"Just try to remember, the world is still here, alright? Tap out when you need to, you won't feel it but I'll see your arm move." River murmurs something under her breath, oddly stilted and with a faint slant rhyme. Her fingers brush out, through the flickering shadows of the forge - and they catch, peeling away, leaving behind something that is not darkness.

She flicks the glob in her hand at César and the world is gone. There is nothing to see; there is nothing to hear. The ground beneath him is absent, without even the pressure of his weight on it that numbness couldn't erase. The smoke of the forge, the tang of metal and the bite of tobacco no longer reach his nose, the air has no taste - is he even breathing? There's no sensation across his tongue, in his mouth, when he tries to suck in the breath of life...