Mafiascum.net

It had been a long day. Impossibly long.

They embraced the force and argued with each other. There was so much to understand, in this strange new world of the Signs.

For a while, the power between their minds quivered uncertainly. It had weighed on the souls of nearly everyone assembled at one point or another.

The pressure built, and built, and then finally unraveled, like a coiled wire. Striking without mercy.

Crog Kellind had been his name. There had been nothing distinguished or artful about his calling. He had shuffled up out of some dull sense of obligation, trying to deal with this strange force that had left his dogs on edge. Now he was dead.

Another effort was mustered. This one accelerated much faster, barreling through at breakneck speed. But even as it happened, the minds began to tear at the pressure. It was clear they could only do this so long before the construct collapsed under its own weight.

The two inevitabilities raced toward each other, the incomprehensible gathering of psychic force being directed by the increasingly degraded unity. In the end, with a thunderclap of release, it was undone. The pilgrims collapsed in unison; no time to think about what had happened, or what it meant.

In unison, but one. The ghost looked dispassionately at the unconscious forms. She knew she wasn't like them anymore; she hadn't been like them for a while. Climbing the hill had left her with a shortness of breath that had never gone away. She had pushed and pushed through the mist and what made it through hadn't been her human self. It was a stubborn wisp of will that had persisted against death longer than it had known it could. But now, with the unifying power unraveled, she had nothing left.

"I tried," Alira whispered as she blew into the wind. "I tried to hold the line."

For many of those present, the walk to the convergence site was the worst thing they had experienced in their life. That sense of their life ebbing away with every step, until they were malformed shadows of their former selves. Surely that had to be the worst life had to offer?

But after the signs had crested within them, giving them power over life and death - the contrast was so much worse. Life turning to unlife was one thing. But more-than-life to unlife was farther to fall.

And not only that. Oh, not only that. They awoke to the corpse of a child. He had been a weapon for the secret war, and now here he was. Senseless. And their not-selves could not raise their arms in retribution.

They numbly consoled themselves with the knowledge that the reckoning was coming soon, and made a meager meal of new secrets.