martyrofduty: (g1deon!face watchful)
martyrofduty ([personal profile] martyrofduty) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-07-07 09:14 pm

July Catch-All (open & closed starters)

who: Pyrrha Dve (by that name or another) & new/developing CR
what: Arrival, Fallout of Boatgate, starting Hunting, etc
when: Arrival starting ~July 8th. Going to Bone House ~July 9th. On from there
where: Beach, Bone House, Around Trench

content warnings: Usual arrival CWs (placenta, nudity, disorientation, etc), remains from boatgate at the beach, corruption levels/beasthood, alcohol consumption, messy not entirely healthy relationship dynamics. Others added as they come up.
necrolord: <user name="thebutt"> (( constellations ))

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-07-08 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Annabel's echo is gone, at least. Or, not gone— she thrums in his heart, a furious simmer of energy, a thunderstorm he's papered over and called contained— but she's not dogging his heels anymore. And he's doing better, you know? He's lost the wings. The chitin only bleeds back up, like an oilslick over his bones, when he's really riled.

He thinks Gideon is here, for a moment. The emotion goes sideways when he realizes it's Pyrrha, and that she recently shot him in the face.

"Interesting way to start," he says, like complaint, but he folds himself into a chair. The study's a wreck, what with one-and-a-half Heralds pacing manic circles in here for a few days straight. All his shelves of blood and bone are in disarray, all his notes are crumpled. "Look, I want to say: I'm not mad. I mean, I'm kind of impressed, honestly. Remind me not to piss you off."

Ha ha, lost cause. No one's happy with him, and he knows it. When he drums his fingers on the desktop they make the click-clack sound of bare phalanges on wood.
necrolord: <user name="thebutt"> (i babble on til my voice is gone)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-07-10 04:25 pm (UTC)(link)
It's reassuring, you know? It's comforting, the way she does everything with such relentlessly methodical calm. She's always been the one tolerating the rest of them, a rock among their storm. Pyrrha's always been reliable.

He's missed her so much.

"Fair hit," he agrees, and spreads his hands on the table. He'll pretend they're just talking about what he does to her temper. "I mean, yeah. But I did deserve it."

He's yet to mention that the raspberries are cursed, and that he knew this from the start. It's not like he was trying to spike her drink, you know? It might've been a cherry slushie. It might've been nothing. But it's not like he can hold Pyrrha's equivalent of a thrown punch against her, under the circumstances.

It's not like he can pretend she had no reason, cursed slushie aside, to gun for him.

"You're still here," he says, more softly. "With what looks like Augustine's entire stash."

She shot him, but she didn't leave him. How sad are his standards, right?
noniad: (02)

[personal profile] noniad 2022-07-10 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Ortus is not a wandering soul. He still does not care for the yawn of the sky above him, and suspects that he never will. He much prefers enclosure.

So it is uncharacteristic of him to be standing at the edge of the sea, looking out across the dizzying expanse of gleaming dark water. He wears a pair of black shorts composed of some sturdy woven cloth, with many pockets full of small and useful things, and bruises are still fading along the exposed flesh of his arms where they extend from the t-shirt he has borrowed, emblazoned with the symbols of the House Cobra Kai. His ridiculous rapier hangs from his waist, where it has always been for the past few days.

"Saint," he says, his eyes widening - and yet he does not bow, nor show the other signs of deference he ought, aside from drawing himself up a fraction of a degree more upright.
necrolord: =- (the words fall flat)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-07-10 08:19 pm (UTC)(link)
In the face of her open exhaustion, he takes up the whiskey and pours: her glass first, then his, two fingers for each of them. He considers, for a moment, then makes it three.

"I don't think it's that far buried." He says this with good-natured exasperation, but there's a note of something real beneath it, a hair's breadth from real defensiveness. "I'm not looking my best... not fighting my best, either. You missed the showdown. The ocean kicked my ass."

He takes up his glass, swirls it, ignores the way the motion shows the bare whites of his carpal bones.

"But I'm not trying to ruin everyone's week."
necrolord: <user name="thebutt"> (Default)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-07-11 03:51 pm (UTC)(link)
He never could win this staring contest— sad for a guy who doesn't strictly need to blink, right?— and doesn't try. John winces, exaggerated for effect, like touché. Lifts the glass to his lips and sips his whiskey while the silence settles in between them.

"I should've been more careful about the crossfire." He sets the glass down with a click and fidgets with a finger on the rim, instead. "I fully acknowledge that. If we're honest, I didn't think things would get that out of hand... it's not often I'm outclassed, you know?"

But she wouldn't know, because she's been dead ten thousand years.

"I haven't been on my own front lines for a while now."
necrolord: =- (the words fall flat)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-07-11 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
He bristles, stupidly and impotently; he goes restless at this statement of deeply inconvenient fact; he drums his fingers on the desktop and they still go clack clack clack. He looks like he wants to start pacing again. He's mad.

But he's not mad at her, because she's right, obviously. Of course she's right.

"Pyrrha," he says, and he looks up. He looks her dead in the face, and every speck of humor has dropped out of him: he has gone very still. "Pyrrha, I lit the fucking sun."

This hangs for a long, empty silence. Then he settles in on his forearms, as though exhausted.

"So the fact that I'm losing metaphysical fistfights is, you know," he makes an unnecessary gesture, the little boom of mindblowing. "Can I be honest? It scares the shit out of me."

He blows out a sigh, drums his fingers again, picks up the glass and knocks back half his whiskey. Swallows hard, sets it down. Exhales.

"Augustine," he agrees. Back to the point. "Harrowhark and Gideon— long story. If Augustine hasn't caught you up on that one yet..." He trails off, shrugs his discomfort. "A kid of the Sixth, a kid of the Ninth, a few locals... a few friends."

There is a deep and mournful longing in him, when he says it. He cared, and cares, and now here he is with all these empty bedrooms.
unsheathedfromreality: (as the darkness closes in again)

[personal profile] unsheathedfromreality 2022-07-11 10:32 pm (UTC)(link)
This is not the first time in all his centuries Illarion's played door-guard for someone the world wanted dead and dismembered. Given the circumstances, he is not in any way surprised when Iskierka alerts him there's someone heavily armed--someone neither of them recognize--examining the house before approaching it. He is wearily alert to the fact the unknown out there carries himself (themself?) like a soldier, which could mean trouble atop trouble for this tattered little household if it came to fighting.

For Trench's sake (for Augustine and Alfred's sake), the shrike's very uninterested in it coming to fighting.

He's headed for the door before the knock even sounds, silently recalling his Omen from her perch among the skeletons on the roof. He settles himself just so in the entryway, so the bulk of his out-self can be flattened to block it if that's a hostile out there. Less an act to defend his host--who could use, but is in no fit state to parse, the lessons taught by revenge--and more prevent any more would-be heroes coming to grief in the lair of a god they weren't prepared to face. But should this particular maybe-hostile fight their way past him, well--that's one way a heroic legend begins, isn't it?

He waits a count of three before opening the door. (Iskierka rematerializes on his shoulder in a swirl of smoke and Darkblood, crimson eyes gleaming.) Then he swings it wide, apparent-foolhardy; let this visitor read into the gesture, and the dead skeletal-slim elf blocking the way, what they will.

"Who are you and what are you wanting with this house?" The words are impolite. The tone's passionless, as the dead are apt to be; no offense is meant. He's merely on war footing and not bothering with pleasantries.
unsheathedfromreality: (reflect on a thousand lifetimes)

[personal profile] unsheathedfromreality 2022-07-12 12:50 am (UTC)(link)
Duty, comes the answer, which is a wholly comprehensible one to Illarion; he cocks his head like a robin considering a worm as he parses it. (Outward, on all the dark bulk of him, his ruffled feathers smooth.)

Duty, perhaps, as Ava is Patience--he wonders. It would explain the timing and the calm presentation before this house of all houses in Gaze, armed but not hostile.

"You are being one of the Emperor's, then?" he asks, and as he asks he steps a (rippling, hulking) pace back from the door. Tacit invitation; if anyone has a right to rebuke the man and disturb the house's fragile peace, it would be a Courtier (a Saint).

Though what invitation he extends is contingent on his guess being right--it is easy to trust this fellow-soldier at his (their?) word, but one should always doubt easy trust. The shrike sends a question through Iskierka on to Alfred, a (mind-jarring) image of the figure at the door included: One of yours?
necrolord: =- (the words fall flat)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-07-12 10:46 pm (UTC)(link)
He hums impatient agreement to her advice. It's good advice, but he doesn't want to hear it. Nothing new there. The disappointment in her voice, that's worse; he looks at her sharp and stung, like a flinch.

"Who isn't kids, these days?" He fidgets, restless and miserable. "I'm too old. Augustine and I— hell, sometimes I think we've become everything they call us."

The room is so empty, the house is so empty, aside the distant slump of Augustine's exhaustion and Big Bird's horror and Kaworu's washed-out nothing. God finishes the whiskey.

"A bunch of fucked-up old liches chewing up the universe." He curls both hands around the glass, grips it too tightly. "It's not like I don't know it looks bad, alright? Skull decor doesn't endear you to everybody. Thanergy blooms don't come cheap. But there are fights I can't just walk away from."
necrolord: /=- (like cymbals crashing)

cw: hand gore

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-07-13 12:35 am (UTC)(link)
Of course she'd give him shit, and of course she'd do it calm and thorough like this. A classic Pyrrha Dve dressing-down: even God isn't exempt. He bears it with what grace he has left. She fills his drink, at least, and her hands are warm and real and human when she touches him.

"Rude," says God, when she takes his finger at the knuckle. He does not flinch nor stop her, but his brow scrunches in incredulity at the nerve. First the shooting, now this; they've apparently settled into a hell of a dynamic. "At least ask first. Come on. Also, I am very kindly not making a dirty joke."

There is still flesh at the base of the finger, still raw red tendons webbing together the bare bone and chitin. All of it has an iridescent dark shimmer, a glitter of surreal blood. John, in the spirit of cooperation and friendship, withers the flesh to nothing and leaves her with only Herald bone to whittle.

"The point," he complains, "is that I shouldn't have even needed that. It's a real learning curve, squaring up against a pantheon. She's so much bigger than you'd think... so much bigger than she ought to be, and I'm so much smaller... that ocean runs as deep as the River, but I don't know its currents. These are— if you'll forgive me, and I know you will— uncharted waters."

He cracks a smile, which twists before it can settle in. She is, again, so infuriatingly goddamn right.

"But, alright! Fair points all around." God splays his hands in defeat while his long-dead disciple and new babysitter whittles one of his fingers into wacky shapes. "I'll admit, I got mad. I've been mad for a while. What I need, apparently, is a tactician."

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