Editing Warhammer High (section)

==Freya and Miranda==

When the aether opened itself to Miranda, she found that she would rather not be anywhere else but within it. Father had warned her...strongly... against so much as visiting the plain of souls, but after her first time glimpsing the indescribable majesty of the other universe, Miranda found that anywhere else was little more than a hovel, created for the sole purpose of binding her to limitations, and fears, and wants she cared nothing for in the ethereal. Stars gave birth and died before her in the time it takes someone to blink. Seconds of time stretched out for millenia in the grandeur of the aether, and she relished it. The sea of spirits was calm, eddying in tides of joy and surfs of joy. She was sprayed with blasts of sorrow and confusion, intermingled with lust and fear, although these were trifling descriptions to what she felt as her soul self drifted aimlessly through the Great Ocean.

Suddenly, the waters of consciousness began to tremble, as if some great fissure were causing them to bubble and ripple. Miranda tried to make sense of the insensate, but found that she was little more than a passenger on this trip, her control over her coming and going no longer existed. She watched a great, dark star, piteously heinous be born in the blackness of the void. It swallowed other stars, bright, but not as bright as the anti-light of this new constellation. Star after star was sucked in, and she felt as if the very sea of thought itself was being pulled in, like a vicious tide away from shore. As soon as she was about to panic, her thoughts exploded with light. A new star, small, but incomprehensibly bright was birthed next to the pulsating, morbid solar body. This newcomer was greeted fiercely, and rampant flares and bursts of energy were hurled at it. Each blow, which had felled dozens of lesser stars, dissipated before it even reached this new, glowing entity. She almost wanted to venerate this new star when it split. No. It didn't split. Because it was never just one. It was many stars. This awe-inspiring light was the sum of many. But why did they separate? What could cause them to...the seas began to boil. To burn. To blister her otherflesh. Something was terribly wrong.

Miranda noticed that the stars seemed to be separating from one central point of light, which shone with a diamond clarity. It had a billion points of light, each one different and majestic, in a simplistic sort of way. But, as the other stars, each bearing a single, distinct color separated, the diamond began to tarnish. It stained, as if it were being covered with some kind of muck. It was then that she realized, with horrible clarity, that it was not being covered. The diamond itself was changing. 

Turning from a piece of brilliance to a creation of utter wrongness, the light turned to something so black and incomprehensibly dark that it outdid its' former rival a hundredfold. And swallowed it up. First it ate the black star. But that would not sate it, not ever. This black diamond would never be sated. All of the stars it once held were swallowed next, as if their lights never were. Then, the diamond looked at her...and it was hungry. The sea of thought began to sway, back and forth, to and fro, as the black diamond began to devour everything. It was devouring even the Warp itself. Back and forth. Back and forth until the coldness of death ate Miranda, and she drowned.

"Wake up, would you! Cut it out, Miranda, you're spooking me!" Miranda coughed. She choked and hacked out water, which even coming back up felt as cold as an untouched glacier. She spit and choked and breathed in gulps of air, her lungs greedy from oxygen deprivation. "I keep telling you to lay off that dabbling, or next time, I'll let you die!" Miranda looked up at Freya Russ, and smiled.

"You make such a horrible liar, Freya." Miranda saw Freya's face contort in a strange mixture of disgust, fear, and thankfulness that she was alive.

Having to convince their fathers that living on campus was a good idea was monumental in and of itself. Later having to explain who they were roommates with was miraculous in that either one of them still had a pulse. The daughters of the Wolf and the Red King so much as existing under one roof was difficult to accept. To know that they were roommates had sent their respective fathers into near apoplexy. They, however, didn't see things in such black and white differences. From the moment they saw each other at the great orientation at the Isstvan Building, they knew that somehow, for some reason, they needed to stay together. To help each other. To the faculty, it seemed like a mutually beneficial arrangement: Freya would help Miranda develop her physical talents in Phys Ed., while Miranda would help Freya with her other studies.

The faculty, however, would know nothing of what they thought of each other after classes. During school hours, they kept up appearances, openly taunting and jibing the other until it seemed like hair-pulling was the only reasonable course of action. Behind the doors of their rooms...and most anywhere else they felt was somewhat private, for that matter, they cared for each other more knowingly than any other being possibly could.