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eldritchkadesart · 2 years

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Revivals And Offerings Chapter 1: How to feel Lovely Again

Originally posted on A03 here

Death was infinite and unknown. It was inevitable and it came for all like did for Aisha Roberts. Decapitation was a horrid death for anyone but more so for the one who called for their lovers knowing they’ll die. Death was supposed to be an afterthought, where you would go to heaven for the saints, or hell for the sinners.

But what was Aisha? She was loved and she led a successful career, but she loved a devoted killer and she hung with saintly sinners. Gang life was what she was born into, and she saw many things a woman should never see. If anything Heaven and Hell was the domain she should’ve fallen into.

But instead, as she laid in a white pond of bright purple lotus under a pitch-black sky, she was in a new domain. Yet she didn’t know, as she slowly opened up her eyes. She didn’t know why she felt her head and her body connected again. She slowly sat up and found herself in a gown of gold and white embroidered with eyes and geometric teeth all on her sleeves and her ribcage embroidered by gold. Upon looking in the reflection, a crown of thorns was hovering over her akin to a halo of a saint. She was restored to her younger state evident by her dreadlocks draping down her shoulders.

“My sweet,” Crooned a hoarse raspy voice toned in sorrow. Aisha looked up and gasped. The voice was a human woman’s but the shape it belonged to, belonged to no woman. Gazing down at Aisha, was the skull of an owl whose beak was dipped in obsidian. Pooling from its sockets was gold akin to tears. The liquid gold streamed down from its skull and fell into white water, upon contact became the hydrangeas the two were surrounded by.

The owl’s head was devotedly attached to a human skeleton, and the upper half was scantily exposed save for a veiled cloak, whose pattern could only be described as the veining of a butterfly’s wings. Her bones were coated in the same obsidian but veined in gold all over, continuing down her spine and to her leonine legs. The skull had no emotion to show, but her voice was of sorrow, and she towered over her, possibly taller than Johnny.

“My sweet, how you’ve suffered. How cruel fate became to you, taking you away,” She sorrowfully said as she reached out with her spidery fingers. Aisha hesitated, slightly drawing back. The entity was damningly terrifying, yet all she conveyed was of no means to harm her. If anything, the sorrow and her gestures were trying to only comfort the dead woman. The entity only tilted her head.

“I died, didn’t I?” Aisha whispered, yet her words echoed in the pond and in the sky.

“Yes, My sweet,” The entity sorrowfully answered. “The dragon’s claws killed you, and took you away from the living.”

The entity reached out for her again, and this time Aisha allowed her. With the entity’s spindly hands caressing the side of her cheek before it trailed up and tucking one of her locks behind Aisha’s ear. The entity, taller and possibly stronger, could rip her to shreds with the swipe of her claws. But in every movement, in the gold drippings, the entity was trying its damn hardest to be gentle with Aisha.

Aisha knew damn well who the entity was talking about as emotions filled her throat. The Ronin, and that damned Jyunichi. It all came flooding back to her, the intruders, the assassin that killed her, and Johnny’s name is the last thing on her lips. A thin ring of ice now burned on Aisha’s neck as she remembered her tragedy, now realizing her death. Gold tears from her cheek now dripping on the side of her face as she spills her emotion. The droplets fell to the water, and instead of hydrangeas, the tears blossomed into the roses that her devoted Johnny once gave her, red white and yellow roses that stand out against the bright violet hues of the hydrangeas.

Aisha would’ve crumbled to the pond on her hands, but the entity caught her and held her close to her own ribs. Aisha continued to sob and wail, wailing for the loss of her life, for her friends and her Johnny. She didn’t want to leave them, and she never had any intention to do so cruelly. She didn’t want to die young, and now may never die old, leaving a legacy of children or wedded. It wasn’t fair and fuck fate for being so cruel.

The entity was silent, cradling her and rubbing the back of Aisha’s head. Within the mausoleum of her obsidian bones, there was no heartbeat, but only the sound of the rain. The two were strangers, yet sorrow was a shared factor. After what seemed like an eternity, Aisha slowly pulled away, trembling and sniffling. The entity, slowly pulled away giving the young woman space as she collected her tears.

The roses did not escape Aisha’s notice. If anything, she was drawn to the memory of them, to that life, her life. And now questions began to arose in Aisha’s mind as she turned to the entity once more.

“Who are you and why the hell am I here?” The question left her lips trembling from the aftermath of her cries. But she stares hoping for answers.

The entity is silent. Though she took no offense, it didn’t show in her hollow sockets that pooled with the gold down her bones. She paused and looked down at the white water before turning to Aisha.

“Many people have given me names for the many shapes I have taken. A devourer, a savior, benevolent and malevolent. Destroyer and Creator, a god and a devil. Warrior and diplomat. I am many of these things and so much more. I am the one who cries and rages for the women and children lost. For unnecessary wars and corrupt men I spill their blood with the very sadism they show to the innocents. They have called me Athena, Kali, Ishtar, and Mut to name a few,” She honestly declared. As two lilac-colored orbs began to fill her once hollow sockets, burning away at her golden tears. There was pride in her raspy voice, all of these things she was proud of her nature over. The nature of cosmic horror, fragmented in this complicated reality, and many more to raise and destroy.

But Aisha did not know this. Instead, she could only listen as her eyes widened in concern.

“But in this shape I take and in the domain, we reside in, I am called Cariformes. Though Cari is an acceptable name you may refer me to.”

Aisha was somewhat horrified by all these titles and the bluntness in Cari’s answer. Some of the names were unfamiliar, but Kali was a name she was familiar with. A woman ready to go on a warpath and take many heads as she wanted. In a sense, the living embodiment could be Johnny.

She was being truthful, at least she hopes she was. Cari continued as she stood up, her attention towards the starless night that cascaded over them.

“I pulled you here, for I have watched your life as I have done with many souls, and frankly, such a death is undeserving to you. I wish to offer you a second chance, at taking your life back,” She offered as she reaches towards the sky.

Holding one finger, she swipes to the sky in one motion, and it shattered into multiple fragments. These fragments were like mirrors to the world of the living. Every fragment showcased every event. From her death, to others that came before. She sees her killer murdered by the Boss of Saints Row. She sees the very people who ordered it suffer death too. She sees old memebers die and new ones joining. She sees the Saints fighting a giant soda mascot and other odd things that don’t make sense.

What does make sense was seeing her earth die at the hands of alien greed. The one called Xinyak took him away and locked him in stasis. The worst part? Johnny being forced to relieve her death. Over. And Over and over and all over again. What a horrid kind of cruelty to bestow, it was a slow death of the mind. Johnny was horrid in some areas, but never did he deserve to watch her die over and over. Anything but that was the last thing he ever deserved.

“Though it didn’t ask for an early grave, your earth is just as sacred as the blood in your veins. This...Filth,” She spat as the images of a pale alien with black thorns shone on all of the fragments. “This wretched filth, had no right to destroy it, like it has done with many others in your universe.”

“Others?” Aisha asked.

“Yes, not my point. My point is that, I can give you the power of choice. The choice to go back and prevent it along with your death,” She announced as she glanced down. “Back to him.”

The fragments cease to have Xinyaks image, and all of them change into Johnny Gat. Aisha’s heart stopped. Their torrid and stubborn natures were often a problem, but at the end of it all she loved him no matter what. Even if her last breath was blessed with an act of love. She looked back up at Cariformes.

“What will I owe you? If it means being back on a leash, I’m not interested.”

“No leash, none. You will owe me nothing,” Cariformes informed her. She wanted nothing physical or faustian. She was contempt with nothing in return, but unknown to Aisha, ulterior motives often came in the form of kind acts. If anything, she wanted to give everyone a chance. A beautiful chance that added to the wonderful chaos Aisha’s world had to offer. The kind of chaos that was the most pleasurable to watch on TV with a glass of wine in hand.

Glorious Chaos.

Aisha was deep in thought. The chance to avoid her death? Without anything in return? It seemed like a trap, but if it was, it would be worth if for her Johnny shining in the fragments of the sky. To give him a chance of being freed in the labryinthe of her death, to give each other a happy ending when there was no chance in her past life? Johnny Gat may be an Asshole, but he was forever her asshole.

She looked up at Cariformes, with quiet determination. “I’ll take your offer.”

The horror stared into her very soul with her orbs. This woman had seen much in her life. Here she was staring the horror back with determination. Willingly agreenig to go back and relieve most of it. Silently, Cariformes raised both hands to the sky.

The fragments of Johnny disappear.

Colors of vibrant red, yellow, green, blue and purple begin to bleed in the sky, marblizing and swirling to Cariformes’ hands, where it dripped profusely from her fingertips. Aisha could stay, but she couldn’t help but be rendered with fear. Her whole body began to tremble as she could only watch the power that Cariformes held in her hands.

Cariformes having sensed this, looked down, as the golden tears began to form once more.

“My sweet,” She assured her as she knelt down. “It will be alright, my sweet.”

Her words were comforting, as she reached out for Aisha. “It will not hurt my sweet. It will be only like a--”

Cariformes and the world were gone in an instant the moment Aisha shot up in her bed, gasping. She reached for her heart, and for her neck. All of it was still in place, and Aisha Roberts was alive once more, and still remembered everything, even her death.

Alive, in Stilwater, where it is now morning. Aisha turned to her clock, and her eyes widened upon the date: November 13, 2004.

Five years before she died.

#Saints Row #Saints Row The Third #saints row 2 #aisha #sr1 #Johnny Gat #gatboss #the boss #dexter jackson #troy bradshaw #shaundi #Revivals and Offerings #Julius little #benjamin king #saints row reboot

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