Sheepeater Cliff the earth spins, the world gets more crazy

Mature Content Warning

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The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: gore, death

astara sat miserably between the world of those who clung terribly to life and those who might rid themselves of it -- unaware of the fissures of dying cells which flared like clusters of supernovas in her brain, and unfeeling of the audience of two which gathered to hasten her demise.

she felt a thunderous coming. looking up, astara saw not donovan, but the flame-engulfed shadow of the bear as it moved in a streak of livid fire towards her. great bursts of calamity -- followed by scrivening shades of smoke -- emanated from that godbruin form with every awful thudding footfall; her bear -- her god ! astara gasped as she beheld its savage beauty, its formless features black save for the livid sunwhite of each hateful burning eye.

astara made a noise straddled between a whimper of joy and sorrow -- a noise which died in her throat when her delirious gaze slid to the creature loping alongside her bear-god.

she saw not the white of nyra's features, but something scarlet and rippling.

fur red as fire; fur which clung to tattered remnants of skin and tissue -- even in death, that pelt was unmistakable.

not her, once-astara quailed, an inkblack feeling of betrayal rising from her throat. her lips curled back as she beheld indra alongside the great and terrible form of the sunfire bear. astara looked to the bruin-god questioningly, lurching carelessly to the side -- was this some test by her bruin-god, some final crucible before her soul was carried to the world beyond the clearing?

no matter -- for now the bear and indra were coming, they were coming quick and savagely and without compunction -- coming to bury her beneath their teeth and claws and rotting bodies -- coming to take her from the land of the living and put her in the dirt where her soul would rot and fester blacker than any bloated corpse.

she snarled and lunged for both, content that her final lot in life would be bloodshed. merrick, aventus, avicus, apophis, asperas -- may the might of the bear guide you. i will see you on the other side. then, the raven flung herself headlong towards the slavering jaws of her beargod, teeth seizing whatever they could as great fangs and claws punctured her flesh and took their pound of flesh, too.

she was fighting -- she had always been fighting -- teeth came for her face and her neck and raked great gouts of subcutaneous tissue back, exposing hostile plains of pulsing red tissue. the bear and its supplicant swam out of astara's vision, replaced by bright constellations of pain which erupted from the back of her eyes and blinded her.

yet still she snapped and fought while she was picked apart like carrion -- they might rid the world of her presence today, but she would leave her mark upon them both for the rest of their lifetime.

and then, before astara knew it her throat had been plucked from her blackened pelt like some world-prized fruit; a violent arc of blood splattered the thrashing forms of her destroyers, whetting the grass a sickly dark sheen.

astara reeled, gurgling and white-eyed as blood flooded her senses, trickling down into her throat as tissue wheezed and sucked and splattered. stilled by the teeth of her enemies, astara went limp and slid into the unfeeling grass while underneath her a pool of malicious burgundy grew.

she heard distantly the murmur of wardrums, unaware it was the final rallying cry of cell death beneath her skin, unaware it was thousands -- billions -- of signals sent and lost as the countdown for her own bodily demise began.

for every signal received another receptor died --a firework of fading synapses fired into infinite blackness.

for a brief moment astara's indigo eyes flickered bright with cognizance as they beheld the fisheye view of an open blue sky above.

and then they too found no signal, and were stilled forever.