Cadence feels her lungs expand, hit a peak, and then recede. As she looks from atop the ridge, the tides seem to follow her now rhythmic inhales and exhales - or is it the other way around? The Angel snaps herself back to the present moment, steadying herself as her eyes focus back to the battle at hand. Others' hands. The sounds of clashing metal, both high pitched and dull, alternating with seemingly no predictable pattern; the grunting and the guttural screams, filled with rage and pain; the thud of metal boots, running this way and that across the slick earth.
'I should be down there,' Cadence chastises herself, feeling a pang of shame grip the soft space just beneath her ribcage and travel up to squeeze her heart, freezing her in place. She remembers all the Very Good Reasons she'd been given about why, as a ~Central Change Leader~, she must remain detached from the outcome of the battle - and detached from the carnage created in the name of 'Everyone's Highest Good.'
But Cadence can't help herself - she doesn't feel justified in closing herself off from all of the pain and wounding being inflicted on and by those whose sole vision has been projected onto them - 'foot-soldiers' - while the rest of the Central Change Agency don't have to smell the rot of death - corpses, dreams, and lives - unless they want to. And some of them do.
Cadence huffs her breath out through her mouth in a sigh, once again bringing herself back to her body in the here and now.
She feels the swirl of dark energy begin to loop in her heart - the dangerous energy she's been told time and again needs to be tamed. Soothed, they call it. Breathe in through your nose, down into your belly, then once you reach the edge of expansion, slowly let the air out through your mouth, feeling the cool sensation that reaches down into whatever divots are wet from the last time you licked your lips. Okay, they don't say that last part.
Back again. Cadence blinks. She knows that this feeling, this spiral, when unexpressed, makes her sick. Sick to her Soul. It points her to what she believes is right, but how can she be when those around her believe something different, when she continues to be told to keep this energy in chains.
When it breaks free, though, oh, is it Powerful. Beautiful. Freeing. Destructive. She could end everyone on the battlefield - both sides - in eight minutes, if she decided that's what she wanted. Hundreds of lives taken just to put an end to the infernal noise of it all. The back and forth. The push and the pull. End the external conflict to invite peace back into her chest cavity and feel the puppet strings on her shoulders loosen. Until it starts all over again.
Cadence screams out, a jagged, bloodied, bruised noise desperately echoing out from her chest, as she grips the sides of her head, all ten fingertips clenching her skull, as if she were going to rip it in half. Or into pieces, as it would probably end up. These things are pretty messy. Bodies, that is, and the ravaging of them.
That's it - that's one thought too far in that direction. The dark energy takes over, picking up like a sudden windstorm, whirling and crashing around inside Cadence's whole body like a funnel, flowing through the meridians in her body and attaching to the points of her feet, hands, and head. This energy moves her in an instant. In a matter of seconds, Cadence turns toward the fight, runs to the grassy edge of her Cliff Up In The Clouds, and jumps down, knocking dozens off their feet, as hers land firmly onto the earth.
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