Ankyra Sound and it's as if my eyes have been replaced with gasoline.

forward dated to when she makes it to the coast - @Ephraim

ankyra sound was silent as its siren at last slipped into its coven, as if she had never left.

snow fell in mute swaths, falling down on a tireless ocean grey and without cheer. the flood-waters from the fall had partially receded, leaving ankyra's chief monument visible from the trees.

the grotto.

she had been here before, somehow. what was left of her brain was in feverish chaos; a spark here, and a blackness there -- no man behind the curtain, save illness. but she knew, in the same way she knew to breathe, that this was where it all started.

and where it all came to end.

in stupefied silence the siren moved, her hind end sagging horribly as she went. several times she had to stop, and tried to command her hind legs back underneath her.. yet it was as if her brain had been severed from her body -- what was left of it seemed only to whirl round and round in a maddening spire of dizzying stars and clouds of enduring red.

to only reach the grotto: that was where the shade's form had slipped off. the ghost she had followed from -- well, she did not remember. a ghost she knew intimately, and yet, could not for the life of her remember his name at all..

Ephraim couldn't say why he returned to the coast except that he was guided there by some fraying thread of sentiment, or maybe a hint of insanity. He knew full well that the wolves of his family would kill him on sight before he could explain a single thing. Ditto Drageda. So why did he saunter along the drowned, shattered sands, tempting fate? Perhaps it was to prove to himself that he had outgrown them and outrun his ghosts.

But ghosts had a pesky way of finding their prey again and again and again, and it was a ghost that he came to behold at Ankyra Sound. So shocking was her appearance that Ephraim didn't even notice the lack of scent markers, the absence of the resident pack; his eyes were only for Caiaphas. He thought if he ever saw his mother again, she would attack him. She had, Heda once told him, turned her back on him when he had not recognized her and had fought beside his pack, like any loyal soldier, and so Ephraim expected that she would tear his soul from his flesh if given the chance. And he thought he would hate her for it.

What he felt instead for the haggard skeleton of a creature dragging its non-functioning rear end toward the grotto was fear. Fear and pity and sadness and a little boy's loneliness. After the battle between Drageda and Rusalka, when he came to know who their enemies really were, he had seared the image of her into his mind so he would never forget the look of her again, so even with her eyes filmed in sickly silver and her body failing her, Ephraim knew. His jaws parted to croak a hoarse, ...mom?

schizophrenics often struggle to discern their delusions from reality. perhaps in some small measure, caiaphas' end was not so different: her hallucinations were just another inescapable part of her reality, no more separate than the fur that still clung to her hide.

yet her hallucinations were far removed from the idealized psychedelia of prismatic rainbow waves, softly blending colors, and warm, inviting psychedelic shapes. there were no neon pools of vivid pink light. no swirling galaxies of relaxing blue. no good vibes, soft energy, or bliss.

there were only three colors, which each evoked a sense of terror in the fading matriarch.

white.

red.

black.

((disorder. agony. nothingness.))

caiaphas' world was composed of this trio of colors, and the shapes represented by them austere and jutting. the walls of her grotto were black, engulfed in shadows -- but her world, her world was a portent red. thin pylons of white punctuated the visceral mural -- giving definition to an otherwise two-dimensional and terrifyingly edgeless world.

around her the walls of the grotto were falling. melting. black stone shifted, scarlet faces abruptly parting from the cave's walls in disfiguring screams -- she watched in horror as around her stone liquefied to a deep and disconcerting puddle of black. it was as if the ceremonial pool in the center of the grotto's chamber was a sucking chasm, pulling all the details of her conscious life into void.

and the noise -- good god, the noise -- it was like listening to the screaming souls of a thousand wolves being skinned alive. the collective chorus of the damned; voices of garbled whispers. the chilling howl of the endless harrow. immutable. inescapable. unnerving.

she wheeled in terror as features of her grotto melted in bubbles of black and maroon, puddling at the grotto's floor like a yawning oilspill. it was here kevlyn's (and her's) soul had slipped -- and from this blackened blight an incomprehensible blue stirred, like the flame of a distant planet. wide-eyed, caiaphas watched this disfigured transformation while the stone edifices about her continued to pour downwards in shrieking groans.

the pool gurgled, that improbably phosphorescent blue growing -- gaining shape. rippling along her feet was the blackened shadow, growing greedily -- swallowing and pulling everything down with it. she knew instinctively she must not let it touch her -- must not let it come near her feet -- yet she watched in horror as tendrils of this netherworldly black reached out in soulstealing tremors.

mom?

much of what had made caiaphas caiaphas had been destroyed; the neural archive that stored her memories, her emotions, her soul, had burned like leaves in a fire.. yet some part of her psyche still remained, the part that was unassailable -- the part that had motivated her, her entire life -- the part of her that was mother.

caiaphas' unseeing silver eyes widened as she searched the vortex of melting shapes around her -- coming at last to light on where ephraim was. yet she did not see ephraim -- she saw only a blurred shape, a silvery outline of white -- and from the corner of her eyes, saw that hungering blackness reach up for him --

NO!

drunkenly, the siren reached for the boy. do not touch do not touch do not touch. her advancement was slow, her paws groping. her eyes white-rimmed, her teeth chattering. a low inescapable whine of terror gurgled from her throat, the sound of both the void and the dead given mortal voice.

Ephraim had played this scene over in his head time and time again. Sometimes Caiaphas turned her back on him. Sometimes she welcomed him home. Most of the time she outright attacked him and there was nothing he could do about it but stammer apologies that fell on deaf ears. After all, if he could've chosen, he would've returned to his family, but it was much more complicated than that. They would never, ever have trusted him or seen him as an equal, but knowing that did nothing to dissuade Ephraim from wishing he could reconnect.

He had never imagined he would be facing his mother's broken husk from the mouth of the grotto while her mind, once sharp, betrayed her.

Mom? he repeated, swallowing thickly when her sightless eyes roved over him. He didn't need to be close enough to smell the sickness to know insurmountable fear then. If there was any recognition in those silvery eyes, it wasn't apparent to Ephraim. The husk that was Caiaphas began to move toward him, her body uncooperative and her eyes bright with terror, and his breath froze in his lungs. The sound that came from her then was unlike any horror Ephraim had ever known... and he'd seen a few horrifying things in the throes of PTSD. This topped them all.

Run, his brain screamed, but his legs would not move. They were rooted to the grotto's cold floor while the monster that once was Caiaphas crawled toward him. RUN! But Ephraim could not, no more than he could stop the silver tears that gathered in his eyes as he whispered, mom, whathappenedtoyou? Her ever-burning hatred for him would have been infinitely more palatable than witnessing this.

what had happened to caiaphas?

fate — cruel, intemperate fate. that her end was here, without her knowing, was just another of kismet’s many cruel jokes.

that the ghost of her son would lead her here, to her true son, was a grievous coincidence the crone would never realize. for the crone was gone - gone to a ravaging, blistering fever — and all that was left of her mind was aware only of the abominable blackness closing in on a world of fiery and inhospitable red.

gibbering, caiaphas did not hear her son’s words nor see the fear she wrought upon him. it was not the reunion either deserved — but ephraim would never know how his mother would have received him; for his mother lived no longer.

that welling blackness was pulling in; in her swimming vision a welting yellow simmered — like the furious eye of a god, or a sun sheathed by blood. it was towards that sundered light — towards ephraim, that the rabid beast of the sound crawled towards.

around her that blackness rose like a tide — but kevlyn, kevlyn was just beyond.

Ephraim was kidding himself to think his mother would respond to him. Much as he would have liked the cut of her humourless voice more than the unintelligible noises she made as she dragged herself toward him, he was kidding himself if he ever thought she could respond. He was too late to know whether her opinion of him could change, although the truth of it was that he was likely irredeemable in her eyes. Yet feeling her wrath slicing to his core would've been preferable to this.

Mom, he pleaded, despite knowing he could not reach her now. Ephraim couldn't help himself from stumbling toward her, ignoring the screaming of his instincts to stay away. Would it be so bad to go the way she was going when he was alone in the world anyway? At least in one way he could follow in his mother's footsteps... It was worth it if he could comfort her in her last moments.

But even though he reached for her, allowed himself to come dangerously close to her, Ephraim was on the tips of his toes, ready to pull away if her ragged body lurched for him. He was stupid in a lot of ways but Caiaphas had passed to him a strong sense of self-preservation. He would do anything to cheat death and he knew it. He reached for her in hopes he could, at the end of her life, be the son he'd never been to her when she was still cognizant, but if things went south, he was ready.

kevlyn. caiaphas' eyes widened, rimmed in fibers of bloodshot red. kevlyn had slipped into the blackness, leaving her alone.

not alone. ephraim's voice sounded distantly. mom, it pleaded.

that single syllable had once meant more to caiaphas than anything else in the world. now, it meant nothing.

caiaphas took a faltering step forward. her thin limbs were dangerously close to the gurgling pool - the very pool she had once protected ephraim from - but she didn't know. her memories were scattered like buckshot, her mind a melting orb of chaos. a dark turn of mind had overcome her - the utterly insensate working of misfiring synapses.

she did not see ephraim step forward. her eyes were trailing the ceiling - or what she thought was the ceiling. it was black, melting down like a foul icicle; already the shadows had touched her forepaw, and were snaking their way up her willowy legs like a malevolent animus.

caiaphas gurgled in terror, reeling back. her movements were stilted and slow, like a drunken or headsplit ox. no no no no no no! she cried -- or tried to -- over the thickening inflexibility of her tongue. once more that low keening groan bubbled from her frothing jaws, as agony melded with ceaseless dread. the very same black-rot that had seized control of her brain was spreading out across her body in spidery obsidian tendrils -- and caiaphas could only watch in horror as the shadows overtook her.

Between Ephraim and Caiaphas was only the pale blue glow of the pool from his earliest memories. While she lived out a nightmare in her head, he lived one out in real life. He hardly noticed the icy lash of water on his ankles when he stepped into it, drawn single-minded toward the plague that was once his mother. If only he could reach her, if only he could embrace her, then maybe he could save her and they could put all of their bad feelings behind them and reconnect...

But when he did reach across the pool and into the fetid air surrounding her, Ephraim's fear seized the reins. He was sudden and quick when he lunged across the space between them. His nose found the silvery fur of her neck, followed closely by teeth. Perhaps she would reach out to bite him back; that was why he'd gone in at an angle where, if fortune favoured him, he might avoid the touch of her noxious fangs.

Tears coursed freely down his face as he cradled what remained of his mother in a strangler's embrace, the closest he had been to her since he was too small to remember. It was the one and only thing he could do for her now.

Lemme know if the PP is too much!

all good - PP away! this is the last post from phas in this thread, so you have total control!

there it was, that routing blackness. running along her body like the shadow of a sinister storm. caiaphas shivered involuntarily as she felt its icy touch. it ran along her legs and sung between her tendons -- rushing headlong in hungry whispers into her veins.

and she knew, implicitly, that when it reached her heart all would be over.

she wheeled -- or tried to -- but already her vision had clouded. gone were the portent reds and harrowing whites of the world -- now, only a blackness pooled in her sight -- the shadow of ephraim, given no discerning shape save for the shade of true horror.

she was screaming crying wailing dying as he held onto her - thrashing bucking pulling fading as he delivered his final kindness. all of it to no avail - what was left of caiaphas was brittle and depleted. not even the full force of the malevolent virus that occupied her faculties could have fought back that day and won -- for her body as host had served its purpose, and there was no use in surviving a moment longer.

gurgling darkly, caiaphas' silvery eyes with their bloodshot rims widened, searching that impenetrable black as it closed around her, and slipped into her frantically beating heart.  for the briefest moment before her eyes were closed forever, yellow gilded that unnerving stare - as if her sight and senses were mercifully restored. she looked up to her captor and saw not the vile shifting of the inevitable void, but a face young, familiar, and full of terror --

ephraim..?

and then, immediately, came the streaking departure of her soul. as if ushered by an unseen force the moment she became cognizant, caiaphas' heavy eyelids flickered closed. her body bucked against the boy's touch, and a furious frothing rimed the siren's lips in ghastly grin of dogged horror. her gums were pale, her teeth visibly clenched. her claws curled to their fullest, and legs thrashing as if fleeing an unseen incubus. the tremors that wracked her frame rolled in and out of presence, gradually quieter with each passing until at last a muted peace settled over that contorted body, which had no more left to give.

caiaphas, siren queen of none, stilled besides the phosphorescent pool. motes of haunting blue rippled along her sodden body, the last fleeting impression of movement caiaphas would ever show.

There came a moment where Ephraim nearly let go. The feeling of his mother thrashing to get away from him filled his heart with ice and wrung his guilty soul out through his eye sockets. When she bucked he almost released her, almost stumbled back into the water, almost stammered out a hundred apologies and pleas and promises—

—but Caiaphas was gone. She was gone even if it wasn't for the crushing force of his jaws. She was gone where no apology or plea could reach her, and when she went still, the finality of it speared Ephraim to the core.

Only then did his teeth relinquish their grasp on her throat. A paroxysm of grief drew a strangled cry to his lips as Ephraim held his dead mother in his thin arms and lost himself. He pressed his face helplessly to her worn shoulder, soaking the grey fur there with every sob that shook him. Every minute of time he'd lost with her when he fled in the storm and found Drageda, every mistake he would never have the chance to atone for, every day he would have to go on knowing he would never know her...

He believed she would never take him back but that never stopped him from hoping that maybe one day, maybe some way—!

A wretched wail took up residence in Ephraim's throat as he crumpled over Caiaphas' body and wept for every wishful dream he had lost and everything he would never, ever get back with her death.