Quote:
Flower Power (15) : Destiny City has erupted with colorful wildflowers, both beautiful to look at and surprisingly fragrant. The aroma is incredibly alluring, and it's difficult not to be tempted to get a closer whiff. As expected, it smells even more amazing up close, and immediately after inhaling the aroma, colors seem brighter. Lights appear softer. The world takes on a warm, dreamlike quality where everything feels just a little more magical. Some describe glowing trails of light, shifting colors, or patterns that seem to move when they aren't looking directly at them. Others find themselves unusually cheerful, creative, or sociable. Unfortunately, not every experience is pleasant. What begins as a pleasant daydream can quickly become overwhelming, and the same flowers that inspire wonder in one person may leave another feeling confused, anxious, or trapped in an unpleasant hallucination. The effects always fade with time, maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours, but no one seems quite sure why these flowers have such unusual properties. If you're the type to stop and smell the roses--be careful.
Jörmungandr returned to the flowers.
It wasn't the same patch, of course. Finding his way back to the exact one he'd lain in, where he'd met Cernunnos, would have been quite the challenge, Jörmungandr was sure. The city was simply too large, and he was not yet familiar enough with its twists and turns. He'd wandered, for a while, hoping to find it again, but it had eluded him, and he'd found the melancholy he hoped to escape weighing him down.
It had seemed so simple and logical, when he started; that lovely aroma had lifted his spirits and given him a pleasant, lightly buzzing high. He had woken from nightmares of the fall of his world, jolted up in the middle of the night, and it had seemed natural, first, to slide out the window, power up, and go for a walk.
It felt better, in these circumstances, to walk as Jörmungandr and not as Keziah; he could pretend that it was because he would be safer, powered up, if he encountered Chaos, but he knew in truth that it was because Jörmungandr felt more like the correct skin to be in, whether he was wearing the little bracelet that hid away his inhuman features or not.
And in any case, as he'd wandered, he remembered how the flowers had soothed his nerves, calmed him, left him floating in a pleasant, dreamy haze. It had seemed like a logical conclusion, then, to seek them out again. Easier and perhaps less worrying than other methods of clearing his head (or fogging it in different, more pleasant ways) at least.
He knew he was nowhere near the field he'd found before, but there it was again--the tantalizing aroma. Soft and enticing and beautiful.
It was so easy to follow it again. To find those beautiful, bright flowers, and sink to his knees, and lay down among them, and inhale the scent, and let everything filter into a soft, hazy dream.
Perhaps he could just stay here. Sleep among the flowers. Enjoy the bliss for as long as it was present.
It would be so much easier than going on.
Darkness began to creep at the edges of his vision, and Jörmungandr sat up, frowning.
That had not happened before.
when he cast his gaze around him, horror clutched his chest. Suddenly, the flowers were changed--still beautiful and vibrant, but with jet black veins bleeding through them. The same jet black veins that had marked the plants on his world when they became infected with the Chaos toxin that had killed...everything.
Jörmungandr stumbled to his feet in horror. How was it--how was it here? It should have been safely contained on his world; there was no way it had made it to Earth, unless...
Unless it was carried.
He looked down at his own arms.
Black, all through his veins.
He hadn't noticed any of the signs. Hadn't felt the progression of the disease. But it was here, nonetheless, clearly--the evidence was right in front of him--and he'd brought it with him, and he was going to poison his adoptive planet, and--
Fear seized his heart, and he ran, though he wasn't sure where he was running to. Every step he took, he risked spreading the disease, risked it getting into Earth's water and soil and killing it like it had killed Jörmungandr and it would be
his fault
all over again
two worlds, dead, because he was too arrogant, too foolish, too curious
Jörmungandr sank to his knees, pushing his hands through his hair. what had he done? What could he do? Was it already too late? Had he borne the taint all this way, with no chance to stop it? Had he been an unknowing carrier for a thousand years, and it had just festered in him, waiting to escape?
His breath came sharp and shallow, and his nails sank into his scalp, and he tugged at his hair like that was going to make any kind of difference, like anything he did mattered anymore when he was poison.
He could see it, spreading out from him, that awful, deathly blackness.
(It was happening so fast. Had it happened that fast on Jörmungandr?)
(It was stronger now. A thousand years of feeding. Maybe it would spread faster, here.)
(But no other Senshi had brought Chaos to this world with them.)
(But how many other Senshi had unleashed it with their own hands.)
(But--)
It was as if everything tilted for a moment, and then, as quickly as it had spread, the blackness in the grass around him vanished. Jörmungandr gasped, and brought down his arms, and felt an aching sense of relief when he realized that they were not, after all, veined through with black.
....He had been hallucinating. For who only knew how long.
Apparently, those lovely, gentle flowers could have other, far more detrimental effects.
Jörmungandr took a shallow breath, and then another, and another. Slowly, he felt his heart and his breathing come back under his control. He had not doomed a second world, it was all--an extension of his awful nightmares.
Perhaps that was a lesson. He would have to take more care in the future.
[wc: 870 words]
