Siran Tavaryse, arguably an Emperor, indisputably a catastrophe, is categorically immortal.

(It doesn't occur to him to wonder if what he's doing might, on some level, be... trying to test that.)

(It doesn't occur to him that, if he were trying to test that, he might not be sure what answer he was hoping for.)

A cursed city is never a good place to be, but he picks an especially nasty one, because it suits his mood.

The whole place is coated in a heat-haze shimmer, like a mirage on the horizon; but as he gets closer, it doesn't get any more solid. He walks straight in, ignoring the way the cobblestones begin to shift and waver under his feet. After only a few steps, the effect is intense enough that it feels like he's looking at the whole world through a reflection in a rippling pond. He closes his eyes, but he can still feel the ground swelling like a wave, moving like the skin of a living creature.

He keeps walking, because he can't think of anything better to do.

At first, the sound of voices is distant and elusive. But as he keeps walking, they keep coming, more and more until he's wrapped in a cacophonous tapestry of babble, whispers and wails and snatches of song. The air seems to thicken, and the ground recede, until there's nothing for him to step on; all that's left is the noise. He makes the mistake of opening his eyes.

Light and colour are unbound from the strictures of physical form. There's nothing to see, but he sees everything. Squinting helplessly into the madness, he thinks he might be starting to resolve—faces?

HELP US

Is he imagining that faint chorus amid the babble?

SAVE US

Is he seeing thousands of people all melted together and painted in unearthly colours, or is his mind just making pictures in the clouds?

KILL US

He tries reaching out with a thread of magic to feel for the shape of the curse, though he's not even sure that's a thing that makes sense to try. Normally he'd look at what a spell was doing in the world to find out about it, but normally spells, even badly frayed ones, don't do—this. Normally there is still a world to look at the spell doing things in.

At first nothing happens. But then his partly-formed wisp of a not-spell seems to... catch on something, and the colours around him get brighter and the voices get louder, spiraling up up up into a staggering crescendo, into enough brightness and loudness that it feels like just experiencing it is going to be enough to crack his head like an egg.

Reacting on instinct, he lashes out blindly with magic. This is never a good plan, but maybe especially not now. It feels like the world turns inside-out, cramming all that noise into Siran and spilling Siran out of his own mind and body and into oblivion.

But Siran Tavaryse is categorically immortal.

He wakes, if you can call it that, in a cold dark place. He can't breathe. His body is somehow managing to experience simultaneous numbness and agony, so that everything hurts but he can barely tell whether his attempts to flail are succeeding.

This time, he catches himself before lashing out blindly with magic again. Lashing out blindly with magic has just never helped anything, ever, and you'd think he'd have learned that by now.

But now he's trapped, blind and basically immobile, in what would be unfathomable pain if his standards for unfathomability had not just been significantly raised, and he has no idea what to do about it. Is he sure he can't lash out blindly with magic? Really? Really, really sure? Yes he fucking is, but every heartbeat he spends like this is another grim act of will to convince himself of that.

Something has to give.

It feels a little like turning inside-out again. But his frantic trapped desperate mind reaches out across a vast gulf... and finds somewhere peaceful to rest, somewhere warm, somewhere safe.

Somewhere with music.