bigapplesauce | You're what happens when two substances collide

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You're what happens when two substances collide

The longer she dwells in this world, the more she despises it.

No one will see her.

A vengeful God-King is not something so easily ignored. She is destructive and regal and demands the attention of all who would worship her. But there are no worshipers here. There is nothing here, nothing at all, just endless swarms of humanity that apparently care nothing for Illyria the Merciless, Ruler of the Primordium, even as she grows ever more indignant and ever more enraged and ever more desiring in her need to do violence.

The vermin are to remain untouched. The vermin are to remain untouched.

So she will not touch them. She will not touch anything here. Illyria will not remain here any longer than is necessary, even if it has long since ceased to become necessary.

The mortal-built bridge will be her focus point. She stretches one shell's hand out, testing the scintillating tear of unclassifiable dimensional energy against her vessel. There is resistance there, a barrier intended to prevent any motion beyond the isolated pinprick of too-small, too-confining space. If she can reach past it, she can escape this metaphysical prison and thus seek out the way back to her world.

The God-King's shell smiles, small and self-satisfied. Nothing can hold a god.

She reaches further. The crackle of foreign energy against hers is unbearable. And then further - the shearing, rifting edge of the barrier begins to screech against her being.

She will test these waters no further. Illyria launches herself at the barrier, driving forward with fists and blazing intent, and the strength of the unfamiliar matter rips at her, eliciting a blistering, tearing roar of utmost pain and displeasure. It is unbearable. It is intolerable. But Illyria is not yet through. She will continue driving at it, regardless of the shrilling agony webbing its way through her shell, into the core of what she is -

The God-King's strength, once glaring and eternal, runs out. She no longer possesses the will or instinct to even draw herself back. Her shell howls, the pain of simply being is exquisite and unquantifiable, and Illyria falls away from the torment of the conscious world.

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To leave Melanie is absolute agony - even now he can hear her plaintive prayers in his mind, and there's nothing he can do to reassure her, and he simply cannot understand why she can no longer sense him. And it's not just her - he's made several attempts to contact other people now, including Crowley, with no luck. He's stepped out into the hall and knocked on several doors and even directly accosted Bee as she was coming down from the roof, again with no luck. Something is very wrong, and he fears it is wrong with him; but much more important is that Melanie is frightened and alone. To have this situation disrupted by whatever it is causing this fuss on the end of the island is infuriating.

He arrives at the edge of the bridge with his wings spread - what does it matter if he's becoming invisible, right? - and lets out an irritable sigh when he sees the form crumpled at the very edge of where the rift's barrier extends. Of course. He should have anticipated this.

Well, perhaps he'll be invisible to her as well, and he can remove her without any kind of fuss. He's surprised no one else has come - this sort of energy surge would ordinarily attract a lot of attention, wouldn't it?

"Come on," he grumbles to Illyria's prone form, inching toward the barrier. He can feel its destructive energy crackling as he gets closer, and he grits his teeth. She's quite bothersomely close. This is going to hurt a bit.

He crouches down reaches out to her, wincing as his fingers brush the barrier. He can feel a harsh electric current buzzing through him, like magnetic forces both pushing and pulling at him. He grasps her tightly with both hands, gasping from the effort of leaning so close to the edge. He can feel an alarming amount of power radiating around him. She's still alive, but he's very certain this could have killed her. How could she be so stupid?

He lifts her up and staggers back, exhaling in sharp relief as he puts distance between himself and the barrier. Well. That's better. Now what to do with her.

The return to consciousness is jagged, protracted, and painful.

Her shell's eyes open to the spread of wings, the humming blur of celestial energy.

Principality.

The reason for its presence is unclear. As is everything else. The thoughts alone burn with ruptured ache, bleeding in and out of their circuitry. She has been reduced, again, to such a repugnant and powerless state that she can no longer exercise the effort required to move.

Yet things such as effort and pain have never prevented Illyria from executing her will before. With a low cry of frustration she wrenches her shell to its feet and takes two purposeful strides forward, overflowing with decision, before the shell folds on itself and she topples groundward again. She braces herself quadrupedally, the shell shuddering with the aftershock of her efforts.

"What -" she hisses, recoiling when the words also bring indescribable agony to her shell. "What was done to me?"

Aziraphale startles when she wakes and practically hurls herself out of his hold like an angry cat, before collapsing onto herself again. He stares at her, half irritation and half pity, hands on his hips.

"You did it to yourself!" he snaps. She won't be able to notice him, probably, just like everyone else, but he can't resist unloading his frustration. "I told you this would happen, you should have bloody listened!"

"I am a god," Illyria snarls, glaring up at the principality and wishing she could bring her shell to its full height, diminutive as it is. "In ages past I could traverse the dimensions with a thought. I believed they would yield to me."

She would have no reason to believe she could not. The vast webs of space-time were once hers to command and travel as she willed it. How could she have anticipated this - this thing being stronger than she?

He blinks, completely bowled over when she responds to him. She can see him? She can? This is intolerable. Why her and no one else? Was this her doing somehow, or - or have they both been affected by some other force? He wracks his brain for a possible explanation, and all he can think is that they both stood in the rain at Bethesda Terrace. Was there something unusual about the rain?

"You - you can see me?" he blurts needlessly, and then, with another surge of irritation, "The rift is more powerful than any of us. It won't let us pass through it or the barrier around the island, no matter what we are. Do you believe that now?"

The shell is still shaking from its jangling discord with the ridges of the rift-thing. Illyria stands regardless. She will not have discussions with a principality whilst at its feet. That would not be dignified.

"You see me." She is still seething. This thing, this thing and the shape-changer are the only two to have seen her, to have noticed the furious God-King stalking through the mindless rabble. "Something is wrong."

The twin statements are inconclusive, but Illyria no longer cares. She is ready to try again.

She makes for the edge again, the burning abstraction, and thrusts one fist at it. She will rend it, rip this barrier down atom by atom until it spits her out from this crude entrapment, regardless of pain. Illyria will have her freedom. If pain is the ephemeral cost then she will gladly pay it.

"Indeed," he agrees, somewhat mollified, and is frowning and about to propose a theory or a course of action, you know, something practical and useful, but instead it seems time for the God-King to do something stupid and terrible again.

"No!" he shouts angrily, and launches forward to seize her around the waist, manhandling her forcibly away from the barrier. There's a momentary crackle as they both get close to it; the tip of one wing brushes the barrier and he grunts in a sudden and brief burst of pain. "For the love of - Have you learned nothing?! What is the matter with you?!"

The constriction of unfamiliar energy is overpowering but she holds, determined to shred it - and then the principality dares to grab her shell.

With an indignant cry, she tears out of its grasp and whirls on it. The principality presumes to stop her, when this is no business but her own. She strikes at its midsection to send it arcing away from her. If it lands far enough, if the blow damages it enough, perhaps then she may continue her onslaught upon the Rift uninterrupted.

He shouldn't be surprised that she doesn't take kindly to his attempts at keeping her from destroying herself, and yet she still manages to catch him off guard, hitting him so hard he feels his whole body rattle. He skids back, flaring his wings out and narrowly avoiding toppling right into a cyclist who simply rolls right on past as though nothing is happening.

"Stop!" he cries, almost taking on a pleading edge. He gathers himself and lunges back toward her with a heavy flap of his wings. He grabs her again and yanks hard enough to send her reeling back several places before touching down between her and the barrier. A dangerous place to put himself, he knows, but he's getting desperate. Much as she irritates and antagonizes him, he doesn't want to see her killed this way. And who knows what other effects there might be of such a rupture?

"I won't let you destroy yourself," he says, terse and tense and braced for impact.

As soon as she has laid out the initial blow, she half-turns with every intention to continue her assault. But the principality remains as undeterred as she. There is something admirable in that perhaps, but Illyria is too furious with its interference to acknowledge such things. It drags her shell forcibly away, plants itself between the God-King and the rift-edge - does it not know how precarious a position it is to stand between a conqueror and her prey? Or perhaps it simply does not care.

It is determined to keep her from her goal out of concern for her - or her shell, as is most often the case. Very little affection is often spared for the being within.

Misplaced as it is, Illyria also finds that commendable.

It is also infuriating. And deeply unwanted.

"Stand aside," orders the God-King.

"I will not," says Aziraphale, drawing himself up. The energy field behind him fizzes and crackles, currents running ticklingly, distressingly, over his wings. "You're behaving like a child. Throwing a tantrum isn't going to get you through this barrier. Nothing will."

He can still hear Melanie crying out for him, her desperation growing progressively pronounced, and it's more than he can bear. He knows he shouldn't be antagonizing Illyria, but he can't help but be angry that she's forced him to be out here, dealing with this, instead of staying with Melanie, who needs him.

"It matters little to you." If it is a God-King's business to destroy herself, what leverage would a principality have to stop her? She is absolute and her shell is impenetrable; she will drive at this barrier until it is become dust. And regardless - if none can see her or witness her grandeur save this principality who neither knows nor cares, what purpose does she have in this world?

She has given the principality ample warning, and it has refused to move. Its solicitude for her shell may be faintly confusing (a product of the shell, as all bothersome things are) and its tenacity deserving of acknowledgement, but these will not be enough to keep Illyria from her objective.

Justified in her reasoning, Illyria does what she must. She does it grimly, however, and with none of the ordinary accompanying thrill that comes with initiating battle. She slams a hand into the center of the principality's chest and drives it into the rift-edge.

The grim set of her jaw is alarming, and surprisingly so. He'd found it abhorrent, the way she seemed to enjoy the fight in their dream, but this is worse somehow. Perhaps because he knows she means it.

He raises his hands to stop her but the moment his back strikes the barrier he is immobilized, his body seizing up, his wings flickering back out of tangibility. Pain rips through him and he lets out a strained scream. It reminds him of being transported in the first place, being pulled apart and put back together again, but this time there's no 'put back together', only the sensation of being disassembled at a molecular level. Slowly, of course, but it will get worse the longer she holds him there, and his corporeal form won't last.

It is with every shred of strength he has that he forces himself to push back, working against both the pull of the rift's event horizon and Illyria's considerable strength. He clenches his jaw and wrenches his arms free, one hand going to her wrist and the other to her throat.

"Let me go," he says harshly, low and dangerous, and from deep within him he summons hot angelic fire, sending it like a coiled spring through his arms and into his hands. Not designed to sear her corporeal flesh but to strike the creature inside it, burning with all his wrath.

She does not enjoy the principality's cries but a God-King does what it must. Until the principality retaliates, something Illyria expected but has no means to counteract when it sends its holy fire howling at her.

Immediately, she severs contact. The pain flares, the flames having surpassed the physical presence of the shell and set themselves smoldering at the non-corporeal thing inside it. It is not the awful, overwhelming wrench of the rift's edge shredding at all that she is but it is near enough agony for Illyria to retreat from both the rift and the principality before it.

One arm curls around to hug at the shell, useless as the gesture is - human, no doubt, a reflexive disgusting motion drawn from the instincts of the shell. The flames will choke and die now that the principality is not within striking distance to stoke them with its energies but they take longer than they should to gutter out.

Even before they have, Illyria glowers at the interfering creature.

"This is not your battle," she insists, the edges of her pain leaking into the words despite her efforts. "I intend to free myself regardless of the cost. To what end does it concern you, principality, if it means that in doing so I destroy yourself? To remain trapped, endlessly walled inside this miserable smear of a universe within a shell that cannot contain my true self - it is a fate worse than death. Is that what you wish for me?"

The emotion inflecting those words is new, and it takes significant searching of the shell's memories to define it. The pain hardens into icy displeasure when she locates the word - desperation.

Aziraphale breaks away from the barrier as soon as she releases him, doubling over and barely keeping himself upright. Fortunately it seems his attack did the trick, and she needs to recover just as he does. For a moment they only stand opposed, bent and breathing heavily.

Her questions are refreshingly substantive. He looks at her, slowly righting himself, the pain fading away.

"I am an angel," he says. "My purpose has always been to protect life, even it is something like you. And anyway, you - you needn't be so melodramatic. You've only just arrived here, give yourself time to adjust. You may be returned home. Or we may discover a way out of here. I know there are all sorts of people trying to develop one. But it will require patience."

He recognizes the little hint of desperation in her voice and it softens him all the more. "To allow the rift to destroy you would be like surrendering, wouldn't it." Hopefully that's putting it in terms she'll understand.

Furious at the moment's visible weakness, she straightens almost immediately.

"I have been kept against my will too often as of late," says the God-King, her voice hard but no longer tinged with - desperation. "I grow weary of barriers, restrictions, walls thrown up against my being. I cannot exist in such containment."

But she has existed in such a state, for untold millennia while shackled within her sarcophagus and buried in a hole in the world in a universe far from here. And again when she was reincarnated within this fragile little shell, and again the wealth of her powers were siphoned away for the safety of that small and different world. Illyria's life has become nothing but endless limitations for reasons she has only now begun to realize:

Because her age is long past.

Because there is no room in this or any world for Old Ones.

Because the world has changed while she has remained in forced stagnation, and now she has no place in it.

The God-King, the conqueror, the emperor of the Primordium no longer has a kingdom, nor does she have the means to build one because she is so reduced, so powerless, and so - there is a word, a human word - alone.

That is wholly aggravating.

"I have no purpose," she says, quieter. "Surrender or sustain - both options are equally meaningless."

Well, that took a turn. Aziraphale blinks at Illyria for a moment, surprised by her sudden period of - what, introspection? - but also faintly relieved by it. This is much more comfortable ground.

"You can get a new purpose," he offers gently. "I mean, we've all had to, somewhat, but especially those of us that... had a defined one in the first place." He and Crowley have certainly had to cope with a lot of upheaval in a short amount of time. There seems to be no convincing Lucifer to leave his old ways behind, but maybe there is hope with Illyria.

"You must be patient," he says, "that's all. And stop trying all this trying to break through the rift nonsense. That's a great task. One can't very well make important decisions under so much stress. You've only just arrived, after all."

"What purpose?" The shell's head goes to one side, forthright in its inquisition. She is Illyria. Since her conception she has been engineered to rule and what she could not rule she destroyed with ruthless precision. But the principality has made its views on her violence clear and with no targets upon which she can exercise that violence, the God-King is left purposeless. A drifting, formless thing.

"What role could I possibly serve here, where even insects do not see me?" That alone would be enough to drive her to attempt to breach the rift-thing's barriers once more, the fury of being ignored despite her efforts. "They look through me as if I were smoke. I besieged one of their constructions, and still nothing."

"Well, that isn't - hang on, besieged what, now?" Aziraphale's eyes widen in alarm. Just what has she been up to while he's been unaware? "What have you done? Where? This is not normal, that they can't see us, something's happened. To you and me both. I thought it was just me until now."

If she's hurt anyone trying to get attention - he shakes his head, unable to think of it. What an unbelievable bother this 'God-King' is. Like an unmanageable child, a thought which makes him miss Melanie, who is several millenia younger than this entity, and yet incomparably well-adjusted.

"An inconsequential establishment," she replies dismissively. "The vermin were unharmed, merely perturbed, and still they would not see me."

Illyria agrees this must not be normal. Even her initial resurrection in this body, less visibly magnificent than anything she has been in the past, had warranted public alarm and spectacle. And here it is as though the world has decided to mask her from anything's notice.

Save for the principality.

She is uncertain as to how she feels about that.

He narrows his eyes in suspicion of the 'inconsequence' of the establishment, but does not pursue the point further just now. When he's through squinting he sighs heavily and passes a hand over his face, looking around at all the cars and pedestrians moving blindly past them, apparently having no idea what has almost transpired here. Free to move in and out of the Rift's limits.

"We must be patient," he says. "This can't last, whatever it is. We'll find a way to reverse it, or something."

The ease of the 'we' troubles him just a bit. Is he really consigning himself to something as ridiculous as teaming up with this petulant creature? The same one who threw his soul into a tree the other night? Ugh.

"Well," he says, tremendously awkward. "Fancy a drink?"

A drink. A frequently uttered statement around those Illyria fought alongside, usually associated with a need for escape from grief and, afterwards, a marked decline in verbalization. This being is not human and nor does it seem to be in a state of extreme sorrow (she remembers the taste of sorrow, rank and disgusting), yet it elects to consume liquids of human design? Is the principality so eager to adopt mannerisms styled after those of these vermin?

"You are not grieving," she observes in mild confusion. "Why would you engage in the consumption of drink?"

"I'm frustrated," he says, "and drinking helps with that too."

Melanie's desperate prayers have stopped now - does that mean she's given up? Maybe she's just trying to exercise patience. He should get back as soon as he can, but he doesn't want to leave Illyria unattended.

"Look, just come with me, all right?" he says impatiently, holding out his hand.

Illyria makes silent note of this, frustration as a reason interchangeable with grief to initiate drinking.

When the principality offers its hand she stares at it, unwilling to display her confusion so merely settling for revulsion.

"I go where I wish," says the God-King without the slightest trace of mortal petulance, "when I wish it."

"Yes, yes," he says, in no mood. "You're very bloody impressive. Do you wish to come with me, now?"

He really wants to just grab her and take her elsewhere, but she doesn't seem to like that too much. Miss God-King needs to be treated as such, evidently. He's not really in the habit of feeling sorry for himself about circumstances (or at least, he tells himself he's not), but really - why him?

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mooore pain and suffering

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