I am unsure what happened.
I float through the void
in blissful, carefree limbo
while my mind is fragmenting.
I try to pick up the pieces. I remember a childhood in the Mountain
home, I remember a skeletal ogre closing his jaws on my head like a vise
I remember a working fortress, loyal minions toiling in my name, I rem
ember
ember
ember
I remember learning the art of cheesemaking.
I remember me.
I was me.
I am me.
Strategia.
A name, yes.
An
anchor.
I am Strategia.
I observe through nonexistent, polyscient eyes, no - I brush against quanta, I feel the charge and the speed and the dreams and the colour and the wavelength and the existence of every photon.
I watch with detached disinterest as skeletal elks, each and every one unique, animal not-souls still thinly tethered to their bleached white frames, fight the militia, each a strong and powerful soul, still attached to corporeal existence, the leptons who are the messengers of gods who do not exist, who control all that happens, cultural inventions and fundamental forces at the same time, passing through the shackled souls not seeing not hearing not feeling not tasting the brief, infinitely long instructions, at the same time made up of other leptons who claim to work together yet collide in their limited space unseeing unhearing unfeeling unaware of their own existence
I shake my head to clear my thoughts, a nonexistent act that shakes the very fabric of reality. I must focus. I must remain.
I watch as the militia gets slaughtered. Some loyal to me, that I can sense, some mistrustful or resentful, that I can also sense, all get killed by these creatures, no longer possessing the not-souls of the animal yet moving about with malicious purpose, dragging their hapless selves along, not realising they are dead.
I watch the skeletal ogres in the womb of the great mother, I watch my own body, I remember I can see I can feel again I remember.
I go down the last stairs, fighting with every boson of my being to go back up and return to life yet I am also deliberately seeking out the creature that I know will kill me because I do not know yet that it will kill me.
I panic and feel calm, I run and I rest, this is as it should be, this is as it happened. I die as do many others. I remain behind, ambition holding me back from moving on
the pettiness of my existence
pointless abuses
a purposeless hold on power, all for myself, that I cannot possess.
I die and the shock shatters my mind
I try to
skip this
part
my anchor
my name
Strategia.
I watch as the madness lashes out and corrupts the minds and very souls of dwarves and pits corporeal against corporeal
I see the tendrils ensnaring the souls
I see the tendrils sucking them dry
I see them go through soil and stone and land and mountain and rolling hill and river valley
I see them stretch all over the world from end to end I see them
I see them reach back to
I avert my ethereal eyes
I have willed eyes into being
I have power I have control
I am dead yet still alive
I am Strategia
I am Overseer of Hellcannon
I am not bound to body
I am not reaching into supple mind to stretch the spirit I am not assuming direct control
I am me
I will endure
I will prevail