deercountry | 13 . autumn catch-all

Fair enough. Fingers crossed for no surprises, then.

[ He notes the nerves, notes the weapon, and makes no comment on either. It's a spooky forest in a spooky town, run by hostile squid gods and populated by guys nobody wanted to get stuck hiking with. ]

You new to town?

Since last month. [ So, yes. ] We don't do monsters or getting dumped in woods where I'm from.

[ And the guy's already shared how long he's been here, so Robby doesn't feel any need to do the obligatory return of the question. The conversation doesn't bother him, however; he's more distracted by what ifs and general Trench bullshit than helping the flow of their talk, sounding rather annoyed at being dumped into this situation, actually.

If this turns into either the hallway maze or cult world, he's going to flip. ]

[ He makes a sympathetic noise, unruffled by the attitude. ]

Big adjustment, then. Not that we're big on either, where I'm from, but at least the decor is similar. [ He tips a hand to the spooky woods. ] Walking skeletons, viscera, all the usual. It's homey.

That's gross. [ You know, maybe not the words to pick after 'it's homey', but also: that's gross. The first thing to mind and out of his mouth. It's not a strong reaction, no scrunching of his nose or anything, but he does look at the man, as if this detail about his home world deserves it.

One look, and then back on the path, tree canopies rustling lightly above their heads. ]

What kind of life is that?

[ Vague, perhaps, but he isn't sure how else to phrase it. What kind of life does one have where walking skeletons and viscera are painted as the norm? ]

[ He huffs a little laugh, amused without offense. He doesn't break his stride as they walk, ambling along like this is a scenic afternoon. ]

One we scraped together even in rough circumstances. It's wild, the stuff people can come up with when they need to. Other worlds got flashier magic, I guess... fireballs and dragons, all that... we only ever got necromancy.

[ Necromancy. It's a word that Robby knows, but isn't exactly hearing in his day-to-day life, that it gives him pause. It's certainly making him less focused on everything about them, his expression quizzical, confused as he has to confirm with himself that he knows - and that is - what the word means. ]

You're the ones bringing the dead back?

[ He looks at the guy for longer than a moment this time. ]

[ He wobbles a hand. ]

With caveats.

[ Once this sinks in, he goes on: ]

Locally? No. This isn't my turf. If you have a bone to pick about the squid thing, I'm not the guy to take that complaint. Even back home, death is death... we mostly deal in ghosts, these days.

[ Everything revolving around Trench, even the people in it, were so beyond him that he's initially confused. And even when he realises where the wires have gotten crossed in communication, it doesn't make it much better. They're talking about skeletons. Everyone being dead-now-alive squids. Ghosts. ]

So, back home it's skeletons -- here it's ghosts? [ There's no outrage - moral outrage is for people who don't feel they're like talking about a movie concept. He's still firmly in baffled territory, confused. ] Do you even need ghosts here? Are there just-- ghosts?

[ Just ghost arounds to do a necromancy on?? He's so utterly, utterly confused. ]

[ So they're taking it from the top, then. He huffs a breath that is nearly a laugh, sympathetic. ]

I'll back up. Back home, we work with— let's call it 'death energy.' It doesn't just work on the dead. You can use it to work on the body, use it for healing... regrow flesh and bones, that kind of thing. Or take an old dead skeleton and give it instructions, get it up and walking around. Talking to ghosts, that's necromancy too, but proper resurrection is another league entirely.

[ His league, specifically. ]

The ghosts here are weird, locally. I much prefer our home-grown ghosts. At least the skeletons still work the same.

[ Home is a place with skeletons walking around under instruction. Okay. Okay. It's a story that should be called out for bullshit, and Robby never quite knows if to accept things just because. Rather, he goes for allowing it: some person is telling him a fantastical story, and if it's true or not doesn't matter until it does.

How to react to it, however, doesn't come so easily. Robby's quiet as he processes it, a few heavy breaths through it. So, so beyond him; and the world they're in isn't any better in its dangers, or its extremes. ]

I'll pass a visit to your place, [ is what he lands on; dry humour, at least. He fiddles with his free hand, tapping a finger against the side of his jacket and trouser leg, a fist made, unmade. ] Must be a hit at Halloween.

[ He's quiet as Robby thinks on it. Good answer, in the end: he does laugh, this time. ]

We don't celebrate. Can you believe it? [ and whose fault is that, john ] But it means we were ready to go for a place like this... aside from all the squid stuff.

[ Of course. Why celebrate when your entire life is Halloween? ]

The squid stuff bother you? [ Robby doesn't even think about it. Maybe he should, but- ] Wasn't what I thought dying, or...whatever this is was gonna have. I don't know. We're here now.

[ That he knows, that he can work with, and everything before it can't be done anything about. So he says it like fact, nevermind the parts he can't understand. ]

[ This displays a level of willingness to accept squidly adversity that God himself does not possess. ]

Funny, right? That I'm rattled by tentacles when none of the rest does the trick. But I wouldn't call this the afterlife— more like something a little sideways of reality. Maybe a jump to the left and a step to the right.

But, hey, pragmatic attitude. I can appreciate it.

[ There's a huff, small as it is. ] I'm not a guy that can mess with the dead. If someone's going to crack reality, it's not me.

[ Which sounds dumb, but fuck it, they're in magical world land. Someone could probably do it with science and magic and whatever else they have.

But know what he can do? ]

Nice reference.

[ Acknowledge. ]

[ He huffs a laugh to be acknowledged, startled by it every time. ]

Cracking reality is overrated, let me tell you. Better to pass on it.

I heard it's the whole deal with the--

'Hello?'

[ A voice calls, somewhere in the farther trees, and Robby stops in his tracks and thought. Head turning in direction of the voice (young, male -- but maybe older than him?), but he can't see anything through the thicket in the way.

But he can hear a sound; of footsteps, and again: ] 'Hello?'

[ It isn't coming from the way their compass points them, but Robby isn't paying attention to that. He's trying to peer around the trunks, and unless he's stopped for any reason -- he'll answer back. ]

[ Here's the thing, though, with being a guy who can crack reality: John can perceive a human at range. He can perceive what isn't a human just as readily. Whatever this is, it's trouble.

But he kind of wants to see where this will go. This is it, right? The trap they've been thrown into, the monster of the week. He can yank the kid back if it's really dire, or clap a heal on him if it isn't.

John goes still, frowning, and lets Robby look. ]

[ When he'd first arrived, he'd taken the idea of Trench being the same as a horror movie close to literally: don't trust your surroundings, don't believe in what you see. Try and hit your former sensei in the head with a stapler, because why else would the guy be in a maze with you out of nowhere, it's obviously a fucking demon that just looks like him.

And there's a thought now in his head that this is a trap. Or that this has the possibility of leading trouble to them, but also, they showed up out of nowhere in this forest. But the call, that sounds human, and Robby -- he can't see them, and he doesn't break far too from their path, doesn't try to be seen when he makes the choice he does: ]

--Hey?

[ To call out. He sticks by the trees, listening out for what comes next. A voice-- a voice would be good, and safe. Maybe? A 50/50 chance, surely.

There's a rustling, something low and going high, and then Robby thinks he hears a thump of some sort, a weight that he can't quite distinguish. But there's a tickling at the back of his neck that makes him retreat, looking over his shoulder at the man with him, expression quizzical. The sound increases, clearer to Robby now where it comes as the canopies of the trees far off rustling and creak, heading in their direction.

He shoots John another look and shakes his head with alarm, and then he's waving a finger, pointing, feet ready to start moving with the intent of getting the fuck out of here. Except there isn't much time for it when a tree close to where Robby had called shakes and sighs, and a figure jumps between the two of them from above, into the space made from Robby's own jumping back. ]

'--Hey?' [ Comes Robby's voice from its open mouth, jaw hanging open as it twists its head like a dog listening intently. Its eyes are small, cloudy; unblinking, yet with pupils that don't shift or move.

(A voice, turned out, not to be good, surely.) ]

[ The inhuman something comes for them, quicker than he'd like it to be; sharp and loping, even in the treetops; it moves like a predator. He doesn't meet Robby's startled look because he's busy frowning into the middle distance, concern written dark and tight across his face.

The thing drops down between them, which isn't great. It isn't nice to look at, for one thing, and John's not sure about having the kid standing alone with it. It's not that John can't scruff him from here, hands-free, but that would open its own can of worms. The last thing he needs is to rile his shadow into trying to help: she only knows there should be blood on the ground, and too easily forgets who to cut.

Eyes on Robby, he presses a finger to his lips in shh, crooks his fingers in come back towards me. He means it as firm instruction. He forgets that it puts on display how he seems to be unarmed. ]

[ Time doesn't stand still, though they might. The beast's head moves, giving a signal it doesn't rely on scent, doesn't seem capable of relying on sight; if it did use either of these senses, its head wouldn't be moving as it does slowly, searching, yet never looking the pair directly on. Time and what comes with it has perhaps made those eyes useless, and a nose -- it has no nose.

It has no ears either, but something drew it to them so swiftly, and allowed it to copy Robby's voice so distinctly.

Robby, however, may be considering none of these points.

His eyes are back on the beast, not catching the other's signal, and -- he's breathing. He's remembering. Being like this before, on one side of a beast, another on the other. A darkness, the putrid stench of blood and sickness unavoidable, cycling through his lungs and body. And it rises like vomit inside him, the stench and memory, a scene witnessed: 2B with her body half-consumed by a leeching beast that stuck to her like tar, tearing at her outer skin, leaving her showing her metal skeleton underneath; the pain that tore into him in his hands, the man bleeding out at the backs, dying, the man dying, the man dying, dying.

The rage isn't his own, yet it is. His eyes flare open as his face twists, and he's grabbing for a weapon under his shirt, the lightest ruffle as it slips out of its holder and its in his hand, and both Robby and the beast react. It turning its head and body to him, Robby running at it, a lacking grey arm and its hooked claws already out and swing as Robby swings what he holds - an axe - at its face.

The claw make contact with Robby's face before the axe reaches it, a sharp tear into the side of his cheek that knocks his head, but Robby still gets the blade of the axe buried into the side of its shoulder. One of them flinches to the pain when it should be both; but Robby is screaming despite what's more than the flesh wound to the side of his face, letting the axe stick where it is while he punches a fist at where one of its button eyes are, to make it stumble back at the contact.

Yet it's a stumble that isn't enough to stop it from grabbing Robby by the shoulder, claws digging in. His shirt sure soon to be stained with blood, but he doesn't act like he notices it as more than a nuisance keeping him in place, which isn't stopping him from twisting into it, striking a foot into the side of its knee, making it buckle and drag him with it.

He's scrambling for the axe, his other hand coming to the side of the beast's face, finding that eye earlier punched, pressing to dig in, to burst. But the beast is struggling to push him back, a fight for balance that Robby can't let happen, and they fall onto their sides, the claws pushing deeper into his arm, into muscle, close to bone. Tilting him downward, where the monster could get him to roll over, pin him, any other participants in this forest unknown or forgotten.

Robby's gotten the axe out, and incapable of giving it a full swing, he holds the handle like that of a knife and brings down the sharp steel onto its head. Breaking into skin, breaking into muscle; and the beast is using its free claw to do the same to Robby's back, clawing at him to get him to stop, but he won't.

He's just smashing it down, his face red with fury, with blood, cursing out when his teeth aren't gritted: ]

Fuck you! Fuck-- you! Fuck you! Die!

[ The wailing of the wind through the trees has never sounded so much like screaming, a company to the raging grief that won't make Robby stop. ]

[ It all goes wrong remarkably fast. He sees the way Robby's face twists, and knows exactly what it means; funny how he still gets a sinking feeling watching a kid jump towards hell. It's been a while since he felt that.

There's a lot of blood, a lot of screaming. Robby hooks a thumb into the thing's dark wet little eye. It isn't human, but John can still feel the rupture of vitreous jelly as a familiar pop. His senses go beyond sight, and a body is a body. He can marvel at the way this one comes apart, blow by hacking blow.

He doesn't intervene.

Robby lives, and the thing beneath his axe doesn't. John regards the color of its brain, wet and clumpy on the blade of the axe. He regards the ribbons of the kid's shredded back, not half as bad as he'd thought this might get, and he waits for the thing's digging grip and then death-spasms to end. It goes sweetly still: it dies like anything else.

When it's finished, when Robby stops swinging, he steps forward clean and untouched. He doesn't look horrified, or even concerned: mostly, he looks tired. ]

I think you got it.

[ When he stops, Robby isn't quiet. It takes him time to recognise when the monster is dead, more the weight of his limbs growing heavier slowing him to recognise the resistance lost before actual observation. But once it's said and done, Robby kneels there, the weapon gripped tight in his hands. He can hear the sound of his laboured breathing filling his ears, choking to even be attempting over the emotion thick in his throat. Rust-coloured blood seeps out from where he's been torn at, flushing his skin, but the latter may be questionable for how long it will stick.

He hears John's remark, but doesn't react. Sense would ask him to respond to the pain in his body, to do anything than the sitting there that he does, but Robby doesn't. His arms shake, he keeps the weapon pressed in to where it is, as if stuck in a moment of time he doesn't dare move out from.

He can be eased out, or he can finally give in, and try to stand as even he begins to recognise the lightheaded he's feeling as a problem. Unfortunately, his attempt topples him, falling sideways, a cry gasped he only seems now to acknowledge the state of himself. ]

[ The kid holds shudderingly still, frozen with his hands still fixed around the handle. For a sharp moment, the kind he hasn't braced for, the kid reminds him of a boy crouched on the black-sand beach. Or a girl trying to will herself to standing despite the ashen pallor of her face.

He steps forward as Robby starts to rise, and catches him with a broad and clumsy hand at his shoulder. He gives a fumbling squeeze, meant as comfort. ]

Easy. Danger's passed, you got it taken care of. Let's hunt down a shower, next.

[ The hold steadies him, in a sense. It stops Robby from going back down, yet the world is dizzying, hard to focus. Walking-- walking's an idea, though the him that was just doing that before the encounter is hard to remember; it's hard to think about anything.

Robby will though, if the other starts to move. Ignore the pain, don't complain, though it flares in him with each movement, the air exposed on his back. He's sluggish, slow, and--he's just human, even with the qualities of his blood, running down his clothing in a golden-red. ]

I-- I fucked up.

[ Because he feels-- not right. Not right. But he doesn't want to say, I think I'm bleeding too much, I don't know if I can do it.

But he's pretty sure he just fucked up. ]

[ John smooths a hand up his shoulder, toward the nape of his neck, just above the wreckage of the boy's back. Though he doesn't touch it directly, there is a sudden kick of power, forceful as a solar flare— and the wounds begin to knit together.

It doesn't hurt, exactly. It doesn't not hurt. John plucks at the back of Robby's jacket to tug its strips free of the closing gashes, which makes for a uniquely weird sensation. There is a layer of stripped wet skin and flesh that gets shucked, matted with the shreds of his shirt, to make way for new growth underneath.

John just claps him on the shoulder and starts moving, even if he's largely the thing keeping Robby upright. ]

Well, you got the job done. Might be a little more careful of the claws next time.

13 . autumn catch-all

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cw: eye injuries, wounds, all that fun jazz

cw: eye injuries, gore

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cw: bleeding

cw: gory healing

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