last_adam | (no subject)

(no subject)

Adam's never really been one much for birthday celebrations. Aside from the presents, of course -- presents are always good. But he's never much been one for birthdays, and this one in particular's been rather surreal. So he supposes he shouldn't really be surprised that it's today that he sees her, standing out by the lake where he'd been planning on skipping stones.

Quietly he approaches, and quietly he stands, hands in pockets, watching.

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Adam watches, his eyes following the pink through the haze of white, watching and waiting, for what he's not sure. Shaking his head, the rush of the ocean roars in his ears, and he takes a step forward, around, through away from the wind even as it grows more fierce and the light fades.

"What's taken once can be taken again."

"The first you would not be to try, cariad." Soft amused malice is clear in the light voice.

A strange grey mist is spinning into the wind around them now, and whispers of madness begin to float through the air, murmuring of temptation and possibility, power and control. The globe at her throat gleams with odd brightness in the rapidly-dimming light as white smoke boils inside it.

"Do you think that you can?"

"That's all I have to do."

There's no light to speak of surrounding them any longer, but Adam doesn't seem to notice as he steps forward again, and again, his head lowered as the wind seems to split for him.

Narrowing his eyes, he reaches out.

And as he does, everything around them freezes into utter perfect stillness. The whirling wind stops, and every single image carried or reflected in the grey mist is visible, as though it were carved from ice or shaped of shadow.

Adam's will lashes across the space between him and the White Rider of the Dark, carrying with it an implicit command. She is still, frozen as though held, as her power is struck by his--

--and then there is nothing but a void within her, a black pit of emptiness that is the chaos of the Dark itself and which draws hungrily upon whatever it can claim.

The frail human shape that is the vessel for the Dark seems to grow taller and thinner, gleaming with eldritch light as she hisses at him, and the moment is broken. The White Rider slips to the side, vanishing from beneath his reaching fingers as though she were but illusion, and the intensity of the storm around them both doubles with the backlash of force.

Adam feels the pain physically, a blow to his chest as his knees weaken from under him. His mouth opens to ask questions that won't be answered as he struggles forward against this new wind.

Finding a bit of solid ground, he steadies himself, closes his eyes and reaches out into the dark, hands clenched at his side.

From somewhere above and beyond them a deep roar of thunder rumbles, but within the whirling wall of the storm it is eerily muffled.

As he reaches out, as his own power builds, the clouds around Adam begin to stretch and thin, twisting into unpleasant forms that have never before been seen in any world. The ground beneath him groans, as small cracks begin to radiate out from his feet, splitting the earth apart.

And all around him, everywhere around him, there is simply nothing and Nothing, a chaotic yawing pit of emptiness that seeks to draw him down into madness. The Rider is not there, not visibly there, only the Dark is there--

(only the Dark can destroy the Dark)

-- seeking to claim him although he is not truly of it nor of the world from which it has been cast out. Ever jealous, ever hungering, it is trying to make him part of itself, to call out to that within him as it rises, to steal his strength into the emptiness and chaos of the void.

And off to one side, wrapped in the howling mist, a feeling of something else can be sensed.

(fluttering wings beat wildly against poisoned glass)

Dimly visible in the darkness, the gleaming white shape that holds that shining glass prison in its hand still has mortal form... and can be hurt as mortals can.

Lightning flashes across the sky, ripping it apart with light and hanging there, casting shadows that echo its eerie white light among the branches and leaves. There's a moaning that finds its way into words, voices, screams as Adam fights against, across the chasm.

Then the light is gone, along with his breath, and all there is is black, and he reaches out for the globe, closing his eyes against the dark and the storm he can't feel or see or hear. And all that is left are the thoughts of freedom, and destruction, and he isn't quite sure they aren't the same thing.

He reaches for the globe, with hand and mind and will together, struggling to grasp, to take, to hold, to seize--

(to take control - to destroy)

--and after so long, on this day, this sixth day of June in the year 2006, his twenty-first birthday, something begins to slip.

(I am the destroyer and the adversary. The prince of darkness, and the spawn of Satan. Nothing will ever change that)

He reaches, and the White Rider shrieks, high and thin and wild-- she is there before him and no longer concealed as ice-cold, inhumanly strong fingers wrap around Adam's wrists and hold with bone-cracking strength. Around them, the wind howls as the will of the Antichrist clashes with the power commanded by one of the Great Lords of the Dark.

At Blodwen's throat, the glass globe begins to flash wildly with pink light, seen as though through an oily sheen over the glass. It pulses like the beat of a heart -- or of wildly beating wings.

His arm goes limp under the Rider's grasp.

Angel of the Bottomless Pit

He gasps for breath and takes a step forward.

Great Prince that is called Dragon

He can feel her power pushing against him.

Father of Lies

He is what he is, and nothing can change that, not even him.

Prince of this World

His legs go out from under him as he tries to move closer.

Lord of Darkness

He closes his eyes and all at once the wind is gone, and there is nothing but a cold, deep quiet.

Destroyer of Kings

And he wishes for nothing else but the utter destruction of Blodwen and her charm.

(nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time)

For a single endless, timeless moment, nothing happens. All the world -- or is it worlds, here Milliways, at the end of of the universe, at the end of everything? -- seems to hold its breath.

(but what comes after the apocalypse?)

In the sudden ringing silence, an awful force builds swiftly to some incredible peak and there hangs poised. At its center, at its heart, Adam Young and the White Rider stand, locked in silent battle with each other, each striving desperately for control, for power, for survival, for existence, for something to tip the balance.

(fire to burn away the Dark)

And then, into that frozen coiled tension, a sudden burning blood-pink light flares violently between them.

(the Wild Magic is meant to be free)

not you
not here
not this

A soundless explosion rocks everything, shaking the earth and the heavens and racing from its epicenter outwards across the ending universe like the waves of some unimaginable earthquake--

--and when the world rights itself once more, neither Adam nor the White Rider are anywhere to be seen, any longer.

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