Warning(s]: None
Mist she was, mist she would become. Ephemeral, clear–Clea. Dully did he sink upon the ground with titian flares staring into that void. He could hear her. When his mind was akimbo and without consciousness, Stephen could hear her. His salvation, and how she came to him. Entwined in starlight, ethereal and encompassing, her visage a vision of perfection as the Alizarine King embraced her without affliction in the waking world. He was dreaming. She sang to him, a melody beautiful and divine. A lullaby in the language of the Dark Dimension, solar ether billowing through her hair, the pale strands moving of their own accord alike starlight. He didn't care. Gnarled and coarse hide encompassed her, a star being cradled in cosmic dust and particles and dark matter, she sinking into him without remorse and he feeling the greatest sense of sanctity.
But like a star, she soon enfolded into a pure orb of light, the King starting as she did. Before he could reason enough sense to scrabble for her, she was gone, drifting on the sea of his outer consciousness and drifting akin to a comet in her slow retreat. Stephen wanted to scream out for her, to claw and pursue her in all his blind and jealous possession. Stephen felt as though he were choking as the air suddenly became packed from his lungs, like drowning in human water. Down, down, he was swept, and deeper still would he sink.
A watery thump filled his mind as Stephen blearily opened his eyes, a slim jettison of bubbles wobbling their way to the surface as he exhaled. Static, crackled, more bubbles escaping through a mask obscuring half his face. Stephen attempted a snarl but all he received as an answer was a blare of static from his own exhalation. The view before him was watery, barely able to muster enough motor control to even elicit a twitch of his digits. Sedated. In the thin memory that he still possessed, the neurosurgeon from that faraway, past life answered for him. He'd been sedated and suspended in this…solution. Perhaps it was part of what made him light and paralyzed.
Two silhouettes came into view, Stephen recognizing them; did this state make his mind lucid enough for the Sorcerer Supreme to remember himself. Deliberately did he manage enough motion to bump brows to the glass, horns eliciting faint friction from the cylindrical holding container. Stephen attempted to hiss, but sleep was too heavy upon his senses. He couldn't move much as it was, even if his tentacles moved independently of his will, it wasn't enough.
Silent he sank, faint screech elicited as he did, letting sleep claim him.
For it was the only place he'd find her again.