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

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.