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

[unsheathedfromreality]

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 ]]

Comments

[peripheries]

Kaworu laughs.

It's not bitter, instead it's almost wistful. It's something Paul would say, with mouth set and eyes blazing. So perhaps it would follow that it is something that Atreus would say. "Would you command the world as you do your Court?"

He thinks he knows the answer. Gripping the railing, he leans back a little, letting the breeze blow through his hair.

"He might. But he'd give you a headstart, probably."

[terriblepurpose]

There is an instant in which they are known to each other. Atreus feels it as a breeze across feathers, an uplifting spiral, dizzied and vast. They cannot be. He cannot make sense of it. He has made little sense of anything since this mad quest began.

"Is that not what a Prince aspires to?" He asks, and he would be archly playful - or viciously cold - or matter of fact - with anyone else.

"Is that not why we seek the Throne?" He asks an angel seemingly untethered from a Monarch, pulling apart under what strange laws he is composed of in conflict with Atreus' world, and there is an ache in him that falls from his mouth like drifting pollen.

"I'd rather we spare him the chase," Atreus says, switching tacks as the ship does, heaved round to a new course. "How may I be of service to you?"

[peripheries]

"Perhaps the world isn't meant to be commanded." He says, softly. He isn't Throneborn, but he feels sorry for the ones called "angels" in this world who have no will but what the monarch tells them. He feels the blankness creeping on the edge of his mind, a static growing ever louder as it seeks to encompass all of him. To live a life like that... it's not life. It's a worse life than those of his brethren who could do nothing but seek Seeds of Life.

Still, he glances over Atreus, eyes much softer than before.

"I just want to do what we're doing. Kill the targets, save the old man."

[terriblepurpose]

Those words would be naive from anyone else. The world is meant to be commanded, or it would not manifest rulers and crowns, or the Throne for which they all struggle. There was a First, there will be a Last, and all the while the world will be commanded.

It's madness and impossibility from an angel, the instrument of a Monarch's command. A knife might as well speak to say the world was not made to be cut.

He is a Prince. He manifests his domain, in the creak of his hands gripping the railing behind him and the bewildered, heady weight of what he says, pulled up from a new-tapped well of the yet to be:

"I dreamt of you."

It's the kind of thing he would have hesitated to say, once. It's the kind of thing he would have imagined he'd have time to say, if he chose to, but he knows better these days. Life is one willing knife from an end, and this angel of will is talking only about his duty. He can't let it stand. There's too much he needs to know, for reasons still obscure to him.

"Why was that?"

[peripheries]

"Maybe we know each other in another life."

The wind flutters his silver hair, the tips catching the light so the strands almost appear iridescent. It's a joke and the truth at the same time. He knows that this world is not real, but it's real to Atreus. Perhaps, it's all inverted and reality has become the dreams of this world.

He turns to look at the shrike before him, a knowing smile playing at his lips.

"What do you think dreams mean?"

[terriblepurpose]

The ship bucks ever so slightly, the workings of the internal engines being repaired shuddering through the artful construction. Atreus steadies himself through it, a watchful eye on the angel, any tremor in his eyes surely a result of whatever averted catastrophe ensues below.

Casually, he hoists himself up to perch on the narrow rail, braced by his curled talons on either side. It's a precarious position, even for him. Nothing will happen. Nothing ever does.

"Sometimes they mean nothing." He shrugs, a supple flowing motion. "Sometimes they're symbols of our struggles, reflections of our thoughts. Sometimes they're memories, or amalgams of memory. Sometimes they're glimpses through others' eyes, or portents, or omens."

"You smiled at me like that in them." He tips his head back, contemplating the sky above. "Like you knew a secret, and weren't going to tell me. Everyone tells me their secrets, you know. Sooner or later."

[peripheries]

"Do they?"

Kaworu moves around him, a smirk now playing on his face. He likes challenge. He likes play. For a second he forgets this is Atreus and not Paul. It is just another one of the games they play together. Jabbing, poking, prodding, to see who caves first before collapsing together anyway.

"How would you take my secrets from me then?"