Quote:
Backdated to July 14, 2021 :: immediately following this RP
His impetuousness made the bite of refusal pinch at Antisana's nerves the very second the mantra flit through his mind. He was to pledge his life to something he neither knew nor understood, to be summoned to some place on some distant planet where he would surely immediately die the second he was out of Earth's atmosphere? It was unreasonable to even consider. It didn't matter what strength or energy he had to fight off some actual monster who'd appeared in the middle of the street.
...Maya presumably hadn't died from her experience, though, seeing as she'd survived to be right next to him for the fight.
Antisana didn't like it; it felt foolish and unnecessarily dangerous, but if there were to be vicious creatures for him to face, who were bent on ending his life, then...? Should he not utilize whatever resources would enable him to be the most prepared? He didn't like thinking the pledge (because he simply could not bring himself to say it aloud), but he focused on it anyway, focused on an ambiguous 'elsewhere,' and then he wasn't in the street, anymore.
He was nowhere. His feet were on solid ground, but everything else was simply black, as if he'd been blinded- and maybe he had been. Maybe that was all that he'd managed to accomplish, as if that whispered mantra was some satanic promise (which he wouldn’t have believed possible an hour ago) in disguise, and he'd given some piece of himself away- his eyes, for all he knew- in pursuit of the ability to destroy monsters. The jagged tears across the side of his neck from the earlier encounter stung viciously, and Antisana was certain, certain that he had made a mistake-
"You want to be stationed on Pluto?" The tone was incredulous, but there was no face to it.
The sound was not quite a sound at all. He felt it like some sort of visceral resonance, but he couldn’t hear it as he heard his own choked cough in the next second, or the scuffing of his boot against stone.
"'Want' is... not quite the right term." Came the answer, low and rumbling.
Light bloomed faintly from some point directly in front of Antisana, revealing a cavernous tunnel. It was tall enough for him to stretch his arms over his head, but little more than that. It wasn’t a narrow tunnel, but more than two people walking side-by-side would likely be uncomfortable. Besides that, there was practically nothing distinct about the stone, just deep, slate gray, and craggly. The tunnel seemed to stretch on and on… But the light bobbed and moved forward, almost as if held by someone walking. If it moved too far away from him, Antisana feared the blackness. He followed after the light, and became passively aware of a lone man, with long slate hair, holding a lantern.
The spoken words were something like an echo: a thought layered over a vision. A memory in a memory. The low voice continued, “It is… more that I think I am suited to endure it. And because I can, I think I should?”
The path through the tunnel was slightly winding, and Antisana used a hand against the wall to steady himself as he walked. He hadn’t been grievously injured in the fight, but it was also the most nerve-wracking and heart-wrenching thing he’d ever experienced. For all that it had lasted just a few minutes, he still felt a strange sense of fatigue.
The first voice answered, ”Well, I can’t imagine anyone who actually wanted to serve such a desolate place as Pluto would be refused…”
The bobbing light revealed an entrance to another tunnel, though this one was smooth and circular, appearing more grandiose to even Indra’s untrained eye as he approached it. The light slipped through the entryway, darkening the rest of the tunnels, and Antisana followed hurriedly into a spacious cavern. A desk and shelves had been carved from stone and were set into the walls. Flowers that bloomed all across the stones, shelves, and ceiling in stunning blues, greens, and purples luminescent bathed this space in an ethereal glow. Glimmering stones and beadwork decorated lanterns and hung in a curtain that shielded another cavern farther back.
The bobbing light moved toward the desk, and there was for a moment the image of fingers, dark-skinned and elderly- Antisana’s fingers- his fingers- gently tugging the knob to the drawer and setting inside a gold-gilded ring, inlaid with some purply-red iridescent stone Antisana couldn’t identify.
In a blink, the fingers were gone, the voices silent, the lantern light gone, the walls and shelves and books and flowers, gone. Only the blackness remained, overtaking his vision and sending Antisana immediately into that state of near-claustrophobia again. He viciously willed the light to return, or for that man to say more, to give him some guidance, because what he’d seen hadn’t felt like enough, and Antisana had nothing to figure out his next move…
Or did he?
He pawed at his pockets, searching for the light, the phone that was ever-present- just not on Antisana’s person. If he followed the will of sensation, he thought to dismiss his weapon, to leave himself as only Indra. Because Indra did have such things on him. If he expected it to not work or not even turn on while on another world, Indra was pleased that the bright shine of the flashlight still illuminated perfectly well, and was more to see by than some bobbing lantern.
Everything was as it was when the light had faded.
Mostly.
Desks, shelves, books, curtains. It was just the foliage that had decayed irreparably, leaving the once-glowing cavern empty and lifeless. Indra didn’t think he really expected to open the drawer and find this ring. What he’d seen was some vision of… countless lifetimes ago. But he tugged the stone knob, peered down into the drawer and saw a perfectly gleaming ring, as if not even so much as a speck of dust had disturbed it between then and now.
He lifted it carefully between his thumb and forefinger. There was still that slight possibility this was all some hallucination, or some magic that would condemn him to eternal damnation, but it didn’t… feel like it.
Though, why would it, he supposed. Surely if there was to be some temptation, it would never feel like a warning.
He slid the ring onto his finger, staring passively at it. Indra didn’t like jewelry. It was gaudy and attention-seeking when he wanted no such thing. But despite the fear of this traipsing too closely into One Ring territory, it did feel like his. Maybe in the same way that it felt like, if he wanted to go home, he would simply go… And he did want to get out of this black cavern and go home.
