Void Rift (rp) - Intermission

"It's.. quiet."

 

"You'd miss out on a lot," Shadow Stephanie says, looking off into the distance, "Sometimes I look back on what my life was like before I got put in this royal position. It was easier, but I don't think I could live like one of those civilians. Being in a position of power isn't easy, but you get compensated for it. Why would you want to live some boring life as a simple mortal, anyway?"

 

"I wouldn't exist in that scenario. With all the hell that goes down around me, I wonder if that'd be better in the long run." She sighs.
"I still shouldn't exist, but here I am."

Your bestial form snores away, unresponsive.

You hear who you presume to be the gorgon walking through the front door.
"What're you doing up there, girl?" She says quietly, probably to a snake.

 

I'll just keep an eye out.

 

"Don't get too tied up in it. Myria thought she shouldn't exist either, so she obliterated herself so you could spend more time with Artemis and the rest of us." Shadow Stephanie shrugs.

 

Ihra sighs.
"I still feel bad about that... but that reminds me, I was talking with Petunia the other day, and she acted like she knew Myria even though I didn't think they ever met."

The best you can do is keep an ear out, seeing as you don't seem to have full control of your sleeping bestial body...
If you wanted to, you could probably try to make yourself sleepwalk.

 

"Petunia? Isn't that the Hive Master's weirdly sweet daughter that's probably going to turn evil?" Shadow Stephanie asks.

 

"I have no idea, she's just kinda weird. She seems to know stuff when there should be no way for her to know, and she sneaks out to get cake about once a week." Ihra shrugs. "But part of me thinks she might be another person like Iris and I. She's younger than both of us, she thinks, but she's better at manipulating paradoxium than Praecantatia."

 

"Maybe she's like a fusion between you two. Paradoxium is existence and nonexistence fused, but also isn't." Shadow Stephanie says, splitting and reforming her dagger(s).

 

"There's another part to it, but you're close." Petunia giggles, her voice seeming to come from Shadow Stephanie's dagger(s).
Ihra jumps a bit.
"O-okay, when'd you start listening in?"
"Yesterday. Lady Tenebrae really wanted to keep everything super secret, but they were really silly things to be secrets."
"Also where are you?"
"Bakery. I didn't go somewhere with cake last time, so I had to fix that."
"What the hell, Petunia..."

 

"I'm locked in this room, so not much else to do then listen."

 

Shadow Stephanie drops her dagger in surprise, before picking it up again.

Ihra starts to feel watched, and Shadow Stephanie spins her head backwards before looking rather shocked.

 

Ihra turns around, uneasy.

"If it makes you feel any better, this place has really good cake." Petunia comments.

You hear footsteps up the stairwell and past your door.
"Yes, yes, I'll feed you in a minute. Let go, silly." The gorgon whispers.

 

Tenebrae - standing tall - glares down at Shadow Stephanie, Ihra, and Shadow Stephanie's dagger; vibrant red eyes seeming to pierce into Ihra's very soul.

"What is happening here?" Tenebrae asks sternly, as if issuing a command. Ihra almost feels compelled to respond immediately, almost like she's being controlled.

 

"We were going to see you so I could ask why you hate me... I guess this also works?" Ihra says sheepishly.
"I wanted cake." Petunia says innocently from Shadow Stephanie's dagger. "I found some this time."

 

"You invited an ally of our realities' enemy into my realm to try and speak to me?" Tenebrae asks, looking more intimidating than usual.

"I-" Shadow Stephanie goes to say.

"Silence!" Tenebrae commands. Shadow Stephanie closes her mouth, it seeming to even disappear from her face.

 

"Hmm."
Keep listening.

 

"I didn't invite her, she just-"
"I told you, I wanted cake. So I came. Again. You didn't seem to mind the other thirteen quintillion times." Petunia says, seeming to materialize next to Ihra and Shadow Stephanie... though she's standing upside down, her horns keeping her upright on the ground with her feet flat on the air. "Also, who's the ally of the enemy? I could try to dig up some info on them." She asks, looking at Tenebrae with frosting on her mouth and a half-eaten slice of cake in hand.

Footsteps, then a door opening.
"Come on, let me open the box."
Pause.
"There, but only one. Cooperate next time, silly."
Pause.
"Wh-hey, no, I said one. You don't get the whole box."
Pause.
"Okay, fine, one more."

 

"You should tell your father that we shall show no mercy if he dares to attempt to do the same with our reality that he has done with yours. Your family's presence is not welcome here." Tenebrae says intimidatingly, glaring at both Petunia and Ihra.

"I suggest you leave, now. Before my patience runs out and this happens to you." Tenebrae says, waving her hand across Shadow Stephanie. Shadow Stephanie seizes up, head spinning back into it's normal position before she falls flat on the ground, stiff. She gives Ihra a terrified and desperate look, before her body suddenly collapses in on itself, forming a dark crystal that Tenebrae picks up along with Shadow Stephanie's dagger. The crystal seems to melt into Tenebrae, as if becoming part of her, as her eyes seems to glow a little brighter.

Shadow Stephanie's dagger grows to match Tenebrae's larger size, looking scarily sharp.

 

Ihra looks horrified, before suddenly growing defiant.
"To make an example of the innocent is to stoop down to his level. If you hate me because I refuse to be your tool, then I suppose we'll never be friends. At that, my friends are more than just your tools, too - let her go!" She shouts.

"I dunno what you mean, missus shadow. I don't tell my dad anything, I just wipe his memory. I keep asking people from here to kill him, he never lets me have any cake." Petunia says, confused. "Would you rather I go play at missus Praecantatia's house again?"