2018-07-31: Surface of the Water
- Log: 2018-07-31 Surface of the Water
- Cast: Isiris Shango'Ra, Lan Lilac
- Where: Nowhere
- Date: 2018-07-31
- Summary: The Stranger finishes what he began so long ago.
BGM: Yoko Shimomura - 'Surface of the Water'
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
"Listen, if we are going to take on the toughest challenges, you've got to get stronger," he'd said.
They were standing in the desert, on the headlands at the sheer drop of the basins leading into the network of canyons separating Hyland and Rolance. It was, in truth, a hell of a climb up here, which Ashansi had mostly jumped (seriouisly, how high can that guy even jump?) over and calously made Lan climb the rest of the way. Admittedly, he said it had something to do with building strong muscles and learning how to deal with snakebites or something to that respect. Having a reason doesn't make the trip up to the little rock any shorter.
So now, Ashansi has situated them both on a little patch of land hanging precipitiously over a sheer drop into the canyon. It provides a great view, and a lot of danger. Especially since he's at the end of the rock, testing out Penumbra, his own cleaver of a sword. The great swings are agitating parts of the mountain, dropping piles of rock into the canyon below. "So listen," he says, knocking down a scraggly looking tree a few hundred feet away with some sort of weird sword beam attack thing, "If you're gonna use the spear thing I found for what it was intended for, we have to make sure it can withstand a pretty strong hit." Whoosh! woom!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
True, Ashansi can jump some ridiculous distances! But so can Lan, who cheats with Guardianist magic. The silver ribbon in her hair makes the chore of following him less of a pain. She may not be able to jump as far or as often on her own, but negating most of her own gravity works just fine.
This is almost certainly not what Asha had in mind.
She's gathered up their hiking gear and left it safely away from the cliff's edge, removed her shoes, and clicked the spear firmly into its straightened shape. "It's kinda weird to be holding a weapon at all," Lan remarks, watching him swing. Seriously! She only knows the basics of some simple weapons. They're lucky she's ever even held a spear!
"You're not going to start out that strong, are you?" she frowns, raising a suspicious eyebrow at him. "You should let me have a couple of test hits!"
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
Whoosh! Wom! The beating of steel against the air fills the canyons below with energy, startling a herd of wild horses into thundering down the canyon, their hooves churning up a fantastic dust. It was a natural side effect of Ashansi's fighting style, some kind of martial discipline they taught in Aquivy or something like that. Or such was what he'd said. Each time, the story changes a little, and the initial wounds to explain his scars growing in severity each time. One time, a particularly seasoned barkeep remarked that if he told the story of dead dragons one more time to explain a small scar on his hand that he might not survive the initial injury.
Oh well, he had replied. Life's not worth living if it isn't dangerous.
At Lan's behest, the cavalier looks in the reflection of his blade, appraising her novice and her form. "Test hits?" he echoes with incredulity. "I suppose he beast beneath Nortune will let you get a few whacks in first. What about the beasts in the southern lands, where they are no so safe or secure? You can ask them if you want," he supposes, before slowly lifting his blade. "But getting to the end isn't gonna be that easy!!"
Without further ado, the slightly older cavalier whirls, rocketing towards Lan with a mighty overhand blow!!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan tries her best to forget the stories as soon as he tells them. The older the story she can remember, the closer to true it probably is, right? If only.
He scoffs at the very idea of test hits. "If you didn't want to give me a couple of practice swings then why even bother testing it out? We could've gone straight to Nortune!" she complains. Of course she knows he's right, technically... or maybe just philosophically.
Lan twirls the spear again, testing it, growing accustomed to the weight of an unfamiliar weapon. A test jab while he raises his sword.
He rockets toward her--
--and Lan moves just enough to angle the spearhead down for a clean parry and slide. She doesn't have the soul of a dragoon, maybe, but she's seen one or two of their moves. "Fine! But don't cry to me when you chop my arm off and you have to braid my hair for me in the mornings!"
She may be missing a point, somewhere.
Hands sliding further apart on the haft, Lan keeps up the twirling momentum, aiming to slip around her partner as she charges bast and give him a knock on the back of his skull for his troubles.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
"Who knows where Nortune is anymore, and I don't know where there's a big enough monster to feed you to so you can break out," Ashansi replies gruffly, rolling by when she manages to force his blade off the mark and crack him in the back of the head as payback for his full frontal assault. Digging the star metal into the earth, Ashansi slides to a stop, his boots skidding in the dirt. He breathes quietly, a light 'che' heard as the tails of his scarf settle with his recovery.
He looks none the worse for wear after the blow, though this is certainly no great surprise. Despite being eaten at least twice during their adventures, Ashansi has come out of most of their journeys almost completely unscathed. If those whispers were right about him, he might actually be at least somewhat invulnerable. Or at least that's how he acts sometimes.
"Listen," Ashansi says, so he is often fond of saying, as the dust from the stampeding buffalo in the canyon reaches their lofty position. A slow haze-head of dust builds in their battlefield, just as Ashansi grips onto a small boulder cleaved from earlier strokes. Even just the part he's gripped onto is the size of a small wagon.
And then slowly it lifts into the air. "If you want to get me to slow down," Ashansi says, hefting the great boulder with an arm, "You're gonna have to hit harder than that." His shades glint in the light, and he grins.
"Because I don't know a damn thing about braiding hair."
WHOOM! There goes the boulder!! Right at Lan's vulnerable position, followed shortly after by Ashansi, blade at the ready to take advantage of Lan's reaction! He's aiming to clobber the hell out of her no matter what she does. It's interesting that even if he scores any direct hits, he won't even break skin, regardless of where the edge lands. He must be really good.
It'll still probably hurt like hell though.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"If you don't know where it is, then don't talk about it like there's any real chance of going there!" Lan's complaining, but she's moving while she does so. And that's the important part. But the whole deal with the boulder is just too much! "Hey, wait, don't go around throwing boulders at people--"
Except he does, because sometimes Asha can be a jerk. Lan sees it coming, but with a bare second to react she doesn't have a whole lot of options. The girl throws herself into a half-planned backbend, the long tail of her hair whiffing at the sandy soil. The boulder barely passes overhead, but she got the timing right - the throw becomes a backwards roll (though the haft of the spear presses uncomfortably into her ribs for a second) and then she's back on her feet. She's barely got herself oriented again before Asha is right up on her--
Whack! If he'd intended to cut her, she might've lost that arm after all. As it is, she'll have a bruised shoulder by the time nightfall rolls around. "Ugh!"
She leaps backward, bare feet catching the sand beneath her, before darting forward speartip first. If he doesn't move, she'll get a decent jab at his chest.
But when has Ashansi ever stayed still?
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The muddy ground kicks up as Lan's long hair whips through it, blonde tresses lightly dirtied by the wet earth.
Off in the distance somewhere, the boulder lands with force enough to quake the ground, but it is already forgotten by Ashansi and Lan, their battle too pitched to recognize small, unimportant details. A slight miscalculation on either side, and someone could get really hurt. Not that there's a whole lot of concentration to go around. "Do we even know where we are NOW??" Ashansi replies roughly.
His swordblow rocks the area around Lan. Though it barely does any damage at all to her -- or at least, no damage a night or two's good sleep at an inn won't fix -- it still crumples the ground around her, sending wet waves in the mud, the same muddy sands that cling to her bare feet, forming only a barely firm strata as she launches the spear at his chest.
But Ashansi's not paying attention to it at all.
Wham! Her spear is caught in a glove, her lithe movement arrested in one strong motion. The cavalier holds it there momentarily, as he looks out in the distance, to the sea their outcropping overlooks. The sunset is dreadfully pretty as it reflects off of the water below and his own shades. The moment the boy catches in severe detail is breathtaking. It is as if the lightest song from a music box plays over the two. He holds her spear momentarily, Penumbra low and to his side. "Look, ah...." Ashansi starts quietly, a little sheepish as the gravity of the moment catches hold of him. He's all covered in mud too, the rigors of their battle marking him. "is it okay if I tell you something?"
He looks out into the sea, as if unwilling to meet Lan's gaze directly.
"I don't... listen, it's like, sometimes it feels like, when I'm not here, I don't even exist to you. And... I guess I just don't know what you think about me. I don't know why that bothers me. It never did before. But it's not always going to be this easy when we're together, you know."
"And, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't want to lose sight of you."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Of course we do! We were at the inn just this morning! An inn on the moon, which is super weird, but it's nice anyway even if they don't have any booze!" What's with him? He's always seemed... kind of lackadaisical, even when they've had to fight monsters or animals or other people. Isn't he being a little intense?
Maybe he really just is that concerned about the spear?
The force of his blow snaps the fabric of her clothes against her skin. She's been wearing more of them in the cooler teperatures here. Once she even got caught in a real rainstorm! She'd been so cheerful about it the next time they saw each other. She'd been out working with that Thomas fellow.
She knew he wouldn't be hurt by such a simple frontal assault, but she'd expected her inertia to carry her past him! The sudden stop tugs at her shoulders, and she yanks against his grip before he turns to look at her with such a strange expression. "Asha...?" she begins, peering at him with those strange-colored eyes.
This is strange. This isn't like him, is it? Had he ever said anything like this before?
Lan realizes she's just standing there. Staring at him. Silent. Her brain must've short-circuited from surprise. "You... Of course you exist all the time to me!" She looks at him, that weird mix of betrayal-guilt bubbling in her chest. "I just went looking for you a few days ago! I even asked Thomas to help me!" He did, but Lan knows it was just because he knew he could use more allies. She's not entirely ignorant!
"Asha, what's going on?" He wouldn't go this far just to get her offguard for another hit, would he? She frowns up at him, fingers still wrapped around the shaft of the spear. "I like traveling with you. You're fun! You've always got my back! You hold my hair when I drink too much!" Isn't that what friends are all about...?
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
"I guess, what I'm trying to say is," he repeats, shyly, "I don't want to lose sight of you."
There is a staccato sensation to the way he speaks, broken, as if sections of him forget what the other sections are doing. His boots are thick and muddy withthe wet ground, so are his gloves, and his mop of hair is stringy and dingy with the exertions of their battle in the rain. No matter how long she keeps hands on her spear, his grip is iron, and no matter even if the mud squeezes between the toes of her bare feet, he won't release it. It doesn't seem like he's really thinking about it, though, as if her actions have no consequence on anything he does, as if his mind is latched on one dangerous idea, one poison to him.
"It's just that, when you're around, I guess I want to protect you," he explains finally, his eyes hidden behind those shades. "Not like the dog, or that mission we went on with the mayor's son. I mean, like... you know, like if something happens to you, I don't know how I could go on. Like, maybe I should go first, right? I guess that's bad for me, cuz you're always getting into trouble... but it's okay, because if you aren't ready to go to the very end of things, like the absolute limit, why would you even take the first step?"
"But then I guess, I start thinking, when you look at me, if you don't think of me as someone, then, maybe I'm not..."
He's trying to say something, but it's not coming out right.
"I guess, maybe, being someone isn't important? And if I'm not anyone, anyone at all, who would look after you.."
The form appears somewhere in the middle of Ashansi trying to figure out what he's trying to say to Lan, standing at the very edge of the precipice over the edge into the raging waters below. No matter how hard it rains, he doesn't seem to get wet. He isn't strictly visible, at least, not at all angles, as if he were standing behind a seamless curtain made up of the world. He is slightly older than the cavalier is, slightly shorter, and wearing a long grey coat that reaches his ankles and whose sleeves reach his knuckles. He doesn't move at all, but when he opens his eyes, they are the most awe-inspiring shade of crystaline blue, glowing with their own color in the night. He stands behind Ashansi, watching the two quietly in the distance, a witness.
But when he opens his eyes, a chill drains into the air that no amount of clothing can block.
When Ashansi notices the crushing presence, he finally lets go of Lan's spear, turning to face the man. He frowns, brandishing Penumbra. "Who is this," he growls faintly, lifting his blade for a soul crushing blow. "...hope he's not a friend of yours," Asha says.
"Don't worry. Just stay behind me, I'll show you that I really exist, if it's the last thing I..."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The whole situation is surreal. Had Ashansi thought things like this before? When she had been sharing a room with him, had he started to notice her? Had he been thinking about it more and more often?
Has he always been thinking about it?
She hates this feeling. Not knowing if her only real support, her only true friend, has been becoming something unknown. Her hands are stiff on the haft of the spear, and she forces her fingers to go lax. She's still not letting go - it feels like to do so would be abandoning him - but she can't move, either.
"Asha, listen..." Lan begins, but it feels like she has no words. He's never this hesitant. Is he... in love with her or something? "You're getting really serious but I can't even really follow you. Of course you're real to me." When did they meet? It was so long ago... wasn't it?
"But I don't want you to... to go at all! If you left me, I'd-" be alone, be uncertain "-miss you!" Why is he saying things like this... Who would die for someone like Lan, who isn't special? Who would die for her, when she never wanted them to? "If you die doing something stupid, I'll be so mad at you! I'll call you back from the afterlife just to yell at you!" She's so unhappy already. She's so confused. She's so--
--so cold--
Those eyes. Why does she know those eyes.
Ashansi turns away from her and lifts his sword.
Lan remembers.
Something worming its way underneath the skin and muscle of her belly, reaching for her heart. The hands that had dragged her down. Had dragged Her. Dragged HER
Lan drops the spear and bursts into an explosive sprint, shoving herself past the cavalier and falling into a dead sprint for the Stranger, spear held low to gore the blue-eyed man in the abdomen. "ASHA, RUN!"
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
"Lan, stay back. Lan. LAN!!!"
The voice recedes into the distance behind her rapidly, the meaning of words spoken just moments ago intimately lost to the cataclysm of the moorless string of moments. The emotion of the thing no longer matters, the cavalier left in midsentence as the Baskar charges ahead of him, selflessly facing off against the man limned in dark at the peak of the headlands, bearing down on the cruel nightmare agent with her spear.
The man looks at her, his glance inclining by the width of a blade's edge to focus those impossibly blue eyes on her.
And she never reaches him.
For every running stride she takes, the distance between them grows by a spearthrow. The feeling of churning reality is something felt behind the eyes, so like before. She can run on forever and ever, and she will get no closer to him than she is now, the earth itself betraying her so plainly, the climb to face him becoming further and further against her favor, a steeper and steeper run to reach the paranoia master with that spear. He stares at her, his half-lidded glance more perplexed and interested that truly malevolent, not at all angered by her aggression.
She can run until her thighs sear themselves through. It makes no difference.
He is silent as he watches her, content to let her run for as long as she pleases, as long as she will. It is something that only he can do, the mercy of not yet having to kill her, that is. The agent doesn't move, not at all at first, beyond that vague inclination to focus his attention on her. He is endlessly patient, and his inviting and unblinking eyes never lift from her. He watches her as if waiting for her to realize something.
The small voice behind her, the one she told to run.
"Maybe... maybe I don't exist after all..."
Then, and only then, will the nightmare agent begin to move.
First one step, then another.
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the nightmare spinner closes the space between himself and Lan.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She runs. She has to be fast. She has to get there first. So Lan runs.
And runs. And runs, until sweat courses down her face and neck, until her muscles burn. Time stretches and contracts like a spring around her, but she never seems to get any closer to the Stranger. She has to. She can hear Asha, still shouting behind her. Good. Stay there. Stay away--
It's been seconds. It's been hours. It's been forever, and it will never be enough time for her to reach him. Lan has the horrible luxury of infinity spooling out ahead of and behind her...
%T...And it's worthless, because she'll never reach him. Her bare feet burn from running, her legs ache from the strain. And he's still there, his eyes as empty and menacing as the void of space itself.
Lan's grip is loose on the spear's haft by now, breath harsh in her aching lungs. If she's stuck in space -- if the Stranger keeps getting further away -- Lan skids to a stop, toes kicking up dust as she draws her arm back to put every ounce of power she can into the spear.
Quiet words at her back ratchet her fear up a notch higher, make her squeeze her eyes shut as she launches the spear as hard as she can for the blue-eyed man. Something horrible is going to happen again. The world will... Asha might...
For some reason, it really does feel like Ashansi might just curl up and vanish like a sigh on the wind. Lan rests her hands on her knees, huffing for air after running what feels like miles and miles. "Asha, please--" she wheezes, head lifting to stare at the Stranger as he slowly, inexorably closes the gap.
"Please-- please--!" Run. Stay with me. Go get help. Don't die. Don't go. Don't let me die here alone.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
He struggles to move forward. It feels like buildings have been tied to every limb, his considerable strength meaning nothing in the face of a 'progenitor.' Ashansi doesn't run on the same axis as Lan, as the world spools ahead of her as fast as her legs can carry her. His is a powerful crawl, but it doesn't mean anything. He moves so slowly, crippled, just to stare at Lan's back. The earth folds with each step, as every one taken is a ton of weight lifted. Penumbra shifts, wobbling as he struggles ahead, forcing himself onward. The muted dismay in his voice drives him, forcing him to find her.
Even as parts of him slough off into ash.
The spear is thrown with full force and pace, slamming into the blue-eyed man with enough power to knock him off his feet, causing his shadow to fall from his body mid-stride. An idea of his death, discarded simply by the wayside. It does nothing to slow his contemplative gait, and by the time that shadow, that idea of him hits the ground, Lan lays there instead of him, another body left in the wake.
All the while, those blue eyes.
"Don't listen to it, Lan..."
By the time Ashansi reaches Lan's side, he struggles even to grip onto her shoulder, a glove attached to a rapidly dissintegrating wrist. Ashansi struggles to reach her. "Don't be afraid of the dark. You'll just be afraid of half of the world," he breathes from lungs that slough out of his tunic, red ash scattering across the ground. Penumbra, the impossibly heavy blade, begins to crawl with corruption. The silvery components of it gleam in contradiction, liquid, as if solid mooring crumples beneath the steel. He lifts the blade, and points it at the stranger, trying his best to stand in the way.
"...i can't lose you, I won't..."
Then his blade drops and breaks in half, his hand disappearing into ash.
"L--Lan?"
The last parts of him crumple and slough into nothingness at her feet.
"There is nothing you can do, iscariot." the agent says quietly, respectfully. "Nothing you can say. Your sufferings and your pleasures are at the whim of a power greater than your own. That is the mercy of the ancient song, whose cruel verse waxes and wanes like the tide." He stops, finally, just before her, the slow snake-like sway of his coat coming to a cold stop at his sides. He is barely taller than the Baskar, but there is no part of him that is wary to be in her presence. Not like this. The cruel agent stares at her mercilessly, not giving her a moment's respite, and the faint glow of his eyes is enough to lose the silhouette of his face in the night.
"Surrender to it," he invites, "and see yourself forever unified with a 'merciful reality...'"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It flies like a lightning bolt, like a legend, and slams into the blue-eyed man with enough force to sever a future-possible-past life. She didn't think. She barely aimed. But the weapon responded anyway, as if it felt her desire and acted on it, as if Lan were only a vehicle for its will. What goes flying isn't the Stranger, and Lan tastes dust and fear and regret that gets stronger with every inch Ashansi creeps closer to her.
"Please," she's still begging breathlessly, even though she doesn't know what she's truly asking for. She can ask him to run, to hide, to save her, to live, but none of them are what she really, really wishes she could ask him for.
.o(please make it stop)o.
Dust pours from Ashansi's raw edges as he bleeds his substance away. "I'm, I'm not--" Lan tries to assure him - to reassure him - but nothing flows like reality. It's all disjointed images, all words crashing into her as she weeps, frozen. She can't stop him. Either of them.
'L--Lan?' Something settles in her gut like ice. Stiff and scared out of her mind, she forces herself to turn away from the Stranger and his horrible eyes. Asha-- Asha is--
Her fingers close on his wrist, on dust, as he dissolves into ash before her eyes. Soon even the dust is gone, leaving a faint smear of rust across her palm.
Hersll that's left. Memories, ashes, and fading warmth on her shoulder. Lan's face crumples.
She cradles the last trace of him against her chest, burying her hand against her breastbone as if she could keep it safe next to her lungs, her heart. Lan falls to her knees and gulps for air, straining to keep just ahead of her sobs. "Why- wh- why--"
She fought once before. She nearly died. Now she's alone, and her heart feels like it's being torn from her chest, and she's just... She can't.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
There is a flicker of emotion in those words, something beyond worried, something horrified. It's not quite of death. He's never been afraid of it, the dying part. Or so he's said. He's never shown fear, not even when eaten alive. But when he says what are possibly the last words he will ever say, the veneer of invincibility cracks. Even as he begins to flicker away into nothingness, ashes in the dirt, his terror has nothing to do with his body, or his fate. He is afraid, but not of dying. He is afraid of being forgotten. He is afraid of being forgotten by her.
Her name is the last word he says.
Those abominable eyes. The last trace of Ashansi, cruelly, does not last, even when held tightly against her heart. Ash splits and splits again, until it is nothing, vague traces of dust falling out of grip. All throughout, those eyes do not cease watching her. It is obscene, the way her loss is bared before those eyes. The nightmare is heavy on her, like a hammer laid against the chest. His wide, unblinking eyes are without respite, leaving no mooring, and no 'room' for her, the way her friend had only moments ago.
"You know why."
Her knees are wet now, not with mud, but with the water. As she went to ground, she did not find her way to the mud, or the dust. She found her way to the surface of the water, the endless ocean stretched out before her. Though she may find herself partially submerged, he stands on the water's surface as one might a mirror. They are in the shadow of the mountain, the headlands abandoned so many ages ago. In the spaces where the shadow casts over the water, she can see the hands of a thousand souls drowning. He stands over her, as if he had been there beside her the whole time.
"Embrace your failure," the spinner implores, his soothing voice enrobing her warmly.
"You are cruel. Like any other. To leave behind a memory is only natural. This pain too will cease, if you only abandon that world.."
With the slow deliberation of things close to death, hands sprout from the water, teasing at the Baskar's legs and knees. They will lay hold of ankles and thighs, clinging on as if drowning. Hands reach for wrists and bare wisps of hair. They are only a nuisance. A brave person could easily fight them off. If there is anything left for that brave person.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
You know why. Her lips part to protest... and nothing comes out.
The Guardians are disappointed in her.
She's been wandering for years now. What has she really accomplished? She hasn't found any kind of grand dream like other Diggers have spoken of. She doesn't have an ulterior motive in trying to help people, and she does care about others, but what good does just 'caring' do?
Silent and still on her hands and knees, Lan stares sightlessly at the water rising slowly toward her elbows. The ends of her hair are saturated with it.
"Why," she says again, softer now.
The last traces of Ashansi had poured from her hand like silken sand no matter how hard she clutched at him.
Everything around her is open, empty. There's only dense air and glassy water. Only her, and him. Only them and the thousands of other souls that have drowned here, continue to drown, will never escape this void. It weighs on her, the guilt of never being truly anything. Of being unable to save Ashansi. Of being unable to understand Thomas. Of being unworthy of her gods. It presses her down, a burden on her shoulders so heavy her elbows tremble with the effort of keeping her head above water.
She opens her mouth again and water rushes in past her teeth.
She can't forget Asha. She can't be that cruel-- She can't--
she can't breathe
Her arms give out, finally. It's too heavy. It's too awful. Her head and upper back disappear beneath the water, and the hands drag the rest of her under.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
She is submerged up to her hips in the cold water. The chill bite is vicious, the sort of cold that isn't kind enough to numb the skin, the sort of cold that affirms one with the deceased, the taste of what it would be like to never be warm again. The tide bites her again and again, taking away her warmth inch by inch as the water rises. No, that is somewhat incorrect. It is not the water that rises. It is her that sinks, taken in by hands that pull her deeper, the water pooling past her neck. It is they that ask her.
Why.
"There is nothing left for you in this place," the man in grey states, looking off into the distance as the cold hits her teeth, strands of her own hair swirling about, wet and tangled with the waves that begin to occlude her vision of the sun. Now, below the water, she can only see him as perhaps he always was, that man above the waves. With the water distorting his image, the only thing she can make out is the throne he rests on, a tall and dark black thing carved from obsidian. He sits there as if he'd never stood, as if he'd been there all his life. The back of the throne faces her, an incomprehensible symbol burning bright across it--
Then a cold, bloodless hand slips over her mouth, and she is pulled under.
The next thing she feels is the cold slime creeping over dark jade stone. Soaking wet and bare, her body hits the ground hard, like a fish pulled from an ocean stuck in the sky. The inverted world is a moonless daylit night, the harsh contrasts of a sky that is filled with water and simultaneously does not exist painful to behold. The stone is slick, though it is not clear if it is because she is still wet, or if it has recently rained. The man in grey is nowhere to be seen, but the dark silhouette of a black machine rises far over the Baskar's head, insect suspended on impossibly thin metal limbs. A god. A mother, beyond all comprehension. She is cruel. And she is loving, for the soft lullaby she sings to you. She soothes, and apologizes for all of the things that have had to be done. Wordless, in a careening cicada song that syncopates with your heartbeat. She soothes and apologizes for all the things that must be done yet.
Slowly, spindle legs of black steel shift, and the leviathan creature turns, a vast spotlight swallowing the light beneath her eye. Inexorably, her attention turns upon the bared and defeated girl in her womb.
The weight of her tenebrous mind settles on the skychild.
It is crushing, her attention. Python does the man wrap around her, a pale annelid thing, glasses crushed only inches from the Baskar's eye. Boneless and beyond recognition, he slides along her, his body wrapping around hers, his knees to her ankles, his hip to the back of her knees, his chin to her thigh. And when he runs out of flesh to travel, his mouth yawns wide, and births himself anew, flesh leaping fully formed from his throat as a tongue become a person. His body winds around her sinuously again and again, the loop of him settling into the curve of her with an awkward familiarity. He opens his mouth again and yawns himself over the small of her middle, crawling over her with milipede precision. The weight of the mother's eye is in the pressure he exerts over her, her breath never having quite recovered from her drowning.
But she still hums her soothing song for her skychild.
The warmth of him soaks away the chill, the cold. Even as his muscles leap and contract against her, it won't feel entirely incorrect. Even as she feels him constrict all around her, as she feels her body being surrendered inch by inch to a flesh-like tumble, even as she begins to twist beyond her own ability to twist, she will not feel pain. At least. Is it supposed to be pain?
'it's not wrong,' Thomas says, from seven mouths. 'trust me.'
His voice is the last thing she will hear before she becomes something else.
Before she hears her own neck break. The snap is softer than you'd think it would be.
"Lan.. LAN!! Wake up!!"
The journey to the waking world is harsh and short.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Lan isn't afraid to die. But she knows by now that what the blue-eyed man has for her is not death. No, nothing that kind or final.
She weeps, tears nothing but water. Maybe this water is nothing but tears. The human body is seventy percent water. How much difference is there, really, between Lan and the very stuff she's suffocating beneath?
There's depth and pressure and pawing hands and Lan can't breathe. How long until everything goes dark? Can she be lucky enough to die instead, right underneath the Stranger's watchful gaze?
She tumbles onto stone, naked and disoriented, limbs sprawled like an abandoned carcass. Eyes - horrible because they can see her, see through her, visualize her as something else entirely. She thinks of her mother, somehow. She thinks of--
Of Thomas--
Of Asha--!
Everything's getting dark. Twisted. Something familiar is constricting her. Tying her down, fitting her into a specific shape, cramming her into a mold.
When it happens, she barely even feels it. It's a voice that hurts, words that dig into her flesh and urgency that drags her like heavy chains. "wu--"
She kicks out blindly, heel brushing against something as she propels herself backward--
--and yelps as gravity asserts itself strangely, dumping her onto theinn's wooden floor. "AH!"
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The weight of mother's gaze and that strange, familiar song fades slower than everything else, but even it too fades with time.
"...."
The sun is pouring warm through the windows of the inn and Lan's room. Interestingly enough, Ashansi hasn't been staying at the inn with Lan lately, so it's actually kind of hard to tell where he came from. There's an ongoing theory that he's been sleeping on the roof of the inns lately to enjoy the weather, but it's entirely unsubstantiated, and he could just as easily have been sleeping in a bush or on a dinosaur or something.
"..."
However, regardless of where exactly he came from, the cool breeze filters into the room from the open window, and though the door is shut, Ashansi is very much alive. Hale, whole, and in perfect health, albeit extremely confused. "..." Mostly because he's underneath Lan, who kempo-knocked him to the floor shortly before landing on him when he came in to save her from the monster he was pretty sure was in here trying to eat her. What he found instead was a ballistic Baskar. Pinned to the ground as he is, he is very careful to not move or do or say anything untoward. He's kind of tough, so it's pretty easy to mistake him for wood floor at first blush. Speaking of.
"uh...." he starts, raising both eyebrows over his shades.
"...You OK?"