[9:12 AM]Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline:

"Mhm." Madeline nodded and looked back over at the disappearing island. Very shortly, it was entirely out of view. The sunset to the west of them was setting the whole sky a brilliant orange and pink hue and reflecting off the choppy freezing water in dazzling shapes.

"What do you want to do when we get to where we're going..?" @innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄)

[10:14 AM]innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄):

"Hmmm... I guess, we have to figure out where we're going first." Albanes mused, and let them both fade into silence for a moment.

Abruptly, though, she braced herself on the railing as searing pain coursed through her body. She put her hand on her chest, and began coughing up blood. @Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline

[10:42 AM]Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline:

Madeline happily stood in silence will Albanes. This was all she had wanted for fourteen years now- just to be able to spend peaceful time with Albanes. No judgments, no pain, no powers..

Just peace.

That was, until her lover began to cough. Even just a regular cough would have gotten her attention- but this one sounded bad.

She quickly put her arm on Albanes back, frowning intently.

"A-albanes? What-.. What's happening?" She had an idea. But she didn't like it. And she wasn't going to accept it. @innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄)

[10:45 AM]innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄):

The red blood pouring from Albanes's lips drained into shimmering, golden liquid. Her veins lit up with what blood was left in her body- her powers, loaned from her father, doing everything they could to keep her from dying.

Albanes wiped the blood away from her mouth. She leaned towards Madeline. "It's- it's my father- he's dying. He's dying, and I'm dying with him." @Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline

[10:49 AM]Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline:

"N-no- why- h-he gave you a new heart, you shouldn't be bound to him. You shouldn't die with him. You can't. You can't leave me." Madeline argued weakly and pulled Albanes back from the railing. She pulled them both in to a sitting position, hopefully reducing the amount of strain Albanes was feeling to keep herself alive.

"M-maybe you're just-.. Reacting to being far away. And you'll get past this- you have to." @innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄)

[10:51 AM]innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄):

Albanes let Madeline guide her into a sitting position, and leaned her head on her lover's. It was getting so hard to even stay conscious. She kept her hand on her chest.

"I can feel it. I can feel it draining away from me." She shuddered. "Madeline, please. Please hold me. I want to be near you at the end." @Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline

[11:01 AM]Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline:

Madeline didn't hesitate to hold her. She wrapped her arm around her back and up toward her opposite cheek, lightly brushing away any stray hairs or blood or.. that eerie golden liquid.

"W-we promised- y-you can't leave without me. I can't live without you. You're the whole reason I kept living-" Madeline's voice was getting increasingly shaky and hard to understand.

Oh she wished she had another arm. So she could hold both Albanes face and her hand.

And how she wished she had her other eye, just so she could take in all of Albanes even more deeply.

But she'd never get those things.

"Pl-please don't die- or- or- take me with you." @innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄)

[11:08 AM]innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄):

Albanes leaned into Madeline, reassured by her presence. She closed her eyes- it was getting to difficult to keep them open. She was fighting herself for control over her own body.

"It would- it would be selfish of me, to make you go on without me." She choked out, spitting up more blood. "We... we did say we'd die together..." @Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline

[11:16 AM]Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline:

"Y-you are not selfish, you are so giving.." Madeline said and tore her eye away from Albanes for just a moment to look around.

There wasn't anything imminently deadly on the boat.. But her eye lingered, back on the railing and out past it to the churning freezing water below.

The shock.. would make it painless and swift, right..?

She slowly started to pull the both of them over toward the edge, but she only got about halfway there before she suddenly collapsed, bringing Albanes down to the floor with her.

She couldn't even speak, only choking out strange noises as her body convulsed, black veins spreading out from her heart and across her body.

It burned. Just as much as it did every time her powers activated.

Her right arm reformed and her eye filled back in instantly- quicker than they ever had before.

She forced her hands away from Albanes, not wanting to hurt her any more than she already was. @innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄)

[11:19 AM]innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄):

Albanes startled as Madeline groaned, and forced her eyes open. She tried to move back towards Madeline.

"Madeline- Madeline, please, don't leave me-" She took her lover's hands in her own, not bothering how it burned away her flesh. "Please." @Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline

[11:28 AM]Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline:

The toxic sludge ate away at Albane's flesh hungrily. It only took a few moments to strip down to the bone, which it continued trying to eat away at.

Madeline could feel the poison sinking back in to her organs. Toxins would make them shut down over time as it became too hard to filter. Starting with her kidneys, then her liver, everything.. It would take a long time for her lungs, heart, or brain to give out, however.

So it would be a painful, slow, and agonizing death over many hours. Hours that Albanes clearly did not have.

She gripped on to Albanes other hand with her cleaner arm, her grip nearly strong enough to snap her fingers. Clearly this was agony for both of them.

She weakly started taking them toward the edge again, the pathetic inches she got out of pushing them with only her legs was getting them nowhere any time fast.

She tried to speak again, but all she could do was let out a whimper of pain. @innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄)

[11:33 AM]innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄):

Albanes, with the all the stability left in her body, led both herself and Madeline towards the ledge. She understood what her lover was wanting.

"Soon, we will be the same dust." She stammered out. @Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline

[11:40 AM]Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline:

Madeline was taking deep, wheezing breaths. Usually when her powers were this active, she wanted to kill and maim whoever was nearby.

But that person was never Albanes. It was never the one who never feared her.

And as she spoke, she recognized that phrase. She was always in the chapel every morning- how could she forget how it went?

"Soon.." Madeline said after a deep wheezing breath. She leaned against the railing, the acid burning away at the wooden railing slowly. It would take a bit to eat through such a refractory material, but that gave the two of them time to speak without either having to focus their attention on how they'd have to jump this hurdle. "We'll.. rest.. forever.." @innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄)

[11:46 AM]innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄):

Albanes didn't take her eyes off Madeline as the railing burnt away- she wanted her final sight to be her. This wasn't her ideal idea of death- a last plunge into icy waters- but any death was ideal, when it was taken with Madeline at her side. She braced herself on Madeline, struggling to stay up.

"I'll never forget you, Madeline." She said through pained breaths. "I'll love you, always." @Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline

[12:06 PM]Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline:

It was taking increasingly long for Madeline to speak as the dark veins worked their way up her face.

(Gore here)

"I'll.. follow you.. anywhere.." She spoke. Was that how it went? It was getting oh so hard for her to remember.. She slowly released Albanes hand and moved her hand up to her own chest- over her heart. The acid ate away at her flesh and sunk down to her ribs in no time. The offwhite bones began to morph in shape around her hand as she forced her way inside. Her own heart was there- beating much more quickly as it tried to pump in and out the disgusting liquid that was only vaguely replicating how blood was meant to work.

"Yeon..aixho.. was a liar.. you.. deserve.. A heart." Madeline said. Her hands gripped around the organ, surprisingly not simply melting it as well. With awful squelching sounds and grunts of effort and agony, she ripped the beating organ straight out of her chest. The black veins began to recede, no longer being forced out from her chest at high pressures. The black liquid spilled from the awful hole in her chest and all over the floor around them.

She knew her powers were fading from their source being removed, and she knew that if she wanted to do what needed to be done, she didn't have time to wait for Albanes to respond. She forced her hand forward and through Albanes' chest, depositing the still beating organ to where it should have gone. She had no clue how to do the connections with the arteries or ventricles, so it was functionally useless unless Albanes' powers remained enough to put it in place. But Madeline wasn't considering that possibility, it was meant purely to be symbolic.

Her toxic arm and eye faded away as the last of her powers dripped out of her and on to the floor.

"I.. love you.. I'm.. sorry." It wasn't clear what she was apologizing for now, maybe that freaky heart thing that definitely hurt, or some other action she had assumed she offended Albanes by, or maybe just to be 100% sure she didn't leave anything to chance.

She went limp as she leaned back against the railing now, only a thin splinter of wood holding the pair up now. Much more movement would surely make it snap. @innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄)

[12:21 PM]innsjo (glass🎸+ darcy🖋+ npcs❄):

Albanes didn't fight or protest as Madeline tore out her heart- it was with quiet, tired knowing she accepted it. She couldn't easily mask the groans and grunts of pain as the organ was placed into her empty chest.

"Any- anywhere you would go, I'd follow." She echoed. Where had she heard those words before? It didn't matter. They were hers now. They were their words.

"Don't apologize. Please, don't apologize. You never did anything to make me hate you. Everything you did, you did because you loved me- and because I love you."

Even if Madeline hadn't heard it, it was all she had left to say. She wrapped her arms tight around Madeline's body, and let them both fall down into the icy blue below. Albanes was gone before she could register hitting the water.

The last thing she could truly understand was pure bliss and being so close to the object of her affection. Even in death, she loved her. @Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline

[12:24 PM]Mads|Roque🩸+Hannah🦈+Madeline:

...

Also as they fell overboard the little glass jar containing the worm fell loose from Madeline's pocket and rolled away from the railing.