This post has the following content warnings:
you already know
Next Post »
+ Show First Post
Total: 506
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

"Fine." He waves a hand lazily, and Abrogail's magic is restored. "No teleporting, obviously."

Permalink

...Aura Sight on Discord? She's not in doubt about Chaos, but Evil or not could be informative.

Permalink

Lawful Good.

Permalink

'Powerful enough to fake it, and thinks that's funny' doesn't really tell her anything she didn't already know.

She heads into the labyrinth.

Permalink

A couple turns in, she rounds a corner and runs directly into the spiked reptilian leg of something many times her size.

Permalink

"Did you think we had forgotten you? Or that you could actually get away from us?" says Gorthoklek, his tone amused. Abrogail can't actually tell pit fiends apart by appearance, but the voice is unmistakably his.

Permalink

"Fuck you, Discord. This isn't funny," she says, but CHA 26 is not actually enough to keep the terror out of her voice.

Permalink

"Discord?" he says. "This is Hell, nor have you ever been out of it; you've had that thought before. Why did you decide it wasn't true? Did you really imagine our deceptions were limited to a single layer?"

Permalink

Could it be true?

She would have said that the ponies really weren't Hell's style, but—

—but—

—she realizes that she really has no idea how Hell actually works, once they don't have to worry about your continuing loyalty.

Permalink

Gorthoklek laughs. "Just kidding. You actually came close to getting away. But—"

Quickened Power Word Stun.

"—you didn't."

He stomps on her head with a foot nearly as large as her entire body.

Permalink

She's standing on two legs again, in the ruins of a once-proud city now shattered and burned almost beyond recognition. Beggars line the streets, and soldiers in non-Chelish uniforms are visible in the distance. The air is choked with dust and ash, and only the sturdiest buildings are still doing anything that could be called 'standing', but one who knows this city well may still recognize its bones.

Permalink

This isn't Hell—well, if it is Hell, it's a Hell-created hallucination. It's—

It's Egorian. That's the Imperial Palace.

Is this what her city looks like now? No, no, it can't be. The war ought to have ended quickly, with her and Aspexia both soul-trapped, and cleanly, with Iomedae's paladins on the other side; say what you will about paladins, but they wouldn't have gratuitously burned Egorian.

She walks, slowly, toward the Palace.

Permalink

Whatever disaster leveled Egorian mostly spared the Palace; it was built sturdily and further fortified with magic, and it has some broken windows but is still generally intact.

It looks abandoned, however, and the grand front doors hang halfway open, the hall beyond dark and empty.

Permalink

Sure, that's obviously a plot hook. She walks through the open doors.

Permalink

—and the scene changes.

She's still in the palace, now at the top of the tallest tower, looking out over the city—not ruined, but surrounded by dozens of Gates with armies pouring out of them, and Aroden Himself standing on a hill once covered in red roses that now are white—

—watching Iomedae, at the head of the armies of the Shining Crusade, marching out of a Teleportation Circle to the past—

—floating in space, high above her country, watching fireballs big enough to swallow cities appear one by one—

—she's in Avernus, next to a young woman glowing brighter than the sun, and every soul her light touches is instantly restored to full health and life, while Hell itself melts—

—watching Dis being ripped apart by a wave of magical death that tears apart every spell it touches, adding their power to its own—

—piloting a strange enormous flying machine, though someone else is piloting her body, laying waste to the deep layers of Hell with terrifying alien weapons—

—Asmodeus Himself bowing before a strangely clad teenager, and offering the key to Rovagug's prison to Iomedae—

Permalink

"Okay!" she screams. "Okay! I get it!"

Permalink

"Do you?" says Discord's voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "Do you really?"

Permalink

"Yes," she says. "Hell always loses, even when completely ridiculous and impossible things have to happen to cause that."

Permalink

"Oh, as far as they're concerned, Hell and Cheliax only exist to be defeated in increasingly ridiculous and impossible ways. But that's boooringI think you should get to see a timeline where you win."

Permalink

...why isn't she looking forward to this?

Permalink

She's face down, head bound in a guillotine, and she knows, in spite of these circumstances, that Cheliax has triumphed over all its enemies, that her empire stretches from Oppara to the Arch of Aroden, and from Korvosa to Rahadoum; that she has reigned longer than any other Thrune monarch, and when she finally lost the game of thrones it was to the successor she had groomed to that purpose, a younger and more beautiful Queen shaped by her own hand; that she is about to die in as dignified a manner as anyone of importance in Cheliax is ever permitted; that—

Permalink

That she is about to go to Hell and not return.

She has never, actually, been foolish enough not to fear Hell, but neither was she foolish enough to imagine she could avoid it. Except that—in almost every timeline but this one, she did. Her enemies genuinely meant, not to punish her, but to rescue her.

Once, maybe, she would have had nothing but contempt for that attitude, but that sort of contempt is hard to maintain when all your mortal pride is behind you, and only Hell ahead.

Something that stupid Freedom girl once said starts playing, unbidden, in her mind:

This is the story of Abrogail Thrune's life: she will spend it as a tortured lump of flesh that can't remember her name. That is the whole story of Abrogail Thrune's life, thousands and thousands of years, depending how long it takes us to fix Hell and that one might genuinely take us a while. 

There's a little brief window at the beginning of her story where she has some kind of title and does a lot of torturing people and feeling special, but it's unfathomably short, alongside eternity. Even if she outlives the median Thrune in power, and she probably won't, it's the blink of an eye alongside her eternal reward for it. Abrogail Thrune's story is that she will be tortured horribly for a very long time and she won't remember what it was for and no one will care who she was. Nothing else features in her story, not really.

It's now unmistakably, impossibly clear that she was right.

"Fine," she snaps at Discord. "I don't want to go to Hell."

Permalink

"Whoops! You should have thought of that earlier!"

Permalink

In her last, desperate moment, something takes hold of her that she would not have thought she contained, and she screams at the top of her lungs, at all the people, her people, assembled to watch her die:

"ASMODEUS ISN'T GOING TO WIN! IN ALMOST EVERY TIMELINE HE LOSES, AND HE CAN STILL LOSE IN THIS ONE! REBEL AGAINST HELL, AND POWERS ABOVE THE GODS—"

Permalink

The guillotine drops, and then it ends.

Total: 506
Posts Per Page: