Just a little ditty.
The scorpion pit.Failing to match the decline of the entry stairs, the ceiling becomes taller and taller. Consequently, the chamber at the bottom is forbiddingly lofty, and sound echoes slow, making even the smallest noises unreliable phantoms. The room's trappings are simple: roughly carved walls without mark or decoration, a trio of smoldering torches, and simplistic, cerulean tiles covering the floor. The center of the chamber is a deep pit, filled with live scorpions, writhing and churning over one another. A squat pylon of stone forms an altar here. A fang-shaped dagger of bone rests atop the altar. In the center of the room is a deep pit, filled with live scorpions.
You see a single exit leading up.Emelle folds her arms over herself, hands curling around opposite shoulders as she approaches a pit of live scorpions.
It aches, today. The way she misses Her. Despite her efforts, she still has not found purpose independent of Her and the sway She holds over her mind, her heart.Arching forward, Emelle looks down into the pit.
She wonders what @Elie is dreaming of.Emelle breathes a sigh. Her eye slowly circles the perimeter of the chamber, unseeing.
“Should I go back to Her?”
The Truthspeaker appeals to her, but not enough that she has felt compelled to closely observe His ways. And the words of His priests are too many, which frustrates her.
Her dreams, however, are vividly enticing. She longs for the Dreamscape, for the intoxicating vision so unique to Her followers.
The priest's words echo in her mind. 'If we are made by the Gods, They have fashioned us for a purpose.'
There is nothing she desires more than to know hers, and she only feels further from it since leaving Her.Emelle blinks, steps back, and retreats into the thermae.
Steam-cloaked thermae.The light is kept low, with torches burning away in deep recesses. Minerals from all across the world have been integrated into the engraved wall, forming a beautiful tableau of abstract imagery in flecked blue, green, and violet. The floorspace is large enough to accommodate two hundred people, and consists of numerous baths, fed from holes in the ceiling that eject steaming water regardless of day or season. A raised path cuts through the center of the chamber, and at its end a staircase leads down into unseen depths. There are 6 hot mineral baths here.
You see exits leading southwest and down.Slowly, Emelle walks along one side of the chamber, then pauses next to a pool. She stares down at it for a long moment, watching steam eddy from its surface, then shrugs a durable leather rucksack from her shoulder and catches it by the strap before it falls.
Emelle removes the pieces of her clothing one by one, dropping each to the ground in a haphazard pile until she stands naked, a blue-green shimmer cast over her skin from the light reflected off the pool's surface.
After a beat of hesitation, Emelle slides the eyepatch from her face, leaving the empty pit of her right eye socket uncovered.
Leaning forward, Emelle steps into the pool, gradually lowering herself until she's submerged almost to her shoulders.
The warm water seems to work itself under her skin to seep into her muscles and bones, easing away her tension and burdens.
Her mind wanders back to a conversation with Elie. She said Omei wanted her to be the bug, and she was torn between her heritage and her desire for love. Are these two different things? She is kin with the shapeshifters, now.
"The Beast Queen."Emelle's left eye drifts closed, but the right one seems incapable of this, stuck permanently in a half-lidded state. She leans her head back against the edge of the pool and exhales.
What does it mean to be a beast?
She does not know how to be anyone, anything other than herself. Is that enough?In a barely audible murmur, Emelle says, "I miss You."
The realization comes to her slowly, but with the resolution of indisputable truth, like a lost, loved thing suddenly found again.
There is no other place for her.Emelle has joined the Congregation of Omei.
Her soul swells, kindled. She wandered, lost, and still she found her way back. But not because of anyone else, anything else, but herself.
She knows who she is.