2018-02-20: What Happened That Day

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  • Log: What Happened That Day
  • Cast: Gwen Whitlock, Isiris Shango'Ra
  • Where: Krosse
  • Date: 2/20/2018 .... ish
  • Summary: Over a month ago, on one fateful day, a weaver of nightmares has finally come to give something to Gwen: mercy.

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    "Do you want these placed at the dock over there?"
    "Yeah, yeah, just pull 'round. You sure you don't want any help with the crates? I'll get one of the boys."
    "Nah, it's fine. I got it just fine."

    If there's one place on the barren western half of the continent that a person could begin to forget the land was dying, it would be the southern lands of Krosse. Rolling hills of gently wind-swept grass, prosperous villages and cities, bustling industries and developments in the fields of Symbology. It's a nice place to be, now that Gwen's finally here for matters that have nothing to do with Hellions or ancient artifacts that threaten to swallow the continent in violet miasma.

    But even here, the spread of the desert is making its presence felt. In the course of five years, just how much has the dry sands claimed? Every turn of the seasons seems to reveal the deserts' growth.

    Gwen doesn't want to think about that. All she wants to think about is just the blue sky above, the bustling sounds of city life, the gentle knickering of Gulliver as Gwen parks the wagon in a spot parallel to the cobblestone road. Leaping off the driver's seat with a grunt, walking to the back of the covered wagon to begin the task of lifting and carrying the wooden crates, pieces of straw trailing by in her wake from the bedding inside.

    A return to ordinary life. No hard questions, no random acts of courage. No hellion to strike her down, no Malevlence to suck her soul dry, no Metal Demon to steal her day away. Just the rhythm and pulse of ordinary life.

    This is where she belongs.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     The dying land always held a particular elegance to him.

     Townsfolk walk past the man in the grey coat, paying no particular heed to him than they would any other passerby. Of course, it is because his wounds have healed by now, and the casual indifference with which he treats those around him is of the same sort that is almost always returned in kind. No one meets his eyes, and even if they did, they couldn't speak to it for long.

     It is the sort of passage which ill sticks in the mind, but holds long enough for a woman to say that he had the coldest blue eyes. The bluest eyes, she would say. He passes without interest and comment, and for most, that would be the story of it, a passing rumor of a man who is but a vague curiosity, nothing more.

     He follows two tolling bells now. The sound of the everpresent song, and the missing part of himself with which he is enamored. It is what brings his pilgrimage through these parts. But then, that is not all that draws him here today. Is it? Yes, that would be the story of it. And what a calming story it would be.

     Until the man walks quietly past the courier, passing inches from her without greeting nor comment. Black feathers twist in his wake, along with the firm sensation of his passing, a feeling rooted deep in the very core of a person. A hammer-laid calm. The painless cruelty of being suffocated by a man's bare hands while you sleep. Even the faintest brush of the blue-eyed man feels this way.

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    Gwen had never seen Isiris. She didn't even know his name. It's a particularly strange position to find herself in in regards to the blue-eyed man, but perhaps, the fact that he chose the form that he did allowed him to land such a lasting memory in the young woman's mind, despite not landing a single blow. Enough that she, in a Malevolence-induced fenzy, attacked an innocent woman, thinking they were a crow some months back. Thankfully, it was Cassidy, so a rich and rewarding friendship was officially founded, thus adding another traumatic result to crossing paths with Isiris.

    But that's not what's on her mind right now. The song of the city has her mind occupied, and it has her stepping to its lively tempo step for step. The crates are stacked on the side doorstep, the elderly man graciously thanking her for the delivery, rewarding her with her fee, as well as gossip. Changing routes, trades, worries over a possible war. The fear of farmland being lost, and coming rain. But you wouldn't know it, by how clear and blue the sky is, like a crop of cornflowers.

    Like the color of the eyes belonging to a man Gwen hadn't had to think about in what feels like ages, but likely only amounted to a month or so.

    But why wouldn't she now? His passing is already casting a peculiar tolling into the city's song, so that when he passes, it's like the toll of a clock tower bell. The man Gwen speaks to pauses, sensing the courier's distraction. Waving a few curious feathers from in front of her face, Gwen tries to reassert herself back into the same tempo, but finds it lacking. Her mind's already passed onto the source of the disturbance. "No, it's nothin'. Don't worry 'bout it. I better get going."

    Her mouth feels dry. It's him. She needs to get to a memory cube, and soon. Even if Marcus Rider wouldn't possibly be able to come all that quickly, she could be certain that the man would appreciate possible news of the blue-eyed magician's appearance. But could she be so certain that it was him? Would she even know it was him if she saw him?

    Gwen twists her head to look in the direction of the passing cloaked man. "I better get going. You take care, now, 'kay?" The statement feels hollow in the man's wake. But that would be less his fault and more hers, wouldn't it?

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     It was too soon yet for her nascent apex.

     There were some in the world who were not on the same pillar of awareness to truly understand cruelty, to understand the nature of this dying world. Some time ago, he had passed her by, left her whole. Then these words had come to him. A courier, barely an adult, holding sword with demons. A group rebelling against an invasion. The demons which had occupied so much of his interest as of late..

     He never actually meets her eyes, even as surely as she can feel his ice gaze slithering across every inch of her spirit. It is the side effect of the swell of sickness that twists throughout the world at his passage, an incomprehensibly black river whose bed cannot be seen.
     He can taste the rising panic in the air, but when she waves away the feathers and looks after him, he never stops moving, his gait no more hurried than that of a contemplative dreamer. Those who ideate that which never ends.

     She tells her partner to take care.
     He never answers.

     By the time she looks back, he is gone, as if she were only talking to herself. She finds oly a dusty cobblestone road in the direction which she looks. The next corner she looks back at, the number of random passerby reduces by a tenth. Then a fourth. Then half. Everywhere she looks, there seems to be less people. They do not hide, nor do they disappear. Everytime and everywhere she looks, the world just seems to be less and less populated, until it's just her...
     ...And him.

     He comes to a stop, the young man in the grey coat. Only the fingertips of his hands can be seen at the end of the large longcoat, swaying to a still at his side. The only articulation he shows her is in the soft howling roll of a lonely wind, tugging at the edge of his coat and stirring up a lazy whirling dust across the street. The air seems to cry, a high pitched tense sound barely on the edge of perception. The city's sounds have gone away, winnowed and whittled away to nothing.

     He faces away from her, saying an abrupt nothing

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    The world is cruel.

    A part of Gwen knew that as well as the impersonal scars that marred the right side of her body, that marked the path of a good part of her childhood. The way growing up against the backdrop of Little Twister had marked her and her friends in separate ways, to the point where a marked change in personality seemed to be the only way to bury it for good.

    Because it was the same world where she could have died, more than once, if not for the assistance of others. The reason she had lost her arm and gained those scars was because she was pulled out of a burning house. The reason she survived her heart condition was because someone, who had every right to simply allow her the peace of an early end knowing they were loved, had instead taken the risk of attaching an ARM.

    The world was imperfect. The world is ugly. The world is beautiful. The world is dying, and

    She wasn't ready to face that contradiction before. She was a hard bud, her bloom far from ready. Would she be now?

    The fact that she didn't follow the feathers may be a sign of something new, as is the fact that caution bristles up her spine at the first sign of Isiris's passing.

    And It just gets worse from there, really. Without a second person to play off of, to allow her to choose her role as the cheery courier, the happy-go-lucky brawler, or, sometimes, the clever markswoman, Gwen's reactions grow muted as her internal panic begins to rise. Time's running out. There's less people around. The shield of normalcy is being deconstructed before her very eyes. In a way, it's kind of remarkable from her unique vantage point of someone so used to the rhythmic patterns of city life.

    But she knows that it's all simply illusion. He's making her think this. If she could break it, she could break free. But how? Cassidy told her to kill him or run. Killing him, even if she had the willpower to commit to it, would be an impossible task. WIth the embarrassed grunt of someone not used to doing so, she turns tail and runs. It's time to test the boundaries. Attempt to lose his interest, or get beyond the range of his magic without risking possibly hurting someone in the act.

    Kahm never did get a chance to tell Gwen just how much trouble her theories about Isiris's powers might have cost him.

    She's a quick learner.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     She runs.

     Her boots hammer out a staccato rhythm across the cobblestone roads as she rushes away from the scene. The sound of her footfall is like a cacophony of gunshots in the sterlized town, and by the time she gets roughly ten paces away from him, she is completely alone in the town.

     "Give in to panic, to horror," he echoes.

     It's like he whispers directly into her soul, the honey timber of his voice jostling all of the small bones of her body at the same time. He is effortlessly calm, and endlessly inviting with every word, the pain he takes to soothe her with the idea of the chaotic a fathom deep and a wingspan wide. She doesn't even have to look to know that he doesn't pursue her, that he doesn't chase her, run for her, not like a wolf might, or a lion might. He stays just where he is.

     As she runs through the town, she will find no one there to see her, no one there to watch her, with the compressing notion weighing heavy like lead on her shoulders that if she truly is in an illusion, then she is only running blindly with no sense of direction. Slowly, blue-eyed blackbirds begin to appear on the edges of buildings. Everywhere she goes, just as the townspeople disappeared, so too did the birds appear. They titter at her absently, watching her run. Their gazes are intense, but they are on the edges of her reasoning, the edges of her perception, no longer the mischievious birds of before, but the audience of children that know far more than they should for their age. Perched on windows, in the threadbare trees, on railings and on walls, they watch her.

     The road she is on winds and writhes underneath her boots as she moves. All the while, she seems to get no farther from that silken voice. "Embrace every part of it. Know the limitations of yourself, and expend every moment and every scintilla of your strength. When you have at last become too weak to fight..."

     He reaches out a hand, and lays it on her shoulder, never having moved at all.
     "You will always come home to me."

     There is nothing stopping her from running, if she wants. He will never stop her from doing so. She can run for hours. Days, if needed. But at the end of it, every time..
     ...she will find out that she has gone nowhere, really, at all.

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    There could be nothing more unnatural to a courier than the sight of a city that is empty for no apparent reason. War, plague, natural disasters, immigration to better lands- they'd all leave some evidence in the language of buildings and landscapes. For a courier, to see a city empty of all noise and people is like seeing a full moon hanging over a backdrop of clouds, instead of behind it. Or an ocean in the sky.

    The more panic she feels, equal measures of anger accompany it. The echoing words that come from nowhere and everywhere, the assurance he has in that he doesn't even pursue her. Still, she runs, and when that provides no solution, she begins to slow, turning instead to examine the limits of this place as crows begin to watch overhead, watching her every move.

    One thing is clear: when left to her own devices, Gwen is very stubborn. Almost absurdly so, as if some part of her expected her freedom could be earned by bull-headed persistence alone. There's a definite rationale of trial and error to her movements. If this environment obeyed the logic of the real world, whether it was illusion or not, she may have found a kink in Isiris's walled in garden.

    But eventually, lungs will begin to burn, and legs will begin to tire. Her heart may be able to endure her body's demands, but the rest of her body, eventually, must rest. No matter how much the blue-eyed man's words seem to enrage her spirit, she is still, ultimately, only human.

    Isiris's hand lays on Gwen's shoulder, drawing an hand to try to slap at it, Gwen looking at him with a a deep frown..

    And she's off. Again. Striding off, instead of running, obeying her need to continue resisting. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that she gave up so quickly. He might as well be a vulture, but her pride demanded a certain amount of steps be exhausted before she even considered a meeker option. There's no one else here to perform for. All she needs to do is survive.

    It's hard to tell when she finally stumbles along and sinks into a seated position, folding both legs and draping her arms over them. No, she's wrong. There is someone here to perform for: the man himself.

    "Hey," she states, expecting Isiris to answer from the ether, "if this is about you wantin' me to deliver a letter, y'know there's, uh, better ways of doin' it, right?" Just a freckled smile directed at nowhere, a humble, joking manner. "My time is pretty limited, after all. Got some deliveries I need to get to. Ever been to Marze? Real pretty town. People there always comin' up with new gadgets n' magic. Kinda like what you're doin' now. All this illusion stuff."

    It's not an illusion. She's beginning to see that, now. Maybe, she hopes, he'll correct her with the answer.

    "But really, what can a courier like me do for a busy man like you?"

    She can't get anywhere. Fighting is, for right now, out of the queston. Let's try to get some information instead.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     His hand is slapped away.

     Each road looks like each other road. That much is simply expected. What is not is the bizarre ways space can connect to space. Underneath the eye of that man on the other side of the world, the courier flees, seaming realities tread upon with little more complaint than a rare flower gives when trod upon. She moves in every direction, looking for the separation of the veil.

     None ever makes itself known.

     Roads connect to roads. Doors open into roads. Roads terminate in doors. Doors that lead into....
     The stem of the rose cracks lightly under your foot.

     At the end of it all is the man, standing no more than ten paces from her the whole time. No matter how fast she ran, no matter how many doors she opened... the net result was the same. With no other interest than her, those chilling blue eyes never lost sight of her. She doesn't need the ether to answer to her. The moment she turns, he has been behind her the whole time.
     He stands there, thoughtfully rubbing the back of his hand where she struck him, in time that feels like forever ago.

     "Pride is the first thing to die in despair," the man reflects coldly.

     His tone is matter of fact, her exhaustion the parchment upon which his word is written. He is patient. He is kind. It is a cruel thing, to wait for him to draw his sword, to place it to her throat. The open threat that is expected, but does not come. "I gave you a gift, one that you have returned to repay me, in equal parts blood and truth...."

     He lifts his chin, the imperiousness of heaven reflecting from his blasphemous eyes as he looks skyward.
     "For the time of your life that you are allowed to live, you belonged to this heaven. Now you will tell me, its scribe, everything you know..."

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    He's always there. No matter what door, stairwell, wall, alleyway, or road she goes down, he's just there.

    Just him and his crows.

    And the rose, with some significance Gwen's too cautious to examine for very long, giving it the consideration of a person making a conscious decision to redirect their path around dead butterfly they've tread one foot across.

    "Well at least I don't have to go lookin' for ya," Gwen comments with a forced light-hearted tone. "But still, can you really blame me for tryin'? I've seen some of the people who do survive your visits. N' that don't count the ones that don't survive. N' I like bein' alive if I get t'choose, y'know?" She stays there, in her seated position, pulling the tail end of her handkerchief upwards to dot at the dots of perspiration that have collected there in her wanderings. "Ah, so you fell prey to my charm? Well, you wouldn't be the first, but I warn you- I'm married to my job." Gwen's bouts with her former childhood friend, Janus, had taught her a few things about keeping a smile on while facing your possible death.

    Because screaming and begging helps no one, and she's too tired to do either of those.

    "And here I thought you said you didn't like stories. Or, well, your littler self did. Kinda sad that a cute kid like that became a cold guy like you, but I guess that's how things go." In the sky, or wherever he's from. "Though, are you sure? I mean, I get pretty rambly. And really, I don't know where I could start. I mean, I don't even know what'd interest ya."
    
    Gwen looks on the man lifting his chin to the heavens, her lips thinning in contemplation. Is this man the reason behind the disappearances? But how does that connect with Krosse closing down its borders to foreigners like her?

    How long could she keep this act for?

    Her eyes lid, slightly. "You've noticed that they're turnin' away foreigners at the borders of Krosse, right? The country's shut their borders seemingly overnight. And what's more, whatever foreigners trapped here are disappearin'. A few deliveries were still needed, which is why I'm here, but I'm also curious. Are you a thread in this story? I could assume it, but nothin' matches up. Maybe there's some Guardian statues here. You know 'bout those, right? They seal 'Mother' away- at least, the whatever that the Metal Demons call 'Mother'. I 'spose I could tell you about the few tussles I got into concernin' those, but not all of them are gonna have happy endings. Most of 'em will just be the story of a courier who wasn't supposed to be there and got some bruises n' scars for her trouble. Do those interest you?"

    She'll keep going, examining Isiris's expressions, always trying to glean more clues. And resting. Ever resting.

    Because pride is a callous, petty emotion, dulled by safety and renewed by insult.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     One fingertip touches another as Gwen speaks quickly and easily, the piercing light of his eyes unabated, his eyebrow not even lifting a shade with Gwen's calm and collected provocations. The social aspect of their eeting is one that falls victim to his manner, a thing that would be kindly, if it were not harsh and cold. A thing that would be inviting, if it were not horrifying. Had any other man or woman had eyes such as his, they would have been a king, a queen, with an entire country enraptured.

     It is this world's cruel joke that they be given to a simple evangel.

     In the end, his silence is a vicious thing, leaving nothing for the inquisitive woman to touch against as she works her way through logic and reason. She holds nothing of what he already knows from him, and her staccato peppering of talk leaves him a slow, casual shift of his hip.

     His is a stare that fixes of her like the moons in the night sky. It is never quite clear for whom they gleam, but it is easy to imagine all sorts of things, casting all kinds of minds and attitudes towards him. It is a feeling that only redoubles as he quietly approaches her, his coat shifting with the sudden motion. He moves not in any form of exasperation or anger. In fact, the only feeling she can feel from him is the most subtle form of an indescribable pity.
     As he raises one hand over her head.

     And then the entirety of the world falls away.

     If she does not run any further, she will be perfectly safe. The streets fall into nothingness, cobblestones tumbling into a great and open expanse underneath them, mortar, beams and brick falling into a yawning black chasm as if someone has slipped the earth out from underneath the town of Krosse, leaving nothing for the ground to hold onto. A series of unearthly splashes from some unseen ocean below can be heard, as well as the cacophony of birds fluttering away into a sky that is abruptly cancelled out. The ground--the only ground--is made of unseeable stuff, the thing writhing between the hands something like a velveteen bedsheet, pliant and able to be worried at like anything more. But the more Gwen pays attention to any one thing, be it the ground, the man before her, or the unseeable depth beneath, the more tension she will begin to feel behind her eyes.

     A force that presses down on the back of the eyes, the same that makes it hard to breathe. If Gwen does not mind herself to resist, if she lets herself focus on any one particular detail of the world around her, or even the blackness of her own eyelids, she will feel the pressure behind redouble. As if a finger was pressing into her eyes from behind. Depending on what she's looking at, depending on what she settles on, the pressure becomes more, stronger, and immense. Eventually her eyesight will begin to split, as the invisible fingers pierce. Her eyesight will begin to split, as if one bubble became two. Her eyesight will begin to undergo a form of mitosis, as anything she focuses on will begin to split into many different perspectives of the same thing at once.

     As if something were gouging her eyes out and replacing them with multitudes of new ones.

     The effect is always there, but can be dampened as long as Gwen never focuses on any one particular sensation for too long. "Do you believe that the truth is just an illusion," the man finally asks mildly, his voice carrying quietly, as sweetly as any man's could. His voice is kind to her ear. "That the reason of the world is something you can just, assume, as if it were a plain and simple thing understandable by your own observations and your own preconceptions," he asks.

     "From the moment you met that boy, you embraced a dream. From there, there is only one path to your escape from this place."

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    By comparison, Gwen's eyes would be considered ordinary. The same color of fog at dusk, far too grey to be called blue, and far too blue to be called grey. Light enough that against a darker skin tone, they'd be striking, but against her freckled pale skin, their impact is more mellow.

    And when he raises that hand over her head, that gaze can't help but flinch as her head jerks backwards, the courier preparing herself for some hidden blade.

    It never comes for her. Instead, the world is slashed away, crumbling all around the both of them before Gwen even has a chance to jerk upright to her feet in alarm. It's not as if he's destroyed the world around her. This is an illusion, but it isn't. It's some sort of magic, but not anything she's experienced.

    And something seems to split her vision twice, into fourths, with each labored breath. That fog grey gaze disappears as Gwen kneels forward, crying out, her fingers curling up against the invisible velvet coating of the ground that she can no longer see.

    Closing her eyes doesn't bring any relief, for all her logic demands that it will. Even the darkness manages to split, despite no shadows or highlights to discern a form.

    "Stop it, whatever you're doing. Stop it. I can't-" Gwen's forehead touches against her hands. Her eyes keep flicking across the landscape brlow, rapid blinks providing little relief. "I can't think about whatever the heck you're, uh, trying to..." Another instinctive rubbing of her eyes, and like the attempt before, it's in vain. That could've been the point, right there. To make her unable to think. "You're makin' me see this somehow. You're changing the landscape. I don't know how."

    ' From there, there is only one path to your escape from this place.'

    She breathes.

    "And what's this path, then?" the redhead asks, trying to hold back the irritation dripping from her voice at the expense of her easy drawl. Or the want to snarl back at him with her guesses as to his possible answers. Despair. Pain. Death. Terrible things, ones that Gwen wouldn't deny their part in the world, but to see everything reduced to these base elements is...

    She can't even think straight, against the pounding of her head. "What the heck did you do to me?"

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     As she cries out, the nightmare spinner's arm falls away, his jacket eating his fingertips. It's hard, in the scheme of things, to think something simple like 'his sleeve has covered his hand' without ascribing malicious intent to the thing. At least, as the pressure builds behind her eyes.

     The man is calm, placid as she worries at the velveteen beneath her hands, trying to gather herself. He no longer directly looks at her, the pressure of his eyes at least a thing that cannot be sustained. He looks off into the middle distance, his attention pulled away and distant to her demands and needs, paying them no mind.
     Instead, he explains.

     "This pain is caused by your attempt to remain in control," the man comments, his voice forming the gossamer fabric of the dream, and the only solace she can feel in a world that simply no longer cares to be one thing for her. With no solid ground for her eyes to rest on, the world is tumultuous, forcing the fragmented sky to glimmer and shine at her. The waters below are unseeable, but they are far too full of motion to simply be just water. There is a lack of uniformity below, a lack of the complexities of the tide. The movement is crazed, almost neurotic, what little of it she can see below.

     "People spend too much of their time trying to escape and control their circumstance. Not knowing that they are doomed from the beginning, and that it is a beautiful thing..." the man observes.

     Her anger reaches his ear, ever slightly bared before him, like a woman's shoulder.
     "You know what it is," he reflects simply. "Succumb. Give in and embrace the totality of that which you are faced with. Only then will this thing end..."

     His words are quiet, calm, and somewhat savvy to the mentality of his subject. He doesn't bother with telling her about the nature of despair. He shows her, and that is enough. "Until then, you will suffer. And you will come to be held to answer. If I am pleased with your experience, I will favor you immeasurably. That is all.."

     By now, the nightmare spinner is facing away from her, the symbol on the back of his coat unknowable to the Drifter world below. Dark hair moves slightly in a wind that doesn't exist, as his head lowers. "While you suffer, sing to me. Sing to me about the Metal Demons. Tell me what you know..."
     

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    Maybe it's not quite an illusion, like some magician's trick with light and mirrors. He can force an experience one someone. Somehow. Maybe there's a trigger.

    "You've got a lot of nerve, t'say that..." Gwen grits back her sudden surge of anger, stuffing it back inside her like a coiled child's toy back into its box. "Don't even try t'patronize me with words like that. If I gave up so easily, I'd be long dead. Besides, think about it- Is that how you see the world? What sorta doom is knockin' on your door? If you met it, will you just give into that? Or will you keep movin' on? N' even if you knew about your doom, why not keep tryin'?"

    It's upon a chance look upwards that Gwen sees the man's back, her rapidly skipping eyes continually drawn to the symbol on the cart there.

    This symbol. It's completely unfamiliar to Gwen, a factor that in itself makes it particularly notable.

    Maybe he did come from the sky.

    Focus. Try to remember that symbol. Endure that pain that threatens to burst the space behind her eyeballs. Either way, she's faced worse pain than this, she reasons. She's just forgotten about it. So she just needs to learn what she can about this man, and survive. Even if Marcus Rider's identity is beginning to show itself to be far too questionable to be allowed to remain as 'trustworthy', he remains a man who just may be capable enough of... what? What sort of jail or cell could hold a man like this?

    Well, no matter. She just needs to survive. Simple enough, really, right?

    "You probably know about their whole background. The Metal Demon Wars, and so on, n' how everyone thought they were completely gone. They weren't, of course. Not by a long shot. A bunch of 'em even integrated into society before the invasion started several months ago, in Adelhyde. Most of us just assumed they were some kinda beastmen." Her eyes keep moving like two nervous birds, hopping from spot to spot as she speaks. "They got a war-type of culture. The strongest survive, the weakest fail. They live to serve a being called 'Mother', who was sealed during the Metal Demon War. They've been tryin' to unseal her so they can get a leg up on things, but it's only now that they've struck. They're kindasorta led by this guy named Siegfried. Crazy levels of armor, carries this giant spear. He was the one who made the blow that eventually killed King Justin, the king of Adelhyde, during the siege on the castle itself. The king took the blow for his daughter, n' despite gettin' taken away for treatment, it wasn't enough to save his life."

    There are details she's already leaving out, for all the ones Gwen leaves in. The daughter, Cecilia, held the Teardrop, the artifact required for this 'Mothers return. Gwen, in fact, was the one that delivered the king to safety, taking advantage of a distraction Vash had skillfully provided. In spite of it all, the Teardrop was recovered by the Hyadeans later.

    This, she reasons, is information that can't really hurt to say aloud. Better for her to be the bird caught in this cat's claws than some other unlucky soul that somehow grabbed this man's attention. After all, he clearly doesn't know her, or the cards she has up her sleeve. Just need to find the right time to deal that ace.

    "The Metal Demons' next big effort was at the Guardian Temple, near the border between Kislev n' Aveh. It's there that many of us Drifters that got swept up in all this that the Metal Demons began to learn about what their main push is. There's seals all over the Badlands, and it's those that keep Mother jailed up. Not everybody is on board with this, but we're talkin' a race of people who live much, much longer than us non-demihuman folk do."

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     In the twisted world of no doors and no firmity, vague impressions, or allusions to things pass in transit. Always at the edge of the eye, as hard as it is to focus on any one thing. A child runs past the courier, the edge of her vision betraying his--or her--passing as easily as distant laughter. A bird calls in the distance, and the nightmare spinner pays it no mind. His observation, passive as it is, leaves his attention a meandering thing.

     She speaks to him, the fire evident in her voice for only a moment. He blinks, the gesture taking a moment or two longer than it really should. Not facing him, it is hard to imagine how his captive might come to know that as plainly as she does. Given that he waits for her to finish her thought, it is also hard to tell what words interest him the most.
     "I wonder if that's really true," he supposes aloud.
     "You chose to run before anything else," the agent observes. "An instinct born of something known deep within you, something accustomed to living life beneath the heels of giants. Even now, you could fight. If you really wanted. But instead, you sing."

     "There are those who live, those who die, and those who know that they cannot save the world."

     The world that they occupy is many things, but it is an 'obsession' more than anything else, subject to the ideations and whims of a mind far deviated from the commonality and trivia of everyday perceptions. The symbol she stares at, tries to fix in her mind, seems to crawl like a centipede caught under the eye, the hoops and circles making it up slowly divides, the mitotic process of the thing taking on a diseased bent.

     "I do not think what you tell me is anything special," he decides quietly, his eyes narrowing in a sanguine sort of peace. "There is no cost in you saying these things. There is no pain. Surely, it isn't all that you know. Is it because you don't want my favor?"

     He slides a hand through her hair, slow and deliberate. No, not hers. A duplicate of the courier sits in the ground, on her knees, her wrists outstretched as if piked to the earth, head bowed. She shivers visibly with the motion, as the nightmare spinner runs his touch along the length of her scalp and letting two fingers, his index and middle, linger on the nape of her neck. "Or is it because you want to know what is on the other side of this which I have spared you?"

     "Ah." In the twisted space and the horrific unnatural silence that twists at every angle, the honeyed sound of the sanguine's voice is like a droplet of blood hitting the ground in dead silence. "You still want to know if I would give in."
     He leans down to whisper quietly a secret to the woman in bondage at his side. And for all the world, her only witness can hear it in every syllable and intimacy in her own ear.

     "The truth is, I already have."

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    The man may not have noticed, but Gwen did. The song of the city, even as subtly warped by recent events in Krosse before he even had a chance to come across her, just may be filtering through the cracks of this cave of perception he's forced them both into.

    She could get out of here. She's not utterly unconnected.

    With the possible sensations of the outside invigorating her spirit, Gwen can only find the sudden appearance of this strange doppelganger, as well as the threat-laced affection just that much more bizarre, even repugnant to her. Gwen looks aside, her face wrinkled with disgust.

    It could be a gift, in a way. Isn't her posture close to the same posture as this strange copy? She had done it because he had managed to wrestle away control from her in a way she didn't realize could be taken from her.

    She'll start by standing up, if she is able, as much as she is able, making her posture reflect the opposite of her mirror, even if her gaze is forced to dance around like a nervous hummingbird.

    He's correct. She fled instead of engaged him, and sang instead of fought him. Even if they were actions derived of advice given to her by the likes of Cassidy, it wasn't anything she wouldn't have considered otherwise. The man has shown what he's capable of in the injuries he's inflicted on her friends, and there are probably many more she's unaware of.

    She considers her options. To fight him would be doing as he expected. She can't kill him, and even if she could get to that point physically, would she want to pay that price mentally? What would be an option that he hadn't set out before her?

    "You've got nothin' that can help me at the moment. I'm here on a mission, y'see. It's about more than deliveries, y'see. You've noticed, right? Krosse ain't what it used to be like. Somethin's changed. People are afraid. Bad dreams, n' all. People disappearin'. Foreigners, specifically. LIke me, and I'm assumin', you-..." Gwen trails off, a queasy wince wrinkling her face at the sight of the man leaning down to whisper in the mirror self's ear. She can hear it, as if that was her own ear.

    Her lips straighten, then bend in a determined smile. "If you've already given up, then what you need from me ain't anything you've asked for so far."

    She takes a step back, keeping in her mind the mental note of bird song. The laughter of a child running by. The snort of a horse, which may or may not be there.

    Maybe her next step will hit nothing but air. Maybe it'll hit stone. Maybe it'll hit more of the same. Ignore the whispers of pessimism that haunt you, she resolves. Do away with that dour child of Little Twister, embrace the parts that where sparked by the notions of an outside world, free and ready to be seen.

    Remember the smell of flowers that bloom in the desert, and the gentle smile of a friend hare-brained enough to follow her up there on what would probably be a fool's errand.

    Keep stepping back, as long as you can, she mentally urges. Fight against that instinct that tells her that death lurks there.

    She takes another, grander step back. "I'll show you my real song."

    The song that tells her to keep going, even when she's a fool for doing so. Even if her next step just may plunge her into the nightmare world below.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     "Oh, faithless iscariot.."

     He says the words as fondly as a brother. She never quite rises, her knees still forced against the stone. Absolute powerlessness subsumes her, the tethers of her defiance fraying dangerously, threatening to break under her weight. There is nothing she can do against him. No, not her. Her mirror self shudders as she shudders, flinches as she flinches. Empty eyes quake and shimmer, welling with tears left unspilled. Though Whitlock stands, and shows him the utmost of her defiance, none of it reflects in her at his side. Underneath the most gentle touch and phantom impressions of such, she is made to be something a little less than a person and something a little more than a promise.

     She is his.

     For a time, there is no response as she continues to back away, step by step seeking the periphery of his influence. He is content to let her explore his obsession, showing no particular interest or concern for the promise she makes to him. "It's sad," he reflects, turning back to face her. But as he does, his eyes reveal themselves, those painful blue things. The moment she sees the faintest crescent of those beyond-crystalline things, she knows he will poison every angle of her if she looks him in them. The world is not secure enough to meet him there. "You promise me so many things.."
     The centipede crawls into her mind, attempting to gain root there. But as he turns to face her, the symbol itself disappears.

     She knows that the labyrinthine connections of the streets are not entirely moored in reality. But whatever is underneath her certainly feels the same as she sees, the distant sounds of things reflecting distant objects and other impressions in her mind. How much of this thing is the real world and how much is his obsession? Slowly she stands.

     She no longer wears the hard clothing of a drifter, her sundress a pale yellow under the warm desert sun. A wide brimmed hat shades her face and thin, sad expression. Long ribbons fixed to the hat float in the wind. No longer is any part of her fake, the acoutrements of her simplistic jewelry settling on bare skin. A small silver pin rests just at her bare collar, secured there with a small leather thong. The symbology of that mark on his back spreads over the smooth skin of one arm, held noncommitally at her side. The contradiction between who she was and who she is is almost painful to watch, a young debutante from Little Twister who never had to live through the horror, through the pain of this thing. The one who remembers the smell of flowers blooming in the desert. The mitosis moves under her pale, dispassionate eye, bubbles of black lines moving, spreading over her side.

     No, not her.

     Staring into this mirror is not something a person can do forever. As she physically retreats from him, her mirror becomes more a part of this twisted space by the moment. "But there is nothing left to believe in but being a savior." His thought completed, the nightmare spinner continues, an inexorable reasoning. "The dreams, hopes and aspirations we have in this world are meaningless, as long as there is no faith in the next. Of what concern is disappearing from a world that doesn't exist.."
     She lifts her eyes slowly to meet her free counterpart, the shadow that the delicate sunhat casts over her skin receding slowly as she faces Gwen. A breeze tugs at the gossamer hem of her dress. And then, if Gwen is still looking, their eyes will meet. And then Gwen will realize that her eyes are inhumanly, abominably, breathtakingly blue. If she does not flee before that exact moment, if she finds herself brave enough to look herself in the eyes, she will become her, as a surge of ideation overtakes her. That is when the nightmare spiner will end all pretense of her reality.

     In a wave of heartless blue.

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    'I'll show you my real song.'

    No sooner had those words left Gwen's mouth than Isiris presents her with the perfect ideation: an impossible ideal, a version of Gwen that never existed from the very beginning. A debutante, a young woman of higher station, something that would be impossible to find in a place like Little Twister. It's in the cut and fabric of her simple, but elegant sundress, the hat, the very ribbons that decorate it. The pale skin. No scars, save the inky one that spreads like oil from the assassin's touch. Freckles, yes, but who didn't get those in the desert? It was the curse of having pale skin.

    And most of all, she's a version that is 'whole', in a way Gwen had never bothered to even consider herself. Nevermind Isiris hadn't seen Gwen's secret, or that he couldn't have known, except that he must have, to realize how she was able to survive so many battles against the likes of Quarter Knights and Gebler soldiers. A man that fell from the sky could know many secrets, and find out so many more.

    Even with the blurring vision demanding she keep looking, she can't stop returning her gaze back to the young woman. It just never occurred to Gwen that it was even possible- there was only the scarred Gwen with one arm, and the Gwen with one human arm and one metal ARM, with a capital A. There was no other. The fire that took her right arm happened so long ago, and was so painful, that it blotted out mostly anything that existed before it. It may have been a small bit of compassion that she remembered that she remembered at least one presence that came in to rescue her, even if she couldn't remember a name. Or a face. Just the idea that at least one person would be kind enough to go after her, when she had no way of paying them back, even in a town like Little Twister.

    None of that's running through her mind right now. She just looks on with a look of surprise, her head tilting at the mirror image like a mirror in a fun house.

    The ideal offers no mercy for those who hesitate, even for a moment, even if their response would ultimately be rejection. It doesn't even matter if it was curiosity that made Gwen continue to look at her. That's all what was needed, for Gwen's grey-blue eyes to the mirror version's own, an impossible blue.

    It took just a moment of weakness.

    And she falls.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     He takes her by the hand and sweeps her into the twisted space.

     The method by which Isiris is able to intuit her real self is not entirely clear, or if he's even really aware at all. The detail itself is lost in the dream. In this space, it is difficult to determine if there is a secret she could keep from him at all, such a creature with such eyes that peer into every window and shine light through every crack in the soul.

     There is no longer any surrogate, the ideated fantasy insidiously winding its way into her self-image. Everything that was defeated and compliant is folded up neatly into her in the form of a stomach-churning dread, a sense of moorlessness in a cold and unrefined world. Elemental in its articulation of doom, the whisper echoes into every cell of her at once, and a thousand eyes open to what only he can see.

     There is no longer any pretense of direction, the sky inverted so that the crumbling town of Krosse hangs like a fat moon overhead, bits of cobble and thatch falling off the roofing of homes into a sky that never really ends.

     The idolater has her in his hands, one to an arm that should not exist and another to her hip as he takes her into a short dance, a merciless waltz in the sky. For all of his impossible warmth, there is no heart to it, nothing affectionate, and only the sensation of the creeping cold touch of that spreading ink over her unright hand. For every moment she can enjoy the sensation of being whole, she can feel the sensation of dead metal creeping back in loops and centipede spirals, filigree creeping out from the nexus of their touch.

     "There is nothing I need from you," he finally agrees with her, his tone as mild as it is chokingly dark. Coat and dress whirling pointlessly, the brutal waltz continues over ground that doesn't exist, the inverted space offering no bridge nor floor to provide any real or tangible support, but his grace is enough that this detail simply does not matter. "But clinging to this life is only a concession. Their pity is only to assuage their own self image. The world is filled with liars, and the sky is smaller than you can even imagine..."

     "So, sing the promised song to me."

     And just like that, he sets her free, with every gift he has given her, releasing her in mid-step from her paralysis. He leaves her in the inverted space, to stand and sing of her own volition, to make every choice of what to do with herself, every choice of how to respond to what has become hers. She can accept the space as it is, accept this new version of herself, and sing. She can go on forever as she is now, if she has faith in the thing of it. Or she can continue trying to run back to reality, and fall helplessly out of the sky.

     "Sing to me, and I will forever release you."

     The moment she doubts, the moment she runs, the moment she falls, he will be there.
     And then he will run her through the chest with his blade, there on the schism between dream and nightmare, illusion and reality. Does it happen? Does it happen for real? Even her body won't know what has truly happened.

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    All it took was one moment of hesitation.
    
    Now, the illusion(?) becomes reality, a thing of inverted sky and city, of two people dancing, movements as smooth, fine, and passionless as chilled silk pressed to bare skin. His grip is as warm and human as hers, but the emotions underneath his movements might as well be mechanical.

    Like an automaton built of precious materials, giving her the pleasure of the first dance.

    And it would be lying to say some part of her didn't enjoy it. Not specifically the fact who she's dancing with, but the act of dancing itself, skin bare in places she would have never allowed go bare before. Feeling air on the skin of her shoulders and flowing fabric against her legs, even the places where scar tissue had distorted such subtle notes of touch. To be the flower, instead of collecting them. After a moments of their waltz, feet against the sky and the city as a grand ceiling over their heads, he speaks. "Well, that's one thing we can agree on," Gwen states coolly, in spite of herself, as they circle around. "You could've saved yourself all this trouble if you've just listened to me."

    He speaks of liars, and small skies. Gwen tilts her head, once more, at her dancing partner, a mote of respect in her eyes. "So this isn't you showing some pity to me." She smirks. "You're just preying on my vanity." That much he could have found out, from their last encounter.

    And lastly, he speaks of a promised song. Released from his grip, the pale redhead is allowed the space to make her decision on what to do next.

    In this display, he's shown that words wouldn't convey whatever idea or inkling of whatever song she could have possibly had. What use are words in a world of illusion? He was able to distract her simply by showing her a vision of what she had never considered to be possible.

    There is only one thing she could do.

    "Ah. Well, this is a real nice stage you've set up." She lifts her right arm, with all its seeming humanity, even if she feels the workings and mysterious material of an ARM, like a phantom, held just underneath. It was always strangely warm, far more responsive than an actual prosthetic, but it couldn't match completely the tactile ease of her left hand. There was always something that wasn't quite there, unless she accepted it for what it was.

     She looks up from her examination, a lopsided smile on her lips, slowly raising her right arm, as if presenting it to the idolater. "But I'm sorry. This isn't my arm."
    
    The young woman takes a step back-

    - and shifts position to something more defensive.

    And with the will she used to survive as a child, to endure the trials of a cutthroat town, and accept the tears of friends gained and lost, she straightens that rigfht arm-

    "And this isn't the sky I know, even if it might be the one I want."

    - and wills that human arm to return back to normal. Her normal, her ARM. Metal, monstrous, deadly, inhuman.

    Life-giving. Infused with light, pulsing with each beat of her heart.

    And if it does, fire a bright flash of light at her former dancing partner's eyes, in order to blind him. There's a risk that it carries, of course, in that if she doesn't close her own eyes, it'd blind her as well. So she closes them, pressing her hand forward in an act of faith.

    It will be there, she believes, because the ARM is a part of her.

    She'll show it not by running away, but rejecting the beautiful things here, in favor of the uncertain reality.

    "I'll take the sky that's not limited by my own desire."

    She'll sing her song by action alone.

GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Crackshot!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Isiris Shango'Ra guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Crackshot for 43 hit points!
GS: Cripple and Jam! Statuses applied to Isiris Shango'Ra!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     "So you've finally decided to stand..."

     Breaking from him in this way, the nightmare spinner fixes her with those abominable eyes as she shows him the veins of her arm, the skin lies she decides against so delicate and gossamer underneath his mindcraft. The world twitches, flexes, a world's disorder reflected wholly in the arc of his brow, the faint satisfaction there belying his 'obsession.'

     Her true arm rips free from its flesh moorings, warm skin and sensation flaking away from the ideation like so much old and cracked parchment. She will choose the sky not limited by her own desires, and the light blooms from her hand, a fragile, eyesearing nimbus. Even his own devastating eyes water, and a hand raises against it, an eerie mirror of her own. Even when his tears turn to blood, he does not close his eyes.

     That is the difference between their faiths.

     "You misunderstand," the nightmare spinner explains in the aftermath of the nimbus. The light fades, revealing a blacklight matrix of ink spread from his hand, glowing with agonizing nonlight black. The matrix itself is a thing of curling rounds and chasing shapes, threaded through a microcosm of red veinwork. It stands ahead of him, threads of red and black slowly spreading from the origin. The man tilts his head, eyes still open, pupils as thin as pinpoints. His blindness is less nerving than one would think.

     "The sky was never limited by your desires. It was only limited by mine."

     The dark lines not ripped away by her own will spread across the courier of their own volition, as the spinner's web blooms in front of her, tracing strange circuitous pathways as it spreads in a hundred different directions, organic lines rippling outward from the so-called shield lattice. If they get too close to Gwen, the strange latticework will creep across her to the point closest to that ideated web, lifting from her skin to form a connection. And then some part of the nightmare will traverse the network in an eyeblink and a breath, injecting itself directly into the defiant woman.

     Nausea-inducing, insidious and crippling harm, inserted into every bone.

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Malediction Chaining!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
GS: Please react using the attack number in +queue.
GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Malediction Chaining for 115 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    Gwen opens her eyes.

    'You misunderstand.' The courier's breath hitches at the sight of Isiris's bloody tears. Her gamble didn't quite work; he was driven enough to act regardless of any blindness, temporary or no. Not only that, but that he wouldn't even shut his eyes as his own protective measure.

    Either way, the ideation is gone. Her faith was rewarded. Gone is the gossamer sundress, the lovely hat and its ribbons, the unblemished skin. She is no longer the potential beauty at the ball, the carefree flower that would flirt with danger.

    She's just Gwen now. And that's more okay with her than it's been in weeks.

    The courier can hear the numerous warnings people have given her. That she should run away, keep running, and never look back. She also hears the one or two voices that had urged her to simply go in for the kill, to kill or be killed.

    To do the first would be turning back on her principles. Problem is, the second would be as well. But he did make that promise to her. And this is the best way she could impart any sort of passion to her words.

    Attempting to take advantage of his temporary(?) bout of blindness(?), Gwen charges in, right fist bared. She dips low, attempting to circumvent the strange shield from touching her body, then changes course, throwing her fist upward, aimed towards the man's chin.

    What hasn't disappeared is the patch of linework that marks her right arm. She may be used to thrusting it into situations and matter that would injure her regular arm, but this time, such a tactic is severely punished. Under Isiris's command, when it connects with the shield of intricate lines in front of him, it's only momentum that could possibly allow Gwen to impart any sort of damage before she succumbs to the pain, her body already attempting to shift away as soon as her feet land. Her teeth clench, trying to hold back a scream, but soon enough, she's crying out in pain as she moves, her bones unused to this special sort of pain.

GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Rocket Punch!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Rocket Punch for 40 hit points!
GS: Break! Statuses applied to Isiris Shango'Ra!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     His eyes half-lid in the dark. Those bright, bleeding, mania-threaded eyes.

     Standing on the other side of that chaotic lattice, the nightmare spinner faces the now-and-again broken woman, staring through her. His face is a plain thing, even as a trail of flood crawls past dark skin, tracing the flat and neutral expression on his face. Cruelty is not about enjoying the pain...

     "Preferring to remain broken, even though the entire world will fall on you. A misguided dedication," he decides.
     "One that has a high cost.."

     When she charges, the blue-eyed killer distantly regards her the same as he might the passing breeze, with no particular inflection or reaction. If he can see her, he does not show it. She crashes through the lattice, her cries audible as she throws herself into a fully committed strike into him, the black lines stretching across her form as she breaks through to slam her fist into his middle, his limbs ragdolling as weight from the tip of her boot cascades through her body and shoulder to spear him, his body slowly wheeling in the air helplessly....

     She can feel his body give.
     And then, that tension right behind the eyes blooms.
     And then it's gone.

     In the warped world in the sky, the nightmare spinner flickers, moving from a body in full retreat, to a man standing just as he was before. In that moment, the agony of the injection through her redoubles, as if a womb overinflated with something horrific and black before popping, the two iterations of reality shuffling together for rief moments, growing harsher and more painful until it is a relief to see him standing again.

     Her body already knows what her mind does not. It is already trying to escape. In that spinning moment of lattice-painted vertigo where her weight shifts away from him even as her fist comes into contact with him, he will raise one hand. To take her by the wrist. She will be off-balance. If she is weak, even for a moment, he will support her carefully, carrying her weight underneath his own, as he stares.

     Those bright, bleeding, mania-threaded eyes.
     Cruelty is not about enjoying the pain.

     Then he will ram a blade straight up through her middle, with force enough to lift her by the hips and take her off of her boots.

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Force Action!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Gwen Whitlock with A World Without!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
GS: Sneak! The true nature of Isiris Shango'Ra's attack becomes clear!
GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Sin Axiom for 91 hit points!
GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Gwen Whitlock!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     Those bright, bleeding, mania-threaded eyes.
     "A misguided dedication..."

     The moment replays, like an echo. An attack that seemed to be physical in nature really had nothing of the sort. In reflection, she can see the lines and seams of it all. The pain starts behind the eyes, a twisting sensation of drunkeness, the world churning as his body folds underneath her fist. The filmy apex of the thing breaks, as he is again standing on his feet. She can feel everything, his gentle support. She can feel his blade.

     "One that has a high cost..."
     Cruelty is not about enjoying the pain.

     She can feel his blade. "A misguided dedication.."
     Those bright, bleeding, mania-threaded eyes.

     She can see other selves of her, crumpling to the exact same iteration of the blade, appearing randomly around her. She can feel his blade. She can feel his body give. Will she have to defend against this forever? He stares. Cruelty is not about enjoying the pain.
     It is about continuing no matter how much you plead.

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    His body gives. Did she misjudge her strength?

    She can't very well pull her fist back. All she can go is forward.

    Then the pain comes back, from behind her eyes, pressing at her brain and causing her to cry out, her hands already trying to clutch at her head.

    And then it's gone, relief found in its passing. As well as a new danger.

    He's still standing. Taking her by the wrist, as if to initiate another dance.

    'A misguided dedication...' The sword flashes through her middle, drawing a single wheeze from her lungs.

    And it plays again. And again.

    And distantly, a part of her is able to realize, as she watches this over and over from all the angles this unique vantage point has given her, that there's almost something familiar in how his sword slips through the air.

    Of course, she thinks. Marcus, with his sword style so distinct as to be almost alien, even to eyes as inexperienced ay Gwen's. An ordinary private investigator, even one that's come from an area as foreign to Gwen as Aquvy, wouldn't necessarily moved like that. Or took command of of a situation like someone with military experience. Or-

    The thought leaves her as she sees another instance of those bright, bleeding, mania-threaded eyes.

    'Preferring to remain broken...'

    "Speak for yourself," Gwen manages to get out, between gasps of pain. "Didn't ask... to be fixed."

    She tries to draw another breath. "Sorry... to disappoint you."

    As she feels the blade again in her midsection, Gwen takes that moment, whether it's illusion, reality, or something entirely alien to either, to let that ARM of hers flare with energy. Her blouse's sleeve bursts apart from the sudden release of plasmic aura, the weapon encased within visible for only a moment in all its beating, pulsing, metallic might. One moment, and she releases that energy, sending it outwards into whatever she can grab ahold of.

    She wouldn't be the first to try to shock him, but Gwen really has no way of knowing that, for better or worse.

GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Corona Discharge!
GS: Gwen Whitlock takes 9 damage from Toxin!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Corona Discharge for 181 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

    "No," the nightmare spinner reflects. "You didn't."

     The agony is recurring, each a reflection of a defense that ends the same way--with the courier being run through with his blade. As ideations of Gwen in every gradation of emotion get ran through like reflections in a crystal, she can reflect on his one-handed style, of the sort that seems entirely too practiced to be a drifter's. His is not one in the same as the man in her memory's. There is an impossible, inhuman grace to his play, and the military clip to his style is almost nonexistent. His is the sword of someone who uses it for only one thing.

     She holds up admirably to the aftershocks of his assault, remaining standing where others would crumple. Those bright, bleeding, mania-threaded eyes.

     In an instant, Gwen moves against him, her sleeve blowing apart in his hand to focus a corona of silvery force into and across him, the killer blown back and away from her with the gasp of a thing entirely detached from reality, as if a great underwater thing seeing the dawn for the first time. The explosion flares, searing through him and coming just this shade of sending him sprawling, his body slowly inverting itself and twisting as he lands, grace the only thing left for him as he straightens himself, smoke trailing from his coat, and sweeping away the crackle of lightning sticking to the edge of his blade.

     As he looks down, one of the ideations hauls some semblance of the courier off of her feet entirely, suspended on the edge of his blade. It is a different sensation than before, the blade slightly higher. What does it mean?

     He dusts off his coat as he straightens, his eyes lifting to face her once more. And his eyes are no longer bleeding. On the contrary, they are so clear it hurts.
     "That... is why I will save you."

     It takes him no time at all to cross the sky to harm her, his steps each counting for ten, and leaving little in the way of intermediary actions. Space shrinks between them, and his movements have the staccato hitch of a ghost not entirely moored to physics. With each breath, he simply gets closer, until he is simply there, his stance open and relaxed as he moves merely to just cut her down with a grand outer sweep of his curved blade, the motion casting off a rippling field blooming from the point of engagement.

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Geist Scything!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
GS: Gwen Whitlock critically Guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Geist Scything for 22 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    Pain. While her tolerance of it has decreased from her days when she was recovering from the surgery that saved her life, it's not something completely unknown to Gwen.

    It also helps that it's not the first time she's nearly been killed by something or another. It's just that no one who's tried had quite the same haunting, bright eyes as this man did.

    That was enough for Gwen to remember him, even if he made no attempt on her life the first time they met.
    
    He's certainly making up for lost time, that's for sure, each time striking her with a grace that makes her recall the other man in her memory. But it's not the same. That much she's beginning to realize, her growing familiarity with the blue-eyed assassin's blade being on a level she didn't care to repeat.

    Marcus would never be mistaken for an assassin, even if he drew his blade. The blue-eyed man here is a weapon, inside and out.

    Electricity drives the man away from her, leaving Gwen gasping for air. It wasn't enough to kill him, no. Most likely, nothing Gwen is capable of could kill him.

    Relief stabs at her at the same time as her dread, emotions dueling for one another for dominance. He isn't dead. On the other hand, he isn't dead. So that's a problem, right?

    Ah, that's a new sort of pain. The impact of the blade sliding through her body registers in her mind, as sharp and clear as the cornflower blue gaze that now fixes itself on her.

    'That... is why I will save you.'

    "Can't we... talk this over a bit?" Gwen falls back on old habits, a sheepish smile managing to find itself on her lips before alarm takes over. He comes for her, his movements impossible to track, and instinct proves to be the courier's only savior in her time of need.

    *SKREEE*

    The curved blade of Isiris's sword cuts across Gwen's right ARM, the cut drawing across metal flesh that does not bleed, but registers pain all the same. "Real sorry 'bout this-" Gwen manages to wheeze out, her words blown back in the middle of the exchange as easily as her strawberry blonde curly hair.

    The apology turns out to not be for some vicious attack, but for the fact that Gwen attempts to launch a fist into the assassin's stomach. A low blow, in any other fight.

    She figures the rules are a little different here.

GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Special Delivery!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has entered a Reflect stance!
GS: Gwen Whitlock takes 10 damage from Toxin!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra critically Guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Special Delivery for 31 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.


     Gwen dangles from the blade, powerless. Blood drains from her, and those threads anchor her to the ground, as if kept from floating away entirely. The ideation hangs helplessly somewhere behind Gwen, the sensation clear to her even if she does not directly look at it. The nameless man regards her with the same kindness as he always has, even the ones that continue to be run through all around them. By now, they are no longer distinct images, her assailants, and more indistinct and flickering jagged imperfections of shadow. Even so. In each case he is as kind and as accomodating as he would be to her were they on opposite sides of a table, as opposed to opposite sides of a blade.

     "Words pale," he says, and nothing more.

     The battle progresses to a deadlock as his blade clatters off of a bared arm ineffectually, metal crashing against metal with a horrifying shriek once and twice as she fires back with a straight punch, the force of the blow slamming into the flat of his hand like a hammer, his palm braced with his opposite hand, his blade's spine resting against the crook of his arm. His coat ripples with the blast force of her punch before settling at his hip. His eyes focus on her, his hands bracing against her fist, needing both to hold her at bay. Even so, he doesn't seem to show an obvious distress. She returns to her old ways, showing him the sheepish smile that she is accustomed to. Mania can be a contagious thing.

     "Only a doll," he observes for the first time, his honeyed voice cutting through the two of them.
     "How much of the real you will be left when I am done, I wonder...."

     If Gwen doesn't pull away, she will see the dark threads of that lattice crawl from his fingertips onto her iron arm. She will slowly begin to realize that the horrific images around her are beginning to break, their indistinct forms spreading cracks of black through the air. They are not reminders, they are not echoes. They are cages. They are that web.

     Slowly, he is reducing the amount of space she has left to move, the space she has left to evade, and the more she pays attention to the details of it, the more reason applied, the deeper this becomes. Looking him in the eyes will see the same black lines spreading from them, and seeing them is suggestion enough for black lines to spread out of an imaginary wound in her middle. The lines spread, like the veins of some great insect's wing, like cracks in glass. Gwen has so precious little time to escape, to stop him, to look at anything but the spreading noxious ephemera. If she doesn't, he will simply reach up with three more hands and two more bodies than he should actually have, and pull her, wet and natal, from a wound in her midsection that doesn't exist.

     She can feel it, deep inside her, the creeping cold thing..

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Force Action!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Gwen Whitlock with A Cruel Orisha!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's A Cruel Orisha for 151 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     She is bare and unclothed, dripping in nightmare amniotic. However, there is no part of her that is soft, no part of her that is yielding or familiar. This is because the scruffy-haired natal is not truly a person, not in the real ways that we expect. She sags out of the courier's nightmare wound by hips made of metal, her shivers against the cold causing an alien rattle to undulate in the deepest recesses of her hearing. Hands cut of segments of alloy and wire drag across ground that doesn't exist at Gwen's boots, pawing plaintively at the leather there. The slow writhing motion that would produce a kneading motion in the shoulderblades instead forces plates to spread and shut underneath her eyes, showing nothing inside. A slow, ominous ratchet causes the dripping doll to turn her head, slowly, beyond the range of human ability. 180 clicks later, and she can look who she was in the eye.

     Even as her metal hands grip onto a blade and remove it, with a slow horrific shriek from the doll's belly, it is almost impossible to focus on anything but the doll's face. Even as she rotates ball joints in her shoulders to hyperextend her arms behind her, bringing the blade to bear against her in an anatomically incredible way. Slowly, she turns to face her, every ratchet click betraying an impossible anatomy, a scorpion whose tail turns against itself. Even so, it is hard to focus. It is so hard to focus.

     The doll's face is made of seams, and has no eyes.

     Only when the natal doll tries to slit Gwen's throat does the nightmare spinner step forward.
     Only then does he move to slip his blade through her.

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    It seems everywhere she looks, there's death. It's kind of alarming how used to it she's getting. That, or she's just letting her mind blot it out, letting herself be ignorant of the more pressing, more frightening issues around her. There's probably a hidden meaning behind it all, she realizes, something that might come to bite her in the ass right when she least expects it. It's just beyond her to understand the depths of what it all means without, perhaps, giving up a part of herself as sacrifice. She'll just make do.

    Unfortunately, Isiris's words prove as distracting an opponent. 'Only a doll.' If only those where the only words he said to her.

    'How much of the real you will be left when I am done, I wonder....'

    Something sharpens momentairely in those fog blue eyes, flicking across the painful blue of Isiris's own as she flinches back. "I'm beginning to make sense of what your song is, just a bit," she comments, focusing on the strength in her own words, even as the strength of Isiris's ideations crowd around her, drawing the webbed bars of the cage. "A person who can only see limits in the sky. Whatever's up there must've done a number on that little boy I saw."

    They spread.

    "And now, even if you're no longer in that sky, you're still just a caged bird, starin' outside..."

    The rest of her words are temporarily hushed by the wet, cold thing that struggles out of her, a mechanical, grotesque automaton that shrieks and writhes against the cold outside. As Gwen cries out, the being turns its head, and stares at her, back at her, at the old her.

    Which is she?

    It's too hard to focus.

    She can't stop. There's words still there, that she has to say.

    "And all you can think about is having the cage encase what's outside." Gwen reaches her right hand to touch the doll's cheek with just the tips of her fingers, wielding kindness against the metal being for a scant few moments before the being moves, threatening to cut open the very soft veins of her throat. "To make it big enough to encase it all."

    She's not even sure she's approaching anything near a truth. But words are all she has in this moment, and she'll hold onto it.

    The same hand tries to push the robotic being away as it comes for her neck, Gwen rushing the last words of her theory out.

    "The only way to force that cage open is to find your own-!"

    The last word never comes, snatched away by the tip of Isiris's blade through her midsection.

GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Sky!
GS: Gwen Whitlock takes 12 damage from Toxin!
GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra critically Guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Sky for 9 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

     Slowly, reality aligns to match the nightmare.

     Parts of the doll fall away from the young courier, parts and pieces of plastic and metal falling away. Because there is no firmity for them to hit, unlike the weaver and his young charge, the parts tumble away into the endless sky below. The eyeless marionette shudders underneath Gwen's hand, limbs verve-less and limp, as if freshly killed. The reason why is plain, for the man who never gave a name slowly lifts her, his strength an unreal thing for his otherwise unimpressive size. The shine of his blade is plunged through the middle of that rotting doll as well, the reason why it no longer fights her.

     At the end of it, only cables, wire, and an eyeless head hangs from the wound he made with her, making it look for all appearances that he may have tried to disembowel the girl and found nothing human inside.

     The young man considers her words, something unreadable passing in the psychotic captivation of blue. "Do you think that child is lost?" he asks, mildly. Considerate, he draws the blade in closer, just enough that the tips of Gwen's boots drag across something unseen. "That he has not seen the real sky..." He opens a hand, lifting it up to the courier. The weaver's eyes lid momentarily, and a slow, gentle smile crosses his expression. It is a cruel thing.

     Force ripples around his hand, energy distorting the view. A scintilla of silver light rotates and focuses at his wrist, as if his hand were at the center of a lens flare. Slowly, the world rotates, the angle of things changing as the sky rights itself, the moon settling behind the courier, as if he were using that iota of light to adjust the world and draw the moon into his hand.

     "Maybe. But then the kindest woman sang a song for him. He has spent his entire life searching for the one who sang it, because she showed him the way. She showed him what the sky was, and everything that was wrong with it. Without ever seeing her, she showed him the way."

     His expression sharpens, becoming clearer.
     "She sang to him about the end of the world."

     And then, the man pulls the moon into his hand, firing a miles-long spear of silver light.
     He aims for her heart.

GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Force Action!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Force Action!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Demiselene!
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock critically Guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Demiselene for 26 hit points!
GS: Mute! Statuses applied to Gwen Whitlock!

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    Even if the force that the hand uses to push the metal doll away is meant to be kind in nature, it's still too much for the automaton to bear. Gwen cries out as the newborn being collapses to the sky below.

    And now, it's as if it never had existed at all. Just bits of metal debris, falling from her, as if she were the metal being herself.

    'Do you think that child is lost?"

    At first, Gwen thinks the man refers to the child that hangs in tatters from that wound. It doesn't take her long to think of that other child, the sullen boy at the campfire, almost familiar to her in some ways in how some parts of his behavior reminded her of her own, at that same age.

    Like that boy, Gwen had to find her sky. The song, that made her into the young woman she is now.

    How funny, that their results would be so grossly different?

    And here, in this space, where the sky sits at their feet, they crash together.

    Gwen's reply is unable to form before that slow, soft smile spreads on his lips. The absurdity is too much for the redhead to bear.

    'She sang to him about the end of the world.'

    His strike, this time, is true, pressing straight through Gwen's chest in a single, clean stroke, the young woman's eyes widening. Her left gloved hand reaches out, grasping at one final show of resistance. but by the time it manages to grasp at some part of the unnamed spinner's clothing, there's only enough strength for a tug, and nothing more.

    There's only a modicum of breath and heartbeat left. Enough for two words, at least.

    "... How cruel." What she refers to is left unclear.

    She begins to fall, her right hand clasping for something in her vest- or did it? A glimmer of movement, but it's lost in the weight of body beginning its collapse to the ground.

<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.

    The spear of light extends outwards for as far as the eye can see, lingering as a trailing silver vapor of nimbus long after the initial strike. A brush stroke against the sky, occluding the portrait that was painted.

    Slowly, details slide from the world, like puzzle pieces being knocked out of alignment, reducing the state of things to nonsense even as the truth of the world is solved. Ideations all around her hit their knees and fall away into dream. The town recedes into being beneath her boots, the cobblestone path straightening and making sense of itself once more. The familiar group of crows perching at the edges of the buildings stand watch over the small alley he'd led her to in her attempts to escape the nightmare, shadowy and indistinct things with crazed blue eyes. As indistinct as they are, they are still the most real thing about the gyre from heaven she has been through.

    His gentle smile fades, his sword wrist relaxing.
    He says nothing for the length of it, his mind needing no more explanation. The nightmare spinner is content to let her paw at his travel coat, her gloved hand worrying at his lapel. He holds her there for a time, for as long as she needs to find herself at the end of everything, understanding him. Understanding oblivion.

    Her lips move just barely as she speaks.
    'how cruel.'

    He lets her drop to the ground at his feet, limp and pale, a discarded doll by any measure. The weaver focuses on her for some time in the real world, watching her. "While away the last hours of you," he bids her. "Struggle as you die, and recount every love you've ever had. In the end, when it is all and cold, you will know what no one else will."

    He turns, leaving her on her back in the dust.
    "This mercy is the only worthy one left in this world.."