bakerstreet | THE END -- the afterlife meme

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THE END -- the afterlife meme

the afterlife meme

You're at the end. you've kicked the bucket. you've passed on. the point is you're dead. And however that end came out it's time for you to face the afterlife. Where will you go? Who will you meet? How old are you? What was your end like?

It's time to meet your end.

i. HEAVEN - Nirvana, Shangri La, Elysium, either way your good life has paid off and you are now paid off with eternal happiness.

1) PEACEFULLY. You died at peace, you've done all you can with your time and you came to your natural end. Now it's time to meet with those who left you behind.

2) A HERO. You died a hero. Celebrated by many. It's only fair that you get to rest.

3) TOO SOON. You died too soon, perhaps an innocent victim of some villain, or in an accident. However one thing is for certain, you shall rest peacefully here.

4) A VICTIM. A victim of a horrible circumstance, a painful death. Either way your end wasn't pleasant.

5) GUILT. You don't feel you deserve to be here. Not with all the suffering that's left behind, with your actions. Others should be here. Not you.

6) WILDCARD. Anything and everything else.

ii. HELL - Brimstone and fire. Tortured until the end of time. This is the "bad" place to end up. At least you may run into some interesting people.

1) A THE TOP. You died at the top, everyone suffering, the world at your feet. And yet look at where you are now.

2) JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS. You were just following orders. Doing what your superiors told you to do... and yet here you are.

3) DEFEATED. Unfortunately the "good guys" won, spoiling your plans. Everything you had hoped for was toppled over.

4) GUILT. Now is the best time to repent and reflect on the evil you have caused....

5) SURPRISE. No good deed goes unpunished. Perhaps what you thought was the right thing to do was really the wrong path. Maybe you had been misled. Whatever happened, you ended up here now.

6) WILDCARD. Anything and everything else.

iii. SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN - Perhaps your in purgatory.... or in the final crossroads before you and others who have passed on must part. However, you're somewhere in between...

1) FINAL GOODBYE. One last meeting between friends, enemies. Just passing spirits.

2) FIRST MEETING IN A WHILE. It's been long. Way too long.

3) I CAME TO FIND YOU. You have fought through heaven and hell to see this person. To try and find them.

4) VISITATION. Perhaps you were both allowed a visitation between two different realms

5) WILDCARD. Anything and everything else.

iv. WILDCARD - Anything and everything in between. Any scenario, afterlife, situation that you could possibly imagine.

Instructions:

POST with your character's name and series title.

RESPOND TO OTHERS either using the prompts or make up your own situation. Use RNG if you feel you need some help.

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[It was a wonder Kain had recognized Cecil at all, considering the mess that coated him. Weeks spent drowning in the fire of his own sins left his skin blistered and semi-melted, his hair stained and caked in gore. Kain may have been strangely blue, perhaps a bit disjointed, but at least he was still definitively Kain.]

...Alas... It seems that we've failed to redeem ourselves properly. So much for Mount Ordeals. [It's bittersweet to say. Despite his attempt to appear strong, the sentence ends in a low moan, the pitiful noise of one who's screams have long since run dry.]

[Ah, Cecil, you look on the good side too much. His extremities are quite well blackened, too, and his bones so bent he can no longer straighten up properly. His legs are especially ruined, though it'd be hard to see that right now... the demons had given those a great deal of extra attention, ensuring that not even in the afterlife would he be able to jump again.]

...but... but, how, Cecil? You conquered the mountain and your darkness... you became a paladin...

You know how, Kain. You saw the people I murdered. All the innocents... I deserve this.

[Cecil only looks on the good side when it comes to other people. When left to consider himself, particularly here, it's tempting to just let himself sink forward into the unbearable heat. He knows it's pain he deserves. Perhaps not even enough of the pain he's earned.]

[Baron is great at instilling an unbearable sense of self-loathing in its fighters, somehow... Kain groans quietly, still not at all adjusted to the agony of going from one extreme temperature to the other. He's wishing desperately he'd just been a little stronger, to defeat that dark self... but what good would it have done to win? Apparently none.]

You were... only acting out of loyalty to our king and homeland... and you'd... you'd repented later...

...and you were never the sinner I was. I was always a pathetic excuse for humanity.

And yet... here we are together still.

[Here's hoping Kain wasn't expecting an inspirational leader speech. Cecil's just dipping further into the river. Perhaps he'll be able to drown this time. WOE, Kain. AGONY.]

[Come on, Cecil, that's your job! Do not challenge Kain to an angsting contest, because he will give it all his effort to defeat you.]

You don't belong here. I do. I should be punished in the worst way.

[He's not just a murderer, he's a traitor, he's lusted for a married woman, been obsessively envious, and wrathful, and...]

[NOPE. DON'T CARE. Eternal torment.]

We're here, Kain. We both are. We reap what we have sown.

[Maybe he'll even tug Kain down with him this time, gripping him hard with his gnarled, boiled hand as he dives deeper into the river. They both deserve to drown forever.]

[Kain puts up no resistance, after all, he has no desire to struggle either. Especially now, knowing that it was all even futile for Cecil.]

Then there was no point to any of it...

[WELL THEN FINE they can both drown horribly and suffer except then I don't know what to do with this thread. Have a tag anyway.]

[A LONG LONG TIME OF CLINGING TOGETHER AND SUFFERING, before something eventually drags them out again?!]

[Together, separately... There was suffering, for ages on end. For his part, Cecil remained here, steadily boiling into a leathery abomination, hair falling out of his charred skull in uneven patches. Kain was pulled away for months at a time, cycling through the other levels of the underworld as if it were some terribly grotesque theme park.

It was a strange day when the last of his nerves died, when the profound suffering had no new torture for him. Or perhaps the pain was still there, but it was so engrained into Cecil's core that it made no difference anymore whether or not he was physically burning. He shambled from the river on stiff, unyielding joints, lava perpetually streaming from his melted eyes, moaning out a noise intended for Kain. Kain's a friend. Kain will certainly know which broken soul is his. Wherever he is. Cecil will just have to play a game of underworld Marco Polo for the time being.]

[So many different sins to be punished for... and of course they make sure Kain spends a proportionate amount of time in each place for each one. It's only fair. He's battered by storms for a long long time because hello lust, frozen in ice again, thrown into the burning river, set to fight mindlessly when he's past exhaustion and then when he falls to lay there in misery and be trampled upon...]

[He's a broken, limping, agonized thing by this point. Several fingers and toes are gone from the frostbite, and his limbs are overall gangrenous and blackened. Once he used to be able to ignore pain and tough it out, but now it's all he feels, constantly. He'll often fall down sobbing, until some strong demon comes along and forces him to move. The demons know his weaknesses, so they'll take turns using him like a puppet in between the various punishments. His mind is not his own- they've made sure he knows this as they make him do atrocious things he'd never have wanted to imagine.]

[This latest change of scenery does nothing to help matters, and Kain limps along dejectedly. But that sound... he calls out in response, voice distorted after all this time.]

...Ceeeeecil...

[At least Kain remembers how speech works. Cecil's grown unaccustomed to producing any sounds at all that don't express some level of pain. But it helps that Kain can still call for him by name, giving Cecil some kind of direction.

It's far too cold to be out of the river. Above-lava, everything's too breezy and pleasant. It would make his stomach churn if he wasn't far too gone to remember the mundane bits of being alive. All he ever did now was remember the killing. He shambles in the direction of Kain's groans, looking down at him with his sightless non-eyes. Another noise, this one a gurgling sound that brought blood to his mouth in a crimson foam. That was close enough to a greeting, right?]

[CLOSE ENOUGH. Since all Kain can manage to do upon seeing Cecil now is approach and then reach toward him with a ruined hand before breaking down into an outburst of hideous, undignified sobbing and wailing. It's been so long... so terribly long... and he'd thought his friend lost forever. But then, this is how Kain reacts to almost everything these days.]

[Dignity is far from something Cecil remembers anyway, so there's no harm in sobbing. That's just how things work here. He clasps Kain's arm in his hand, though his touch is as scalding as his adopted habitat.

He punches Kain next. Not out of malice, but because how else does someone go about saying hello a friend? Suffering should be shared, right?]

[A strong sense of humiliation is all part of Kain's daily torment regime! He's just stuck in the point of every little thing causing maximum pain. He cries worse at the burning heat when Cecil's fist hits him, and does the only thing he automatically knows to do anymore in exchange... Kain aims a punch at him in return. He wants to show that he cares for his friend just as much.]

[And elsewhere, in the land where people still live and breathe, there is a very bored queen with far too much money at her disposal and a white magic hobby. So maybe phoenixes have become extinct on the continent to provide magical aid. Rosa needed all that down for her spells! She's been working on the skeletal remains of her husband and BFF for years now, struggling to improve her skill at Arise until it reached into the underworld and brought back the loved ones lost to silliness.

Sorry to interrupt your impromptu fistfight, boys, but how's this casting going? Did she get it right this time? So sorry to plurk you angels out of heaven, but the some of the living folks just aren't ready to let go yet!

Rosa hopes they won't be too angry with her for interrupting their eternal bliss.]

[...there's a ridiculously irresistible pulling sensation, and Kain whimpers as he continues fighting Cecil...]

[Suddenly, all the air rushes around, but instead of being pulled off to some kind of escape or respite, Kain feels himself suddenly shoved into the mortal realm toward... a pile of bones? Give him a moment to adjust to this, he's disoriented and still feeling the weight of the eternal damnation he'd been immersed in.]

[But that's all that the spell manages to do, join his broken soul to his bones. There's no restoration of the living man Kain once was. He's still quite dead, and his flesh is still gone, long rotted away. BUT his bones are stirring...]

[...and then suddenly the sound of agonized wailing emerges.]

[...Oh dear. That's not at all what she'd been trying to do! She's gotten the bones to move about on their own before -- it's just a simple matter of casting some cure magic and then starting over.

If it's really one of them (She may have forgotten which pile of bones belonged to which man), then curative magic will just make their bodies regenerate, right?]

[Sorry, Rosa! That curative magic only BURNS him as it surrounds his skeleton, bringing him a new torment that he's not yet felt before. There's no white magic in hell. Kain screams in agony.]

[She blinks, distracted from her casting. The spell tapers off mid-syllable as she peers curiously at the cringing skeleton.]

You know... The undead don't normally have voices that work. [ARE YOU A POLTERGEIST, NOT!KAIN-OR-CECIL?]

Ro......

[The syllable extends into a long groan. There are a lot of words that have long since left him in those long years of suffering. But he could never forget her, not entirely...]

[After a moment, the skeleton moves, streeeetching as it sits up.]

[The syllable perks her considerably.]

...Did. Did it work? Is it you?

[More groaaaaaaaaninggggg and other pitiful noises. Somewhere in there, he indicates something that sounds an awful lot like a yes.]

[He reaches a hand out to stroke at her face, but of course he can't actually feel her, which only makes him more sorrowful.]

Ro...

[At first, she flinches. But then she's absolutely sure she knows that touch, vile and decomposed it might be.]

Cecil? Cecil, you've found your way back to me!

He can build an ice condo there!

HE COULD XD a place to stay part-time, since he's got 4/7ths of the deadly sins pretty well covered

and then he can have snowball fights with the other inmates! THINK OF THE GOOD TIMES.

EXCELLENT FUN, clearly hell is lacking in wintery games!

or any games at all really

really unfortunate, that :|

I think the volleyball would be especially fun.

FLAMING VOLLEYBALL!!! except that everyone would lose all the time

...still sounds way fun.

it's all fun until you get flaming balls to the face! (OR MAYBE IT'S STILL FUN THEN IDK)

.........That's either really horrible or really sexy. I can't figure out which.

it's allowed to be both! /terrible

Sounds like a plan! :3

yaaaaay!

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Sob I apparently can't thread anything without zombies. :(

BUT THAT IS THE BEST THEME OF ALL

IT IS A CRUTCH.

BUT IT IS ONE THAT I LOVE TOO XD

THEN YAY.

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