2018-07-10: Feeding the Monster Within
- Log: Feeding the Monster Within
- Cast: Gwen Whitlock, Ida Everstead-Rey, Garrett Stampede
- Where: Gwen's Dream
- Date: 7/10/2018
- Summary: It should have been a normal dream, like any other, but outside influences have warped it into something much more frightening. As the two Hellions invade Gwen's dream, they are faced with a chilling fact: they may not be the worst things present there in Gwen's psyche.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Dreams have been such dodgy things since that night, several months ago. It wasn't as if Gwen had nightmares every night like clockwork. There were others- anxiety dreams, dreams about the mundane, ones where there seemed to be no real point at all. Then there was the darkness of healing sleep, where a body pushed to its limits sought refuge. That dominated whatever sorts of sleep she had for a good few days, after Gwen decided that fighting a Fell Dragon was a great idea.
Even *Zed* was trying to coach her on that. She got a nice scarf out of it, and she's certain nothing will come of his promise to 'tutor' her.
Now, her wagon stationed in a nondescript rest stop, Gwen rests, cocooned in a woven blanket, marked with geometric patterns not quite of any culture on Lunar, but not entirely alien, either. It's a quiet night, punctuated by the occasional call of some nocturnal bird, or the creak of the tall canopy of trees as a lax evening breeze blows through it. Gulliver has been put up for the night, his still, standing position the only indication of his own sleep. Hanpan is curled up in a cute ball near Gwen's head, his ears twitching occasionally at the call of some night owl.
The night feeds into the landscape of Gwen's dream, a quiet scene of the Badlands at dusk, purples and blues stretching out into the inky blues of night, the heat and light of the sun giving way to the cool light of a moon, coloring the sands.
There is no cold here, unlike a real Badlands night. There is no danger here. Just the quiet flutter of moths among the cacti in bloom, the call of a distant wild dog. And Gwen, standing there, her shoulders, arms, and feet bare, a sundress being all she needs to keep out the cold as she walks on the sands.
It'll be a calm dream, this time. She has those too.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Without any preamble at all, Gwen's right hand starts to twitch. It feels like it might be a short, at first, like she'd been exposed to something that caused the Dragon nerves to misfire--but it only gets worse, traveling up her arm until it reaches her shoulder. It isn't long before the whole limb is convulsing, muscles spasming erratically. Her pulse quickens. It keeps getting faster and faster and faster, but even though it feels like she should be gasping for breath, she doesn't feel winded. And then--
It stops.
Gwen's arm moves to hang at her side, but she can no longer feel it. Her heart still pulses in her chest, but it's like it's no longer hers. Her arm extends, fingers tensing and flexing before finally assuming a claw-like configuration.
Something moves in the back of Gwen's hand. She can't see it clearly.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
It starts out often like that. A small twitch, something she could easily overlook. Then, at the end, she's having to open up her ARM in a display that seemed as fair from human as possible, her left hand taking its position of its right's savior, holding the necessary tools needed to repair the damage. It's just a machine, her ARM. No more sentient than a finely crafted ARM in the hands of its owner. An extension of that owner's will. Those twitches are just misfirings of jumbled body signals, a signal that her ARM's calibration was thrown off by a particularly heavy blow. It's made from a Metal Dragon fossil, yes, but that's the case for so many.
It won't do anything the owner wouldn't do. ... Right?
Because that's not the case here, it seems.
Her left arm, so lacking, so weak, compared to its newer other part, clamps on the other, but its human strength can't hold down the other. It can't do anything for her heart, either, just press fingertips up against her chest as the rhythm of her chest flutters dangerously. There's no accompanying gasp of breath, or blurry vision, so maybe-
It stops.
Gwen stands there, in the similarly still landscape, her left hand still held in place over her heart. Her eyes widen.
_She should be dead right now_.
She should have been dead months ago. But now...
She's at the mercy of her ARM.
And something is there, moving. She cranes her neck back, her breath so dreadfully quiet without that beat of her heart.
You can't run from something that's in you. "Stop it."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Gwen only gets a brief look inside her arm, but everything looks like it should. The casing shuts of its own volition, looking eerily organic--like an eyelid closing. 'Stop it', Gwen commands, but the ARM does not listen. A horrible stretching sensation spreads from the back of her hand to the tips of her fingers, as though muscle and bone were overextending, and then some. Gwen's fingertips lengthen into hooked, serrated talons. Muscles grow and bulge grotesquely, reconfiguring themselves into an arrangement that isn't quite human. The ARM's plating distorts, reshaping itself into a mixture of scales and armor. Gwen still can't move the limb, or sense the air around it, or even know where it lies in relation to the rest of her without looking at it. She can still feel what's happening to it, though.
She can still feel what's happening to her heart, too. It's growing warmer by the second.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen's never really had to command her ARM. At least, from what she could remember.
But dreams operate from another kind of logic.
Stretching muscle and bone tugs on Gwen's nerves like an itch that never leaves. The nails of her human hand, dig into the shifting surface of an ARM that could no longer be mistaken for anything close to human.
And her heart.
This is worse than death.
"Auntie..." Auntie Frea would know what to do. Or, at least, would try something, anything, to help quell the alien warmth in her chest. She commands her body forward, shuffling her feet through the sand. Logic would dictate that this would be impossible to accomplish; the Badlands are vast, and the town of Boot Hill a mere speck on the map.
But again, dreams operate from another kind of logic.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Gwen is desperate to get to someone who can help her. The dream is not letting that happen. She walks and walks, but that tiny speck on the horizon that might be Boot Hill doesn't draw any closer. It's like the desert itself is keeping hope just out of reach, taunting Gwen with a promise of safety it has no intent to honor. All she has for company are her own thoughts, and the horrible sensations spreading throughout her body.
Gwen needs this ARM to live. And yet, it's gone and replaced a crucial part of her, turned it into something alien. It's enabled her to do so much, but it's also something she has to hide, lest she be thought of as a monster.
Heat-haze flickers on the horizon. The desert air feels deathly cold. Motes of Malevolence flicker around Gwen like fireflies. A thick violet mist settles in the air around her, as if attracted by the conflict in her heart. Gwen's ARM reaches out for it. Malevolent essence starts seeping into the metal.
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.
In the mist, that heavy cloud of vile energy, flickers shadows. They should be comfortable. Familiar shadows. Almost recognizable. This one looks like a horse. That one like a friend. This one like a wind mouse. People she's known flicker in those mists.
But there is something unnatural about them.
Their movements a little to stilted. The flickering shadows of half-remembered figures twisted. The figures just a touch too odd to be 'normal'.
Whatever passes for normal in a dream.
On the faint edge of hearing the clicking of metal on metal can be heard. The whirring of clockwork. The clicking of gears. The smooth hum of servos like her own ARM.
Closer they march, at a snails pace it seems but always gaining along with those mists.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen was never truly alone, not like this. The moonlit landscape feels more and more alien to her, a threatening expanse that just keeps stretching ever longer.
It's cold. She must have forgotten to put on proper clothing when she set out. There will be blankets and clothing at home, if she manages to get back. She'll never go out like this in the Badlands again. She'll remember, this time.
Violet motes flicker around her, an almost beautiful, eerie display. Her ARM reaches out for it, and the translucent mists, shadows of familiar faces dancing in its weaving bands of energy.
Panic flutters in her chest. Just keep going forward. They can't see her like this. What would they think? They would be scared. Nevermind that, in reality, it's been the opposite; this is the logic of the dream.
There is only conflict, fear, and the contrast of cold air against the heat in her chest.
"..."
They're going to catch up. All of it. The clanking metal,
If her ARM becomes infected, well. Surely, she only needs to cut it off. Just have to find a sharp edge.
A few seconds is all she needs to get there, to Auntie.
Auntie would know what to do.
She can survive without an arm. She's done it before. Maybe things will be different.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Gwen is afraid. Gwen is panicked. And yet, the ARM seems to welcome the Malevolence in, as if eager to grasp the power it represents. Fear crackles through its nerves as though it were electricity. Her heart beats a little faster. The metal takes on a sickly purple gleam, and when Gwen looks into it, her face seems child-like, distorted, a caricature of powerlessness. Malevolence starts to flow through her veins, hot and angry and terrified. It seeps into her lungs with every breath in, and forms clouds in front of her face with every breath out.
One of the figures in the mist steps forwards, a pale, hollow-eyed woman with features that could've been called 'aristocratic' a year or so ago. Now Ida looks like a shadow of her former self. She looks at Gwen, and doesn't quite smile. "Look what you've gone and gotten yourself into," she says.
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.
The words seem to part the mist and for a moment those shambling and half-seen things are fully visible. Once they may have been people she knew, but now? Now something has turned them into mechanical horrors.
Like what her ARM is becoming.
Like what it is turning Gwen into.
Humanity goes from glowing eyes. Clockwork limbs clicking onwards, some of them watch her without a sound. The most distrubing though stare towards her as they speak soft words carried on the Malevolent wind.
"...wait for us. Stop running. We can fix you..."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
The something that may or may not be her heart leaps when someone recognizable steps into view, all full of dread, fear, hope, happiness, all sorts of conflicting emotions tumbling through her. It's Ida. Her friend.
Her friend, who is now a Hellion.
Ida can't help her.
She can't trust Ida, not with this.
Still, Gwen cracks a small, weak smile, as if Ida had only caught her trying to lift something far too heavy.
"... I hope y'don't feel insulted. Need to, uh, cut my ARM off." She laughs softly, violet breath clouding the air in front of her mouth. "I don't want to lose my humanity. That's my decision."
As if she was still in control. As if so many metallic shambling bits weren't closing. True demons, bereft of the stuff that Gwen would classify as 'humanity', even if the word feels ill-suited to the amount of people she applies it to.
"I think I'm the last human here. So I can't let it die, y'know? My humanity. My... kindness. If there's none of that, I wouldn't be here. So I have to kill it off, to survive." She explains this to Ida, almost as a bashful apology, as Malevolence burns in her veins.
A boulder will do, in place of a sharp piece of slate. She numbly strolls past Ida towards something promising. "Just a moment, Ida. I'll fix this. My fault, really, leavin' with just a dress on."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Gwen's ARM has other plans. It reaches for her fleshy, human forearm, trying to close those clawed fingers around it and hold it in place. It's fast, and phenomenally strong--and should it grab hold, its grip is like iron. Ida smiles a sad, knowing smile, and as Gwen tries to walk off, she follows. "You're numb," she says, as though she were making an observation about the weather. "Is this how you've managed to keep it at bay?" Despite Ida's words, the Malevolence churns in Gwen's blood, slowly preading from her heart to saturate the rest of her. Is it having trouble gaining purchase?
"But you still think you're the one in control," Ida says, with a slow, steady shake of her head. She reaches out, and touches two fingers to the back of Gwen's distorted right wrist. Malevolence arcs between them. Gwen's heartbeat quickens, again. The arm starts to twist once more, distorting, becoming more draconic and more mechanical--like some strange, alien hybrid of the Metal Dragons that Gwen saw at Adlehyde and the Fell Dragon she fended off at Lastonbell.
"Do you want to know what happened after I killed that man in Lost July?" Ida says, as the change spreads up Gwen's arm. "I ran. I ran, as though I could somehow outrun my own failures. They caught me in the desert, fell on me--and it was as though a seed planted months ago finally took root. It overcame me. It overwhelmed me. It gave me a choice: accept it, and retain my mind, or reject it, and become a beast."
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.
"Beast~ beast~ beast~"
The shadows, once again by some small mercy concealed by the eddies of the mist seem to chant after Ida speaks. A screaching, mechanical cacophany of sound in no known language.
But somehow, disturbingly. Gwen can understand them.
"What is so great about humanity anyway?" Pipes up one voice from the masses. "What good as it done you. You've lived more by that ARM than by your humanity haven't you?"
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"S'real great at it," Gwen drawls, with a small laugh, as her left hand struggles from out of the right's iron grasp. "I'll manage somehow."
At Ida's touch, the redhead turns, some level of trust betrayed in how she doesn't flinch away, even knowing what she does. This changes as she notices, out of the corner of her eye, the arc of violet, resulting in the quicking of her heart, and the twisting of her ARM.
"Why'd you..." Gwen already knows the answer to her own question, but the impact still stings. Tears well up and fall, then anger, her ARM lashing out in accordance to this primal emotion. The claws of a dragon, sharp and as cold as the very things Gwen's torn psyche are basing them on, a distorted imitation, whip down towards Ida.
She doesn't even have to dodge. Gwen's twisting her body around, letting that ARM of hers claw at the sand like a child's arm throwing a tantrum. It hurts to fight it; the ARM is far too large for a human body to properly maneuver it.
But she can at least do that.
Still turned, Gwen shakes her head, an outright motion of denial, as her right ARM pulses with draconic power. "Why do you think I'd be happier if I gave everything up?!" Tears stream openly on her face now, raw emotion bleeding through onto her face. "You killed someone. Even if it wasn't outta malice, n' you were tryin' to protect people, that guilt consumed you. Same thing with Rosaline- she killed the people holdin' her, and killed her childhood friend. Jack found out what happened to his friend, and it made him want to kill someone so bad that the fact that he couldn't made it just as bad." Her voice cracks. "I don't want to hurt people. There's enough death on Filgaia already. People givin' up on it, n' themselves, when there's still so much there. If I give up, I *will* kill people. It ain't just 'bout me. It's 'bout you, n' Jack. N' Rosaline."
The voices chant around her, making a case for another option, one that feels like it's beginning to make a terrifying amount oif sense. 'You've lived more by that ARM than by your humanity haven't you.'
"My ARM is an extension of my will."
Only, it's not, right now. Why?
"If it isn't, it's being taken over by something else."
As if, by this decision alone, she could resolve it.
"I will fix it."
Her left hand, freed from the stunned, still transforming right ARM, manages to grasp onto a sharp disk of stone, shining white in the moonlight. She grasps it, breathing hard, posing it over a critical joint of her ARM.
She looks over at Ida then, weakly. "That comment, about Lost July. Uh, it.. reminded me. Y'ever wonder, what happened to the guy who caused it?" Nevermind that this man could have willed it himself. Just as Id had, and did. And Id... well, he could be a Hellion. The man who could be Vash, well. It's just as likely that he isn't. Maybe she just wants to believe he is, because it meant that the world was a slightly nicer one. A selfish wish, to be sure.
But even if that wasn't true, this world, both Lunar and Filgaia at once in this weird dream logic, was worth...
".... Sorry, Ida. I can't." She thrusts the stone down.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's eyes widen, ever-so-slightly, as those twisted talons come rushing at her face. She steps back, raising a hand--but Gwen is already twisting out of the way, dragging the mutated ARM away before it can do any damage. Gwen might have denied it its prey, but it keeps thrashing, still trying to immobilize her other arm.
Ida's face twists in a snarl, as if Gwen had just smacked her across the face. "You don't know the first bloody thing about any of us," she says. "Do you think that killing is what did this to us? Do you think Rosaline had a cheerful life until Hope Springs burned? Do you think I had it good simply because I grew up with money?" She looks deeply, personally hurt--as if Gwen trying to reassert control has wounded her.
"You claim this thing is a part of you. And yet, you're still terrified that if you pass some arbitrary threshold, you'll become a monster, and lose everything. You're lying to yourself." Gwen makes assertions. She talks about Lost July. Ida keeps talking, as if trying to regain control of what's happening. "Rosaline and I realized what we'd known all along--we're both terrible, violent people. And you--you still can't even--"
Gwen raises the stone. It comes down on the ARM with a horrible scraping crunch. One strike is far from enough to sever it, but that didn't stop Gwen the last time, did it?
Ida's face twists. In the shadows behind her, something begins to howl. For the first time since this dream started, Gwen might notice a bizarre, uncomfortable sensation that can only be described as fundamentally draining. It's as though something was feeding off her this entire time. Is it this apparition of Ida, or...?
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.
"I like how you keep me out of that, Ida." Comes a deep, rumbling voice from those mists. Familiar, if colder. "Because I've always known I was a violent person. It comes with my previous occupation."
Jack steps from the mists, calm. A touch of a smile on his face in contrast to Ida's angry snarl. "Terrible? No. I'm quite good at being violent. Its the fact that people actually thought I was a good person that I always struggled with. After all you have to be alive to be a good person, and I've been dead since my Kingdom burned."
There is a rent in his armor over where his heart would be, Malevolence leaking from the wound as he slowly advances towards Gwen.
He pauses though, smirking slightly towards the girl with the ARM.
"If you're going to do that though, at least use something sharper."
And a short blade is flung in her direction, landing point down in the sand nearby.
"Not that it'll matter. It'll still be part of you. You can't be free of it that easy."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
As Ida's dose of malevolence flows through Gwen, something begins to filter through, pressing through the pain and fog of denial.
This is what Ida must have done, when Gwen found herself suddenly brought back to some semblance of sense during the fight with the Fell Dragon. This feeling, this malevolence, was it the same she felt then? Or is it just her imagination, trying to find some silver lining among a whole host of storm clouds?
It had to have been Ida. Ida had tried to save her, in a way only she could.
Ida's anger is unexpected. Gwen flinches at the snarl on her friend's face, her body compulsively shrinking back as if she was struck. "... No. You had it hard. I may not've been involved with everything you've had t'deal with, but it certainly didn't look like you had it easy. Rosaline, well. There's a lot of parts of our pasts that line up real eerie-like. I don't think the killing was the start n' end of it. It was just the feather that broke the camel's back, in Rosaline's case. And you... It wasn't even that."
Terrible, violent people. Both of Gwen's fists curl at Ida's assessment, pain flashing in her fog blue eyes. "And I still can't even what?" Not even as a Hellion, does Ida find respite.
And Gwen can't do anything in this state, much less show Ida just how wrong she is.
The sharp stone only cuts the surface layer, the mutated ARM whipping around with enough force to jerk Gwen's body in the process, causing her to drop the stone.
It's at this point that Jack, another face in which Gwen finds a brief moment of welcome relief, before remembering. Ah, right. He's a Hellion too. Guilt pulses in Gwen as she sees the mark in Jack's armor. That's right. She had tried to shoot that amulet of his, thinking it would solve things. It didn't. But it would have happened, regardless.
He's helpful too, just... in a different way,
"..." Gwen's human hand grasps at the handle of the flung blade. She nods her thanks to Jack, then turns to Ida, walking towards her, sword in hand.
When the blade raises, there's little doubt what Gwen's purpose is. She's already turned, stamping one foot on the bucking, elongated ARM, trying to pin it down. She takes a breath.
She stabs the sword down, pinning the thing like an insect on a pin, a sharp, high yelp of animal pain escaping her throat.
Gwen's left hand shakily leaves the handle, and, if Ida doesn't flee her grasp, she reaches out, pulling Ida forward just enough to wrap that left arm around her in a hug, her hand clutching at the fabric at Ida's back, her forehead craned forward to try to touch Ida's own. The right ARM spasms, sending another choke of pain from Gwen, but she holds firm, her eyes shut tight.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida turns to look at Garrett, brow furrowing with concern. She wasn't expecting him to show his face like she did, but perhaps she should've known better. She knows damned well that her two companions have their own demons, but it's never easy to hear them talk about themselves like that. Is this what others feel like when dealing with h--
Gwen's ichor-tainted blood splatters across the ground. Ida twitches, eyes narrowing. Gwen doesn't give her much of a chance to react. Before Ida knows it, she's been pulled into a shaky, one-armed hug, literally face-to-face with Gwen. "What," Ida says, "do you think you're doing?"
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.
There is a slight smile from Jack as he sees Gwen grasp that blade. There is a slight nod towards her. She has courage and spirit. That is something. Though her next move does seem to catch both Ida and him by suprise.
Blood splatters as Gwen flings her arm around Ida.
"...I think," He drawls out as he crosses his arms and just watches this. "She's giving you a hug."
A beatpause.
"I suppose we all look like we could use one."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
There's no answer. The way that Gwen's lips thin, stained over with tears, makes it clear she's unable to form much of any response beyond cries of pain, or, well, crying.
Especially as a newborn wing rips from the wound that Gwen tried to make in her shoulder, unfurling and arching into the sky with a violent jerk of motion.
Gwen squeezes her eyes shut, attempting to regain a measure of calm with each malevolence-laced breath.
She finally speaks, lifting her head away from Ida's.
"... You saved me. Back during the fight, with the Fell Dragon. I understand now."
The corruption spreads ever further, but Gwen's smile is still there, a sunflower in cracked, parched earth.
"You can't be a terrible person. You aren't. Neither is Jack. Or Rosaline. I refuse to believe it. If bein' a terrible person is what..." She grits her teeth. "If it's what makes a Hellion, then... I guess my crime was..." She bites her lip to hold back another cry of pain, a fang drawing blood against her bottom lip. She relaxes. "Refusin' to die. I should be dead. But I couldn't, I wouldn't..." Another hitch in her breath. "-face the idea that my turn would end, just as I realized how... beautiful the world is. And the people in it."
The sword holds for now, but the spasming ARM continues to twist against it, throwing more ichor-laced blood against the white of the sands, and further draining Gwen. She cranes her head to look over at Jack.
".... Then get over here before my ARM gets free, or I faint." Ida is finally free from that close embrace, Gwen drawing back her shaking hand. "I don't think I can hold out for much longer. It's... draining."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Gwen makes something of a case. Ida holds still, stiffening noticeably as Gwen fails to let go of her after a moment or so. She glances down at the wing, and fresh anger flares in her heart. Somehow, Gwen isn't cursing her fate, or the woman who did this to her--she's reaching out, instead. She's being graceful. She's being a good woman, the ideal that haunts Ida's self-image like a hateful spectre.
Were you expecting her to break? She's no weakling. She's not like you.
Gwen speaks, tells Ida why she thinks she's turning into a monster. "No," Ida says. "Malevolence does not care about crimes. It does not care about sins." She glances back at Garrett, a man whose only sin was wanting to avenge his people. Her heart feels just a little heavier. "It feeds on conflict." Ida reaches down, and taps two fingers against Gwen's right wrist--this time, though, there's no spark of Malevolence, no sickening loss of control. "You owe your life and freedom to this device, and yet, you fear it, and resent what it has forced upon you. You talk as though you would somehow become someone monstrous if it passed some threshold, as though it could erase your mind and heart. It cannot."
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.
"Conflict is the root of things. Especially of us." Jack's voice comes as he slowly steps forwards. "The more you think we are good, the more we disagree with it. The worse it gets. The more you fear your ARM, and the more you rely on it. The closer you get to becoming like us."
He does walk over though. "You don't always become a monster, but...the conflict always feeds it."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"No." Gwen smiles, sadly. "It's a little worse than that. ... I walked into it, knowing there'd be consequences. It was okay, when I realized there were people who'd accept me. I was okay with it all, then, because I knew it let me be with all of you. Gave me a chance at remaking myself, n' allow myself to be the sort of person who could act this way n' still survive. But then..."
Jack approaches.
Gwen reaches over, her hand poised in front of her, fingers gently reaching for Jack, to draw him in a hug, the same grateful sort of embrace as she had Ida.
"I just need to remind myself that-"
--Preferring to remain broken, even though the entire world will fall on you. A misguided dedication. One that has a high cost..--
The words aren't spoken, only felt, speaking with a honeyed, soft tone against the ear.
A sharp blade, the same white as the moon above, comes through Gwen's back, though no weapon is present in front. It creates an opening, misery spilling out in cold, inky tendrils in the wake of a shadow parting through the portal it has newly created.
It looks at the two of them, holding onto something that shines, tiny, beautiful and precious.
--Only a doll.--
Its eyes, when they open and focus, are an indescribable shade of blue, of cornflowers, and deep, clear skies. Cold expanses.
--How much of the real you will be left when I am done, I wonder.--
Before the two of them can act, it disintegrates into a fury of crow feathers and fleeing birds, deathly silent.
And a fallen Gwen lies there, her ARM lolling drunkenly against its held state, one wing weakly flapping against the cold air. There's no blood, just black stains against the ground, a spilling darkness where the being made its entrance.
"Didn't expect this to happen," she says, weakly. "... I'll fix this, soon... when I remember to..."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
How much of this is Gwen going to remember when she wakes up? Ida doesn't know. She's not even certain Gwen's processing anything right now--it sounds like she is, but there's no telling if she's too caught in the pain, and what she thinks she knows about people she still considers friends. It rankles. It shouldn't. Ida clenches her fist, wondering if anything is going to come of this, or if this was a poor choice on her part--
Someone speaks. It's not Gwen, or Garrett. Ida turns to her fellow Hellion, eyes widening, but then immediately turns back to Gwen. She stares at the inky tendrils spilling from the young woman, and takes a step back. She doesn't recognize the voice. It feels, almost, as if someone else is intruding in this dream. Is it a memory?
"Did you...?" Ida says, to Garrett. Did you recognize that voice, or that sword? Gwen says she'll fix something. "...What is there for you to fix?" She chokes down the urge to do something, anything, to help. This is only a dream, after all, and she needs Gwen to feel fear.
She has to. It's the only way this will work.
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.
Jack, or he was once Jack, tilts his head to one side as that voice sifts into the dream. The shake of his head is given towards Ida. And when he looks back towards Gwen he finds only a soft hug for his trouble. The hug is...awkward. It takes him by suprise...and at first he tenses...
But then there is a smirk. A sigh. A shake of his head. "You are entirely impossible." He mutters half exasperated...
...but then comes the daggers. The tendrils. The strange glowing pinpricks
"It's not me." He says softly. "Her memories coming to the fore. Something..." He frowns slightly in thought.
Then a smirk.
"...something worse than us."
He adds for a moment before looking towards Gwen once again. He frowns slightly though as he glances between Gwen and Ida.
Then he sighs slightly.
"Ida," He shakes his head. "She isn't afraid of us." He takes a step back from those strange tendrils. "You'll have to find something else...try something different." A pause. "Or move on."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen's eyes focus on Ida, and then on Garrett.
"... Is that what y'need?"
She rises, the hole now present in her chest, the ARM dead against her side, the sad limp wing slumped down. It would be symbolic of a lack of a heart, maybe, if not for the moonlight streaming through that hole. And the small, sad smile on her lips.
"You were too late, I guess."
If it weren't a dream, and her wits were fully there, it'd be a different story. But here, in this raw, unfiltered dream view into her psyche, they found... Gwen.
She simply accepts them, because the world her dream creates demands it.
"I'm plenty scared, but it ain't of you two. Take it for what it is." She motions to the slowly shifting colors of the night sky, dawn making its early call already. "For now... if you have the time, watch the dawn with me."
She's still in the dream's grasp, her notion of asking such innocent questions right after so much trauma more evidence of Ida's words to her, earlier.
Whatever that entity took from her, it's healing, slowly.
She reaches her hands out to the two as the sun peeks over the edge of the horizon.
And as things begin to fade, as she reaches towards them, the dragon's wing straightens, a few more scales growing up her neckline.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Hot, acidic envy curdles in Ida's heart as Garrett explains. Someone else got their claws in Gwen, someone who wasn't K.K., because Ida knows most of their arsenal as well as their voice. Whomever it was, Gwen survived. Gwen did not break. Gwen is recovering, day by day.
Of course Gwen survived. She's not weak, like you.
Ida shakes her head. She looks at Garrett, lips thinning into a tight little line. "I thought it would," she says, but then she trails off, frustration mingling with the envy. "But it's irrelevant, now." Ida sags, looking more and more haggard with every passing moment. Gwen offers her a hand, and she takes it. She says nothing.
On the horizon, jagged spires stand out like knives. That's not part of the Badlands. What is that?
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.
"There will be other times, Ida." Garrett replies easily as he eyes the healing wounds in Gwen's soul. The odd scales and wings. The strange jagged spires on the edge of sight.
The dreamscape is a strange thing. A terrifing and wonderous thing all at once. Is it right for them to be there?
...he isn't sure.
Finally there is a heavy sigh and a shake of his head. "I'll stay." Is all he says to Gwen, stepping forwards to stand with the slowly transforming girl in the middle of her fading dream.
"Tell Hanpan hello for me, would you?"