Alpha and Omega† ⋆ ☾ ⋆ †THE BEGINNING AND THE END

minor ♚ detailsas above ☨ ✵ ☨ so below

✵❝They whisper ancient legends of ultimate chaos, at whose center sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things. It is encircled by its flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, who are lulled by the thin, monotonous piping of a demoniac flute held in nameless paws.❞~ H.P. LOVECRAFT, "THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK"

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♚kαπετάνιος❝When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly; in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped earth of her mantle of beauty, and poets sang no more save of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward-looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone away forever, there was a woman who travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces to where the world's dreams had fled.❞― Azathoth, H.P. Lovecraft

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The Lucky Black Cat
Gomorrah

No One Embraces Sin
Quite Like Nekani

gomorrah, formerly known as the lucky black cat, is marisol dahlia's entertainment and burlesque plaza, located in nekani, Italy (formerly Sicily).more details on the lbc can be found here.GUIDELINES AT GOMORRAH- adults only. children, or patrons resembling children, will be turned away and permanently barred entry to the plaza.- black tie attire is a requirement for entry. all patrons, male or female, are asked to come in their finest, or don't come at all.

Employees

escortsthe escorts that serve at the lucky black cat gomorrah are predominantly magical beings that came through the mirror parallax. outfitted in elegant finery, each of them carries a weapon on their person, save for the witches and magical creatures that can defend themselves without the use of one.the escorts each determine their own hourly rates, though there are limitations put in place so that they cannot demand too much of their clients. that said, the escorts also reserve the right to refuse service to anyone; they are widely independent and have a great window for control over their own lives and careers, assuming their rolls as escorts become their lifestyle.roles- bartenders: operate the bars within the plaza on the first floor; they do have freedom to wander the building, and frequently cycle through the bars that the lbc gomorrah hosts.- chefs and restaurant staff: There is a broad and rather worldly selection of restaurants in the plaza's first floor, though the chefs are certainly centralized to whatever spot they're placed. each restaurant throughout the lbc gomorrah. while they are all high end and usually hosting a fairly long list of reservations, each restaurant possesses their own special theme and cuisine; italian, japanese, french, marine, middle eastern, brazilian, and a single american-style steakhouse, as well as indirectly themed restaurants such as an ice-cream parlor, experimental and educational spaces, and even a gourmet kitchen where the dancers and escorts can go to make their own meals.- escorts: as implied, the escorts are the main attraction at the lbc gomorrah. they are one of the primary money-makers for the company as a whole, and wander the entire building freely. all of the escorts are outfitted in their absolute finest, dressed from head to foot in elegant finery. black tie, as expected of such a high-class establishment.each of the escorts possess their own special spaces on the third floor, each one uniquely suited to each one. they have free control of their own price ranges (within reason), and have a great deal of control of their lives within the lbc gomorrah. their primary job is the seduction and 'treatment' of the patrons that visit, though they also provide less salacious services similarly to the sweethearts.- dancers: the dancers, whom can all be found on the second floor (where most of the more frivolous bar scenes are found), are one of the cornerstones to the success of the lbc gomorrah. marisol outfits all of them in dahlia family lingerie, and they have freedom to wander the entirety of the dance area. each of these lovely creatures have several different available locations for their performances, all to be located on the second floor.- disk jockeys: as the name implies, the disk jockeys select the music and manage lighting on the dance floors throughout the lbc gomorrah. They are, in many ways, active masters of ceremonies, as they also set the mood and tone of events and are meant to be the spokespeople of the lbc gomorrah within the assorted dancing spaces. the djs are not limited to any section of the entirety of the building and can be located on all of the floors.- sweethearts: as the only fully-fledged secretarial and dedicated "decency" workers, the sweethearts travel freely throughout the lbc gomorrah, working as waitresses, desk management, and caregivers. the sweethearts are primarily first aid, servers, greeters, and hostesses. they don't partake in any of the salacious activity that happens within the lbc gomorrah, save for the occasional request for cuddles - special sweethearts, which wear collars, are all selected to provide cuddling and other minor 'relationship fluffs' to patrons that request them.- security: every employed body that walks the halls of the lbc gomorrah holds some sort of weapon or brandishes some kind of power or ability that they know will keep them safe. the dedicated security team within the lbc gomorrah is a heavily armored troop of the strongest nekani's streets can offer. often made up of them men and women adopted from a rough lifestyle - and that are still looking to cause a little trouble - they're marisol's number one problem solver. they get paid handsomely enough to behave themselves, and even better if they dedicate themselves.many of the security team are promoted to the city militia, once they've earned enough to pay their way into an apartment of their own. the security team operates under a command-only freedom from restriction; whenever they are called, their one and only job is the permanent disposal of unwanted pests.

The Floors

1: the foyer and the plazawithin the foyer, you meet the secretary and security team for the building, who will grant you entry after a swift identification check and enrolling you into membership with the lbc gomorrah.the plaza is the central hub of all of the lbc's gomorrah's larger financial functions. home to a host of bars and restaurants, it also features several lingerie shops in a mall-esque monster of a cathedral. directly down the center of the first floor, which is scaled to a twenty foot ceiling, is a floor-to-ceiling sheet fountain that runs the length of the building. the lip of the fountain hosts violet leds, which ignite the floor rather than a traditionally lit ceiling. indeed, a consistent underglow is a key feature of most of the lighting in the plaza, save for the candlelit tabletops within the restaurants and upon bartops.the first floor is where the sweethearts and kittens thrive, many of which make their livings off of the less salacious activity of the escort lifestyle.2: the dance floorthis floor is a neon journey through the lbc's gomorrah's finest neon lights, soft smoke, and elegant dancers. for both erotic and exotic dances alike, all the way down to partner dances, there are dancefloors throughout this level to suit anyone's needs.each club hall includes its own minibar and waitress staff to attend to any requests you have for the downstairs staff, as well as dancers and instructors for those who wish to learn.this floor does not feature any escorts, but the dancers are numerous and more than friendly.3: xxx suitesas suggested, the name says it all. the xxx suites, otherwise known as the vip suites and voyeur rooms, are the playrooms used by the members of the lbc gomorrah and the escorts that they choose to hire for that evening. each room features its own theme and decor, all designed uniquely for the specific escorts that run them. from the lighting to the artwork, each escort has full creative control of their space - even if they don't have full control while they're in it.there are also voyeur suites, designed specifically for those who wish to look but not touch. designed for couples and groups alike, the suites follow the same codes of ethics and cleanliness that the rest of the rooms do. these rooms feature a number of different items usable by those who wish to use them; as opposed to the specified suites, they host similarly set items to suit the needs of the users, such as swings, shibari rope, boxes of condoms, etc.every suite features a hidden security button to be used whenever patrons take things too far; the floor is lined with security guards who are on constant patrol; the guards dedicated to the suites are exclusive to that floor and their sole purpose is the permanent disposal of unwanted pests.the suites do have strictly enforced rules, as follows:1. consent is key. if an escort says no at any point, patrons are expected to take them at their word and stop unless that person explicitly provides permission otherwise.2. the suites are to remain as clean as possible post-encounter. regardless of what kinds of substances are spilled, all must be cleaned by someone - and it should be the person who made the mess, no?3. merging rooms with other escorts comes at an extra charge to the club in addition to the escorts individual payments, which is to be collected up front prior to any encounters with the escorts in question.these rooms also serve a dual purpose as the escorts' living quarters; through a secondary secret door hidden in the back of the room, there is a second private apartment for each and every person that works under marisol's care.4: penthouseonly accessible via a specialized security card that is exclusively for use within the elevator, the penthouse is a magically-gated pocket dimension that acts secondarily as marisol's apartment. carved entirely out of jet-black onyx, the unnatural measurements of her home fit only thanks to her dimensional manipulation. looked down on by a permanently suspended full moon, the space is isolated from the rest of the real world. it's inaccessible to any outside force that does not have the specified security card or a passkey to enter, purely because - well, she knows. she always knows.the penthouse features its own floor-to-ceiling waterfall against the back wall of the living room, stark white furniture to contrast sharply against the onyx floors and walls. the entire left side of the building is opened to a large balcony overlooking the tyrrhenian sea. the balcony is large enough to feature a large swimming pool carved out of the rock, five feet deep to be precise, while a glass balcony railing protects the witless from falling from such a height.in the back of the building is the bedroom, which is equally as spacious and features a massive ornate king-sized bed, complete with an overarching canopy and soft leds lit beneath. the bathroom, similarly designed to the pool, is also carved out of pure onyx. the tub is the size of a small pool on its own, four feet deep and six by six feet in dimension. a skylight in the ceiling pours down a constant stream of pale moonlight to illuminate the room with the aid of candles.this is marisol's safe space, her home, her haven, it's where she goes to contemplate, to sleep, to thrive.

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Nekani, Italy

The Mirror Parallax:
The First SongPart One: Achamoth Consumes

It had been within the days of the summertime Celebration of the Old Ones that they accidentally summoned such wrath upon them. For many long centuries, the magical community had toyed with the books and incantations of the Eldritch. Summoning abominations for sport, praising Eldritch Deities to incite their wrath with poorly laid magical traps, and they had truly wondered could have summoned such evil upon them. Dancing and clamoring on, jeering on the joyful and jovial cries of celebrations, it was nigh impossible for the citizenship of the Mirror Parallax - a world previously of no name - to note the crawling darkness that loomed in their lands. The poison that they had invited into their home.It started as a trickle of blight. Plants wouldn't grow when the summer crops were sewn. Rains did not fall even though clouds populated the sky in thick layers of dark blankets. Over time, birds stopped to sing and leaves stopped growing upon the trees. Rot and decay infected the lands, choking the growths of spring to nothing. Farmers suffered at the hands of poverty and starvation, having nothing to trade and nowhere to turn. The soil was blackened and smelled of blood and sulfur; they knew that there would be no harvest that year. Even the oceans saw the damages that laid waste to their reefs, the waters murky and polluted to the degree that even the merfolk sought escape from the darkness that slowly took their home from them.The air was putrid and carried the scents of rot. Days that were once sunny and bright now seemed bleak and empty; the only color that was visible in the world was the magic of priests, witches, and wizards alike, all singing their praises to their ancient gods, begging for their salvation. The cries of the taunters of the Mirror Parallax fell upon deafened ears that cared not for the fate that they'd so recklessly invited upon themselves. Their gods - eldritch and magical alike - had turned their backs on them. The blight feasted upon the land, and over time, civilizations vanished into the dirt.⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀ PART TWO: THE NUCLEAR CHAOS THRIVESAfter a century, there was no food left. Homes and villages had been raided for what supplies could be gathered, and many a soldier found families in hovel holes, grasping one another before their final moments had taken them. In the wake of the death of their home, even looking to other worlds had been inconceivable. Though science had invited space travel and beyond, they were nowhere near prepared to settle new planets, let alone move their civilization as a whole. Science was not their ally.On the shoulders of the graces of a family of changelings, magic very well was.

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“There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold; vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy with perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, alighted by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of deeps beyond memory. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted her away without even touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men’s calendars the tides of far spheres bare her gently to join the dreams for which she longed; the dreams that men have lost. And in the course of many cycles they tenderly left her sleeping on a green sunrise shore; a green shore fragrant with lotus-blossoms and starred by red camalotes.”― "Azathoth" H.P. Lovecraft

Rome, 1478
The Establishment of Nekani

Upon the shoulders of the 14th Century, the Catholic faith and its dictatorial papacy had regained a great deal of heavy gravity in Rome. With the violent Crusades placed under way by Isabella's rule, Europe was in an upheave.Prior to Isabella's staggering influence, it was not uncommon to see the magical and human communities intermingling. However, after religion became a key function to the daily lives of the humans, many of the magical creatures that lived in Europe at the time came under heavy scrutiny. Their physical differences - as all humans were to be made in God's image - genetically marked them to be considered unholy beings. Their magics were shunned as witchcraft, magical beasts were considered monsters, and almost as a whole the Mirror Parallax community were regarded as the Devil's abominations. Once Isabella's Inquisition came hand in hand with segregation, the church excommunicated the magical community as a whole, eliminating families in troves and shunning them as evil. Men in dulled silver armor came in swarms to impart 'martial law', rounding up magical beings for execution. Death camps became quickly common, filled with the bodies of magical beings, humanoid, animal or otherwise.Creatures like werewolves, mermaids, witches, centaurs, true monsters, vampires, and beyond were killed, maimed, encamped, and forcibly removed from cities all over Europe. Eventually pushed south into Italy, they found their way to Rome. For a short while, the city and its citizens accepted the new citizenship among their own. However, slowly but surely, the city became split in opinion and in compassion. One half fell in love with the haunting Hallows Eve creatures they'd been told to fear, and learned that they had to offer. On the other hand, the other half of the city hated the magic community and everything they had to offer. The elitist caste of the citizenship of Rome banded together to ostracize them further, forcing them back into segregation over and over again. Eventually, Rome's people became thoroughly divided and the Island of Sicily provided asylum to the various beings that spilled into Southern Rome. The island was quickly liquified as humans left in droves to provide space for the new residents. Soon, Nekani was established in its place as a safe haven for all of Europe's magically gifted and spread further north, eventually swallowing up the waterway between the islands and absorbing Messina and moving towards Naples.The Dahlia family had been renowned for centuries for their business practices and for their political pull in the magical community. Azazel and Scarlett Dahlia had, for many decades prior to the crusades, had independently run incredibly successful businesses. Azazel had spent the better part of his life as a tailor and warlord, making clothing for his family and friends and underlays and padding for armor. Their empire had grown long before the religious reign of the tyrant Isabella and was the financial basis for a large number of the operations that the magical community participated in. That said, Azazel Dahlia was the first to take it upon himself to purchase a new building in lower Rome to employ as many of the bodies of Nekani as possible. They dug out a basement for the building, which was converted to living quarters for all of the men, women, and children who worked there until they could find or build their own homes. The children were tasked with rolling spools of thread while the parents did the more tedious tailoring work. Scarlett opened her arms to the women and men who were most comfortable with their physiques, placing them in her brothel as additional bodies, servers, and even caretakers for those who came purely for the comforts of loving company.The Dahlia family eventually built a building similar to a hotel, providing familial housing in a monstrous, three story complex. The two offered three full meals a day, as well as a production program for those who wished to help with the feeding process. Not only that, but Scarlett was able to finally build her own establishment, opening the first known brothel in Nekani. She was the head mistress of a troupe of more than thirty women and equal numbers of men, all outfitted in their most attractive attire to draw the gazes of the masses. With these efforts, Nekani finally started to see the birth of a true economy. Azazel slowly started moving clothing production from one spectrum to another, transitioning from armor and finery to lingerie and concubine's dresses.At no point did the citizens of Rome offer their assistance. Only a small group of humans dared venture into the land of Nekani, the tiny portion of Italy that they were able to claim all their own.Over time, the Dahlia family came to lead in not only the rebuilding of the city, but also in the new politics. Azazel and Scarlett Dahlia became representatives of the magical community through the support that they provided, and they humbly used their positions to further build Nekani and develop a livable home out of it. Over time, the Dahlia family funded the construction of an enormous magical gateway that would open a path between Nekani and the magical world, hence allowing more and more magical creatures to come and go at their leisure. In this way, they built and shaped Nekani's economy, offering up an entire body of magnificence in character and culture that was as yet unknown to the human world.More to the point, the erotic community branched off of the fruits of Scarlett and Azazel's labor had earned the community total excommunication. The church as a whole denounced the entire family, as well as the magical creatures that lived in Nekani. The decree released was as follows:Those who participate in the residency and practices of the unholy demons found in the City decreed 'Nekani' are hereby denounced in the eyes of god and thereby renounce their entry to the Holy gates of Heaven.

Villa Ada, 1899
Prologue

For many a year, it had been beyond common practice in the magical community to worship and consult deities from a broad variety of ever dwindling holy realms, from Evangelical Christianity, all the way to Egyptian pantheons and Greek panels of holy judges. The realm of medical science was only just beginning to become more prominent and technologically advanced, and while they were improving greatly, the growth of the medical community was not nearly enough to combat the disease that plagued the Dahlia family.In the creeping hours of dawn, the thunder of footsteps in the underbrush crumbled leaves and twigs in their stead. Hastily slashed dash marks led the way deeper and deeper into the woodlands. Two lone creatures trampled through the growth upon the forest floor as they ran and prayed for the life of their child. Scarlett had been pleading with Azazel for the past hours to halt in his pursuit and mourn their chilling offspring, but he was far gone from himself. He didn't stop. Not even when Scarlett tripped over a gnarled root that stretched forth to her, hidden from her sight under a mess of crumbling dead leaves. She hit the ground with a shuddered cry, and her voice echoed through the woods when she called to her beloved.He could not hear her.His rush had carried him deep into the woods, far past the audibility of his wife's cries. Stillness of a different kind had met him like a threshold of ice, chilling him to the bone once he entered a small clearing. That clearing had a neat arrangement of stones, all laid out into a summoning circle. Black crystals jutted out from the rocks, newly formed post-arrangement. The dark magics of the ritual had taken hold before he'd even pulled the crumbled page of the spell forth from his pocket. Azazel Dahlia dropped to his knees in the center of that cursed magic circle, holding the still body of his child close against his chest, nearest his heart."Don't worry, little one. I'm going save you," he whispered, "I promise."Then, when the sun just barely peaked its head above the horizon, casting light over the canopy, Azazel began chanting. He remained in vigil mantra for much of the day, drawling on into night. The cold had numbed his fingers, his toes. He couldn't move his lips very well, but her forced himself to keep going for the sake of his still blood.Another day and night, he continued to pray. The paper was gripped so hard in his cold hands that he was sure he'd tear it if he moved them even a little bit.“Thee I invoke, the Bornless One.""Thee, that didst create the Earth and the Heavens.""Thee, that didst create the Night and the Day,""Thee, that didst create the Darkness and the Light.""Thou art ASAR UN‐NEFER; whom no man hath seen at any time.""Thou art IA‐BESZ; Thou art IA‐APOPHRASZ""Thou hast distinguished between the Just and the Unjust.""Thou didst make the Female and the Male.""Thou didst produce the Seed and the Fruit.""Thou didst form Men to love one another and to hate one another.""I invoke thee, the terrible and invisible God that dwellest in the Void place of the Spirit."The ritual he performed was one that even the necromancers had warned him of... summoning an eldritch god of any kind was a horror to behold. However, doing so to restore his child to him for a mere boon... well, Scarlett had called it lunacy. He had called it love and hope - and quite possibly agreed with his wife. But the time for remorse had long passed once the cold gripped him and caused his muscles to lock and cramp. By this time, his nose had lost feeling altogether. And he was on his knees to beg for life, staring at the corpse of his child as it turned from pink to blue, to soft grey. He quickly shoved his hands into his pocket to withdraw the last item he had needed; a small vial with a tiny label, scrawled in messy handwriting with the prayer of the ancient god Azathoth. Inside, a deep crimson glow emitted from the vial.He had never wanted to turn to such extremes, but his love, his family, relied on the survival of their child. For without Marisol, they would be hopeless and dying. She gave her mother the motivation that it took for her to step out the door every morning, only to come home more exhausted and raggedly worn than the night before. Since the crusades swept the land, life had been a never ending cycle of horrors for the Dahlia family until Marisol was born. Her death would no doubt mean theirs as well.Only when soft tendrils of darkness twisted around both idle bodies and purple light shown from his daughter's eyes and mouth did he halt entirely in his speech. Snaking tentacles of shadow, radiating evil of their own design, crept through the vicinity, coiling around trees and slipping through the plant life as easily as a fog. If a fog had full motor control, that is. Its very aura radiated horrors unspoken and Azazel was immediately reminded of the consequences of his grand mistake. The clawing fingers of intrusive whispers shattered his mind. An array of images passed through his mind's eye and effectively caused him more fear than hope, as well as a healthy amount of gut-wrenching nausea. Flashes of visions passed through the theater of his mind, portraying horrors unspoken... all of them coiling around the entirety of the community that was his people. Writhing at the outstretched command of the papacy. But these visions were fleeting and left him with a catatonically empty feeling. It didn't last, though, as it was quickly filled with dread and terror that had almost certainly stolen any remaining motion from his stiff body."Yield to my power, Ye who summons."Azazel searched about him to find the source of the voice, but it was like a worm, drilling itself into his head, planting thoughts and speech directly into his mind without so much as a hint of effort. It painted him so and made his vision blot, but he withstood it for the sake of his child."Please," he finally cried, throwing his hands into the air as if grasping for the disembodied voice, "please save my baby's life."Slowly that evil crept, incapsulating him in shadow. Otherworldly cold bored into his very bones, chilling him from the inside out to the extent that he'd considered his night in the woods to be warm in comparison. Azazel gripped gently at the fabric of his sleeves as if to pull his shirt tighter around his body, but to no avail. He could feel the air around him become stiff and stale and a horrendous smell of rot and sulfur filled his nose."Is she already dead?"Azazel sat back on his haunches for a long moment, clutching his hands in his lap in tight fists. He didn't dare move, lest he risk harming the magic circle before him. Finally, he surrendered to the question, praying that it would not heavily influence the decision, "Yes. She... passed in the night. Two days ago." A considerable pause haunted him as he waited for a reply. The stench of rot had overridden anything else that one could smell in the area; he couldn't even apprehend the earthy scent of the damp forest floor. That horrid rot was a scent akin to fermenting meat."Very well."It was all too simple. The cold dispersed and dissipated, the air grew warmer. Scarlett stumbled into the clearing with her crying husband, matted, dirty, and shaken, and collapsed to her knees beside him, staring down at their daughter.That night, an infant scream echoed through the dense body of the forest.An explosion of purple light surrounded the body of the baby when she first cried out, but the god that had stretched forth had all but disappeared. Azazel took his child up into his arms, clutching her close as warmth again took her chilled skin. Slowly but surely, color returned to her features. The parents never would have known that her original soul never returned to her, had it not been for the telltale twist of smoky violet in what had previously been strikingly golden eyes, as if her magics lived in her very irises. Yet even as color came, some went, draining away from her hair till it was stark white and stripping the sunlight from her eye's originally gold hue to lilac.The prayer Azazel gripped so insistently combusted of its own accord into a handful of scorching black flame within his clutches. But the man was mindless of the pain as he observed the same eerie purple glow in the eyes and mouth of his child. But the signs of the illness she suffered were gone. All of them. Her once tiny, frail frame had filled out with the muscles of a healthy baby. Instead of hollow, pale patches of smooth skin, she had warm and pink cheeks with drool dotting her lips - lips that were commonly chapped and peeling. All that lingered was the darkness in her eyes and the unsettling nothingness, the vastness of everything that he could feel boiling just under the surface. Her unhindered potential, hidden away in the darkness of her form. For within, the living soul trapped inside that infant body was not Marisol's original soul. It was Azathoth itself; a shattered rendition of the god's body and soul.Marisol's empty infant corpse had been a very convenient way for Azathoth to unleash the fullest extent of its power in physical form. She was born into magic, designed to be a catalyst of power and strength. Her body was built for change, constantly altering even now, tiny hairs coming and going and scales dancing across her skin for just a moment before they'd fade again. Everything about the child brought before the outer god had been designed as a vessel - a vessel that had melted so perfectly with Azathoth's consciousness that it was no longer a vessel at all, but Azathoth's own body. A body that was unlearned, empty of knowledge.The reasons and logic behind Azathoth's choices remain unknown even to itself, for in sealing such a large part of itself inside of an infant child, Azathoth trapped away all of its own memories and severely fragmented itself into blips of its own soul. While Azathoth was capable of attaining these fragments, it was impossible at the time. Limited by the abilities of the physical shell, it had, in essence, become an infant itself. 'It' came to call itself 'her', as its mind was renamed her mind - empty, that of a baby. Thus a great fragmented outer god Azathoth became Marisol Dahlia, the daughter of Azazel and Scarlett Dahlia, forever bound. The body was slow to develop, but was already adapted to the needs of immortality, a trait that one could take with a grain of sugar or salt, either way one swings it.Luck placed Azathoth within a body that was skilled and highly susceptible in maintaining its magics; as was proven through her father's later teachings in the magical arts. As Marisol learned the spells passed down through the Dahlia family, she revealed herself to be incredibly proficient in magic even at a young age, much to the pride of her wary parents. It was estimated by her father though, that with time, she would slowly be able to piece together her soul once more... thus sealing herself once more as Azathoth. He feared that in doing so, it would erase her identity as Marisol. But still, Azazel had a daughter. A living, breathing daughter that laughed and played and carried on as a normal child would.She grew up a normal child, never to know who she truly was. Her life carried out normally as a magical creature, but the beings in her community could always tell that there was something very different about Marisol. They treated it as a gift and attributed the feeling to her charisma and skill; they never dared regard her questioningly. Especially not when the Dahlia Family came to protect their community under the scourge of the church. Certainly not when she created a haven for all of them in her mother's name. As dark as she was, no one ever mentioned or questioned it. They only knew her as good, so how could she ever be anything but?

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Laghetto di Farfalle Danzanti, 1918
Mourning

♕♚♕She couldn't even begin to pull the laces of her skates tight enough. They already cut off her blood flow and made it difficult for her to be able to even walk.The chill in the air had encouraged her to arrive in a thick cotton dress that and a heavy fur cloak that she kept hanging low over her face. She didn't show her eyes. Or any features, for that matter, when she'd crossed the city to run to the lake. She hid herself well, and did so with a spell that was quietly cast beneath her hood to produce an impenetrable shadow. Her features were masked incredibly, almost as if she were wearing another garment. It was fairly obvious that she didn't want to be seen, but if the getup wasn't enough to convince, the spell producing her shadow should have been more than enough, for the shadow on the ice was twisted and mangled beyond the original form of its beholder.Marisol practically flew on the ice. With no one around to get in her way and no one to tell her to stop, she moved like she was the puppet of a goddess; each motion so pristine and precise that you'd have to be fluid as water to even come close. The world could fall away when she was out on the lake, and she truly felt more at peace then than she ever had before. She was the Black Swan, she was the La Bayadère lead, she was a ballroom dancer that needed no partner. But she dreaded being there alone. She didn't feel as beautiful with tears frozen to her cheeks, or with the sting of countless more welling in her eyes.Since she was able to walk, she had spent countless hours out with her mother, sliding across ice patches and riding the smooth surface of the Farfalle Danzanti when it froze over. Every day she spent working with her mother was spent toiling away till the night, but when the two got a day to themselves, they would make more elegant motion, design more complex methods of sliding over its surface. Together, they danced across the lake in joyous rancor while Azazel sat on the sidelines, sketching the scene. Each free moment was dedicated to practicing her art, stretching her muscles, expanding her flexibility to outlive a joy that she'd had since childhood.January 22
Marisol's 19th BirthdayThe fog in front of her breath was especially thick this time of year. Rather than taking it as a warning of the cold, she only ducked her head and pulled the laces tighter, then hung her cloak upon a nearby tree branch. Once the laces were taut, she looped them into bunny ears against her skates. The chill was more severe than it was earlier in the winter. The sting on her nose and the tips of her ears testified as much; three feet of snow piled against the borders of the lakeside. It was only through the ice's absorption of the snow door did Marisol maintain the opportunity for sanctuary.At the edge of the ice, the pale surface shined with the beauty of silver and blue marble, decorated with the clearest water you'd ever seen. In the center, there was an alabaster tree thriving on an island of its own, lingering out in that cold snow against a golden sunset. It took a bit of convincing herself to even step onto the ice, but once she did, she fell right into the smoothness of her motion. Before she knew it, she was off to a steady glide and moving across the ice ring. Marisol was dancing to a tune of her own, moving in smooth, deliberate patterns that somehow soothed her soul.A soul that was ablaze with an empty fire. Her father was still fussing about funeral arrangements.The escorts had all been staying together in the Dahlia mansion with them following Scarlett's passing. The building's doors had been locked, never to open again. Azazel was forced to employ all those that Scarlett left behind. All but Marisol, who'd opted to avoid going home completely for several days after the coroner had taken her away.She couldn't find comfort at home. She found it gliding seamlessly across that vast, chilled expanse. Moving with that soft melody that played on repeat on her mind's turntable. Her father had tried to talk her into going to lunch together to soothe the hurt she felt. To celebrate a birthday that would never feel the same again, to be sure. Marisol opted for a quiet evening on her own, and her father was more than contempt with that. After all... she was just like her mother. You can't cage a free spirit.Thus the small spirals that painted the ice with cuts from her bladed skates. The once smooth ice had since acquired a thin dusting of ice shavings that flew up into the air like snow when she passed. Her motions each a bit faster than before, but more filled with emotion, it had swiftly transitioned from a smooth break from reality to a pure stress relief figure skating extravaganza. She was moving now to forget, rather than soothe. To ignore the tears that pooled in those eyes, daring to burn and crack the ice on her cheeks. So fierce was her motion, that when she finally ground to a halt, it sent a spray of ice across the surface.Her breath was heavy. Silence clung to her, pulling her away now and again to thoughts unheard and untold. Only the sound of footsteps brought her back to reality; she eased her breaths, glancing from one end of the lake to the other.She looked to the bank, where her mother used to stand with open arms. Scarlett wasn't smiling back at her as she used to. No, this time, the grassy field beyond simply gaped open nakedly and exposed... and full of burning candles, laid carefully in vigil by a funeral procession that had silently illuminated the grasses in twilight.Azazel was standing at the ice's edge, holding her coat folded over his arm. Somber eyes told silent apologies as he gripped the gate and approached the ice. In a fashion much unlike Scarlett's, he slid onto the ice on skates of his own, shakily at first and with little grace. But soon, he fell into step, steady and smooth to approach her. He did not speak, but draped the coat over her shoulders to shelter her from the cold. Whether the trees hid her or not from the wind, they did little to stifle the chill that rose from the ice, and he held her hands against his chest to warm them. Much as he did when she was a child, he cupped his palms over her fingers to breathe a hot puff of air onto them.Marisol could feel the tears gathering in her eyes, just as she saw them in his. But they did not fall. Instead, she fell into step beside him on the ice and eased silently towards the raised tree in the center of the lake.Beneath the white branches of a rare white stone pine, the magical beings of Nekani gathered with their candles and their magical lights. A procession of glowing lights moved across the ice together that night, adrift upon a marble cloud towards the pine. Once they reached it, all of them knelt upon the ice, presenting their lanterns. Marisol stood beneath the tree, gazing out upon a thousand blazes of shining starlight upon the ice.The leaves of the tree had shed, leaving only its pale branches reaching to the heavens with naked, spindling fingers. All at once, the lights drifted together to kiss those branches and bring it life anew, illuminated by the soulful lights of Scarlett Dahlia's love. Marisol's magic swept around her in plumes of glimmering purple and black as she approached the tree, pressing a kiss upon the trunk. Bright light encompassed her, and from it came butterflies, all adrift on violet light instead of wings. They soared across the surface of the ice, lighting the swirling, dancing scratches from her skates. Tears slid down her face as she watched them fly westward, towards the blue and purple twilight horizon.Scarlett Dahlia's ashes were carefully dusted into the earth beneath that stone pine tree. Rain came in the weeks to come, and for the first time since Marisol was born, she saw it grow magnificently tall over the course of only a year. Each year after, the tree sprouted brilliant golden leaves that glowed in the evening sunset; a bittersweet end to a soul just as beautiful.

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Palermo Nekani, Italy 1920
The Birth of the LBC

♕♚♕"I was born in Nekani in the year 1899. I was raised in the Skin District, where I lived with my mother and father in Mother's brothel, The Vixen Den. Now, before you get that worried look on your face, I didn't dare touch a man until I was eighteen. I was too young and my mother wouldn't allow it; I was grateful for it. I wasn't ready for a long time, not till I decided that I wanted to gain some personal... experience."The sound of a ballpoint scribbling across parchment was nearly as loud as the ticking of the clock above the office doorframe. Marisol idly nursed at a steaming cup perched upon a crystal saucer. Her kind smile had not done much to quell the concerns of her current company. She was an incomparably intimidating presence, yet kind and welcoming all the same. Surely a thrill for the young author that sat across from her, gripping a small clipboard and a pen. She kept in time with Marisol's story as quick as she could, but the sound of her writing was like nails on a chalkboard to the feline's sensitive ears. She grimaced through her smile, but she bared with it. She'd agreed to the interview, after all."My father was a woefully successful business man. He'd started out with a clothing business, you know. Where he'd make shirts, pants. Underwear were the most popular; he could sell a dozen pair at once. Then he got his hands on French lace and everything changed. He created Dahlia Lingerie, the finest lingerie in all of Italy, and we started to see an enormous change. He brought in a hefty sum of lira on a daily basis for the family to thrive upon - and compete with. My parents were competitive as could be; they always to compete and made a game of trying to see who could earn more money.""You see, mother was a business woman herself. She ran the best damn elite escort service that Italy had known up till that point. Her escorts were highly sought after, very talented, and dear god were they beautiful. Men and women would come from across the seas to taste the nectars that those angels were so famous for. And as any smart child would, I watched so I could learn."Marisol paused to sip her tea only once, then cleared her throat. "Now. Don't you get it twisted even a little bit. I watched age-appropriate activities; furthered my academic knowledge of the world I lived in. I started by learning the business models my parents worked around. The way they handled their employees, the way they conducted themselves. I learned how to improve and how to build. I gathered what I needed from my parents. Now, I'm going to tell you the most important business information I learned throughout all of my years in mother's service.""The Skin District has always been a key to Nekani's success. It is, financially, a very strong portion of the city and has done more than its fair share to help build up the city as a whole around the remains of southern Rome. Back then, with the Skin district providing 'service' to people of any kind, they pulled in enormous amounts of legitimate revenue and slowly began to build up a financial powerhouse. In this way, my mother and father carried an incredible and noble reputation in Nekani for offering what they could, when they could. It was best hospitality that the city could possibly have asked for. That was their business model; Nekani's business model. Good hospitality, on all fronts.""That just left me learning how to be hospitable... and how to manage a business from the clerical end. First, I got used to seeing the others around me nude. Then, I started to take on my mother's paperwork. Learned to do the math, schedule the appointments, pay for the catering, hire the finest of the fine, find the best of the best. Rather than locking myself up with my mother's clients like she wanted me to, I'd join in on sessions with other clients and take lessons from her employees. The men and women that worked under her had incredible advice and they knew exactly what could make a kitten purr. I didn't ever work for my mother as an escort. Now that I think of it, I was more like an assistant, a very, very good assistant." She was smirking, but there was some bitterness lingering in the shadow on her face. "I picked up some more of Mother's tricks of the trade and introduced a very profitable advertising model with my father and his lingerie company.""Then, finally, when I was about eighteen, I started to perform as a Sweetheart and did sit-in's for the men who liked to be watched. I learned quite a bit from mother's girls, I'll admit. I got a grand opportunity to adopt techniques that I'd have never known otherwise.""I learned how Dahlia business works. Eventually, I finally got a bit more brave and I gained some... hands-on experience with the clients. I'm a talented learner, you see, and I became very popular with a small handful of her escorts quite quickly. However, I only took requests on occasion. I was more of eye candy, which the fools were just as happy for. For several months after that, I went and apprenticed with father's seamstresses. I sat with her for hours and hours on end, learning to weave the finest lingerie that Rome has ever seen for BlackLace Lingerie. I can make you the best pair of underwear you've ever worn, and be the first one to take them off of you."The author's eyes snapped up over the edge of the clipboard to stare at Marisol with a slack jaw, then shifted her thighs together nervously in her seat. Her cheeks were cherry red, and once Marisol met her gaze, both eyes were immediately back on her messily scrawled notes. She couldn't bring herself to look up from her notepad; she just nodded and kept on smiling, fingers gripping her pen just a teeny bit tighter.But Marisol had trailed off, looking out the window into the distance. She had only been with her mother for a short few years before her illness took her, and in a bitter twist of irony, was carried away by scarlet fever. Usually, the fever affected children, but her mother had already been weakened by leukemia. If the fever hadn't taken her that year, Marisol was sure that her mother's cancer would have. Her silence was absorbed into the walls and permeated into the entire office. She snapped to attention when she remembered herself and the author waiting patiently for her to continue."Ahem. Anyways... I learned that I could make money off of men staring at beautiful women, women staring at beautiful men, men staring at beautiful men, women staring at beautiful women... even androgyny was something that we thrived around, comfortably and happily. Some of those poor dears simply wanted a caring soul to talk to them.So, when I finally managed to save up enough lira to purchase my own building, many of the initial escorts that I hired were magical creatures from across the Mirror Parallax, like myself and my family. See, the allure of the magical community had been one that even men from the outside had come to see, and it was not a fact lost on me. They were gorgeous, the faeries, the mermaids and mermen. Some of them served more carnal needs, like the burly pride demons and devilish imps and wood elves. But slowly and surely, the business grew in diversity just as it did in customers. It's possible that it was the mixture of all of these interesting and individually magnificent beings that attracted all of those extra customers, but who's to tell for sure? The Lucky Black Cat catered to anyone's needs, regardless of how grossly self-indulgent they were. That made us the hotspot for getting the sweet spot, beloved. The diversity of the crowds exposed myself and my hires to many new kinds of cultures and skills, as well as tricks and tips from foreigners that none of us had ever known about.""The Lucky Black Cat is and always was a haven for relentless debauchery. Men and women from all around the world would come to have a taste of that which they had denounced as 'unholy'. Priests and sinners alike would travel to the Skin district to try and get into the building, try to indulge in the worldly sins that lie beyond those doors. That all paid for the lifestyles of my beloved Cats. We all survived together; the success of Nekani was the success of the Lucky Black Cat, and vice versa. I donated hundreds of millions of lira to the city for repairs, remodeling, rebuilding, and security. The economy stabilized four years following the opening night of the Lucky Black Cat.""Now then... let's see. When I was older, more developed into my womanly form, I began to model my father's lingerie along with the business. Eventually, as my father so proudly told me, women and men alike had been contacting BlackLace Lingerie in hopes of retail purchase. Father got to open several retail stores, all very lovely, I assure you. I started dressing my employees in his lingerie, building up their resumes and my business model. Men, women, those who chose genders and sexualities beyond, I didn't care. If they were comfortable in it, I let them pick their own lingerie from my father's collections to model to the patrons.""Well later on," she said with a soft sigh, grasping at the handle of her tea cup, "Father insisted that I attended a formal business college. So I went off to America to study business and public service at Yale." A sour expression had twisted onto Marisol's face at the mention of her educational career. It clearly left a poor taste in her mouth, though she didn't let it affect her for long. " That itself was an incredibly arduous task because I had to live as a man for the duration of my education. Well, since I'd finished my degree and had been so successful in the lower Skin district, father helped me pay for a building beside the Tiber River so that I could have direct access to the Naval population that docked and frequented the harbor.When we finally celebrated my success, it was after having bought a three-story stone cathedral, previously a Villa owned by an incredibly popular priest that abandoned it once the magical community moved into Southern Rome. I brought my little crew in and we cleaned it up, knocked down a few walls, you know. Rebuilt it all with marble and granite, enormous stone pillars, grand carved staircases, elegant fountains in the lobby and even more in the pool out in the gardens. We let vines and wildflowers grow freely over the architecture; Dryads would come from the Slavic District to tribute gorgeous alabaster stone pines to the front lawn of the Plaza, all of which had metallic foliage that boasted various shades of gold, orange and some even yellow.Inside was just as grand. The first story was the Plaza that you still see now, though it's certainly seen a grand deal of upgrades. It's where we had, and still have, the dance floors, the restaurants, and the bars, all run by employees hired for their specific role. These places were free to visit for all of our patrons, so long as they attended with one of our escorts. A few of the communities from around Europe had wanted to open up restaurants that ended up being... quite high end, actually. Say what you will about us sinners, but we make incredible chefs.The second floor was the stage for all of my beautiful dancers, and the third... well. Those are the Evening Suites. They're designed for the delicate love and care that my attendants provide to our clients, and then there is a set of luxury suites that serve as a lovely, shared home to the dancers, escorts, and other employees that wish to stay there."Marisol had begun to sink back against the cushions a bit more; her tone had softened to a degree of casual conversation, leaving the young author before her leaning in and far more engaged than nervous. She eventually even perked up to ask, 'What about the fourth floor?'. But Marisol waved off the question, "That's just the penthouse; I live up there. Not open to the public and rarely open to visitors.""So anyways... I personally declined to ever take clients of my own; I'm mostly just the captain of the ship, the conductor of the orchestra. I took... and still take lovers out of personal interest. The only services I provide to the patrons are nude photo shoots and occasionally... occasionally making an exception."She finally lifted her tea, then took a slow, steady sip. Her expression suggested content contemplation, which was settled with a decisive sigh. Marisol leaned forward to set her cup and saucer down on the coffee table in front of her, if only to brush back her hair with both hands."Ah, I almost forgot. My father has bequeathed to me, the entirety of BlackLace, the Vixen Den, all of it. The Dahlia legacy."The writer paused. "Ma'am?""My father sat down with me and his lawyer on my eighteenth birthday and bequeathed all of the Dahlia Estate to me. And as the sole heir to the Dahlia fortune, I couldn't say no, now could I? In return, he simply asked that I continue to advertise the underwear that his company produced up until the date of his death or retirement." Marisol sighed, a finger lightly tapping against the delicate porcelain between her fingers. "He gave me my family's whole existence in return for a modeling deal. Isn't that a silly condition?""Ah... I couldn't well say, ma'am," the young writer said timidly, shifting in her seat. "Should we continue?""Oh yes," Marisol said. Her tone had taken quite a turn towards dissonant disconnect, eyes tracing the chain that dangled down her chest. The cold iron of the shackle was a never ending reminder of what she'd been trough. "I suppose it's time to discuss the church and my service in the World Wars."

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Nekani, Italy 1915 - 1943
Enslaved for War

Of the name and abode of this man but little is written, for they were of the waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to know that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, and that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window opened not on the fields and groves but on a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned far out and peered aloft at the small stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive to madness a man who dreams and reads much, the dweller in that room used night after night to lean out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the greyness of tall cities. After years he began to call the slow-sailing stars by name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existence no common eye suspects. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream-haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher’s window to merge with the close air of his room and make him a part of their fabulous wonder.― Azathoth, H.P. Lovecraft⠀ ⠀ꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥꕥ⠀ ⠀
⠀ ⠀ ༺ WORLD WAR I ༻ "Between 1914 and 1918, Europe was further abashed with the weight of the world powers, all crumbling beneath empty threats and idle chatter. There was a great deal of horror employed in those dark times, when hatred and rage seized the land and forced the hand of the European powers to fight. Italy neglected to join the fight, initially. Even though our country was one of the legs of the Triple Alliance, we weren't too keen on joining in a war that didn't serve our interests. Not till the following year, after we'd already negotiated land agreements. Italy entered the war on the side of the Allied Powers, and began to fight against Austria-Hungary along the northern border, including high up in the now-Italian Alps with very cold winters and along the Isonzo river."- Excerpt from Marisol's Manifest⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀★ ⋆ ✧ ⋆ ☾ ⋆ ✧ ⋆ ★⠀ ⠀
"Kneel, girl."Both knees hit cobblestone before she'd managed to move of her own accord, dragged down via the weighted iron chain that held her. The impact was jarring, but Marisol grit her teeth against the pain.She refused to look up into the beady eyes of the cleric that hovered over her - they pierced into her like righteous daggers, staring her down to pass self-righteous judgement. As much as the anger twisted in the pit of her stomach and ate away at her judgment, she knew that he believed it his divine, God-given right to look at her that way. He stared on at her as if she'd killed a hundred men at the footstep of the cathedral that very morning."What a wretched beast. And you're sure that it can fight? I won't waste gear on a buffoon."Marisol cocked her head to the side; surely he had seen her in action before? Against his own people, no less. Perhaps he simply needed one more excuse to degrade her, to which she could only stare at the floor and lock that sour away where a well of suffering and pain beaten into her by the church had boiled and made bitter the depths of her core. His stare was ever pompous, hosting no small amount of displeasure while he circled her forcibly crumbled body. She did't dare look up at him; it was heresy for a witch to look at a man of 'God'."Only the finest, your Grace. She's strong and fast, and we know firsthand that she can fight. We had a lot of trouble getting a hold of this one. Please, observe," came the first chime from Friar Carson - a dark haired man that hovered behind her gripping the chain. It was attached to a heavy iron shackle that clung just a bit too tight around her neck, making each little turn of the head, each swallow, a reminder of her status. His grip was, as expected, one of unnatural strength. The smell of cabbage and potatoes clung to him when he leaned in with a dulled kitchen knife - and pressed the tip of the blade into the skin beneath her jaw till blood seeped down the blade. Friar Carson sliced her open from one ear, all the way down to her collarbone, and Marisol was too in shock to react properly aside from a pained whine against grit teeth. The priest looked nigh unimpressed - till the skin began to sew itself shut in sticky, bloody lace patterns that began in the deepest reaches of the wound. Together, the friar and priest watched while a wound that should have scarred and indeed lasted many months mended itself in a matter of breathless moments."Incredible," the Priest breathed. He then slowly raised his hand and brought the back of four ringed fingers hard down on Marisol's cheek. Her head whipped to the side and the sound of splitting bone echoed through the cathedral - she'd been weakened so horribly by the Church's prison camp that even her very skeleton had brittled. The impact caused a cut to form beneath her eye, but only a single pearl of blood escaped it before it was sealed off and seamlessly healed. Both eyes remained locked on the cold cobblestone floor, but Marisol was boiling inside. "It'll be perfect for the front. Can it withstand the gasses?"She could feel Carson's grip around the chain tighten - before he'd become a friar, serving the Church so diligently to save his own skin, he'd been a heavy chainsmoker. She could tell, if he could, he'd blow a lungful of smoke into her face. He laughed at the Priest's question as he tugged the chain, cutting the iron deeper into the already raw skin on hr neck, "She could breathe in Satan's hellfire and survive."The priest merely nodded, chortling beneath his breath. "This will be a grand turning point for Italy. She looks strong. No food for what... three weeks, you said? And still able to walk in here with all those chains. Marvelous." He then beckoned to a smaller altar boy to his right, whom scampered across the room with a small box in his arms. The box was promptly offered to Carson, who knowingly accepted it without a moment of hesitation.Inside was a vial. A potion, glowing sickly yellow and acid green in swirling motes of venomous neon light. Marisol could just barely see it out of the corner of her eye, but she knew what it was and she knew exactly it could - would - do. She felt a cold finger of terror run down her spine, but she was not equipped to fight back when he uncorked the vial and poured it onto the back of her neck at the base of the collar.An instant, horrid burning sensation encased her throat. It was like nothing she had ever felt, akin to acid but something much more sinister and lasting. Pain seeped down into the very muscles and her esophagus soon began to swell against the toxicity of what she could only assume to be the breath of a dying chimera - one of the most potent magical toxins known to Nekani as a whole. She began to claw at the iron collar, delicate fingers slowly morphing to blackened talons the more she tried to shred away the metal and escape that fiery pain. But the friar was a skilled Missionary, and she knew better than to hope for sanctuary from the pain. Soon, the burning sensation had become so unbearable that she'd finally collapsed to the floor.Even in Nekani, Carson had been cruel long before he'd stepped foot into the Church's playing field. His unremovable enchanted collars were his magnum opus and had become highly sought after among a large portion of the religious populace once war started brewing in Europe. The spell that he'd put onto them acted to the effect of a brand; it became permanently embedded into those iron shackles and made them nigh indestructible. When the papacy had found one of Nekani's citizens outside of its protective walls, they took them and put them in chains. If they were not strong enough to survive... they didn't. If their bodies were able and willing to carry them through their tumultuous trials, then they were deemed soldiers. Marisol had spent her nights in the prison watching Italy's new army trying to break free of the iron, only to be met at every turn and method with failure. Even with all of her own mother's teachings, she knew... it would never come off again. It bound her to her new title, to the chain that he'd been dragging her about in for so many days. The vial in Carson's hand was a promising bind that many survivors before her had spoken of, and none had comforting or well-ending tales."Welcome to the Italian Armed Forces, mostra."⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀★ ⋆ ✧ ⋆ ☾ ⋆ ✧ ⋆ ★⠀ ⠀

21st October 1915:
The Third Battle of the IsonzoThe rifle clutched in her hands was heavy; in comparison to the rancorous explosions that rocked the earth above, its weight was that of a feather. Shells rained down and clattered over boards and dirt, hailing down upon the motley crew of black-clad troops that slunk through the shadowy trails of enemy trenches. Marisol's breaths came in small puffs when they met the icy autumn air, but the numbing cold did not stifle her pursuit. In fact, it only helped to quell the sting in her neck where the shackle around her throat had worn away flesh down to the muscle. Alas, weakened by her imprisonment and countless sleepless nights, she could not heal; the cold was a welcome deterrent to the pain.She had to narrow her eyes into focused slits while she peered through the dark to see. Being the only therianthrope present, hers were the only eyes that could see in the uneven lighting with consistent accuracy. Fire blazed above, ignited by the hand grenades launched into trees and surrounding wooden structures while shadow encased the trench and everyone within it. Smoke had filled the infantry's lungs and caused them all to wheeze, but they didn't dare cough, lest they risk detection.Marisol was doing what she could to lead not one, but two platoons out of enemy lines to safety. So far, she'd suffered a casualty and two bullets in the arm. Shrapnel had done well to cut into the skin of anyone unfortunate enough to be in its path, but luck placed them in the safety of the far end of the combat, just near the threshold of a ramp that would lead them towards the larger portion of the enemy barracks. From there, Marisol surmised, she'd clear the remainder of the trench dwelling forces and guide her people to the safety of the trucks beyond.They had come to a crouch in a small pit near the barracks to the south. Marisol took the chance to quickly load a fresh round of bullets into her service rifle and cock the bolt in preparation of the battles to come. Behind her, she could hear the field medics tending the wounded and calling for rushed triage runs. Gunfire exploded in the distance, calling them all to duck indefinitely and descend into hushed whispers. Once everyone had confirmed readiness, they all moved to the south along the western wall of the barrack. Her grip on her rifle was so strong that, instead of sliding against her palm's sweat, it actually kept her hand practically plastered to the stock. Marisol was more than confident in the abilities she'd honed, but she wasn't confident in the survival of those she was trying to rescue."Quelli del corpo abile, separati nelle posizioni di andata e di fianco.Non si lascia indietro nessuno."𝐍𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐧 𝐋𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝They all nodded their heads and the group split off. Three soldiers scouted ahead with their pistols drawn, ready to fire at a moment's notice. Two more took the rear so that they could watch for flanked positions that may have been following. Marisol glanced around the ragtag group that remained, and waved a hand silently towards the depths of the trenches. Deeper into enemy territory but so close to safety and freedom. They were so close to the forward base that Marisol could actually smell the gunpowder from the rounds fired off with their mortars. When she listened especially closely, she could even hear the footsteps of forward forces moving on their position."Unità in avanti, mantenere la posizione. Nemici convergenti sulla nostra posizione," she said, just loud enough that her soldiers would hear her and could stop their pursuit. She knelt down into a steady crouch and moved past her units. Her rifle was raised to eye level so she could peer down the sights as she moved towards the telltale footsteps of approaching enemies. "Sii preparato sul mio marchio. Armi pronte."As if on cue, three soldiers rounded the corner with their weapons drawn. A barrage of fire rained between the two; the thump of bullets sinking into flesh filled the ears of the woman as she unleashed rounds into the soldiers with expert precision. But not all of those sounds came from in front. Some of them resonated from behind her, where one of the wounded soldiers from the second platoon had taken a hit in the chest - one that proved fatal as he collapsed into a heap in the mud. But they pushed forward while one of the other infantrymen took his dog tags. Deeper and deeper into the foul bowels of the beast they went, weapons drawn, bullets flying overhead. They were so close to their target that Marisol could practically feel the bullets hitting the bodies ahead in her excitement. She had started pressing forward up the gentle slope of the trench, gripping her rifle so hard that her knuckles locked painfully against the strain."Quasi lì," she whispered to herself; 'almost there'.Bullets came flying by, but they were from the wrong direction. Muffled shouts echoed around her and she whipped in a quick circle to see two more of the infantrymen fall to a flanking force. Her own flank units were throwing quick fists to fight off those that had attacked, but they were swallowed up by an entire enemy platoon that came upon them like a wave. With an enraged hiss, Marisol threw her pistol to the ground and drew her katana. Not a single moment went by before she was charging into the masses with a blood-thirsty cry, swinging wildly with such precision and accuracy that heads quite literally did roll back down the other end of the trench.Cavae Terram was down by one, but the second platoon had shrunk to less than four in number and was dwindling quickly. One of them hobbled on a limp, another was holding his shoulder with a muddy hand that was caked over with blood. One could barely tell that he had bandages hidden under all of that grime on his hand. Marisol was sure that infection would seize him quickly; he already looked sickly and pale. The rest of their friends didn't look any better than they did, though they had certainly done better to avoid the bullets. Their emaciated faces suggested that they had been working their muscle off of the bone, food rations were in short supply. Even when they had dug into the personal stores that Marisol carried, it hadn't been nearly enough to partially sate their starvation. There was a certain degree of fear in towing the dead weight of the second platoon around. But Marisol had stuck with her word.No man left behind."Sanctificate Terram, su di me. Le unità del secondo plotone, ho una missione molto specifica. Restare. Vivo. Dobbiamo andare avanti al campo di prua, dove incontreremo quasi sicuramente una forte resistenza. Tieni la tua compagnia vicino e le tue pistole più vicine."Hallow Ground, on me. The units of the second platoon, I have a very specific mission. Stay. Alive. We must move ahead to the forward camp, where we will almost certainly encounter heavy resistance. Keep your company close and your guns closer."With her sword drawn, they pressed forward. The members of the Sanctificate Terram platoon moved with speed and silence that was a birthright rather than a result of their training, and they ran almost immediately towards the fort that held the final crew of enemy infantry.Marisol tore into the building. She didn't halt for a moment as she threw herself into the hands of combat, submitting to the dangers of gunfire while she drilled her way through the base. Her soldiers behind her called out to one another as they worked through each of the branching tunnels, echoing past the cries of gunfire and horror hailing from the enemy soldiers. But Marisol was headed deeper. Further into the bowels towards the commander of the Austro-Hungarian platoon. Her mission was to kill him, and kill him she would. Hence the woman leaving her team, whom had successfully cleared the building, to hunt through the remainder of the barracks to hunt down commander Richter Slovak.Richter Slovak had been famous for his history of being a fan of dark practices both medical and magical. He'd done little to actually aid his people aside from the horrific research that he'd embarked upon during his years in service. He'd been known in the magical community as a man of great evil for more than a decade, and his name was on the top of many a man's shit list. Especially Marisol's. She'd lost friends and family members to the scourge of Slovak and the Court of Beasts - an entirely different faction of monstrosities.Once Marisol had cleared the barracks as best she could, she settled to stand still and listen for the sound of Richter's voice. She had expected to be able to hear or smell him prior to even reaching that point; she'd been most expectant of hearing the man barking orders out at his constituents to direct their actions. But strangely enough, she had neither seen nor heard him whatsoever. Not until a knife was plunged into her back, directly through her heart. She felt him twist the blade, and the pain summoned a horrific banshee-like scream from the woman as pain coursed through her body. She should have died, and in her mind, she was counting down the seconds until she did. But instead, and explosion of purple blinded her vision and she was thrown through a memory that wasn't even hers. At least she didn't think it was.Shredding of teeth, gnashing jaws. Throes of black beasts rose from inky shadows like dancing black flame. They cried out to her, bowing and worshiping. And Marisol the great blasphemer bubbled not in feat, but acknowledgement, she released a bellowing roar into the void of nothing. Writhing eyes and tentacles danced to cling to oozing husks of nothingness, shells of men and empty creatures. Ink blots of beings came and went from the world, accompanied by the nightmarish cries of damned beasts surrounding her. Baby's laughter and joyful cries clamored, an orchestra of happiness amongst the endless anguish. The screams were muffled and harsh at the same time, but came as a cacophonous melody to her ears. Such a sweet song of salvation and suffering in her, and she but smiled.

• ↓ •"Outside the ordered universe is that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes."
~ HPL , The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath⋆ ✧ ⋆The building that they'd been inside had all but been obliterated in the explosion, leaving a crater of dirt clods and wooden debris scattered about. Richter's body was nowhere to be found, but further investigation revealed that in bits of blood and meat, he had been splattered in different spots against the remnants of one wall. An enormous piece of metal shrapnel protruded from the center of one wall, spearing a clod of black hair and chunks of bony meat to the wood. The hanging remains of his bottom jaw dangled lazily from a strip of muscle no thicker than a pencil. Marisol was shaking; several soldiers peaked around the corners of the trenches with their features painted over in horror that she couldn't even begin to describe. Fresh wind whipped at her face and the scents on the air promised rain despite the overwhelming presence of smoke."Quello che è successo?" Her platoonmen were yelling at her as they pushed through the trench behind her into the now opened area. "Che cosa..."Gus, a towering beast of a giant and one of her most trusted platoon men slowly pulled his scarf away from his face to view the scene. He'd tried to wipe some of the dirt from his face with one of those huge gloved hands but only managed to smear it across his nose and make an even bigger mess. He was an enormous man, more than eight feet tall and towering. The man had spent his whole life around magics stronger than most, lived a warrior's life in all seven circles before he'd been dragged out of the Mirror Parallax with the rest of them. He feared to man or woman and never showed discomfort... but even so, his expression had solidified to stony discomfort when it settled upon her. For only a brief moment, he'd gazed at the remains of the barracks before closing his eyes and heaving a slow breath."...quello che è successo?" he asked again, this time in a tone so low that she almost couldn't hear it against the thunder of grenades and gunfire beyond.She found herself merely staring up at him, then down at herself, examining the blood splattered across her torso. Even if she had tried, Marisol couldn't possibly even begin to explain what had happened without sounding more along the lines of a lunatic than a credible soldier. The vision played back in her head a hundred times over; unlike anything she'd ever seen in her life and riveting to her very core, she simply couldn't place a finger on what it was that made it so... familiar."...non lo so."'𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰.'

Italy, 1943
World War II

⠀ ⠀ ༺ SICILY ༻ ⠀ ⠀
♕♚♕⠀ ⠀"Many of my squadron fell in combat. There was a lot of chemical warfare. Pain. When they started introducing poisoned gas, many of the magical beings that were susceptible died on impact. Guns, tanks, flamethrowers... there was never-ending artillery and ours was an ever-dwindling force. When the war finally ended... I don't know. I couldn't have been more proud to be alive. To have survived that harshness, knowing and seeing first hand what we fought against. My men and women died heroes, protecting the things and the people that they loved."- Excerpt from Marisol's Manifest; The Aftermath⠀ ⠀★ ⋆ ✧ ⋆ ☾ ⋆ ✧ ⋆ ★⠀ ⠀The most vivid memory she had was likely the worst.Landmines of all shapes and sizes had quaked and annihilated the grounds around her, sending dirt clods raining down on the earth in the wake of a series of new craters. Marisol reached up behind her head to tighten the straps on her gas mask before securing her hood over her head, huddled behind a toppled table in the street. The security of a stealth suit had encased her in a skin-tight bodysuit made of leather and spanded; she had good mobility, but the suit was incredibly hot and she was more than excited to escape it. Especially with the amount of fire and explosions bursting and burning around her. Through the circular lenses of her mask's goggles, she peered out at the members of her squadron, who all looked much the same as she did. A quick weapons check had her loading a new clip of bullets into her SMG while she prepared for their assault. The mission this time: eliminate Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham and slow the Allied Assault while the remainder of the troops evacuated the island of Messina to escape to the mainland."Abbiamo cinque minuti fino al lancio. Controlla maschere e armi e muovi," she called as she clipped an extra magazine of rounds to the belt of her suit. Thank god for the advances in technology, or she would have been far less confident in the abilities of the chuckling idiots that were busy passing cigarettes instead of worrying about the battle outside of their small bunker. Right about that moment, Marisol desperately wanted to return to the LBC. But that was why she was in the trenches to begin with; to protect her escorts and all of the people she loved along with them. Her dedication made overlooking the foolishness of her squadron a task that came with ease. She even found herself smiling while listening to their decades old banter; jokes that went one way or other about a wife or a girlfriend... or a mother, now and then. Marisol had been more than willing to participating in the chatter of her crew while they began the slow march across the island towards their target and its nautical units.Sancificate Terram was a militant unit that began in the first war, consisting of a purely magical soldier body. Because the magical beings were far more able bodied than humans and had capabilities far exceeding their own, they were the first to be forcibly drafted into the war. The creation of Sanctificate Terram was incepted following a small group of militia magicals taking up arms against magic beings on opposing lines. Marisol was selected to lead this prestigious platoon, guiding her people through hell fire to their certain death as if it were meant to be a badge of honor. She saw it as a symbol of what she fought for: to save her people from the horrors of war. Fortune had not been kind enough to spare her the sacrifice of the few for the many. Somehow though, she was fairly indifferent towards the idea; whether or not her men sacrificed themselves for their country was not her choice. That was how her mind had so compassionately processed it.She almost obsessively checked her watch. The time ticked away slowly, like cold molasses sliding down an obtuse slope. But the moment was quickly approaching, and she prepared accordingly by patting each of her soldiers on the shoulder to signal to them that it was almost time to go. They all offered up solemn expressions, but they were hidden by sweet smiles that pinched their cigarettes in a way that showed off how shaky they'd all become. This was by far the most risky operation that they had ever undergone, and each one of them was more on edge than the last. Marisol understood that fact, but was not comforted by it in the slightest. If there were any words that she was confident would comfort them, she didn't find them and didn't want to try. She just wanted to move.One more glance at her watch, then she called to her men, "È ora di andare avanti." Time to go. They nodded, and in a soft tempo of even marching, all trotted off through the underbrush and trees with a silence that was only interrupted by the gentle crunch of leaves and dry grass. They did their best to maintain some kind of stealth among them for the sake of not getting shot right on the spot; Marisol was only praying that they remained hidden from visual detection under the assumption that a magical being was present. If one was, they couldn't smell them past the overbearing scent of smoke and decay that had seized the land. It was only fortune that provided the shroud of mist that helped to hide the dark shadows of their boots and conceal their actual shadows altogether, though they also had to offer high praises to the overcast weather that didn't dare let the moon peep through those impregnable clouds. They moved until they came to the edge of the beach clearing, peering out at the nautical units that had run aground to deposit soldiers along Messina's banks.It was with a heavy hand that Marisol signaled her men forward when she saw the final watercraft come to a halt before the beach. Her men charged forward silently, crouching low to use the tall grasses and fog as cover just before they had reached the beach grounds. The guise of darkness had been more than helpful when combined with the use of her stealth suit. They all slunk through the soldiers that had just landed aground, invisible in the darkness as they made their way through the camp. Several of her troops branched out to go and kill the leading commanders of the militant troops. And as always, Marisol ran straight for the Admiral's ship, disbanding from her crew for the portion of the mission that she alone could pull off. And it was an easy mission. She tore through resistance like a hot knife through butter, scoring her way into the ranks of men so that she could push into the head of the Armada.What she didn't expect was when she heard a rain of screams echoing out from the camp following the telltale hiss of air releasing pressure. When her head whipped around, she saw horrendous gasses of green and yellow filling the air. A horrid stench spread across the area that choked off any good scents she had been able to pick up at all and she actually gagged inside of her gas mask. And through the goggles of her gas mask, she watched as her soldiers gagged and collapsed. Some of them died on contact while others simply struggled with their inability to breathe. She could feel her pulse rushing and thundering in her ears and the air caught in her throat. She didn't dare pray that her men would survive the poisonous gas that the allied powers had released against them. She held no doubts that they all possessed gas masks of their own and were prepared for such an assault.She couldn't help but feel that she had inadvertently led them to their death.The first choking screams came from the east. She looked to see her men collapsing and clawing viciously at their throats; it seemed that the gouges that their nails left behind had been of little consequence in comparison to whatever gas had been released onto the battlefield. Marisol ran towards them as fast as her legs could carry her, but as soon as she came in range of the gas, it made her gag violently and begin to cough. She stumbled backwards; her eyes were watering horribly, burned by the chemicals that filled the air. She could hear screaming around her, but knew that she couldn't do anything to save them. Not without completing her mission and forcing them to retreat. She turned, stumbling towards the beach's water line. Her eyes fixed on it past the burn in them; she could see the largest ship of the armada creeping upon the beach to her left.One glance behind her revealed a slew of casualties.'For them,' she thought as she turned tail and dashed at full speed towards the ship's lowering ramp. The gasses blinded her and forced her to cough with violent retches. The only saving grace she truly had was the scarf around her neck, which she swiftly used to cover her nose and mouth to try and filter the gas. Her eyes were burning, stinging like a thousand embers had fallen into them. Tears were streaming down her face, caking ash and dirt to her cheeks. But she did not stop, not for a second. Marisol ran at top speed, carrying herself as fast as her environment would let her. The only thing saving her from stumbling over the multitudes of holes and debris that littered the beach was the speed at which she was lifting her feet off the ground on her journey to the ship. Had she paused for even a moment, she no doubt would have stumbled before she even dreamed of approaching the ramp.Once she'd touched foot on that slide of metal, she had never run so fast in her life. Her sword's hilt was clutched so tightly in her hand that her knuckles hurt. Her other hand was holding steadfast onto the grip of the pistol at her hip; she could feel the flesh of her hand grinding against the hammer. Even through the scarf, each breath she took was full of ash and the gas that filled the air. She coughed hard every time she inhaled, but couldn't halt to catch a breath. She'd come too close to the bowels of the ship to even slow her pace. Each footstep slipped on the slick ground and threatened to trip her, several times forcing her to catch her footing again and grind her boots' rubber into the ramp. Her vision was all but gone, save for the motion of shadow around her. She found herself smelling her way around and directing her motion by sound. Her ears rang from the rancor of gunfire and explosions, but she could still hear the churning and grinding of the ship's engines ahead.She could not stop herself. Even if she desired to come to a halt, she knew that she would be unable. She was met with inevitable resistance and was forced to carve a path through bodies; each swing of her sword caught a new limb. She found that even her blade was failing and resorted to her pistol, dispatching of those who stood in her way. She was unrelenting with her goal in sight, and when the bomb squads came with their charges and grenades, she was moving so fast to avoid the explosions that it was almost incomparable to her typical skills. The scent of salt on the seafront made her gag when mixed with the scent of smoke and the gas they'd released. If she was breathing at all, she couldn't tell past the burn in her chest and the ache in her lungs. Bodies toppled off the side of the ramp into the water, littering the shore with blood and old shell casings. Still, she persisted, barreling forward through a fresh unit of infantry that had only just started to disembark from the ship. Her blade swung wildly through the air, flinging blood and viscera with each soldier dispatched in her fury.So close was she to the top that she'd almost forgotten: she was still on a battle field that she'd not left empty. A bullet careened past her, slicing a hole into the side of one ear and tearing away the flesh. Had she not been so overwhelmed by adrenaline, it was likely that she'd have felt it, but it wasn't till her blood stained her scarf that she realized she was bleeding. She'd turned to gaze out at the field to seek out the culprit, but was quickly thrown off of the ramp when an arm swept against her ribcage. She went sailing, crashing down into the water with a dull thud. It knocked the wind out of her and spots dotted her vision, eliciting a soft groan from her that was just barely suppressed by the scarf. Part of its fabric was wedged into her mouth and she took that opportunity to bite down hard on it when the pain inevitably caused pain deep in her bones. Peering up at that ramp, she could see that the commander of the ship had taken point, aiming down at her with his pistol. His face was amused disgust, but she'd braced herself for the inevitable and only raised a hand to feign a wave.

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⋆ ☽ ♠ ☾ ⋆

The Birth of the Cosmic Machine

The year 2018 had seen many grand and rather enjoyable profits for any and all that worked at the LBC. Modernization on the building and all of its structures had successfully modeled a massive cathedral into a three-story superstructure of a night-club. It had been a prosperous time for the members of Nekani, all whom had spent the time developing their own superstructures and vying for their own declaration of national independence. Much of the modernization had been done with the help of the Dahlia family; her father had done his part to provide funds and workers while Marisol saw over design specifications and architecture. Indeed, it was one of the best years in recent memory, inviting a defined heartache and happiness hand in hand.Marisol's year had been spent much in the company of her darling employees and all of the bodies that came together to make such projects happen, and while she certainly seemed happy enough at the time, she was also tremendously ill. Each passing day, she found herself weaker and weaker, experiencing horrendous nightmares of writhing creatures crying in the abyss and waking up vomiting blood and bile. Many of her mornings were spent hugging the toilet bowl and praying that the coffee would be enough to stave off the residual migraines, but alas, she failed. Her vision was failing her as well; years of war, chemical burns, blinding explosions, and overwhelming head trauma had finally taken their toll, and it wasn't long till things in her vision were simply blurry grey masses. Seeking medical assistance seemed a futile effort. The same information, day after day, night after night, no matter how many tests she did. She submitted to blood panels, full body scans with and without contrast, allowed a brain surgeon to extensively study her brain activity, but nothing, nothing at all seemed to explain the sudden and incredible decline in her health. It wasn't long till her eyesight was gone altogether. She was forced to use magic to assist in her navigation, spending many long nights mapping the layout of her penthouse from the largest furniture, all the way down to the last shred of paper.She'd started to experience memories that didn't belong to her. Seeing landscapes in front of her very eyes that weren't even there - that she shouldn't have been capable of seeing in the first place. She could smell ocean breezes and landfills and babies and death and decay and growth all at the same time, hear everything all at once. Over the next few months, she'd been locked away in her room clawing apart her furniture while she was throttled with a constant wave of information that ground into her brain like a mortar. All day every day, she listened to the clamor of the vastness of the cosmos, all coming down upon her in waves. It drove her to the edges of madness more than once as she listened to it all, throwing herself against the wall on more than one occasion in an effort to knock herself out and seek some semblance of sweet relief. But the voices just kept coming, the smells just kept coming, the visions and then the tactile. She could constantly feel pins and needles all over her body, which felt both healed and horrendously damaged at all hours of the day. She spent many long moments keeled over beneath the battering comforts of a cold shower on high and playing music as loudly as her speakers would let her, just to see if she could drown out the noise... but she merely added to it, and she hated every second of it.Her body underwent horrifyingly animal changes; arms and legs blackening over time as her fingers and toes grew long, sharp, and pointed talons that tore into the stone walls like it was simply the air before her. She alternated between becoming taller, shorter, once being so large that she'd actually taken up the entire penthouse foyer when she laid down. Her eyes had completely forgone their sweet lilac color; it had been overwhelmed with constantly-writhing lines of gold. Her hair had burned white from all of the stress, irreparably so - even for all of her magics, she couldn't seem to get her hair's color to change, even as the rest of her body did.Needless to say, many times over, her furniture had been broken and replaced till eventually, she simply stopped buying more altogether, opting instead to sleep on the floor and inside of the fountain when she finally got so exhausted that she could do nothing else. Then, sleep stopped entirely too, leaving her to lie in the fountain while she purged black sludge and blood. One of those long nights, on the New Years night of 2019, while she was in the fountain, she'd dropped her head beneath the water and found - quite strangely, in fact - that she no longer felt the need to breathe. Staring up at those hazy, water-warped lights, all she could think of was just how cold everything had become, how she was simply always so frigid. How even if an employee touched her, they withdrew without a second of hesitation and commented on how icy her skin felt to the touch. She almost thought it funny, even as she listened to her heart's already slowing pulse as it steadily declined to silence.Such melancholy was unbecoming of such a being, she thought. But what was she?The darkness that had overtaken her that night was unlike anything she'd ever known. Consciousness abandoned her, at least she thought so. Rather than being adrift in her penthouse's fountain, letting the universe take her off to wherever it would, she'd opened her eyes to an unbroken darkness. There was a great and infinite nothing before her, and for the first time in a very, very long year, she'd heard little more than silence... then music.Sitting there, adrift in that great and vast infinity, a horrendous and uncoordinated symphony of voices crackled into the air, shaking the very foundations of absolution. She could hear herself playing a flute; disgusting and out of key notes that didn't seem to fit together, like ugly little puzzle pieces shoved together against their will. The familiarity of it all had been so overwhelming till her mind flashed to that little infant in the woods; a dead body that she'd seen so many times before in old and abandoned dreams. The baby that she'd saved - no, taken. The original baby never had a single chance in this whole universe. But she, no it, it had a chance. Azathoth had a chance. To live. To be conscious. She knew herself then, remembered everything like she'd opened a Pandora's Box that contained only the remainder of herself. There was a certain kind of delight on her face when she began to pipe that mangled tune with glee, dancing among her unseen but ever-present children and for just a moment, a long, beautiful moment, she felt alive again.But she was never truly alive, was she? With the returning of her memories came the loss of the illusion. The body had decayed centuries ago, her eyes had simply been the last to go after meticulously replacing her cells on the subconscious level. All she was now was the pure flesh and blood product of an unusual and unthought union. It was almost humorous to her how truly mindless and reckless she had been prior to taking consciousness and claiming her place. She'd had a chance to experience love and loss, hardship and comforts. And suddenly, having awakened so infinitely and to be so vastly informed, those achievements had lost their luster.She'd been gone for six long months in that abyss, finding her way to the Nameless City and beyond to study and simply absorb the new information. A bit of extra time to gain control over her power within such a body, and then a while more to learn how to quiet all of that constant cosmic noise. When she'd finally returned to the organized world, it had not been easily. Uncertain in her social life and equally so in her business, she'd spent many hours locked away in her home, churning out paperwork for the LBC and associated cooperations. Weeks and weeks, locked away in her office, and she never felt the need to speak with anyone because she always knew what was happening with everyone. She even fired several employees during that time with her newfound knowledge - and newfound objectivity. It had been stunting to say the least, withholding her from maintaining most of her social responsibilities. Even obligations such as fundraisers and holiday parties became a matter of simply keeping her trap shut when someone told her something about themselves, forcing herself to nod and smile instead of telling them she already knew. That she was constantly living everyone's entire life, past present and future in this universe and the next, all at the same time. She could look at someone and know what their multiversal self was doing at that same time, and it made her queazy to try and process such a thing. To lose all of the surprise and charm that existed in life, to never look forward to anything or anyone. The only future she couldn't see was her own, and even then, the futures she could see were so vastly numerous and branching that she could never guess just which one she'd find herself in without influencing her circumstances directly.All she could do was sit back and wait, letting those thoughts wash over her like cold water. They kept her sane, kept her rooted to the LBC and the cosmic responsibilities that she'd adopted upon awakening.She'd pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars that year alone.Alas, money truly couldn't buy happiness. Presently, she's put the LBC into the hands of a board of directors so that she may repair her social skills and rekindle her ability to establish relationships, friendship and otherwise. She's restored her relationship with her son, Darkness, but has yet to approach any of her other Eldritch family tree so to avoid unnecessary conflict. Over time, she's regained her ability to hold casual conversation, and even found focusing techniques to help her avoid being overwhelmed by the constant noise so that she doesn't simply... know all of everything all of the time. Of course, she still does, but she can intentionally ignore those things... sometimes.

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