Cecilia Forester Survived.
Survival, however, could be a terrible thing. Cecilia would carry the immense weight of the guilt she felt for her survival for the rest of her days. After the world had come crumbling down and the Gods rained onto the earth from their heavens, Emma, Harry, Cooper, Ayden, Scarlet and Sebastian had been her chosen family. They found each other in the darkness and banded together to create their own source of light, to be the light for one another. To have them ripped away from her, and indeed to be responsible for their deaths was almost too much to bare.
Cecilia returned to her apartment, surrounded by the belongings of her departed friends. For what felt like days at a time she would do nothing but sob, curled up on her bed like a dog who had been kicked one too many times. Wailing and wasting away, letting hunger overcome her. Some days she would stand and make her way over to the second hand upright and bring herself to sit at the bench and force her weary and trembling hands to play through Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, a study and of itself on music. It was a pleasant distraction, each etude calling forth a new concept that played with the rest as a broader body, something that allowed her to process her emotion.
Yet the true terror was when her eyes closed. Sleep eluded Cecilia. The visions, the subject of Etude number 6. Every horrible moment replayed like a movie. Over and over again. Cooper's body, Ayden's death, Scarlet's screams and the sound of her heart hitting the floor. Sebastian's final scream before he was taken. Cecilia wondered if he was still alive. So many days had passed, and Erebus' interest in the man was unclear, but it couldn't be good. Her heart cried for him. Erebus' voice remained in Cecilia's head, it had almost become the narrator of her life. It described things as she did them, as she thought about them or was about to do them. It summarized complex emotions and memories in neat little packages.
This, of course, was not Erebus doing but rather her own, her mind fractured beyond repair. In fact, nothing had happened since Sebastian vanished alongside the God of Terror. Everything seemed so ordinary, so trivial. No odd smells, no other worldly voices in her head, or messages to be found. There was just that absence that plagued her. Cecilia wanted death to take her. She wanted to be free of this mortal coil. To give up. It seemed so easy a thing to do. But what would that do for her friends? Nothing. It wouldn't bring them back. It would in effect, render their deaths meaningless and eradicate them from living memory. That seemed too heavy a price to pay.
In the end Cecilia chose to live. And in so doing, she chose to accept the mission and purpose that Erebus had given her. Cecilia found a new group wandering through the wastes of the world. A group of similar size and composition, taking pity on what looked like nothing more than a defeated woman. They were kind, warm. Their names weren't important, nor were their faces or defining features. They were little more than a passing fancy. But that third or fourth night, as they sat around the fire, Cecilia smiled. "I want to tell you all a story. A true story... The story of Terror itself." She grinned and began her tale, just as she would time and time again through each group she stayed with. Forever committing to her friends memory, and to warn the survivors that Terror could come for you too, and when it does, when He does, pray to him for a swift death, for being left alive was the worst fate of them all.
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