Seer: Surrender.
au where going grimdark means becoming a vessel controlled by the horrorterrors and tends to lead to murderous rampages and breakdowns.
Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you have been hearing voices since the first time you slept in this awful game. They've been there at the back of your mind, a steady drone, a set of whispers in a language not even the whisperers understand, a dull, painful throb, since you woke up, queen of a purple maze. You almost had them under control. You were ignoring them. Everyone else told you you had made them up, that they were just the manifestation of the guilt you harboured for accidentally bringing about the destruction of the human race., for causing the deaths of John's father and Dave's bro, for causing the death of your own mother. Your friends had convinced you that there were no voices, and you were inclined to believe them.
That is, until they came back, louder and more painful than before. They grew more restless, more agitated with every trip into the dreamworld that you found yourself in upon falling asleep. You dismissed the voices, their babbling, their words of nonsense, though the possibility that you were going insane from the effort that taking responsibility for the apocalypse was remained an ever-present possibility for your predicament.
You thought you could shut them up, ignore them like you had before, but you were wrong. The voices were done with being ignored; their words an omnipresent roar, a steady battering of the inside of your skull, a fire set behind your eyes until you wanted to claw them out to set the flames free. You endured, you resisted. You did it before, and you were certain you could do it again. But now, as you collapse, falling to your knees, feeling tendrils of pain extend from the back of your head to your burning eyeballs, you realise you can't fight the voices anymore. You can't fight them because something's different this time.
Weak from a lack of sleep, fatigued by the constant state of fear you're living in, you let your guard down for a split second. Just for a moment, you don't just hear the voices, you listen to them.
That moment is all they need.
You're overcome with the pain. The pounding in your skull crescendos into a climax, shattering your bones. You place your hands towards your head an attempt to push it together, screaming in horror at the sensation now overtaking you, exhausting every muscle from your shoulders downwards with the effort of holding your cranium in place. Your arms tremble and shake, your throat unleashing another shriek as the heat behind your eyes bursts from within your head. Soon every inch of your body is protesting in heated agony, burning, blistering, splitting, cracking, surrendering, and you're still screaming. Were your blood not already boiling, the intensity of the sound being ripped from deep within you would no doubt have sent a shiver down your spine. You don't have time to register this, however. Your mind is a hectic mess, every thought happening at once, and at the front of these thoughts, commanding them, the conductor of the orchestra of horror, of pulsating organs and aching limbs, are the voices, louder and more confident than ever.
You are suddenly aware that the voices belong to speakers who identify themselves as "Horrorterrors", and considering the torment you are currently undergoing at their hand, you couldn't have thought of a more fitting name. The realisation wracks your heart until it feels as though it is being pulled from it's resting place between your torn, battered lungs, devoid of air. With deep, shuddering breaths that sting your ripped throat, recollections of a writhing mass of limbs pierce your fragmented mind. Creatures that aren't quite octopi, but aren't quite squids, with clicking beaks and curling tentacles, swimming through the black oblivion that those on Derse consider to be sky; those are the horrorterrors, the whisperers, the owners of the voices at the back of your mind.
And now that they have broken you, they begin to whisper again.
It only hurts, they hiss, because you haven't given in yet.
Whether you are speaking their language or they are speaking yours, you don't know. All you know is that their previously incomprehensible jumble of sounds and syllables is now a collection of noise that you can also communicate through, and that their voices, their voices which stung, which bit, which ripped, which pounded against your skull almost as though they wished to get out, were now soft, soothing, the only remedy to the agony currently shaking, breaking, destroying your body. Instinct tells you to listen to them, to follow their instructions. It's clear that the voices will get you out of this, that they will stop you hurting.
If your blistered burning eyes had opened, perhaps you could have seen the tendrils of darkness that your torn, greying skin was emitting. Perhaps they would have seen nothing but the bleak, misty white they had now become. They would not have ended your pain. Only one thing could do that.
Let us in, Seer. No. No, there's something very wrong about that tone of voice. You don't like the idea. Another wave of crippling pain engulfs you, and a sound so anguished it is barely recognisable as human is choked from your core. Let us in. We can help. You want this to stop, don't you? You want this agony to end, you want to be free, you want everything to go back to the way it was before you heard voices, before you played Sburb, before you had even heard of that dreadful game. A whimper, a strangled sob, somehow makes it's way from your tortured throat, and the fire in your eyes in quenched by a new burning, the burning of your tears, filled with every regret, everything you'd change, everything you wish you could go back and undo.
Lost, despondent, angry and anguished, the voices sound more enchanting than ever, their words cool on your throbbing brain, their tone beckoning you in. You're weak, Seer, they snarl, as if you weren't already aware of this. Useless. You shudder. Every inch of your body; fatigued. No part of you is spared from the ongoing torment. You are the reason they lost everything. You are the reason their dreams are just that; dreams. Memories of a time that was, hopes for things that never will be.
We see it all, Rose. We see their dreams. We see them hear their thoughts. They're fed up with you. Aren't you fed up with them? Aren't you tired of the things they say, of them blaming you? Why should you take the blame anyway? They all agreed to play with you after all. They wanted to play with you.
Somewhere, inside the prison your body has become, you find yourself wondering whether the voices, the horrorterrors, are talking, or whether they're just amplifying your own thoughts and feelings, manipulating whatever they've found in your brain, repeating the words that have ran through your mind countless times. You want them to accept responsibility too, don't you? They would, if you weren't so weak. Another half-sob, half-scream. You want to put an end to this. You've lost feeling in everything below your knees. You greet the numbing; that's one part of your body that no longer plagues you with pain. We can make you strong. We can make the pain stop. All you have to do is let us.
Your hands fall to your sides. You can end this. A frantic feeling of euphoria suddenly escapes from your stomach, and you know even before your broken mind has made the choice what your decision will be.
You surrender.
You no longer have to think or feel. You take a backseat, you let the voices do what they promised. They make the pain stop. They make you strong. A passenger in your own mind, you have no control over your own actions, and it is bliss. Your body is now a utopia in which you can safely reside. There's nothing for you to worry about, nothing to regret, nothing to do, and certainly nothing afflicting you.
You've never felt so free.
It isn't until later, when you wake on Derse once again, that you realise what has happened, what you've done under the voices influence. Horrorterrors is most certainly an apt name, and perfectly describes the feeling that grips your stomach as the recollections of a time so dark and so grim that you find yourself fighting the urge to vomit as you begin to remember them.
- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB]-
TT: John?
TT: John, are you there?
TT: God, I can barely type. I'm shaking so badly
TT: Please say you're there.
TT: John, I think I may
TT: I might've killed Dave.
TT: Jade isn't answering me.
TT: John?
TT: I'm scared, John.
TT: Did I kill you too?
TT: I'm sorry.
TT: It wasn't me
TT: It wasn't me, John, I promise.
TT: I didn't mean to.
TT: I'm too far away to save you
TT: To save any of you.
TT: I can't take any of you to your quest beds.
TT: I can't bring you back to life.
TT: None of us are god tiering.
TT: None of us are even alive.
TT: I've really fucked up this time John.
TT: Please don't be dead.
TT: Please.
TT: John?
TT: John?
TT: JOHN.
- tentacleTherapist [TT] has stopped pestering ectoBiologist [EB] -
Your name is Rose Lalonde and you are alone.