Marjorie looked down at her own cooling corpse and thought that she should feel something at the moment. After all, she was looking at her own body after literally dying while walking down the street. At least she wasn't hit by a truck or something similarly ghastly, but at the same time it had been terrifying in the moments she felt life drain away from her. But now she felt...nothing. Not even amusement or incredulity at the randomness of her end, or even sadness over the fact that her life was over. Marjorie liked to think that she i-was a practical woman, but somehow that didn't seem to be the reason why she was so calm.
It rather felt like something was leeching away her every feeling and come to think of it the world itself seemed to fade with it. The street and the town seemed to have mostly become an indistinguishable grey mass, all that remained real was her corpse. And you can only stare at your dead body for so long before you would want to turn away. So, Marjorie turned to see if there was anything else to look at that moment, and then it happened. Almost as if the world had waited for her to come to terms with it, out of what? Politeness? Deference? Sorrow on her behalf? She couldn't guess, but for one moment she stood there looking at the place she died, and in the next there was nothing. A blank void without even the dark there, she was the only real thing in a sea of pure nothingness. Her soul "body" was the only thing she could see if she tried to look, beyond that there was simply nothing to see.
Marjorie felt almost like she was drifting through an ocean rather than falling from a cliff if one could use such an analogy to describe the feeling of sinker deeper into nothing. And where she previously had felt nothing now she definitely felt something: mind-numbing terror. Maybe it was something akin to thermodynamics, that she had to come with an equal and opposite reaction to the sheer amount of nothing around her. Or perhaps it was due to the strang leeching sensation having stopped, so her soul was free to feel once again. Ultimately, Marjorie didn't particularly care about the whys and hows of the situation as she was busy shrieking at the nothingness.
"AFHEWUIFHWIEFHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO! NoT this! No! I didn't want to die! I don't want to disappear! Take me back! I want...I want"
She didn't go hoarse exactly because that would imply she had lungs that could be tired out, or that air existed in this place. Rather her sheer terror at the nothingness engulfing her rendered her mute. A cold feeling spread through her body like a hand grasping around her heart and she let it sink in.
You are going to die Marjorie...No you are dead, you are going to disappear. This is oblivion...you will be nothing, all that you have done and that you have been will be nothing. YOU ARE DEAD AND THE WORLD DOESN'T CARE. There is no heaven, there isn't even a hell...you are just going to be nothing.
Her panicked thoughts raced as she let the cold despair wrap itself around her like a spider's web. She continued to sink through the nothingness and it started leaving its marks on her. All that she could see previously were her own "body" but before her eyes it started to fade, her hands disappeared first and then her arms. It took maybe a minute or a century before the rest of her faded with it, all that was left of her was a glimmering spark of consciousness sinking through the void. Marjorie couldn't even scream anymore and it was that which finally shattered her.
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A floating shard that had once been a person continued to "sink" down through Oblivion, with each passing eon/nanosecond it shrank in on itself. The barest glimmer of thoughts were the only signs that there had once been something more to the shard, and yet something noticed it. Marjorie returned to herself as she felt something where there had once been pure oblivion. The vastness of the end pushed aside as a presence reached out to touch her almost like it was saying: well hello there. But no words accompanied the touch, but Marjorie was not inclined to let that stop her.
"He-hey, hello? Are you there? Is anyone there? Can you save me?! Please...I don't want to be-"
Marjorie stopped her feeble attempts at communication as she didn't hear a reply. Rather she felt one as the touch of the presence intensified around her soul shard.
"Why?"
The reply stumped her, she wasn't exactly sure what the why was in response to. Her words? Her wish to not become nothingness? The general state of her existence? She tried to summon up the mental wherewithal to form a response, but before she could even begin to reply the touch pulsated again.
"What. Will. You. Give?"
And to that, she had only one response really, unlike the first question she definitely knew the answer to this one.
"Everything! EVERYTHINGEVERYTHINGEVERTYHING! I WILL GIVE YOU WHATEVER YOU WANT!"
Marjorie did not let anything foolish or simplistic like pride or dignity stop her from launching into a sobbing barrage of begging, pleading, supplication, and even prayer at the presence. It didn't bother to respond like before, she felt almost like a door into herself opened after she answered it and through that, the presence sank deeper into her shard. Lodged into her soul it then began to pull and she practically flew through the void that she had spent an eternity and a half sinking through. Like a vast and barbed tentacle wrapped around a fish, she was pulled through the Ocean of Fragments and into something.
As she was pulled her shard grew back into a full soul once again, and with it, she could finally see the presence. A liquid limb seemingly made out of mercury and blood was wrapped around her form, spikes sinking into her "flesh" but before she could scream at the sensation she was finally pulled out. For the barest of moments, she saw a vast being of feathers and talons with attached limbs made out of blood and mercury sticking out from between the plumage. A vast avian head looked down at her form for a moment, before the limb that had pulled her to safety dropped her into a fire.
Marjorie didn't scream at the pain of her soul being burned by the ephemeral fire, she could feel the fire not only burning her "body" but her very identity itself. Childhood stories and events were ashed in moments, her friends and family withstood the flames longer but they too disappeared. Only the barest sliver of her identity was left and still, those were charred at the least. Marjorie didn't scream as her body melted and she felt massive taloned limbs hammering and bending the mass that was her into something else entirely. She didn't scream as her new form was doused in a thick liquid and then set aside to cool. Because all of these things paled in comparison to the sensation of having been ground down by Oblivion. No, Marjorie laughed because the first time in her new life she finally felt something. That laughter accompanied her as the new Conquest Seed was dropped into the ethereal space between realities, and the nameless thing flew towards its new destiny.