[Endgame: rise or DROWN]

[warpweft]

[How long have you been exploring Nessa's palace now? You've met her family, viewed her memories, learned how to fight as a witch and tried to find the source of her power and the Treasure of her palace: the Voidheart. And along the way, you've tired your best, with mixed success, to avoid the incarnation of her eldest cousin and the representation of her trauma and fear, the Nightmare of Esmau.]

[Wherever you are in the Palace right now, you feel the ground briefly shake under your feet. Little shakes here and there haven't been out of the ordinary - Esmau is trying to blow the place down to the studs, after all. But that felt different. That felt....worse.]

[Your phone beeps as you receive a message.]

Comments

[DROWN] @akira [DROWN]

[voidhearts]

[You gasp and let out a wheezing cough as you feel a boot in your stomach. You feel blows raining down on your body and your face. You feel the needle of a syringe pierce your neck. You feel yourself cuffed, restrained.

'You were sold out.'

You're knocked down. A boot lands on the side of your head and pushes it into the ground. You get kicked again. While you're laying there on the ground...your "crimes" are read to you.

'You should know your place.'

Your leg is stomped on. You can't do anything to fight back. You're exhausted, drugged, beaten, too weak to resist at all. But they don't stop attacking you. They don't stop berating you. All that matters is that you tried to attack their system. For that....

'We're going to make you understand. You're going to take full responsibility for your actions.'

Why did you think you could change things?

Why did you think you could fight them?

Of course...it was always going to end up this way.

DROWN.]

[survivaltricks]

[jesus motherfucking christ]

[. . . he can still feel it sometimes. phantom pains running through the scars that remain after that horrid experience. phantom reminders of the world that tried its best to crush him, to grind him into nothing underneath its heel. sometimes he finds himself lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling in pitch-black darkness, trying not to let his mind wander to those hazy, drug-filled memories buried deep within the interrogation room]

[. . .]

[most of the time he can pull himself out of it, just by remembering what happened afterwards-- they didn't win. they were never going to win. my future. . . was mine to steal back. and it's that emotion-- the rage-fueled spite that he used as motivation to keep fighting-- that he clings to now as he brings both fists down against the sides of the bubble]

Ffffffuck-- [he hisses the word through clenched teeth] -- fuck you!