Adrestia floated, displaced and tried not panic, but after all the events, the hunts, the dialed-up armaments, the unfathomable heights of the Fates whispers influencing the outcomes of all the weeping Laconian prayer circles, and surviving the vacuums of the secret Abyss while listening to the last wails of the dead and dying. She could run without requiring breath, she could manipulate the continuum in countless way s that the dusty meister-sages were sifting through tea leaves to comprehend. She could strike down the infernal and spat in the many-eyed endless themselves, all of these assets…..all the power that her dual patrons could focus through her and preserve her, none of them foresaw the warlock’s tactic in opening that damn scroll.
The Shade of Hastur held her body safely in its web, but could do nothing for her spirit spliced from the physical form. Being inspected by the Choir was quite the nuisance, any aspect of the Yellow King should never present itself to the mewling sheep for this long, it was an affront and Adrestia sensed its vulnerability, its urgency for her to return so that it wouldn’t wither, it longed to operate in periphery and shadow once again.
The Root of Gaia was at peace as it always was, like a humming mantra along-side her own vibration. While the shade was dissonant and powerfully frenetic, hers was a warm harmony that amplified her curiosity and artistry. It grounded her in the face of overwhelming odds and she was never surrounded on the Grand Terra’s firmament for it could heal her form from burn, wound and poison with the celerity and grandeur that inspired poems and artistic vistas. It grace again and again, but like the Shade, it was doing what it could for her form, not her displaced energy.
Adrestia was unanchored from them both and felt hopeless and floundering. Her sense of navigation was a maelstrom of empty spinning, no orientation to a horizon or a true north. The void spun her with any effort to focus on terrestrial skills.
In exchange, as long as she didn’t try…as long as she let herself just be careless, she was alone and at peace for the first time in quite awhile. With the other’s absent from her thoughts, their drives, their inputs and the whipping of Hastur’s influence and incessant agenda upon her every move, she had only herself to ponder in this billowing suspension of nothing. She was tempted to remain here, in nothing and not “continue” at all. Somehow this was a comfort in all of the abandonment of self.
She would, from time to time, remember to ponder, but all was smokey whims in the gentle nothing. She didn’t care for the ponderings, she no longer felt the tribunal of mental impulse of “what was I meant to do next?”, “what was that scroll”, instead she surrendered to oblivion’s silence.
Time slipped for awhile. She slept and needed for nothing, no impulse of thought. Not a single inclination of responsibility of pulls to move on. The luxurious empty was full and so quiet.
Had she not felt the ripple, her story would have ended right there, in nothingness.
There was a rustling in the warmth and comfort, inspection? Observation?
It felt like something calling her home….caring for her wellbeing. Just a single tone way out over the vista, a distress call. It was just enough to unsettle her.
“Damn him,” she hissed into the silence, her voice swallowed by the astral nothingness. Amun—that decrepit old warlock—had gotten the drop on her. She had underestimated him, and now she was paying the price. He’d blasted her out of her own body with ancient magic she barely recognized, and now she was adrift in a place she had no control over, no knowledge of. She had no training in the astral plane—this wasn’t like the dimensions she had sidestepped into before. There was no familiar structure to latch onto, no foothold. She clenched her fists, though the action felt meaningless without her physical form to ground her.
Adrestia tried to focus, to summon what little knowledge she had of the astral plane. She needed an anchor, something to guide her back, but here, everything was fog—endless and indifferent. She had been trained to walk between worlds, but those worlds had always made sense. Here, there were no rules, no clear path forward. She was adrift, and she hated it.
As she drifted, Adrestia noticed a shimmer in the space around her. The astral plane, though a place of infinite possibilities, seemed to shift and reflect parts of her back to herself. She saw three figures, fragmented yet whole, dancing at the edges of her vision. Three faces, three states of being—each one a part of her, but none of them fully understood until this moment.
The first was herself as she had always known: Adrestia the Enforcer. She stood proud, fierce, a warrior and a tool of the gods she served. Her armor gleamed, but it was not the bright armor of a hero. It was dark, worn by time and conflict. Her eyes were sharp, but there was a hollowness in them, a fatigue born from servitude. She had always been a weapon, wielded by others, guided by unseen hands. Now, in this endless silence, she saw the truth—her life had never been her own. The weight of her chains felt heavier now than ever before.
To her right hovered the symbiote shade of Hastur, in the material plane, if only she could reach it?
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Yet, independently, she wondered why? She could decide for herself without the psychic coercion and chatter.
She saw the substance of it, a shadow of herself in ways, yet something more grotesque. It was her reflection, but twisted and corrupted—its face contorted into an eternal snarl, its eyes darkened and filled with an ancient malice that wasn’t hers. This was the piece of her that had been bound to Hastur, the harbinger of decay. The symbiote had coiled itself around her soul like a parasite, feeding on her strength, on her fear, on her emptiness of memories that could drive her, it drove her like a yoke drives the dire oxen, a stunned beast for Hastur’s burden, the Spire’s fragility. Here, in this plane, she saw the ooze for what it truly was—a leech, a force that had used her as much as she had used it.
And then, in the depths of the plane, she saw Gaia’s presence, anchored deep within her, like a root system that extended far into her core. It was gentle, patient, and ancient, but also untouchable, a force of the natural world that had always been with her, but rarely spoken. Gaia’s presence was silent but watching, a primordial entity tied to life itself, to growth, and to cycles that moved beyond mortal understanding. This was the balance that had been within her all along, but she had never truly listened.
She longed to be soothed by it whilst she floundered in the dark, stumbled in self-questioning, suffocated in this open freedom all at once. Gaia, the Mother could counsel and lend wisdom, calm the Shade’s barking to whispers and makes less consequential. The root of the Mother was gone from this abyss as well and Adrestia knew it would seek her out if it could.
Yet seeing of her own volition these three pieces of herself, for the first time uninhibited by their influences, was a moment of staggering clarity. She felt the edges of her soul that had been dulled by servitude sharpen again, the murky motivations of her past becoming clearer. The choices she had made—the missions, the hunts—had they ever been hers? Or had she been nothing more than a tool, passed from one colossal force to another?
The silence should have been comforting, but instead, it was enormous. Adrestia’s mind raced and the sanguine sound screamed in her head. She had no reinforcements, no clear destination. Here, in the astral plane, she had nothing to rely on but herself—and she realized with a jolt that she had no idea how to escape. She had always sidestepped between dimensions with purpose, with guidance. But now, without Hastur, without Gaia, without her usual foothold, she was truly lost.
Her breath quickened, though it felt more symbolic than real in this place. “Think. Think!” she growled, trying to pull herself together. But the vastness of the astral plane swallowed her frustration. She had been trained to walk between worlds, but those worlds had always made sense. Here, there were none.
Still, beneath the frustration and panic, something stirred. A presence, faint, a whispering force that didn’t belong to Hastur or Gaia. It felt different—subtle, but insistent. Something in the plane was nudging her, not with malevolence, but with purpose. It was as though this force was guiding her, subtly pushing her thoughts in a direction she hadn’t considered. There was this notion, a pull and an overwhelming sensation of someone being concerned for her, but not the rooted Mother. Someone close, but unseen….
Adrestia felt the confusion begin to shift, replaced by a flicker of determination. She was not without purpose, not yet. And as much as she hated the thought of following a force she didn’t understand, it was better than drifting, helpless and powerless.
She took one last glance at the three faces around her—herself, Hastur’s shade, Gaia’s root—and with a final breath of the astral calm, she let herself be pulled by the force, the whispering guide, and began her slow drift toward another presence, and she was desperate. “Focus on me, call me to your attention. I need your help!”.
Adrestia floated in the astral void, trying to quiet the rising tide of panic, when a sound—a whispering chant—broke through the silence. At first, it was faint, barely more than a hum at the edges of her perception, but as she focused, the sound became clearer. It wasn’t just a chant—it was Amun. The grizzled warlock's voice, rasping and ancient, carried across the void, threading through the fabric of the plane like a dark incantation.
Her gaze sharpened as she drifted, and there, shimmering in the endless distance, she saw it: a tether, a lifeline of energy stretching from Amun, who lay somewhere in the physical realm, to… someone else. The tether pulsed with a faint glow, throbbing with purpose, and Adrestia’s mind raced. Who? Who was the warlock calling to? She strained her senses, and though she couldn’t hear the full conversation, she caught enough to understand that Amun’s words weren’t meant for her—they were for someone else, someone important.
Abe.
Abe, the childe. The name floated through her mind, foreign but not entirely unknown. She didn’t know what he was or what role he played in the larger cosmic conflict, but the force that tugged at her now told her that he was important. Perhaps he was her way out. Perhaps he was her next target. Whatever the reason, the pull toward him felt real—more real than anything else in this void.
The name whispered across her thoughts, carried by the unseen forces that seemed to drift through this plane. It wasn’t a name she recognized, but the tether between Amun and this mysterious figure was unmistakable. It hummed with significance, as though Amun’s entire focus was centered on reaching this Abe, on binding him to whatever dark purpose the warlock had set in motion.
But the tether was strange, unfamiliar, almost dreamlike. Her awareness slid along it, deeper, beyond the mere connection of two souls. The further she looked, the more the tether shifted, fraying at the edges, as if the strands of it were written into reality itself. And suddenly, she understood.
Abe wasn’t just another figure. He was something more—not just a child, but the reader of the story she inhabited. She felt it as a truth woven into the essence of things, a revelation that reshaped her perception. Abe was the observer and, by extension, the architect, capable of reshaping the very fabric of her world but unaware of his own potential.
As the realization settled over her, the void around her quivered. A barrier, some limit fractured, a boundary dissolving in her mind’s eye. She felt the pull forward, a new horizon opening up before her, a path that hadn’t existed moments before. Her vision shifted, became layered. She could see the threads that formed the story itself—atoms of perception, woven into the frame of her existence. They weren’t immutable; they were permeable. If she chose, she could cross through them.
Abe was there, waiting to be discovered, unaware of the power he held. She could feel herself shifting forward, eyes set on this path, the tether leading her toward a new forward. The boundary that separated her story from his was weakening, and as she moved, she felt the whispers of Amun’s chant urging her onward. The story was no longer hers alone. It was a bridge, one she was going to try to cross.