deercountry | o2 . september catchall (closed)

Floods are hardly the strangest or most dangerous thing that's happened to Trench, but they are very annoying. Ford's magnet gun has gotten lots of use the past few days, and he's been a regular sight perched on top of lamp posts and rooftops as he waits for the latest rush of flood water to recede. He hasn't been swept away, but he's sure it's only a matter of time.

But it hasn't happened yet, which means he's not going to worry about it. Today has been pleasantly flood-free, and so he's treating himself to a trip to the Archives. He got approximately nothing done in July, and barely anything else thus far in August, and he's eager to finally get some more research done.

Not that research is always easy in the Archives, given its impossible and ever-shifting layout, but there's tricks to it that Ford has learned after roughly a year in the city. The more urgently he needs something the further it'll be from the entrance, but the more likely he is to pass by other interesting or relevant subjects along the way. If he intends to stay for a while he's apt to find whatever he wants tucked away in a quiet alcove with tables, chairs, and little in the way of passersby. And the more dangerous whatever he seeks may be, the more likely it is to be reassuringly out of the way in the basement - a fact made even more reassuring that Ford is pretty sure the Archive doesn't always have a basement.

He finds the basement in question much faster than usual, but he doesn't get a chance to celebrate. He descends the stairs before his eyes have fully adjusted to the lower light underground, which means he doesn't realize there's six inches of standing water covering the floor until hears a splash. He's had a tiring enough few weeks that he can't even curse or grumble, just heave a sigh as he steps back up onto the stairs and surveys the basement. As his eyes adjust he can see it's not that bad. The bottommost shelves are largely empty, and the water doesn't reach any higher than that. He'll probably be fine so long as he doesn't take too long...

Two hours pass before he finally runs into someone else, and in that time the water has risen more than an inch. Ford has taken to climbing the shelves and jumping from table to table to avoid too much contact with the water, and it turns out that playing 'the floor is lava' is as fun when you're 60 as it is when you're 6. So he's in good spirits despite the annoying circumstances, and when he glimpses the top of Jon's head in the adjacent aisle, he greets him with a cheery:

"Hello there! I didn't expect to run into anyone else down here."

Jon Sims, for his part, is up to his ankles in floodwater. It reminds him viscerally of a Statement, and he can't quite discern whether the memories are of something that happened to him or if it's all secondhand; the more intently he chases the thought, the more he can recall of a hundred thousand impossible drownings. Only in glimpses and unsettling flickers, like half-forgotten nightmares.

In short: he does not like the water.

But there's no other way to get things done, so he trudges through the stacks and lets a wake ripple out behind him. It's— uncomfortable, witnessing the water damage. It puts him on-edge. He wants, compulsively, to keep these old tomes safe.

So he's reshelving things to higher, safer places, when he hears the familiar voice. Jon Sims blinks, owlish and startled, and finally thinks to look up.

"I— you—"

Ford Pines is on a bookshelf.

It's a brief, sudden thrill that Jon remembers him. From Deerington— from his own crowded little home study with red string on the wall.

"I didn't expect to run into anyone up there."

It takes Ford a moment to realize who Jon is - not because Jon's appearance isn't distinct, but because Ford is so unprepared to meet him here it takes him a moment to realize he recognizes him. Once he does, however, the response is immediately.

"Jon! You made it!"

Since 'you're back' wouldn't quite make sense when Ford's not sure Jon ever made it to Trench in the first place. Ford doesn't descend from his perch on the shelf, but he does pull himself up so that he can sit on top of it properly and make communicating a little easier.

"I thought it would be best to avoid excessive contact with the water - and it's pretty energizing to be up here."

Or rather, it's fun, but 'energizing' sounds more dignified.

"What about you? How long have you been here?"

Ford says avoid excessive contact with the water, and Jon's expression pulls into a grimace, given the inches of water around his ankles. He looks about the way he always does: beleaguered and several steps past where he meant to be.

Still, meeting someone he remembers, and who remembers him, is enough to keep his mood up. The frown lifts to open interest quickly enough.

"Two months, about? I've spent most of that just trying to settle in, to..." He gestures, haplessly, to the soggy books around them. His tone goes wry, but in the usual, exasperated way of a man faced with unrelenting chaos. "To make sense of the place."

He has spent some of it doing things he doesn't care to remember. He says nothing of that: it's only there in the tightness of his shoulders, the general air of exhaustion.

Jon remarks on trying to make sense of 'this place' and Ford, naturally, assumes he means the Archives. That gets a sympathetic nod from Ford, though one that carries a sort of fondness to it. The Archives are kind of a pain... but there's something exciting about an endless, maze-like library that contains books on nearly any subject he can imagine.

"There's some tricks to navigating it, though I doubt they're consistent from person to person."

That seems like the sort of half-baked metaphor that Never Mind would enjoy. Still, despite what he just said Ford sees no reason to not share his own observations.

"The most dangerous stuff always seems to be in the basement, for me."

Jon looks cagey, at this, which may be readily misread as discomfort that he's surrounded by dangerous things.

In fact it's the unsettling feeling that he is one of the dangerous things. Still, he screws up his face in open distaste at the local organization, which is an easy enough topic to settle on.

"I've received that impression." He is not pleased about it! This isn't the sort of dream logic that comes readily to him: it only seems interested in stalling him, keeping him an arm's length from real knowledge. It feels like an unkind joke, a sort of ever-stretching funhouse hallway, for no real purpose. "Is that Never Mind's sense of humor, or Remina's?"

The nonsensical (at least, nonsensical by human standards) method of organization is anything by convenient, but Ford finds that it rarely actually annoys him. Even when he's in a rush, there's something kind of fun about being handed a puzzle every time he walks through the door.

Thus, his tone is still light and bordering on cheerful even as he responds to Jon's question.

"Never Mind's, I'm certain. He's the sort to think of this sort of arrangement as particularly clever. Remina is more..."

He drums his fingers against his knee for a moment before he lands on a response he likes.

"Well, she's far more direct, but only on her own time. If she thinks you should know something she'll tell you whether you want her to or not, and if she doesn't think you should know something you won't even see her."

Jon does not strictly know who his patron is; he's never had it confirmed; but a grotesque giant eye, goddess of archives, is not terribly subtle.

"I haven't seen much of either of them," he admits, almost rueful. "In Deerington, things made a different sort of sense. The most powerful beings— Pthumerians, I suppose— were out of reach, except by... generally ill-advised means." The memories, he means; the hideously difficult battles. "Our interactions were rarely friendly and never, well, banal. Here I never know whether I'll round a corner and find one of them playing a practical joke."

[ As usual, Jon Sims can be found in the Archives at all hours of the day and night. He's gone more pale and still than usual, looking so worn-down and gaunt that a passing Trenchie asks kindly if he ought to see the healers in Lumenwood. He dismisses the suggestion with a murmur, but stares longingly after the person as they go.

There is something worseningly off about him, these days. He doesn't blink as often as a person should. Omnis seem to distort into static in his presence; anyone engaged in a network conversation as he passes might find their call dropping out or the text squirming on the screen. He drifts, almost wraith-like, between stacks and rows of research desks.

If you find him occupied at a table, it is with an unusual relic laid in front of him: a hunk of stone tablet, recovered from the ocean floor. Sometimes Remina herself appears— blinking into existence, tendrils floating lazily in the air— to look over his shoulder at it, and he doesn't even seem to notice she's there. The moment he's startled back to awareness, she vanishes again.

Through it all, an Omen perches smoky and half-formed on the back of his chair. You can only tell it's an owl by the huge, luminous yellow-green eyes. ]

[A bird is perched on the girl in the blue jacket. The girl's eyes are a puff of mist, her sight gone, but the bird's remains, and so through the bird she sees, hears and feels. Adaine looks over a map, hand-drawn by her a few months ago. She's missing something, of course.

An expedition into a temple, barred at the entrance, but pushing through regardless. It was one of Adaine's first explorations into Trench's internal makeup. Since then, Delilah Dirk has disappeared. A lot of people have, really.

But it bugs her. Something draws her to it. She's dreamed about it, night after night, about halls covered with maddening delusion clouded by hate, ramblings of a world that was before. She looks at the map - or rather the bird does - and hums whispered prophesies under her breath.]

...This might be a good place to start. [Her voice comes out louder than she'd intended it to, but her hands lay the map flat.] Right in the withered jaws of Mother Superior's old evil lair.

[What could go wrong.]

[L works best in a state of haphazard chaos he manages and untangles along the way, and the Archives provide a uniquely receptive environment for his thought process. The Pale Sanctuary is too tranquil, the Rookery has come to feel too comfortable to challenge him, and so he thrives here, sometimes for days on end if his cases have slowed down.

Pity the fellow researcher, if they're all in such a stretch of time, because L's energy is brilliant, bright, and terrifying, not unlike a violin string wound tight to the point of snapping. L doesn't exactly lack awareness that being over-caffeinated, underfed, and unwholesomely high on both is unlikely to put others at ease, but he's the type to attempt a sonata on that torqued and tortured string anyway, to hell with what anyone else has to say about it.

An acrid, stale-scented aura of coffee, musty tomes, and blithe, incremental unwashedness drifts along with him as he returns to his desk with another stack of somewhat on-the-nose books. His twiggy arms tremble slightly when he sets them down, and he's breathless when he speaks, but there's a lit-from-within quality that always seems to buoy him when he's really and truly motivated.

His own omen couldn't be more different from the two birds present. The orca whale matriarch, shrunken to the size of a Saint Bernard, does her very best imitation of a weighted blanket as she presses against his legs. Perhaps she wants her sleeper to take a goddamn seat already; perhaps something about Jon Sims' presence makes her insubstantial, seeking a grounding line of her own in an off-kilter, formless moment.

He leans over to look at the region Adaine's indicating, sipping coffee that's cooled while he was away and trembles in jittery fingers. Luckily, not a drop spills on the map, even though Adaine's voice did startle him a bit.]

The logic is sound... constitution and preparation might not be. We could find more than withering there.

[He glances down at Alaine's head, as if thinking palpably about wanting to pick her brain in a dream, before finally tucking his feet up under him and taking a seat. Lycka pools lethargically beneath him like a shadow, a hint that his actual exhaustion might rival Jon's through the artifice of caffeine and enthusiasm.

He raises his voice, very intentionally, to call over to the owl-omened man who seems to have more than a foot outside of their current reality.]

Sims. What runes can you see on that statue, if any?

Edited 2022-10-04 06:30 (UTC)

[ He startles at the call. Jon seems to come to awareness like a man surfacing from deep water, blinking and off-kilter. He recognizes Lazarus with a twist of frustration and a deeper flicker of unease; Jon still does not know how to carry himself around the man, restlessly unsettled by the way Lazarus's eyes track him in the Archives. There's something very ironic in that.

Regardless. He peels himself up from his table, waving a hand to brush the owl out of his way— his mouth twists with some faint bitterness as it dispels to smoke beside him; the man and his own soul do not seem to get on well— and he rises to rub a crick out of his neck. Breaking his gaze on the tablet seems difficult, as though it is somehow magnetic. ]

The... it's not any sort of language I recognize. I don't think it was written by human beings.

[ And, shaking himself more freely into reality, with a little scrunch to his brow: ]

Is that a map?

[Adaine glances over at this strange man. Even just on a base level, without casting any spells, she can tell that there's a powerful aura of... what's not quite divination about him. SHe resists the urge to squint and instead flattens the map out further.]

Yeah. It's an old expedition map. The one who found it and investigated it first left it behind when she returned to the ocean. I managed to do more digging. [And then she pauses, considering.] Where'd you get the tablet?

[Adaine hums at Lazarus's words though. Her head doesn't move away from the map, misty eyes still pointedly stuck on the paper, but the bird roosting on her shoulder twists around to stare at Lazarus, eyes far too intense and sad, like they have seen everything and will never see again.

But to start with...]

You don't go into a dungeon crawl expecting light obstacles, trust me. But from what we were able to figure out from Delilah's expedition, it seems like the actual temple was massive and older than nearly everything in Trench. We were only able to clear the entrance, basically.

Edited 2022-10-07 00:02 (UTC)

Fortunately, we have many sentient nonhumans for points of reference.

[It's a relatively new way for L to exist, even though such beings existed in his own reality, if not quite his own world or dimension. Shinigami certainly wrote; their survival was dependent on it, after all.]

We also have the statues from the ships, and having seen many, I don't think finding a semblance of meaning is a futile undertaking.

[Though the omen is the one sighted, L keeps his eyes on Adaine when he addresses her.]

Do you have any theories or insights as to what might lie beyond the entrance? Anything that could help us build a specialized team would be useful.

It was recovered from a shipwreck. [ He can't help but sound a little defensive, but he uncoils somewhat and shuffles closer to have a look at their... treasure map, apparently. ] A friend retrieved it in August, when the ocean was, ah... swimmable, I suppose.

[ Which sounds stupid, and he feels off-kilter under the casual scrutiny of Lazarus. Still, the discussion raises his interest. ]

Do we have an idea of how old?

Oh, right. [She nods, interested, the bird peers over at the tablet.] I have a few things I've been meaning to sort of more accurately look into...

[She scratches her chin and thinks.]

It's after Sodder's dream. Or during it? Or... it's between that world and this, when Sleepers first started arriving thousands upon thousands of years ago. When she was Mother Superior and not... Mercy.

Traps are a given. From what I remember, even the entrance had a habit of shaping itself around the nightmares of those who entered it. Beyond that... I might have to do some more divination work. But I think we need combatants and ways to help against corrupting influences and illusionary magic. And people to help study whatever we find.

Edited 2022-10-17 06:07 (UTC)

Mercy...

[L mumbles the name, as though it gives him pause or cause for conflict. His eyes avert for a few moments before returning, in flicking intervals, to his companions; his efforts and attention are usually focused on where the action is taking place, nearly invariably.]

Do you think...

[His question is murmured, wondering]

If a dreamwalker should, with focus and drugs to aid the effort, explore this... would it be a boon? Traps may not achieve in a dream what they might in the flesh. For some of us, that's the preferable outcome.

[ Jon lights up with interest, at mention of the dream. For what little he remembers of Deerington, he has made up for the gaps with relentless and dire enthusiasm— and, well, Ford Pines has been providing much of the notes he'd lost. He is openly less interested in the practicalities of dungeon-crawling, still hung up on Mother Superior. ]

I don't know much about dreamwalking. [ That's a lie, and an awkwardly fumbled one: Jon knows a hell of a lot about going where he hasn't been invited, in dreams. He speeds past it: ] I'm sure any reconnaissance we can perform will be useful. I have notes on Mother Superior, and on the appearance of Trench during the dream. They may be of use.

[She nods at Lazarus.]

I haven't practiced that sort of method, but I can try to use my divining to scout the inside. I have a particular spell tucked somewhere in my spellbook that should work... [She pulls a journal out from one of her piles and starts going through the pages, though she stops when she registers what Sims just said.]

Oh! Were you in the dream?

[ This, at least, is steadier ground. ]

Yes. I don't remember everything, but what I do recall is... distinct. I was there long enough to experience the month of October, which bore an unfortunate resemblance to Trench today. Mother Superior was the force behind it.

[To Adaine, he says]

If you're willing to try, and see what turns up as a result, we can work from there.

[L sips his cold coffee with jittery fingers that slosh it frenetically on the inside of his mug.

He doesn't think that Jon knows "nothing" about Dreamwalking, staring a little longer at him after the claim. Half-truths make more convincing lies, in his experience. No one in Trench has anything to lose by saying that they know "something" or "a little" about a known phenomenon.]

It sounds like you know a little more than "nothing," in truth. What about your distinct recollection makes you sure of the connection to Mother Superior?

o2 . september catchall (closed)

( mid-august )

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(before martin's arrival) for the archive gang.

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