Even the illusion of June is enough to send a stabbing pain through my chest

[butnotyet]

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).

Comments

[butnotyet]

There are two people in the room already — given a generous-enough definition of 'people', anyway — and either of them could notice her, could say something to her, could do something that makes it clear that they're aware of her attention and have an interest in it, or for that matter that they want it to go away —

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.)

[necrosaint]

She does know that voice, though. Between the voice and the imagery, she knows that something is not right. If Augustine's Omen is going to ask her for assistance, the ghost of a Lyctor's cavalier to the most dysfunctional of Lyctors—

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!

[butnotyet]

Distractions aren't welcome, by the thing wearing Alfred's seeming, so intently working away at murdering a Lyctor — the one who isn't trying to resist, at least not all that effectively, at least not by fighting back with any particularly good effect —

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.)

[necrosaint]

Well.

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.

[butnotyet]

When an irresistible force hits an immovable object, logicians rejoice and everyone else gets a headache.

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.

[necrosaint]

"Oh for fuck's sake!" Harrow yelps, taking her linguistic choices, for once, from Gideon Nav. May no one ever tell her cavalier that this moment happened. Or her other cavalier, for that matter.

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?"

[butnotyet]

This isn't the first time she's been forced to endure some really horrible repetitive blows against a bone cocoon, of course; clearly familiarity breeds conte...ntment, right? This is fine!

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.)

[necrosaint]

It is not the first time at all.

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.

[butnotyet]

He manages, somehow, to get a knee underneath him, and then a foot.

(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.

[necrosaint]

Harrow can tolerate that.

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.

[terriblepurpose]

There are several senses in which the chest Harrow bounces off of in a gauzy red shimmer of hardened shield-light is a close secondary approximation of both other parties Harrow has gone in search of. Light hands touch her elbows as she is delicately turned to slow her wild momentum and put her behind her freshly collided help, who steps back when this is done with quick neatness. He understands how much Harrow does not like to be crowded.

"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.