As I believe I’ve previously mentioned, I am a big fan of the Dungeons & Dragons stream Critical Role. The arc I’m watching right now (the Whitestone storyline, for the initiated) is so ridiculously good I simultaneously struggle to turn it off in the evening, and have to take pauses and pace around the apartment intermittently because OMG THE TENSION! I will eventually blog about why I love watching RPGs in general and CR in particular, but for now let’s leave it at: it’s awesome!
Anyway, in this particular story arc, the illustruous DM of the group, Matthew Mercer, has (amongst other NPCs) been portraying what may go down in history as some of my favorite villains ever, the Briarwoods. Now, I like a good villain as much as the next guy. Stories need them, after all. But usually, usually, even when I find a villain interesting and cool, it’s still the protagonist’s story I’m most interested in. It’s fairly rare that I say “oh man, I want to write/read a story about THEM” about the villains, unless it involves imagining a scenario in which they’re not actually villains. Not so with the Briarwoods. They are awful, awful, awful, and I sort of want to read the novelization of their great, epic lovestory. High praise, coming from me! In the last episode I saw (episode 34 spoiler alert for you late watchers like myself!), Lord Briarwood met the end of his undeath and… all I can say is, Mercer, I hope you feel good about yourself. You made me feel sympathy for the evil, sadistic, now widowed necromancer! I’m glad you use your powers for good!
So why am I telling you all this! Well, because a line uttered by the bereft Lady Briarwood in the episode (and truthfully, probably the best line in the show so far, jokes notwithstanding). It just wouldn’t leave me alone this morning, and so I had to write it out. I hope that the Critical Role gang, and especially Mercer, don’t mind, but they seem to be pretty positive about fan-stuff so I’m choosing not to worry. This piece isn’t strictly fan fiction, especially since I don’t actually know how the story ends yet, but it’s a sort of… highly abstracted take on it, I suppose. I’ll be honest, I don’t really think I’ve done the line justice, but here it is anyway:
“I broke the world for us.”
She stood in the ruins, in the nothingness. Everything around her was floating, shapeless remnants of things torn asunder and ripped apart. Tears streaked down her face as she waded through the detritus, searching for him.
“Where are you?” she called into the void, her voice breaking as her body began to sunder with the rest of everything. She could no longer feel herself moving, but she didn’t stop. Direction was a lie, but she pushed on, still searching. A loud crack, and something shot out of the darkness and impacted her shoulder. Ligaments tore, muscles ripped, bones snapped and the limb fell away. It didn’t matter, she couldn’t feel it anymore, couldn’t feel anything except his absence.
The wretched sun was still there, its sharp, merciless rays burning her eyes. In the light the dust swirled, horribly, unchangeably dead. It wasn’t supposed to be this way… They were going to love each other, forever!
“Come back to me!” she cried, but the dust swirled without meaning or intent. She screamed at the sun. There was no echo, nothing for her pain to reverberate off.
Then everything was dark, and it wasn’t the sun going out but her eyes. Piece after piece fell away from her, floating out into the void, mixing with the other remnants of the world. Soon she would be gone, too.
“I broke the world for us!” she screamed into the nothingness, but her voice had already fallen away.
And then there was nothing.
And then there was nothing.
And then there was nothing.
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