Blessing or Curse, I Do Not Know

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CHARACTER NAME: Deet
CHARACTER SERIES: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

[OOC]
This is the permissions list for OOC (out of character), activity.
Answer the following questions with "yes" or "no", as well as additional information if desired.

Backtagging: Yes please!
Threadhopping: If unlocked, please check with all thread participants before jumping in. If everyone's on board, sure!
Fourthwalling: Ask first. I'm probably okay with it but it's good to have an idea of how the other character would know what they know about her.
Offensive subjects (elaborate): As a player, I have no triggers. However, I prefer certain subjects be approached with sensitivity and content warnings. These subjects include: domestic abuse, rape/sexual violence, animal abuse, transphobia and homophobia, and self-harm. I will play threads wherein these topics come up ICly, but I will always try to include a CW.


[IC]
This is the permissions list for IC (in-character), activity.
Answer the following questions with "yes" or "no", as well as additional information if desired. With IC permissions, it's a good idea to elaborate on what other players can expect from your character if they choose to do any of the following:

Hugging this character: She'd love it, but she does carry a kind of blight on her person, the Darkening, so it's possible the other character could be affected by this. She might panic, but it would be because she worries about your safety.
Kissing this character: Same as above. She's very affectionate when she can be, but it might be wise to work something out OOC first, due to the nature of the Darkening.
Flirting with this character: Sure! She may not get it. She's affectionate and not completely inexperienced, but she has trouble interpreting intentions.
Fighting with this character: If you want but you better check with me OOC. She's kind of a glass cannon.
Injuring this character (include limits and severity): Yes, with OOC discussion
Killing this character: With prior discussion only
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Yes. Sharing memories is not uncommon between gelfling; they call it dreamfasting.

Warnings: There are some dark themes in her canon, but it's really pretty PG overall. I don't anticipate anything too gritty coming up with her.

The stone floor in the Palace is not as smooth as it looks from a distance. It's been polished by years of skeksis and gelfling and podling feet, but there are scratches, too, from careless bare claws cutting shallow grooves in the rock. So different from the caves, where the ground was cleared but never truly machined. Gelfling feet are smaller and softer; they will bend for the natural curves in the rock. There was always light in the caves of Grot--it was never truly pitch-black thanks to the glow moss and the other bioluminescent creatures there, and the red fire from deeper below--but even if there had been none, and she had been blind, Deet could always have known where she was in the caves by the feel of the rocks and veins of ore under her toes.

These are strange rocks, and they do not welcome her. But she didn't come here to be welcomed.

The emperor's throne strikes her as a ridiculous thing, arched and pointed and impractical for comfort. There is little softness in this place, and that's hard to comprehend. These are the lords of the crystal. They could once have demanded anything from their gelfling subjects, but all the fine fabrics have gone to clothing and draperies, decorative rather than substantial. If it were her, she'd have made the throne a single, simple curve and filled it with sweet-smelling pillows, cushions made of nurloc-leather.

Nevertheless, she sits, folding her legs under her, and waits.

She cannot see the skeksis draw closer, but she can feel them, and hear them, talons clicking, teeth grinding, sharp eyes watching from the shadows. They laugh when they kill. They laugh at pain. She has seen it. But they're not laughing now.

"Behold," she says, and her voice is sweet and soft, lilting as a song. "The Power of the Darkening."

There's a violet haze over everything, a burning feel in the back of her throat. Light flickers and her eyes cannot fully adjust, it's too fast, there is no time or space. But she can feel them draw closer, and she can sense the Emperor. She holds up an aching hand--the veins of Darkness throb under her skin. It hurts. Everything in her hurts, but she smiles when she beckons skekSo close.

His staff clatters to the floor at her feet.

"You want to live forever?" she coos at him softly. "You want the essence of Thra for your own? Come closer and drink."

There's a sound like water dripping, drop by drop, into a still pool. There's an empty-eyed skeksis lying on the floor in front of her, and glittering dark violet liquid drips from her fingertips into his open mouth. "This is Thra, too," she whispers. "This is me, too."

Energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred.

The floor is littered with the prone bodies of the skeksis. She steps over them heedlessly. Their clothing is soft under her feet. So are their bodies. Soft, melting, liquid of swirling purple and inky black. Her wings are heavy and she cannot fly, but the room drip, drip, drips and the liquid rises to her ankles, her knees, her chest, her chin.

When it closes over her head, she shuts her eyes and breathes it in. And screams...



The sound of her own shriek wakes her, and she sits bolt upright in her little bed in her hollow in the Nexus caverns. She feels choked, constricted, and she tears blankets away, gasping for air. In the corner, her baby nurlock stares with wide, worried blue eyes, and Nadi scuttles up from the foot of the bed to clamber into her lap and lick her, trying to offer such comfort as she knows how.

After a minute, Deet's heartbeat slows to a normal pace, but the trembling will linger for hours yet, and she'll have to take a bath to wash away the cold sweat. For the moment, though, she simply gathers her pets closer and sits, feeling their warmth and the little movements they make in her arms. And she rests her head against the dark feathers of the cloak Thnisko gave her.

"I won't." She says into Nadi's fur, into the softness of the cloak. "I won't. I'm not giving up."