Aᴜɢᴜsᴛɪɴᴇ ᴛʜᴇ Fɪʀsᴛ, Sᴀɪɴᴛ ᴏғ Pᴀᴛɪᴇɴᴄᴇ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
butnotyet) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-06-08 11:12 am
butnotyet) wrote in deercountry2022-06-08 11:12 am
Even the illusion of June is enough to send a stabbing pain through my chest
Who: Augustine the First and ____________ (This could be you!)
What: A little bit of everything, including Event threads, and who knows what else
When: Throughout June
Where: All around Trench; specific locations listed in TLs as necessary.
Content warnings for this character: Necromancer with visibility issues (still running a little bit Invisible Man) seeking CR for explicit gore/body horror as a matter-of-fact daily occurrence / being jaded AF about life in Trench and otherwise (look, man, he's older than dirt) / needs more people to be slutty at-or-with (bearing in mind he is, again, currently at-least-mostly Invisible, you/your character's kinks/mileage May Vary, player more interested in vague/FTB/finessing a scene than anything explicit). Also, his omen is his brother, and also a venomous snake, and also really chatty.
Specific warnings for this post: Nightmares featuring a lot of violence, including self-inflicted/suicide; various types of religious imagery/discussions, definitely including "taking the Lord's Name in vain"; invisible nude spying on God (might get spicy).
What: A little bit of everything, including Event threads, and who knows what else
When: Throughout June
Where: All around Trench; specific locations listed in TLs as necessary.
Content warnings for this character: Necromancer with visibility issues (still running a little bit Invisible Man) seeking CR for explicit gore/body horror as a matter-of-fact daily occurrence / being jaded AF about life in Trench and otherwise (look, man, he's older than dirt) / needs more people to be slutty at-or-with (bearing in mind he is, again, currently at-least-mostly Invisible, you/your character's kinks/mileage May Vary, player more interested in vague/FTB/finessing a scene than anything explicit). Also, his omen is his brother, and also a venomous snake, and also really chatty.
Specific warnings for this post: Nightmares featuring a lot of violence, including self-inflicted/suicide; various types of religious imagery/discussions, definitely including "taking the Lord's Name in vain"; invisible nude spying on God (might get spicy).
(open invitation)
Maybe it's happened more than once, by now. It's been going on for quite a while, after all — days and days, weeks even, that the downstairs residents of the Emperor's House have been having a problem — and even if you could rival Alfred himself, in the omnipresent-spying-about-the-House capacity, you won't see them talking to each other about it.
But that's fine, really — isn't it wondrous, after all, that Remina has remembered Alfred so much more clearly, so much more accurately, than the Moss King did? It's such a tremendous gift, to give Augustine back his brother, whole, not merely a sliver of soul as a slithering serpent — no, this is everything either of them could ever have wanted; what even God Himself couldn't, or wouldn't, give them, nearly ten thousand years ago.
They're happy like this; everyone should be happy with them, and not worry about the lackluster, faded finish on those less-and-less-often-present scales, or the depth of the shadows more clearly visible than the rest of Augustine's face.
They're happy; don't you want to share in that? Don't you want to come tell Alfred a story?
no subject
The snake Omen who he's spoken to in passing, who seemed friendly and helpful--compassionate, patient, wise, in Augustine's words--has disappeared mid-conversation. Midoriya no longer thinks these disappearances are a fluke. He decides his first step is to find Augustine, which presents its own unique challenges this month.
He wanders into the hall in his socks. (He's always removed his shoes despite house custom.) He's prepared to search all the common areas for both snake and man, and Paul and Kaworu's room for the snake, just for good measure. He hears a sound--
"...Alfred-san?" he asks quietly.
[closed] (cw: extreme violence w/choking, verbal/emotional abuse, hungry ghosts, murderish)
(There's a sharp, cut-off sound, here: a man's involuntary cry of pain, interrupted — in this case, by someone much stronger grabbing him by the throat and squeezing, hard enough to disrupt such petty considerations as 'the function of vocal cords' or 'breathing'.)
" — that isn't good enough, you utterly — useless — waste of flesh! I should take you back to the shore and drown you myself, send you back to the Hell you belong in —"
(A crashing collision, in the hallway: a body flung against a wall, or pinned up against it forcefully — then dragged sideways, every piece of furniture or art or ornamentation becoming nothing more than another piece of collateral damage: broken glass, broken bones, broken hearts and broken dreams.)
"— no, that's —"
"Do you think I care about your opinion? That it matters, after all these years? Did you really think you could get away with killing me, with reaping all the benefits of my death, for all this time, and you'd never have to pay the penalties yourself? Grow up, brother!"
"— please —!"
"You've been wasting my life, and my gifts, for all these thousands of years —"
(This voice, the dominant voice, is sing-song, now, but more than that: less solid, more present; less Alfred, less singular, less human, and far, far more of a dreadful, hungry choir — and that weak, quiet rasping croak raised up in protest cannot possibly be Augustine's — can it?)
"I don't think you get to keep it — them — any longer, brother. No, I think, in fact, that I'm going to take and eat your life, just like you ate mine."
(The noise in the hallway gets much worse then, quite suddenly, in the manner of a wrecking ball — or an abattoir — or a war zone — or, perhaps, probably, all of the above, and more as well.)
no subject
As a rule, no one from the Ninth ever eavesdrops, they simply observe, but in this instance—Harrow was profoundly not eavesdropping as she was not observing or overhearing either one but innocently walking from point A to point B, and she had in fact intended to attempt to meet up with the Saint of Patience. She'd been working on the bone armor properties and she was going to try to lure him into helping her test it.
She was not expecting to have to test it under fire, but the alarming sounds coming from the Saint in question's quarters have Harrow stopping only to activate the theorem and wrap herself in her exoskeleton—now hopefully with added protective properties!—before walking ever closer.
Now she is overhearing.
He will know she is there, or at least that someone is, that someone Lyctoral or the King Undying is, perhaps, in the way footfalls can be heard (Harrow makes a point of making them audible, this time and this time only) and then she will know what she should do. Somehow she assumes he will cue her.
no subject
There's a very loud and reverberating shattering sound, immediately followed by a splashing sound, and the acrid stink of alcohol and blood fills the air, in the midst of all the rest of the sounds of someone getting the absolute shit beaten out of him.
(Out in the hallway, for the briefest fragment of a moment, there's a shadow — with the faintest impression of scales — barely more than a dark line that stretches where nothing casts it; it's not a snake, because that would imply too much definition, and this absolutely doesn't have that — but it still whispers in her mind, in a voice that isn't any of the voices she has only ever heard in her mind,
«— help —»
and then it's gone, again.)
no subject
Harrow wants to hide, wants to push away the chaotic stimulus and wrap herself in an impenetrable cocoon of protection. She wants to erase the smells, the sounds, everything that isn't the blood, but she instead does the opposite; she takes a deep breath and a confident step into the room.
Tossing a few carpal bones into the air and exploding them from the inside as she does so.
Hey, whatever's going on! Look! A distraction! Over here, look at her!
no subject
Explosions, whether of bone or of fire or both, are not welcome, and yet here they are anyway, at risk of igniting some of that spilled alcohol — lucky for Augustine, whose luck has really not been good this month, the explosions are far enough away from the fumes that nothing catches fire (yet), and the thing that isn't really Alfred anymore is drawn away from him, at least briefly.
(It was never really Alfred, was it? No, that's still impossible to accept — to think that all this time, the weeks they've been reconnecting with their agreeably-familiar human faces, that it's all been a lie — it couldn't have been, could it?)
Of course, this means that the (semblance of) the First Martyr for the First Saint is flying at her at high speed with rapier drawn, attempting to spit her —
(Augustine is sprawled in the puddle of shattered glass and crystal and spilled alcohol, weakly shoving his pharynx back into a functional shape with one broken hand; he isn't looking, or he'd see how atrocious not-Alfred's footwork is, and it would just be that much more proof — as if he should need it, after being turned upon like this.)
no subject
Harrow came in here to test impenetrable bone shields, didn't she.
This isn't how she had wanted to do it, but if this is what she is up for, then this is how it is going to go; she certainly tries to dodge, squeaking out a desperate, "Patience!" because honestly you are a far better fighter than she is and a better healer, too, are you going to heal up and help her out here—but it's possible that Harrow's pivot fails, and she'll get stabbed by—
Stabbed by something.
Something that may be a haunt of some kind, something that Augustine should be able to vanquish when he's back to himself, and if it stabs her, well, he can fix that too if she can't—
so either way it's going to be fine.
Harrowhark will worry about what the hell is happening later on.
no subject
When a beautiful antique rapier hits an unbreakable-bone shield, there's a very daunting sound: a cr-rack, and a moment in which the thing holding the other end of the rapier does not look even remotely human.
(It doesn't look like a snake, either, although there is a hint of nasty, massive fangs in the face that ghosts away beneath Alfred's face.)
Across the room, Augustine makes a remarkably weak and pathetic attempt to rise, gurgling something that is definitively not a word.
Not-Alfred drops the sword, damaged or stuck as it is, and lunges for Harrowhark's face, fingernails growing into talons that were never human, either.
no subject
She drops down to the ground and curls into a ball, rolling out of the way and into another bone cocoon. Come on, impenetrable bone shielding. Hold up. She's been working so hard.
"Patience, can you hear me?"
no subject
Augustine coughs, wretchedly, and sits up a smidge, and shakes a hand, exhaustedly knocking bits of shattered decanters from his skin. His eyes aren't focusing right. (His eyes don't even know what color they're supposed to be, right now.)
"Harrow," he says, or thinks, or breathes, or prays — "Go."
(Wham. Wham. WHAM.)
no subject
It is fine.
Everything
( Nav, have you really forgiven me? )
was fine, and Harrowhark was definitely not shaking inside the bone cocoon and forcibly trying to orient herself as to when and where she was
( Yeah, fuck it, I'm getting us out of here )
and as something kept hitting against her cocoon so that little shards broke off but nothing yet broke through she cried out, "Where?!" and then, "Go how?"
( i'll distract her as long as possible all you have to do is live )
She's not sure Augustine is in a particularly great position to get it off her long enough to do that.
It's just another day that ends in y in Gaze.
no subject
(WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.)
"Stop," he wheezes.
(There's too much cracking, too much shattering, too much light getting in, too many scrabbling claws at the edges, bony and sharp talons that are multiplying, surely, as much as they are mending themselves —)
His blood is all over everywhere; it has coated so much of the glass, beneath him; glass is silica-based, it isn't flesh, but the blood is his, it's his to use, to call, to direct —
(WHAAAAAAAM.)
The blood flies through the air, arrowing into any exposed flesh of the creature that is not, that never was, Alfred Quinque, no matter how well it resembled him — and it takes all the glass it coats with it, and buries itself (and its glass) in the flesh-that-isn't-flesh of the man-who-isn't-a-man — and he screams.
It's the sort of inhuman scream that flenses the mind, unfortunately; the sort that causes spontaneous bleeding from any convenient orifice near the brain — eyes, noses, ears — and Augustine collapses to the ground again, groaning and clutching at his head, trying to keep as much of his blood inside him as possible, as that scream continues.
no subject
Harrow can tolerate her nose and eyes and ears bleeding, Harrow can tolerate spitting blood from her mouth as her cocoon starts to fall apart, so long as she can get away just far enough, fast enough, to get help.
Suddenly it doesn't matter where or when or—or any of that—just that her shielding is failing and Augustine is keeping the distraction going long enough for Harrow to escape. Holding it off long enough for her to do—something. Something that matters.
So far, all that something is is close her eyes and break through her cocoon enough to bolt out the door and run down the hall as quickly as possible. She's looking for the King Undying or Gideon Nav, as the most logical people for her to turn to, but honestly, she'd take anyone at this point.
no subject
"Harrow," Paul says, with steadiness belying the knife in his hand (which cannot have been there when he spun her, but is now) and the hard, careful set around his eyes, "What is it?"
There are crashes and clatters in this house as a matter of course, these days. Many of them come from Paul and his closest tumbling friends; the ones that don't tend to resolve themselves without intervention.
What that scream was is something else. Whatever has made Harrowhark Nonagesimus flee blindly from a room with blood smeared across her face is something else again.