Illarion Albireo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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deercountry2022-05-16 04:23 pm
unsheathedfromreality) wrote in 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.
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 ]]
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.
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 ]]
Awake and arise (Illarion, OTA)
a. But once you have made it into the tree, Illarion's not hard to find. The hollow's (incongruously) wide enough to fit at least three grown elves, full of dead leaves and bird bones and cached acorns; emaciated, he takes up less than his third of it. He's propped up as if he'd died on watch with his eyes open, unveiled, unseeing; with the rest of his dark and shifting mass gathered around the tree. There are more arms there, than once there were, and more feathers, and appendages more difficult to name, and all those
eyesare shut.He looks and seems entirely, finally dead.
But he revives at a touch, lashing out with all the horrid swiftness of a striking snake to shove his assailant away from him. Then he moves, and moves, becoming all black feathers and wide gold eyes and talons--a column of darkness that mounds itself up like a startled owl and snarls,
<<"̵͈̒P̴͖̒R̵̨͌Ó̷̖V̵̫́E̸̫̊ ̸̻̆Y̴͇̕O̶͇͋Ǔ̷̮'̷͖̓R̵̨̎E̴̮̕ ̴͉̕R̷̰͑E̷͉̋A̵͍̿L̵͍̍.̷̜͑"̶̥͝>>
It's only the risk of possession that keeps him from immediate violence--and that's lucky, perhaps, for all parties in this encounter.
b. Escaping the tree's easier than climbing into it, and Illarion--still half-awake and running on adrenaline's memory--isn't shy about carrying anyone who can't step outward from it with him. (It's disorienting; it feels like falling in an impossible direction the inner ear was never meant for.)
Much of the instant's animation leaves him as he sets foot on the ground and ((feels)) all those present in the clearing. (Some are shaped wrong and yet exactly as he'd expect them to be--their outlines and mass-shadows attaching to names of those he knows and cares for; it is profoundly disorienting.) This is not what he'd expected--he had not allowed himself hope, knowing he's ultimately expendable (and it is right for him to be). Sayo-- Sayo of course would be true to her word, but it had been so long, and Sleepers might return to the ocean at any time--
He blinks and swallows, reflex action of an emotion that doesn't register with his conscious mind. "You are all--" Mad optimists. More true than he deserved. "--here. You are real," almost a question, "you have come back for me."
Then--because laggard as his reason is and fuzzy as his senses are, he's noticed this assembly would be perfectly normal for Nephele but is far from that for Trench-- "What has happened to you? You are so many of you remade."
c. Later--hiking out of the woods, perhaps, or during a brief rest--Illarion takes a moment to seek out those he recognizes, those close to him, who didn't get their chance to greet him at the base of the tree. He manages a semblance of animation enough for a lopsided smile (it doesn't reach his eyes) and a little warmth to his tone (though his feathers are flat with unease and despair).
"I thank you for this." A breath's width of a pause, as he considers meanings that don't carry in Steppescommon, and how the debt he owes is vast enough to bridge a self-imposed distance he's maintained since washing up in Trench, and switches languages: <<"'Thank you' doesn't last long enough. I owe you a debt of gratitude without limit, for coming.">>
a
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.
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She has not changed as much as many who've come here--she is much as she was in that final, fatal instant he'd sacrificed himself to buy her freedom. It is that memory, with its attendant embers of guilt, that stands in recognition's way; if Sayo is truly back, then his debt to her might be repaid and the web of obligation binding them as flock, as unit, might be made whole-- A kind of redemption he'd long ago learned to discard as a foolish hope where he's concerned, and this is--
This could surely not be--
He stares sightlessly at her as the shock of rescue settles on his shoulders. Then he draws himself up, and inward, and steps forward to take a knee before her, his hands over hers and head bowed in supplication.]
<<You give me a gift greater than I have words for, master storyteller.>>
[He lifts his head then like he could look at her, and without his veil the look in his eyes is raw and obvious for all its death-muted subtlety.]
<<You came back for me.>>
[He knew she was as good as her word, after all they'd been through. He trusted.
But he'd also thought himself lost beyond retrieving, by the end of it.]
no subject
Those words that Sayo had always longed to utter, to stare soulfully into the eyes of her rescuer and let slip from her lips in acknowledgment that she was free, free, free at long last. There's bitter catharsis in finally hearing them tumble free from the mouth of someone else, all the misery that the promise had been keeping at bay (one way or another) finally released.
Sayo won't stand for being bowed down to, though, not when she took far too long to come back. She clasps Illarion's claw and gently kneels down next to him, giving him a wavering, but radiant, smile in return.]
I'm not the only one who came back. I couldn't have been.
We all worked together to find you.
Now, come on. [She gets to her feet again, gently tugging Illarion along.] We may have miles to go before we sleep, but a little rest and reunion shouldn't set us back.
It's... good to see you again, Forneus.
punches writer's block to death
(How long had he been hidden here? Days? Weeks? Months? How deep was the accumulation of numbing dust?)
--by disuse.]
<<'We,'>> [he echoes her, strangely hung up on the word. We. Of course, she'd brought others. She'd said she would; he'd prepared for that eventuality. (He doesn't know yet what Iskierka's done with his planned briefings. He doesn't know about the notes; his Omen's not pushy. Not anymore, not now that he's awake and in possession of the single rational soul they share between them.)
Sayo'd brought others with her, others who'd want to be reunited with him. Knowing as much should be comforting. Shouldn't it? He's not a solitary creature by nature. Not when he's truthful with himself; this bizarre half-world had been a Hell in part for its isolation.
But Hell, to shrikes, was another way of naming the Home that awaited for them beyond death, welcoming for all its torments and treachery--revealing of who and what someone really was.
An irredeemable monster--an abomination recalled from Hell itself--belonged to the All-War.
And some part doesn't want to leave; some part wants to vanish once more into endless battle and never be seen again.
He tips his head away from her; his expression is faintly--faintly--troubled, the dawn-blush of corruption staining the few of his black feathers left unevenly visible.]
<<I doubt I'm suited to reunion with anyone now,>> [he confesses, quietly. She has held his other secrets in trust; he can offer this one as well, explanation for his hesitation. It is a luxury he knows he cannot afford, and yet.] <<A moment more, and I'll be ready.>>
[Then, because tactics are safer ground than whatever it is coiling in his chest that refuses to be seen again of Trench's Sleepers--] <<How much do they already know?>>
a.
A soft step forward that's so light it almost doesn't make a sound, like his foot never even brushed the grass, as though he fears disturbing the roots of the great tree. Perhaps the old man is dead. Most things that Kaworu is fond of seem to be kept from him by death, either theirs or his own. Before he can say anything, the mass shifts at his presence, a talon catches the soft underside of his palm and flicks blood down his arm and his onto his white sneakers. It spares him having to speak. (It doesn't heal.)
"I don't know." Is the answer he gives. His outline is distorted, strange, like he stands on a layer of the world that is ever so slightly beyond world they stand in. The space that is the edge of his body seems too sharp to be real though sometimes, it slips backwards, as though trying to fade him into the background, into the rest of the world.
"But I came to find you. It doesn't matter to me, right now."
no subject
That silhouette, that stance, child-small but not child-vulnerable--not physically-- Illarion's horror is instant and deep. Half's at himself and the blood on his talons; half's at this first and fatal evidence his mind is gone, for he'd witnessed Kaworu's death and the hallucinations so often wore the newly dead to torment him with guilt.
And yet. And yet, he is Argonaut's creature through and through, for there's a dim and struggling hope beneath the horror that moves him to ask,
"Little bird?"
He struggles--visibly, he struggles--against that horror, unclenching his bloodied talons, and reach out toward that familiar-and-not presence. It feels Throneborn; it feels like Kaworu. It could be a demon, and he could have just doomed himself by reaching.
Yet how could he not, after all these weeks? How could he not?
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Kaworu approaches and presses his face against one of the overgrown, distorted talons. He knows there's danger but he doesn't carry.
"I'm sorry. This is-"
This is my fault.
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There's no horrifying moment where he feels his will wrenched away from him again and overwritten. There is only a quiet apology and an explanation that trails away into silence--that doesn't need completion to speak volumes.
"This is not." Between one instant and the next, the talon Kaworu's leaning against is a hand, is joined by Illarion's other hand as he cradles the angel's face and leans in to kiss his brow.
"This is not your fault, little bird. You do not have my foolishness on your shoulders." Cruel to rest anything else there, after all that evil men had freighted on him.
More quietly, in a tone that breaks subtly with emotion the shrike can't otherwise articulate: "I have missed you sorely."
no subject
"It wasn't... You did it to save me." Perhaps, when he was new to the trench, he would have thought Illarion meant the foolishness of trying to save him. But now he can tell himself that's not so, it couldn't be so.
"I missed you too."
no subject
It doesn't change the reality behind it, either: That he'd have done exactly the same thing to save Tabris, as much as to avenge him. Lord of Hell, give me back my son.
Illarion swallows back the ashy taste of his own failure, and the impulse to pull away again from guilt and his own monstrosity. He's an unfit parent, years out of practice, warped through death--and yet he'd gotten here by neglecting his duties, and damned if he will keep up the trend.
He steps forward and pulls Kaworu into his arms, tucking the boy's pale head beneath his chin. "I am sorry to have taken myself away. I will not, again."
If it's possible for him to escape the trap he's made for himself. If it's possible for any of them to do that.
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“Don’t. Or I’ll be angry with you. You need to come back with us.”
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But he's a shrike. They know what each other look like. They see the names no one else does, blazoned on their wending banners. They see the monster-in-flesh even when it's folded away like a switchblade.
There's more than that to this one. The mantle of it fills the hollow of the tree with unilluminated brilliance, the true inverse of light.
Atreus pushes back his hood. He undoes his goggles with two hands, tugs down his scarf with one, and he looks at a man he recognizes better than he recognizes himself anymore.
"That's right, Old Man," says the young Prince, uncrowned, with eyes that are flat and dark and watchful, "No more sleep."
They both know that there has been no more sleep for some time now. Or Atreus would think they both know that, but here he stands, reassessing the things he thinks he knows for what must be the thousandth time in a handful of hours.
no subject
(Dukeling, his subconscious corrects, and, you know that shape and that voice, except it's not the one he knew in Trench.)
--proves hostile. "Stay there," he orders, the words tense and bitten-off.
Then lagging recognition catches up with him, and with it the plunging feeling this really is all a product of his mind--for while Trench might change Sleepers capriciously, why would he instinctively recognize one who'd been so-changed?
Familiarity where it didn't belong was an ill sign. It corrupts, pillar-wise, the surety he'd felt just moments ago that Tabris was real, that Sayo was real, that they've truly come for him; it suggests the nightmare is undergoing a new evolution the same way it had grown when he began to wander it.
Yet what can he do about it if it has?
No more sleep, Paul-that-isn't says, and that much is true: Real or not, this will not let him be even if he does curl back up in the tree's heart.
His feathers vanish once more, the too-tight hold on Kaworu easing. <<"No more sleep,">> he agrees, low and toneless. <<"What,">> has happened to you, no, wrong question, >>"what's happened since last we spoke?">>
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"Teacher found us. We've been living together in a big house. I'll tell you about all the things we do... like throwing parties and baking and sometimes everything burns." He inhales, burying his face in Illarion's shoulder for a brief second as though nestling into the remnants of his plumage. "Then we found the notes. All of your notes. Then we came here to find you. To save you."
A tug.
"We have to get out of here."
For Bigby
"Bigby!"
The numbness serving the shrike in place of reserve breaks as he recognizes the other man. He all-but-leaps across the distance between them to get his friend in an embrace, any thought of propriety fled.
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It'd been disturbingly difficult since Illarion's disappearance, a matter that he has tried to not examine too deeply, frustrating anxiety twisting him up and spilling out as he could keep himself barely contained.
And finally, there is relief.
Normally, such an eager display of affection would make him shy or uncertain, but right now he grabs Illarion and pulls him close, clutching him furiously. And he feels human for it.
The name in his mouth, the tip of his tongue, but he keeps it hushed. A promise he'd never break.
"My dearest comrade," he says quietly instead, meaning every word.
C
Oscar Pine wanted to be just himself. Instead he was navigating yet another set of foreign memories on top of the foreign memories he usually navigated, and the moments where he seemed to 'break character' were the easiest way for him to keep his sanity.
He looked up in surprise at Illarion's approach, distracted by his own doeny, fledgling feathers and a tangent of memory from Remnant that his unconsciousness helpfully provided. It wasn't his own-- but it was a scrap of what life in the country of Anima, where the humans with beast-like features called Faunus lived, was like. Truly, the Wizard had taken partners and lifetimes across all cultures of his own world...
Recognition took a moment too long to dawn-- and Oscar-as-Sweetroll laughed awkwardly when he recognized the words in a language he couldn't possibly have known.
<<"It just seemed like the right thing to do,">> he answered in kind, trying not to think too hard about where the words were coming from. <<"No one deserves to live in this kind of prison. Even if we're strangers... I couldn't say 'no' after I learned what happened.">>
abecedarium
Lord Augustin is far from his rhizophora swamps, his mangled fastness of a home — he is only a solitary elf, far from the trees he knows, far from the skeletal servitors
??he's raised?!, the orchidswtfhe might have used to tear open this Klein-bottle tree guarding, or imprisoning, or anyway containing, his husband —(Somewhere, in the back of his mind, underneath this relentless cascade of centuries' worth of memories, Augustine the First is having a day, and slaughtering all those demons is not enough to make up for it.)He's not a loudly emotive sort, but that comes with being an ancient wood elf (and not a flash-in-the-pan, mortal human), and it comes with being undead (when emotional acuity is always such a messy area to focus on, when it comes to fixing a soul back into a body). He's already had to raise his voice once today, addressing that useless fucking angel. He's not going to go charging in and demanding that his rights be acknowledged a second time, especially not with such a crowded audience.
He isn't hiding his presence, by any means. This isn't to say that he's sending longing stares across the glade, or making eye contact; that's both resoundingly stupid and wouldn't even work, given that his Beloved is blind, and that he has no interest in being struck by the madness inherent in such an act —
(What fucking madness is this?! demands Augustine, whose mind has been forced to hold far more memories than any human ought, for far too long — who is struggling, really, to remember who he is, in the face of this compelling narrative telling him all about who he's been.)But there will come a moment — as he remains near the back of their little caravan, chivvying on those who would fall behind again, and brushing away at least some of the signs of their passage (disguising it, and their numbers, if nothing else) to beleaguer those who might seek to track them — when he is as alone as he is likely ever to be, when
IllarionCassowary will have the opportunity to approach, to speak with his Lord-husband.And maybe apologize for wandering off, losing contact, and getting yourself locked in a tree that wouldn't even relay messages properly back home, while you're at it, you wretched peacock —