Space, bright and alight and alive, empty and teeming and neon and pitch, from one nowhere place to a thousand grasping hands to the inside of his iris as he fall into his own screaming mouth, to stillness.
Angry, violent plains of open void, speckled with great cell structures that swell and pulse, colour cutting through dark space like fractal knives of purple and green as angry clouds of starstuff loom. A face that appears from the darkness, roiling, a gargantuan mask of living rocklike stripes that eddy in waves, two piercing eyes of flaming purple set within them.
He doesn't know what it is when he sees it that first time, but he remembers that journey through everywhere as he returns here later to bargain with that vast entity. Dormammu of the Dark Dimension does not take that kindly, and for it Stephen dies. And dies. And dies. And dies. He bats away flaming rock with sacred mandalas until there is too much to keep at bay. He's engulfed in beams of boundless power and disintegrates to nothing. He's pierced through from every angle by spines of planet rock.
He loses count of the times. Of the ways. Time resets, he dies again, time loops, the spell holds. He hovers once again down from one swollen cell of land to another to face the glowering godthing, offer his bargain, and await an imminent demise.
There's a shift. Pronounced, dramatic, and immediately evident in the look on the stranger's face, the little noise he makes that can't have come from nowhere. There's a struggle going on in the man in front of him, however brief, and when it's over it leaves him looking — unwell.
Stephen's not sure what he'd felt. But there was a marked difference in the sense of the space between eyes closed and eyes briefly open. Before was standing far below someone looking out a window, a general sort of watched that only includes you because you're standing in the scene. Peripheral. The latter was something closer to a spotlight on a dark night, a breath down the back of the neck, the inevitability of being perceived.
Being looked at doesn't do that. Not with one pair of human eyes. His expression pinches into a faint frown, tight with opposing concern and caution.
"Is that a no?"
There's a blunt edge to the question, dry humour devoid of it's usual play. He doesn't move to help, stands rooted to his spot, waiting for whatever might follow. Unsure exactly what it is that he's walked in on.
no subject
Angry, violent plains of open void, speckled with great cell structures that swell and pulse, colour cutting through dark space like fractal knives of purple and green as angry clouds of starstuff loom. A face that appears from the darkness, roiling, a gargantuan mask of living rocklike stripes that eddy in waves, two piercing eyes of flaming purple set within them.
He doesn't know what it is when he sees it that first time, but he remembers that journey through everywhere as he returns here later to bargain with that vast entity. Dormammu of the Dark Dimension does not take that kindly, and for it Stephen dies. And dies. And dies. And dies. He bats away flaming rock with sacred mandalas until there is too much to keep at bay. He's engulfed in beams of boundless power and disintegrates to nothing. He's pierced through from every angle by spines of planet rock.
He loses count of the times. Of the ways. Time resets, he dies again, time loops, the spell holds. He hovers once again down from one swollen cell of land to another to face the glowering godthing, offer his bargain, and await an imminent demise.
There's a shift. Pronounced, dramatic, and immediately evident in the look on the stranger's face, the little noise he makes that can't have come from nowhere. There's a struggle going on in the man in front of him, however brief, and when it's over it leaves him looking — unwell.
Stephen's not sure what he'd felt. But there was a marked difference in the sense of the space between eyes closed and eyes briefly open. Before was standing far below someone looking out a window, a general sort of watched that only includes you because you're standing in the scene. Peripheral. The latter was something closer to a spotlight on a dark night, a breath down the back of the neck, the inevitability of being perceived.
Being looked at doesn't do that. Not with one pair of human eyes. His expression pinches into a faint frown, tight with opposing concern and caution.
"Is that a no?"
There's a blunt edge to the question, dry humour devoid of it's usual play. He doesn't move to help, stands rooted to his spot, waiting for whatever might follow. Unsure exactly what it is that he's walked in on.