, lifting her gaze almost immediately as they begin to address. Slowly she rises, feeling the warmth driven up through her from their mere presence and she sighs. Strength returns in a sort of soul strengthening way. But her eyes remain fixated, locked onto the figures before her.

"They…who are they?" Storm. A storm is coming. Piraeus? She draws those beads from her neck, now held in her hands before her. "Tell what your will is." She asks of them, composed but trying to decipher the creed given.

"You will know"
"The time for mourning will co"
"
and the time for action will follow. You must be…"

The last voice trails off. The strongest of the three falters and his spear falls to the ground. He clutches his chest and a rumble sounds from all around as he falts and comes crashing down to one knee. Afton is greeted by the horrifying sight of a god in pain, as the other Lords of Kobol continue to circle, paying the plight of Ares no mind.

"We are all to die. We are all to p—"

"—erish and be baptized in fire."

Without warning, Ares's skin starts to peel away and is caught aflame, like a match being struck. His cries are a deafening baritone wail that sounds all around her, like a foghorn signalling the death of something as cosmic and as powerful as a god itself. The edge of the dais catches aflame.

Asclepius falls to one knee…clutching his chest…

Gods. Lords. They are ideas with purposes but are made more real as they speak and circle her. Following Acelpius first and foremost as she listens, her lips part in surprise as Ares falls. It brings her about to stare at him, catching her breath as her hand reaches forward but never touches him. The other two continue and so she jerks her attention back to them, focusing on their words.

The example is made of Ares and she grits her teeth at the sound of pain, panic starting to set in. What could fell them. Ideas, symbols…but now living beings before her and in pain. "You are eternal, you can not perish." She says swiftly as Asclepius falls.

She steps towards Athena, imploring. "You are ever eternal, how can the Lords fall?" She asks swiftly, trying to make sense of the failing deities.

"How little you know…my child." Athena response, her lips unmoving through the darkness, and her voice barely audible as another male voice joins the horrible tone of pain that assaults Afton's ears.

Asclepius, before her, starts to chip and shatter like a porcelain stature being pelted by rocks. Pitiful and helpless, he falls to the ground beside Ares and shatters into a thousand pieces. The two gods die side-by-side before Athena lets out a moan of pain and falls to the ground, hands flat to the floor. On all fours, her stomach suddenly lurches down violently as if a terrible weight is dropped onto her back, destroying her spine.

Her owl takes flight towards Afton, soaring majestically through the air as Athena begins to scream. The massive, heavy bird hovers before Afton's face, clawing at her eyes with its razor sharp beaks, blinking her to the sight of her patron gods' terrible, violent deaths.

"I do not claim to know all…but how can you perish?" They are ideas, ideas can not perish unless those that hold them as meaninful die. A chill runs down her spine as Aclepius is broken around her feet and she steps, dress caught beneath a piece and ripping. She gasps, making a sound of dismay as Athena finally falls, broken beneath an invisible weight.

"Ideas can not die." She says as firmly as she can. The flutter of wings and biting talons still her cries and turns them to surprise and pain as her sight is stolen from her, a hand lifting to ward off the bird. She collapses to the ground, carrying one less sense in her arsenal as she tries to see past the darkness that is suffused with sounds and smells, her hands reaching out to try to find the beads she dropped.

The beads that now are chipped and broken much like her Lords and Lady.

The taste of her own blood fills her mouth from the horrible wounds to her eyes, and the warmth that she once felt from the ground beneath her begins to grow swelteringly hot. The fire. Ares' fire has found her, and in her blindness she can only try to discern where it's coming from as everything around her starts to rise in temperature. Like the inside of an oven, she has nowhere to turn to.

"All…can die. You must be—" The goddess' voice is cut off suddenly as something sharp and painful latches it to the side of Afton's neck. Hissing and writhing across her chest, the viper fills her veins with poison that steals her strength, leaving her helpless against the approaching fires. The bricks beneath her grow hot, searing her flesh with every motion.

Pain seers up through her knees and hands as she remains upon the ground amidst the shattered pieces of Asclepius, the dias burning her flesh. She draws her hand back, trying to edge away from the most potent of the heat. She chokes a moment, coughing on her own blood and lifts her singed hand to wipe at her lips and mouth. Pain draws like seering rivelets where her eyes have been torn and face broken.

That bite though, it causes her to scream finally and she collapses, dragging at the creature. The symbols of her patrons destroying her, making her weak. She drags her hand, trying to pull the snake free and throwing it far away from her if she can.

Dragging herself up, she begins to edge back from that dias, reaching out to try to find that narrow path and retreat.

The more she edges away, the further away the fire becomes, but her body is weak and frail. She scent of her own seared flesh fills her nostrils, causing a sickening feeling to overtake her. Her blood-filled vision deceives her, though her ears do not.

"Afton!" A voice, familiar to her, calls out through the pain. Her mother's voice, wracked with pain. "Afton, please d-d-darling…I'm cut, so…deeply oh Afton the blood!"

Her stomach heaves and it empties, feeling that hollow sensation creep across her as she scrambles still, struggling to find her way, find air to breath. Fingers reach out, pawing at the ground until that voice stills her. Its like a knife right to her heart. "Mother?!" A gasping shocked sound creeps past her lips and she stops herself, listening, straining to hear. "Mother, mother where are you!? I am coming!"

Its a promise she plans to keep, even if she can't. She turns herself to that sound, getting to her knees and then to her feet, she shakily tries to feel her way along, her legs giving with that poison sapping her strength. "Keep talking…please.." She says.

Her mother's sobbing serves as a beacon to her, whimpering softly for aid through the blindness. The minutes pass until Afton's hand splashes into a pool of tacky, room temperature blood. It stains her dress and fills the cracks between her fingers. The body lying next to the pile of blood no longer whimpers and cries. Afton's mother is at the center of the pool of blood, and as her fingers find her mothers face, she finds her mother's mouth agape and her eyes forever opened. She was too late to save her mother.

Left alone to her grief, the world around her is left in silence until all at once, in unison, voices around her begin calling out for her help. Her family members, her shipmates, Cooper Knox, and the unmistakeable voice of a child calling for his mother. Her. Her child. Each and every one is dying, with precious seconds left to them and all a need for her assistance.

Fingers press through that blood, deeper and deeper, its a ghastly lake of life force now bled out and she's felt enough blood to know what it is. When the whimpering quiets, her hands brushing and feeling over the arm, then the shoulder and then the neck and face of the woman that is her mother, she lets out a soft soun. But Afton focuses, feels for breath, for even an echo of a heart beat and finds none. She begins to tremble, fingers plucking and pulling at the woman she knows is already dead. But a second chance is a second chance and she lost this time. Again. Even here she could do nothing.

There is a choked sob, something caught in her throat a she wants to cry and can not, her face tore up at it is won't even allow her to mourn the loss a second time. She lets out a scream and pulls at the form to try to drag her closer.

But then, more voices. She staves off her mourning, even with that lump in the back of her throat. "Major?" She swears she heard him. Though Knox' voice causes her utter pain and she pushes herself up, or tries, not wanting to leave her mother. She hesitates, takes those broken beads that are what tie the two women together and presses them against the woman's chest, taking a moment to find it.

It is then the voice of the child cleaves through her personal darkness. "Timothy!?" She cries out. "Please…no. OH please." She pushes herself up again, stumbles towards the sound, but the voices, they drowned each other out. "I am here!! Tim…Tim!?" She starts to cry out then, "I will help you.." But she can't. A woman of strength and purpose driven into impotence by her very Gods.

Her feet scrape against the stone and as she stumbles, the blood splashes onto her face. Try as she may, she moves so slowly, and the voice around her start to become angry and pained as she leaves them all behind in favor of young Timothy. Adult hands, grasping for help and begging for their lives to be saved grope against her limbs, trying to pull her to them. Their hands are slick with blood and their voices are bathed in pain. Each and every one of them that she passes whispers a new word to her…

Traitor

Coward

Heartless

And each and everyone of them that she passes dies just as her mother did, in a pool of their own blood that fills her every step to her ankles. She stumbles, splashing through the muck of bodies until a pair of small hands reach out to her.

"Mommy?" Timothy's voice whispers, fading. "Mommy why…it's not fair…" With thousands around her begging to be heard, the young child's dying words are the loudest of them all.

It's hard, its like any mission where decision must be made - yet this is a selfish one. Afton presses on, pushing through those grasping hands that are like souls ripped free, taking a piece of her with every one that touches her. "I am sorry, forgive me please…." A mother's desperation - a choice made drives her on, even as the weakness steals her ability to function.

It is the need to get to him that breaks through her body's claim on her to still, to stop, to fall over exhausted. The woman drags herself along, feeling the stone wear at her, the hands claw and pull, stretching her thin. Each soul a weight. Each word a wound. But it all fades when she feels his hands. Afton reaches out, hands shaking as she fumbles for him, nearly unable to gather him or even attempt to. "Tim…oh sweet baby." She whispers in a rough, worn voice. "I know…I know. I shouldn't have left. I should have stayed when Aunt Riley asked me too. Its okay now, I have you. Just hold onto mommy, okay? I will make it better, I promise." But her hands are like lead, they don't work like they should and there is that sickening feeling that she will lose him. Why have her Gods forsaken her? Taken what little ability she has from her when it us most needed?! What has she done!?

Timothy's hands are weak and his skin is like ice. Terrified and not understanding what's happening to him, the young boy starts to snivel and whimper, softly crying while she tries to staunch the flow of blood. His whispered words trail off into incoherancy. Her hands fumble until it starts to register that Timothy isn't moving. He hasn't moved in quite some time.

Afton begins to hum as she presses, tries to get enough strength behind her hands to stop his life from spilling free. The woman feels him giving, and then denile sets in, denile that he's dead and she presses still, that hum continuing til it fades and she is left wavering in both voice and strength. Her hands press against his little body, broken and still. Cold. She goes still as well, tired, defeated, broken.

Her hands begin to tremble and she gathers him up, she can sound off her mourning, a sob, but no tears. She no longer has the ability to shed tears. "Please…oh please. Of them all, not him." She begins to rock that lifeless form that she can not see. She has memories, but they are faded, punctuated by pictures in bunks. His years mapped out from afar and now? Now he has no more years. A clipped, raspy scream leaves her as she asks, "Why have you forsaken me?! Why have you forsaken me?" It becomes a mantra, a chant as she rocks.

Her words echo through the world around her, sounding off of the bloody floor and sea of moaning bodies until it is all that she hears. She rocks back and forth, little Timothy in her arms, driven out of her mind with grief and pain. The cries for aid dissipate until her voice is the only one left.

Her lords are gone. They have died. They do not answer.

A pinprick of light through the blood in her eyes forms in the distance, and the sound of a single pair of feet stepping in and out of the blood can be heard approaching her. As he draws near, the bright light clears the blood from her eyes, and the outline of a male figure can be seen. Backlit by the blinding light, he is a dark figure on a blinding background.

When sight starts to return, breaking through that dismal surrounding with a bit of hope that is long overdue. Perhaps late. Afton blinks, catches her breath as she clutches her boy to her chest in an effort to make sure that even in repose he is not stolen from her. She stares at the approaching figure, tilting her head down against Timothy's head as she rocks him. "Please…help us." Because she can't. It kills her to plead for help when she can give none to those who need her. "Please…tell me you can save him. Help my son." She whispers and tries to push herself up to her feet, but her limbs are too heavy, she has no strength. "Please…." She whispers.

The figure stops before her, face a black mask framed by the light. Casting a dark shadow over her and the lifeless child in her arms. One of his hands reaches out to her and brushes her bloody, tear-stained bangs away from her eyes. He kneels before her, the touch to her face filled with sympathy and forgiveness. He opens his mouth to speak.

The corona of light surrounding the man's features starts to pull and fall all about her and Timothy. Like starlight falling towards her in the same way that rain does, her eyes are pelted with the crackling light as he leans in to say something to her. He opens his mouth. Light fills her eyes, her mouth, her nostrils, and her ears. The overloading of her senses refuses to cease, forcing her, unconscious in her bed, to start to thrash, threatening to wake her…

It's like sweet release with that touch, the first sense of sympathy and compassion and it nearly breaks her. She leans into the touch, trying to life the boy so he might feel it to. Afton squeezes him more tightly to her, hope renewing, strengthening her limbs. Words. The figure is to speak to her, this glorious figure and then that light rushes through her, causing her to start and jerk slightly.

Afton kicked off her covers long ago, having hit the floor while some of those in the bunks are trying to wake her because of the sounds she made. There are tears soaking her pillow and when she finally jerks away, she slams her into the ceiling of her bunk which lands her heavily back down onto her side. "Timothy!" Because now her arms hold nothing and she begisn to feel the after effects of a bad dream and cold sweat.

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