14 . winter catch-all

[necrolord]

Who: John Gaius and company.
What: As the cold sets in, the God of Necromancers gets restless.
When: Late November through December
Where: Gaze and the Sleeper Farm.

Content Warnings: Tagged in headers as needed. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

Comments

cw: glimpse of bodies, gore

[necrolord]

"It really does have an ambiance." He is being doggedly, relentlessly casual about this, like he will pry a decent joke up from the overheated grates of the floor. "That classic slasher-film energy. I respect what they've done with the place."

They start finding doors. John catches in a doorway and hesitates there. What's inside is bad by any reasonable metric— a lot of disassembled bodies, parts of people— but that isn't what holds him up. The problem is that he has to fumble and grasp for an awareness of whether all that flesh is still alive, when he should be able to know from a planet away. Now he can barely figure it out from fifty paces.

"No survivors." He doesn't think to tell Oscar not to look. He just squeezes his shoulder and continues them on. Would've been a nightmare, if they'd found more fucked-up chained Sleepers: he knows the trouble of trying to shepherd a flock you can't actually handle.

(He might have made it clean, but he would not have left them behind.)

cw: glimpse of bodies, gore

[justoscar]

Curious eyes can't help but notice the carnage of mangled bodies contorted into unnatural shapes. Oscar stared for a moment too long, heart and stomach squeezing up towards his throat in the seconds it took for his mind to register what it was that he was viewing. Only John's voice and the squeeze on his shoulder kept him moving-- hobbling step by imbalanced step as they tried find escape from whatever hellish dungeon they were in.

"It'd be a miracle if anyone survived that..."

He trailed, tearing his eyes away from the gore to focus in on the path ahead. The monotonous, continuing pattern of the hallways was dizzying. But, it wasn't like they had options.

[necrolord]

"Not one of mine, I hope."

The God jokes get weaker when he's limping along with a kid tucked awkward against his side. They stumble on like that for a while, following the droning thrum of wasp's wings; he orients to Lenore like a compass to true north, drawn along behind her in mindless synchronicity. It's a little eerie, given how she is.

Still. They don't hit trouble; there isn't any screaming. By some genuine miracle— definitely not one of his— they find a storage room, unguarded, and John shuts the door with a low grating metal-on-metal rasp. Inside it, with Lenore alighted and still beside the shelves and shelves of Sleepers' things, John draws a breath of relief.

[justoscar]

"Oh, thank the Brothers...."

Oscar groaned at the sight, letting go of John so he could sink to the floor for a few moments of heart-rending quiet in that nightmarish den. They both deserved a break-- Oscar wanted nothing more than to just sleep for a night or a week, but they needed to get out first.

"Just-- just give me a minute?"

He asked breathlessly, knowing full well that they probably didn't even have a minute to spare.

[necrolord]

"Our luck may not hold that long."

He sounds grave but not unkind, or at least that's the goal. While Oscar catches his breath, John goes rifling through their captors' prizes. His monstrous Omen stands still as a guardian statue, her great insectoid head swiveling gently to track John's movements.