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Being corrupted by another dimension likely isn’t supposed to feel good. Gem doesn’t know for sure — she hasn’t seen it happen to anyone else yet, but she certainly has been getting concerned looks from her allies ever since she got home with void crawling up her arm.
It’s sort of pretty. Everytime she catches sight of the way her arm glitters a faint, deep purple, she has to resist the urge to examine it. It doesn’t hurt. She doesn’t feel any different. All that’s changed is that she looks a little different now, and in her eyes that’s not all too bad.
She didn’t even go to the End dimension — that’s what’s most confusing to her. She’d really think those who she sent in there to slay the dragon would be the ones starting to look like it; instead, her rallying of them only seems to have encouraged the void to creep further.
Then again, there’s nothing she needs done about it; she’s perfectly alright with this change being left upon her. She manages to get Scott and Impulse to stop pestering her about investigating it further, tells people she runs into outside of their base that it’s really very normal, and keeps its slow progression as her own little secret. The End has given her a gift — a piece of itself — and she won’t refuse it.
It’s difficult to see in the daytime, against the cherry blossom pink of their base, but it really does look gorgeous against the night sky. When she raises her arm to see it blend into the stars, it seems to glow; it’s as if she’s peeking into a void hidden deep within herself.
Late in the evening, when her teammates are asleep and the sun is out of sight, she takes to heading down to the End portal and dipping her legs into the swirling darkness of the void. It’s the kind of cold that’s barely noticeable, the kind of unknown that’s welcoming.
If she allows herself to be lost in the moment well enough, and if she closes her mind to her own thoughts, sometimes it feels as if she’s part of it too. The End takes her whole self, and it’s beautiful.
It’s a harmless corruption. It’s a beautiful corruption. The void reaches her face, eye glowing like an Eye of Ender itself, and there’s really nothing to be worried about.