Lif3bl0od

dDizzied/lLost/rRedeemed

Dalli turned from the flaming corridor, sweat and burns upon her. A voice called to her, piercing the smoke and death.
"Run, Dalli, now! Over here!"
The neon lights of the skyscraping city. The thrum of a ship's flight engine. A hand outstretched, gloved and saving.

Red. Black. Blades. Jolts. Lightning swerving across her vision.

Dalli looked about her, the ground swaying like waves beneath her. The very air crumbled to ash, the sky shattering into dying shards; the earth shuddered, as it perished.
There was screaming, she was certain of it.
Dalli listened.
Someone crying, a woman. Wailing, grief-stricken and terrified.
Dalli realised it was her.

Nighttime. Daytime. Starlight. Sun. All blurred together, forming a drowsy veil above her. The morbid carpet of reality.

Dalli fell to the floor, jaw bleeding salt, wounds leaking spice. Her fingers turned to stone, and her eyes became rubies upon a crown.
Someone stood over her: a man. His feet were stone too, his fingers of the deepest obsidian, his chest of the richest gold.
The wind lifted her up, turned her over, made her look, helped her see.
"Dalli, thank goodness. Are you alright?"
His eyes were emerald. And amethyst. But this man wore no crown.
His head was a grave, a monument to the dead.
In that grave she saw her name.
"Dalli, talk to me! What happened here?"
And his.

Gulls cawed above a rocking shore. Old men frolicked beneath an alabaster cliff. Travelers fell at the foot of the pyramid. Life. Joy. Grief. Death. All were the same. All were limbs on the body of reality.

Dalli stared at the pit. A million bodies waited in the depth, a million dimensions of light and matter, a million singularities of meshing geometry and clashing dashing gnashing paradox.
The pit smiled a question.
Dalli smiled an answer.
Was this what it was to be real?
To be saved?
She took a step. Her foot fell, and its echo lasted an age. She took another. This one sounded for instants.
Then her hands, raised and ready, went forth, and peeled back the face of fabric reality.

Dash. Three. Delta. Eight. Two. Two. Dot. Four. Four. Dash. Omega. Nine. Slash.

The code of the worlds. The code of the dimensions. The lifeblood of life itself.
Dalli saw the heart of the Earth, pulsing and dead to the heart of men.
Her fingers traced over the digits and dials of reality, editing and skimming and cutting and trimming and copying and printing and pasting the essence of atomic existence.
"Hey! We've got company incoming! Do you have it yet?"
Time rolled like a marble, cast by the hand of fate, the hand of those in power. But where was it rolling, and why would it never begin? Or had it always begun, and yet it never ended?

Light. Red. Black. Stone. Grave. Shores. Pyramids. Bodies. Numbers. Blood. Marble.

Darkness.

Dalli saw darkness now.
Dalli saw darkness.
Dalli saw darkness.
She saw
She saw
She
He

Kryze outstretched his hand, eyes alit with fear, as the world crumbled about them. Dalli simply stood before him, pupils glazed, skin bleached with absence. Her lips were singed at the edges.
"Dalli, please. Come back. I need you. I can't do this without you."

He
She
She saw
Dalli saw
Darkness abandoned, light reborn.
Dalli saw him.
Dalli saw him. Dalli knew him.
And Dalli would save
him.