unsheathedfromreality: (reflect on a thousand lifetimes)
Illarion Albireo ([personal profile] unsheathedfromreality) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-05-16 04:23 pm

Real & Half-Real: Chapter 2 - Nephele-That-Isn't

Who: A brave party of rescuers and their intrepid support staff
What: Pocket dimension shenanigans to save a missing Sleeper
When: Two insane days in May
Where: Nephele-that-isn’t, which isn’t Deer Country either

All at once–one day, in early May–the portal’s finished, and the planning is as near to done as it will ever be. All at once, it’s time to venture into Nephele-that-isn’t, and retrieve not one but two Sleepers who’ve gone astray.

The team assembles in the clearing by Argonaut’s abandoned shrine, in a darkness lit by glowing CRTs and the green, green moon. The portal itself, and the world beyond it, casts a light all its own–and one by one they step over that rune-etched silver threshold, and one by one vanish into another story than Trench’s own.


What does it feel like, to journey to a dead reality?

Like being sieved through strands of glass and fire. Like being picked apart thread by narrative thread as the Words themselves that write the universe flash before stunned eyes in the seconds before they’re erased and something worse substituted. Moments of fleeting alignment between passager and host-creator come in stopped heartbeats and empty lungs, in the memory you’ve been dead for years and the cold slide of steel between ribs.

Then that second-that's-years is over and deposits its captives beneath an alien sky, with sun and ring and stars and moons foreign as any far-flung land. Some travelers wear skins and magic to suit those stranger heavens; some have been changed by the logic of the half-world half-story to better fit its weave.

With a changed nature come changed senses and abilities–and those in the skins of shrikes, with eyes to see, may notice much more if they look.

All can see one grim fact, however, on entering the world: Any clock, any watch, any Omni now displays 48:00:00 or its analogue equivalent... And begins at once to tick down.

[[ Part of the Real & Half-Real player plot! Navigate to other plot posts: [OOC] Interest Check | [IC] Prologue | [IC] Iskierka's Notes | [IC] The Portal & the Plan ]]
wannasmash: "Oh no, huh?!" (oh no huh)

1.1 Arrival | Deku/Ize

[personal profile] wannasmash 2022-05-17 05:53 am (UTC)(link)
OTA but please be kind to my thread load

A wood elf rises from where he was unceremoniously deposited here in a jumble of limbs, backpack, and industrial-grade suitcase. He feels uncannily like an improperly-developed photo, blurry-edged senses stretched through a sieve. He's just a little taller than he was as the human named Izuku "Deku" Midoriya, but still short for an elf. His skin is medium cedarwood and freckled. His forest green plumage is flecked with red and yellow near his ears. Like his human counterpart, he has muscle packed onto whatever an elf's willowy frame will allow. He wears a gray jumpsuit, a black vest, and boots. A grease stain decorates his forehead.

Ize shifts his possessions more securely as he smells the blood in the air. It stokes something feral and wide-eyed in him. With a grace that belongs among trees and not iron-soaked stone, he wordlessly ushers anyone he can to a safe spot to talk, preferably behind some solid brick cover.

What... is your quest? (closed to Paul/Atreus, and those listening in if need be?)

Everyone safely assembled for the moment, Ize's green eyes barely sweep the motley crew before they land on someone he recognizes. Something strange is going on, and he suspects one person of having a hand in it:

"Shy Hood!" he blurts at the shrike in surprise, warm familiarity, and the kind of accusation that can only come from that. Ize, the son of a dying backwater community marches right up to his Prince. "What the hell?! I had class."
terriblepurpose: (004)

What... is your quest?

[personal profile] terriblepurpose 2022-05-17 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
The figure crouched by a partially demolished fortification left behind by some earlier motley band is indeed hooded in dull, dusty black, their face muffled in a dun-colored scarf save for the eyes pressed to a pair of brass prism binoculars which they only lower to scratch obscure markings into the brick by their knees - until that nickname is called, and Atreus, the Prince of the Shortest Way, sets down his spyglass.

"Aren't you still learning?" He asks, mildly, patting the ground beside him. "Don't restrict yourself to lessons fed to you, Ize."

One of the things that sets him apart from many other Princes, especially now, is that he strives to make himself accessible to his followers, within reason. He sits back on his heels and pulls down his scarf, revealing a slight and easy smile.

"Besides. Not everything that happens in the world is at my hand - although the accusation flatters me. You don't know how we got here either, then?"

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justoscar: (gentle)

1.1 Arrival | Oscar/ Sweetroll | OTA

[personal profile] justoscar 2022-05-17 02:42 pm (UTC)(link)
He came to his senses slowly-- piecing through the intangible debris that was the viceral recollections of someone (or something) beyond just himself with more difficulty than what was usual for his experience. Picking up information that wasn't strictly his usually happened on the fly, with stories, details, and images emerging from some subconscious collection and spilling into his awareness. Buildings he had never visited and events he had never witnessed were there at his fingertips, with the full sensory and emotional depth that came with lived experiences.

This was different. This was More-- and Oscar Pine needed a moment or several to piece through the fractured shards on the edge of his sense of self alongside the wider lense granted by Sight greater than what he was used to.

Rising on two feet in a disheveled pile of smokey colored fluff, hints of orange and green bleeding through the dusky hues, the boy-- no, the young shrike, sought for something, anything that was familiar. The rough hewn work clothes he wore were dusty with dirt and the broken bits of twigs and leaves.

It was a start.

"I-I'm fine," he'd reply softly to anyone who asked, stumbling over the words in a voice that was unfamiliar to him. His gaze was unfocused while he struggled with knowing what to focus on, and not even the well of thousands of lifetimes inside his soul could provide any parallel which he could grasp.

He was lying.
peripheries: (daddy SEELE but like bad)

Arrival | Kaworu

[personal profile] peripheries 2022-05-17 11:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Unlike everyone else, Kaworu doesn't collapse when he arrives though he feels the sensation that brings everyone to their knees. A twist and a pulling sensation like being collapsed inwards and reformed with your elemental pieces into something new.

But it can't collapse him, there's nothing to reform him into in this world. So he exists on a periphery, something like a Throneborn and something like an angel and something a bit like a human. His outline too sharp, like he's standing in front of the world within it. An extra cel layer on top of already complete frame.

Still, he can feel its pull. Like if it cannot collapse him, it will simply unravel him bit by bit until he's nothing but a pile of string to be made a proper Throneborn.

He sits on the edge of the wall, knees to his chest, looking much more like a bird that's fallen from its nest than anything divine. However, the the halo hovering above his forehead and the faint outline of wings made of light reveal his true nature.

For now, Kaworu just looks out over the land that's real and not and thinks about what he must do.
Edited 2022-05-17 23:54 (UTC)
forwantofahorse: (Weary)

a

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-05-16 11:00 pm (UTC)(link)
[If she was being honest, Sayo barely Illarion before she was dragged into his personal Hell. He'd saved her soul with his words, her life with his claws, and they made a contract forged in blood to save everyone else too on the beach.

But a week is a long time to get to know one another, especially when you're the only two sane (or insane, if the rest of the world had truly descended into madness then being semi-sound of mind was likely a worse illness than if they went with the grain) individuals in a broken half-reality, and even moreso when the bond is tempered in terror and survival.

It really had felt like part of Sayo's heart had been ripped out when Illarion hurled her out of Nephele-that-isn't.

Now they're together, once again, and the pang in Sayo's heart when she sees his mangled mind and body only rings louder when she realizes that must've been what her own soul looked like after those thousand/six (thousand, it had to be a thousand for this plan to work) years. So she does what she wishes somebody had done for her, simply because she doesn't know what else to do in the face of such mind-melting terror:

Sayo reaches out and, whole body trembling, says with such deep tenderness that it feels like an open wound:]


...I brought something new for you to read, Forneus.

A tale without pages stained in blood.
Edited 2022-05-16 23:01 (UTC)

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for Augustine

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Ize, Slortus, Chara, Sweetroll

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butnotyet: (016)

[personal profile] butnotyet 2022-05-29 06:34 am (UTC)(link)
Nobody likes demons.

Not these demons, anyway, and not in Nephele-that-Isn't; and Augustin's experience with demons is different, and sometimes worse, and sometimes better thankfully limited, as any sane wood elf would limit his exposure to such creatures — even in a life spanning so many millennia — as much as he can.

"One last thing," Ize's ancient uncle says absently, over his shoulder, just before he'd definitely have to raise his voice to be heard over the clamor they're approaching. "Whatever you do, don't let them touch you, after you kill them. They'll be every bit as happy to wear your skin as those poor animals' — or more, perhaps."

A faint movement of his shoulders may be meant to indicate a shrug.

"Not that I suppose you'll care much more, if you do."

And with that confidence boost of a pep talk, he pushes on that last little way — leaving them at the edge of chaos, and battle, and mayhem, and doom: and all of these overseen by the eye-searing, impossible form of the angel, phlegmatically observing it all without movement or interference in the slightest detail — even when those demons fall, or falter, to try to trick a foe closer in the fight, that they, too, might be forced to Fall —

"God damn, I hate these things," Augustin might be heard to mutter, sounding resigned and philosophical about it, if anyone's kept up closely enough — perhaps to realize he's the reason no small number of these demonic-beasts falter, foundering on shattering limbs, in some cases just before their blows might land on the arms (or armaments) of the intrepid rescue party's members; perhaps not, as Augustin's gaze sharpens (like a gyrfalcon ready to stoop for its prey) on that Angel.

"You," he hisses, with a fury that brings to mind a snake ready to strike, perhaps, more than something raptorial.

And he stalks across the battle in the clearing, apparently careless of the danger, sending friends and foes alike flying out of his path (although those who are not born of a decaying Court-gift will find, at least, that they can keep their feet underneath them, and whole and attached besides) to stare at it, as face-to-face as could be most charitably defined. "You utter bastard, to think you could claim a bind on him —"

(The angel does not seem inclined to interrupt his tirade, as yet — no more than it was inclined to interrupt the slaughter of the innocent-turned-corrupt animals, at the hand and command of this young Prince and his apparent Court.)

By the time the last demonically-possessed animal falls, Augustin is barely more than an arm's length away from the angel, and the air around them is ice-cold and vibrating with a heat-shimmer, all at the same time.

"You are in my way, you — you freezer-burned, tinfoil-wrapped, mystery-meat nuclear harbinger!" Would it have been, had he chosen any other approach toward that tree? (Too late to say, now.)

Now, at last, he draws his blade — his blades, rather, two swords like brothers, one larger, one smaller — and stands before the Angel, unflinching, a ready threat.

"Open that tree and get him out here, this instant," he orders, in a voice (but alas, not a Voice) that Will Not brook disobedience. "And don't try to deflect me, either — I have rights!"

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maritimelaw: (Default)

[personal profile] maritimelaw 2022-06-06 12:27 am (UTC)(link)
She does.

[The tone is mild, pleasant- but the voice carries, low and strange and musical, an unplaceable accent that doesn't belong to the shape of any humanoid throat. In better times, bygone days, there might have been a tinge of deadpan humor in it.]

[Nowadays, "politely conversational" is about the best she can manage.]


I have been waiting to speak with you, sraati.

[Lankhet remains sitting, still as the grave- letting them come forward at their own pace, or not. It can be difficult to give people a mannerly amount of personal space when the world is built for beings a fifth your size, but she does her best.]

Of course, a bard can only speak- whether you will listen, that choice is always yours.