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Lucy's Apocalypse
Aug. 3rd, 2007 04:34 pmRenee was the first to die.
It was unexpected, of course - it could not have been otherwise. Had she been capable of her ordinary powers of expectation it would never have happened at all. But in the tumult caused as the world fell stark raving mad in the course of six hours, she was so caught up in scattered perceptions of imminent disaster that she scarcely had a free moment from the rapid-fire dissemination of instructions to her three sisters with which to consider how her own fate might possibly be affected. It was one of the statues that did it, crushing her head almost peremptorily beneath a mighty bronze fist. Lucille fell upon it in the next instant, just back from her latest mission at the orders of her most adored second-eldest sister, and rent it to tiny metal fragments in the space of a second. There was no-one present to hear her howl or see her spit foul-tasting shards of ex-statuary from her sharp-fanged mouth.
Alice went next, shockingly, her endless compassionate fires run dry in the latest of an equally infinite round of necessary healings administered to those too wounded to recover by themselves or even, in most cases, with the aid of hospitals. Luce nosed the cooling, grey-skinned corpse disbelievingly, even going so far as to revert to her more vulnerable form the better to build her fiery sister a nice bonfire in case all she needed was a healthy jolt. Watching the flames consume that impassive face, so vivacious and friendly when alive, she decided with an abrupt sort of calm that it was exactly the sort of end and exactly the sort of funeral Alice would have wanted.
Anne was the last of the three for Lucy to mourn. She would never know when her sister finally fell prey (no, not prey, not Anne, never that; family, after all, family) to one of the innumerable sudden dangers that presented themselves in this uncertain time, but she would always know how: in Anne's usual fashion, defending to the last whatever and whomever she could think to protect, she had fallen in the process of securing most of the midwestern United States from the worst of the danger, ensuring that at least - in an area stretching from the mid-upper reaches of Texas to the northern border of South Dakota and from the rough centre of Utah to the middling parts of Kentucky and the barest western fringes of Ohio - no gaping holes would open in the ground or air to admit strange creatures, biotechnical monstrosities, or bizarre enchantments from worlds that appeared to be the likely result of some bastard confluence of H.R. Giger, H.P. Lovecraft, and Hieronymous Bosch should they all go out on an improbable midnight bender involving substances banned in most decent countries for their hallucinogenic effects. Unfortunately, those creatures and enchantments still had the means to travel, and thus the destruction of the world ran more or less unimpeded by the lack of what Renee so disaffectedly called 'spheres of exchange' in that admittedly sizeable area.
Lucy herself, having not the talents for healing, foresight, or simply making the fabric of reality sit up and beg that her sisters possessed, was tasked by Renee with the destruction of the most dangerous of the crossovers: a goal to which she set with her usual fearsome single-mindedness, and - made even more determined by the three precious lives which these things had so infuriatingly snatched from her - kept at without food or rest until the crossings reversed and the dangers began to peter out four days later.
Exhausted beyond belief, tired, hungry, and entirely ignorant of where she might be or - for that matter - what day of the week it is, she collapses in the wreckage of a building, slipping fluidly from sleek black-scaled perfection to pale, fragile humanity as she falls at last into blessed unconsciousness.
It was unexpected, of course - it could not have been otherwise. Had she been capable of her ordinary powers of expectation it would never have happened at all. But in the tumult caused as the world fell stark raving mad in the course of six hours, she was so caught up in scattered perceptions of imminent disaster that she scarcely had a free moment from the rapid-fire dissemination of instructions to her three sisters with which to consider how her own fate might possibly be affected. It was one of the statues that did it, crushing her head almost peremptorily beneath a mighty bronze fist. Lucille fell upon it in the next instant, just back from her latest mission at the orders of her most adored second-eldest sister, and rent it to tiny metal fragments in the space of a second. There was no-one present to hear her howl or see her spit foul-tasting shards of ex-statuary from her sharp-fanged mouth.
Alice went next, shockingly, her endless compassionate fires run dry in the latest of an equally infinite round of necessary healings administered to those too wounded to recover by themselves or even, in most cases, with the aid of hospitals. Luce nosed the cooling, grey-skinned corpse disbelievingly, even going so far as to revert to her more vulnerable form the better to build her fiery sister a nice bonfire in case all she needed was a healthy jolt. Watching the flames consume that impassive face, so vivacious and friendly when alive, she decided with an abrupt sort of calm that it was exactly the sort of end and exactly the sort of funeral Alice would have wanted.
Anne was the last of the three for Lucy to mourn. She would never know when her sister finally fell prey (no, not prey, not Anne, never that; family, after all, family) to one of the innumerable sudden dangers that presented themselves in this uncertain time, but she would always know how: in Anne's usual fashion, defending to the last whatever and whomever she could think to protect, she had fallen in the process of securing most of the midwestern United States from the worst of the danger, ensuring that at least - in an area stretching from the mid-upper reaches of Texas to the northern border of South Dakota and from the rough centre of Utah to the middling parts of Kentucky and the barest western fringes of Ohio - no gaping holes would open in the ground or air to admit strange creatures, biotechnical monstrosities, or bizarre enchantments from worlds that appeared to be the likely result of some bastard confluence of H.R. Giger, H.P. Lovecraft, and Hieronymous Bosch should they all go out on an improbable midnight bender involving substances banned in most decent countries for their hallucinogenic effects. Unfortunately, those creatures and enchantments still had the means to travel, and thus the destruction of the world ran more or less unimpeded by the lack of what Renee so disaffectedly called 'spheres of exchange' in that admittedly sizeable area.
Lucy herself, having not the talents for healing, foresight, or simply making the fabric of reality sit up and beg that her sisters possessed, was tasked by Renee with the destruction of the most dangerous of the crossovers: a goal to which she set with her usual fearsome single-mindedness, and - made even more determined by the three precious lives which these things had so infuriatingly snatched from her - kept at without food or rest until the crossings reversed and the dangers began to peter out four days later.
Exhausted beyond belief, tired, hungry, and entirely ignorant of where she might be or - for that matter - what day of the week it is, she collapses in the wreckage of a building, slipping fluidly from sleek black-scaled perfection to pale, fragile humanity as she falls at last into blessed unconsciousness.
