Kasdaye/The Genesis of Sanity

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

“Amy,” he crooned to her, calling her out of the darkness. “Amelia. Come back, now. Come to me.”

Her eyes opened and the darkness remained. There was nothing in it, nothing there. She tried to sit up and couldn’t. She knew the feel of restraints, had learned long ago not to fight them. She could feel them, but not see them. She floated in nothing, and waited to see what would happen next.

“Such a slender thing,” the Voice mused. “Lethal, but unguided, undirected. You’re like a ricochet, mindlessly moving through anything in your path. And inside... Ah, there you are the oubliette. All humanity falls into you and is forgotten. A man could drop everything he is inside you and never touch the bottom of the abyss. But this...”

A crystal shimmered in front of her. Blue at first, then a spill of red tainted the cerulean with crimson. The red crawled up, swallowing the blue until the entire crystal shone like a sliver of frozen blood. With a pulse, the shard illuminated the room in ruddy light. Holding the shard was a man, a man who seemed to glow ever so slightly brighter than the rest of the room. His eyes matched the shard exactly, she decided. Just that red. Just that bright. Just that frozen.

She forgot to watch the shard. She watched the Voice.

“This, I think, will bridge the chasm, fill the void where your soul ought properly have been.”

He smiled at her then, and she smiled back reflexively. “Well! No need for these, I think.”

Her restraints snapped open. Amy sat up. Pain danced knife-edged fireworks across her brain. She wasn’t healed. Her right arm didn’t work. Muscles in her back twisted against broken bones. Her ribs made it difficult to breathe except in shallow gulps. She adjusted. Amelia Livy wanted the shard. So she used her left hand to reach for it.

The Voice stepped away from the bed.

She stood, and reached again.

“Now now, Amelia Anne,” he chided. “What do you say?”

The question fell into her, stopping her. It spun around the edges of memory, spiraled down, echoing as it went, eventually snagging on a response and dragging it up from the depths of her mind.

“Please?” she asked.

He smiled again. “There’s my girl.”

Sliding one hand behind her back, the Voice slammed the shard upward under her rib cage, spearing her heart.

Her body snapped backward, arching against him for as long as it took her heart to shudder to a halt. He let her fall.

“Bloody hell, Ted. All that trouble, and you just kill her. She was pretty...pretty!”

“Ah, Recoil. Just in time. Please, feel free to observe, my friend. This should prove most intriguing.”

She could hear them. Recoil and the Voice. Her body was so silent. No breath. No blood. No pulse. A twitch. A crackle of hidden lightning. A spasm. A heartbeat a breath a snap of bone rebuilding a tearing of muscle righting a scream.

She felt the cold ground under her and shied away from it, she felt the air against her face and shook her head to get free of it, she felt the Voice pulsing like the sun and crab-crawled backwards until her back hit the wall. She felt -- oh god, she felt! -- the touch of others, heard almost-whispers, saw almost-images, and scrambled along the wall until she huddled in the corner.

“She’s gone spare...it could be radio waves...”

“On the contrary, I believe we are witnessing the exact opposite. Behold the very genesis of sanity.”

It was inside, inside! She could feel warmth instead of nothing, could feel presence instead of nothing, could feel being and existence and awareness instead of nothing. She felt afraid. She slammed her head into the wall to make it stop, to chase it out.

Stop.

She stopped. The prompt arose as naturally as any want or need she had ever had. She wanted food, she ate. She wanted money, she took. Now, she wanted to stop hurting herself, so she did. Wide-eyed and trembling, she stared at the wall, traced her fingers over the surface as if understanding was written there in Braille.

She felt him.

Her head snapped around, black hair swarming around her face, and she stared at Recoil and the Voice through the silken strands once lank with sweat and blood. The shard, the stabbing, he had been responsible. She spun to her feet and paced toward him. She wanted a knife. Her hands closed on nothing, and a spill of energy gave her a sword. Her hand clenched on the hilt.

The Voice watched. Beside him, Recoil already had two guns drawn. “Stand down, Recoil,” the Voice soothed. “Watch but a moment longer.”

She wanted to kill him.

No.

Her arm froze. She thought about it, felt her way around the desire to kill and the decision not to. She still wanted to kill him. Her arm moved a fraction of an inch.

No.

Her head cocked, and she frowned, thinking harder. Please?

No.

With a sigh, she surrendered. The sword vanished.

“Bloody hell...that was sexy,” Recoil swore softly, relieved.

“Who am I?” the Voice asked her.

She looked up at him. “Scion,” she answered.

“Who are you?” Scion asked her.

She smiled at him. “Kasdaye,” she answered.