ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ ᴜɴᴅʏɪɴɢ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
necrolord) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-02-07 10:42 am
necrolord) wrote in deercountry2022-02-07 10:42 am
Entry tags:
o4 . february catchall
Who: necrolord and you!
What: Local necromancer is networking. Archives research, healing for lockjoint and self-mutilation, and more.
When: February.
Where: Archives, Lumenwood, streets of Trench.
Content Warnings: Skeletons and mentions of the self-mutilation curse. Note all the usual warnings of this character.
(1) research.
necrolord and you!What: Local necromancer is networking. Archives research, healing for lockjoint and self-mutilation, and more.
When: February.
Where: Archives, Lumenwood, streets of Trench.
Content Warnings: Skeletons and mentions of the self-mutilation curse. Note all the usual warnings of this character.
(1) research.
You've probably seen him around, by now. The man is something of a fixture in the Archives: he settles at an unremarkable table and proceeds to drown it in open books, scattered pages, notes, journals. He seems intent on skimming his way through half the library. Sometimes there's a girl, scrawny and dour with her face painted up like a skull, hovering at his elbow. Today, he's on his own.(2) the skeleton plow.
He doesn't look like much. Simple clothes; bare hands, which suggests he's either confident or reckless, in a town that will titter at anyone who doesn't wear gloves; he looks fortyish and plain. Only one thing about him is remarkable: his eyes, black as oil from edge to unpleasant edge.
Today, he's amassed an odd collection of vials, bloodstones, and shards of bone. You might catch the sudden reek of Beast blood, which is alarmingly toxic to handle even with gloves; you might catch him weighing a huge, inhuman bone in the palm of his hand, looking thoughtful. If he notices your attention, he'll speak without looking up.
"Six months, and I'm still trying to puzzle out the basics."
[ On the 9th, a blizzard blows in. It leaves the town blanketed in a heavy weight of snow, and Trenchies come out with shovels and resigned expressions to scrape the streets clear.(3) healing.
God, who has places to be, finds this a touch inconvenient. He's meant to be in Lumenwood just now, playing Jesus on everyone's frostbite and having a generally pleasant morning. So he claps his hands, watches a dozen skeletons claw their way free of the frozen earth and pop out of the snow ("like daisies," he says to whoever is nearest) and then sets off across town with his helpful new posse.
Each skeleton moves as smoothly and politely as a human servant, with a speck of red light in each empty eye. God makes a little gesture, like a conductor with an orchestra; his servants' fingerbones fuse and spread. Their arms distort and lengthen. They each now wield a broad bone scoop, which looks somewhere between silly and horrifying.
The skeleton army sets to work shoveling snow, heedless of appalled bystanders. ]
[ Maybe you're still suffering from Lockjoint, Sleeper. Maybe you've begun scraping your own skin away under this month's curse, trying to resist temptation, trying to resist the urge to confess.(4) wildcard.
It doesn't matter whether all the damage is hidden by your clothing, or whether you think you're doing a good job of masking your pain. Today you're near the gates of Lumenwood - maybe to get help for your own issues, maybe not - and there is a man here, who has just waved away a grateful Trenchie making conversation. He turns, tips his head in hello, and considers you. ]
Want a hand with that?
[ Happy to match formatting! ]
no subject
[He says it so dryly, it could be the Sahara desert. Shiro's A+ coping mechanism apparently.]
[Still more hesitation. His weight shifting in his seat. His arm extends, slowly, but, this time, it's less out of reluctance. More because his arm doesn't want to cooperate.]
[But he manages, with the stiffened metal splayed across his lap.]
That's fine. Can't feel it, anyway.
no subject
God has never needed anything as mundane as physical contact to reach into someone. But it makes people nervous when you start fiddling with their bodily processes at range, turns out. Also, this way is more polite. ]
I'm not much of a tech guy, but we'll see what I can do.
[ And, okay, sure. He's no engineer. The inorganics are more or less a black box to him, necromantically, he can barely even read the thumbprints of thanergy signatures and what he can read tends to make no sense.
But he has enough handle on blood magic to see where the energy's catching and tangling and crystallizing, way deep down. He'd qualify it as weird as hell but within his purview.
God reaches in and smooths out the damage. It will look like nothing more than him tapping his fingertips on Shiro's wrist, and will feel a bit like getting slapped in the arm with a high-voltage live wire— a sudden deep jolt, there and then gone. ]
no subject
[Shiro's own 'tech guy' hadn't been able to find a problem. Not that he would ever hold that against Hunk - it likely wasn't even a tech issue in the first place. That wouldn't surprise him.]
[What does surprise him is pain.]
[The shock - hah hah - of it has him jerk where he's sitting, startled, shouting. It doesn't last, of course, but when you're not expecting that - you can't not react. For a split second, he looks down at the hand, as if it's suddenly sparked to life of its own accord. But nothing.]
What -
What did you do?
no subject
Right— sorry, should have said. I get ahead of myself.
[ He points, not touching: finger hovering a polite distance away, tracing the flow he'd seen from sheared-off organic humerus to mechanical joint, radius, ulna. ]
It's a common problem this season. Blood magic catches in the joints, gums everything up— pretty nasty if you leave it untreated, but it's not a tough fix. Check the mobility, see if I've got it all.
no subject
[And frowning.]
I... How? I don't have blood magic. [At least not like the others. Not like Lance or Will. Not like he's seen.] Warmblood. We don't have any abilities.
[The useless blood type, argues something ugly in the back of his head.]
no subject
You're a Sleeper. Saying you don't have magic is like saying you don't have a soul; just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.
I'm working on a theory, about how this all works. It's not finished yet, but that much seems solid. We're all magic, whether we have flashy ways to show it or not.
no subject
It's a nice thought.
[Is what he says, finally. His eyes dropped down to his hands. The arm does feel better, if nothing else.]
You do sound a little like an after-school special, right now, though.
no subject
I'm only saying: existentially, when you get down to it, the real magic is the friends we make along the way.
[ He claps his hands together and leans in over his knees. ]
Also, say no to bullying and don't do drugs. Or at least know where to find a healer if the trip goes weird, who knows what kinds of mushrooms they're serving us here.
no subject
[He's only half joking. Because - ]
I'm pretty sure no one in their right mind would say I'm prone to substance use.
[So there!!! Or something.]
no subject
The advice I'm leaving you with is more to the tune of: it's just a form of energy.
[ He gestures to the flowers around them, which glow a gentle silver like moonlight. ]
Most tech here runs off Lunar Orbs, right? Moonlight as energy, because the moon is some kind of eldritch god. Very normal stuff. Sleepers are like that: blood magic is the power that makes us tick. Some of us can externalize it as fireballs, but everyone's running on it. Being a less flashy demigod still makes you a demigod.
[ His smile is wry and, now, a little tired. ]
Not just anyone can die and come back.
no subject
[Or was she? Was Cynthia technically an "eldritch" god? She was some kind of god, certainly. All the Pthurmerians were. But 'eldritch' meant something like Cthulhu, something that wanted destruction and devastation, didn't it? That didn't describe the woman-turned-Moon-Presence. Not to him.]
She's not a threat, if that's what you mean by 'eldritch'.
[But back to the topic at hand. Har har.]
No. They can't. I know that. [Boy does he know that. And pushes a hand through his hair.] It's not a bad theory.
no subject
She could be if she wanted to.
[ He holds up a hand to preempt argument, tone gentle. ]
Not an accusation. I'm just establishing who has power here. They have a lot; we have a little. [ He has more than he's letting on. Takes one to know one, et cetera. ] But the folks who live here, the ones without tentacles? They've got none. Even the least of us is still a legend to them.
If you want an afterschool special takeaway, maybe have that one. We're worth more than we think.
[ He quirks that tired little smile. ]
So come on by if something locks up again. It gives me something to do.
no subject
[There is absolute surety in the words. Even though, in reality, there isn't any way to have that kind of certainty, not with the Pthumerians. But after what Cynthia had done for them, in the end? What she'd done to the one who truly wanted to hurt them?]
[He trusts her.] I just know ... she was part of the dream, before. She was on our side.
[Cynthia had been trapped. Just like the rest of them.]
I don't know if I want to be a legend. Helpful is fine with me. [We're worth more than we think - shouldn't that be his line?]
no subject
So I've heard. Still... I'll keep your vote of confidence in mind.
[ He does not intend to be a friend to Pthumerians, but Cynthia's story hits different. ]
Sure, sure. [ This rekindles the gentle smile like a candle flame. ] Legends leave a lot of people behind, don't they? Lot of casualties to any big journey. Helpful is more than enough.
no subject
[He can't believe she is. He can't believe Cynthia would be anything other than an ally. A neutral, at worst.]
[Leave a lot of people behind - He looks down. Looks away.]
We've had enough Sleeper casualties.
no subject
So here's to doing what we can for the folks still here.
[ He claps his hands on his thighs and stands, then offers Shiro a hand up. Without bite: ]
Which includes keeping all our limbs functional, generally.
no subject
Right.
[He'll take that hand, though.]
First time it's ever acted up, actually.
no subject
[ He squeezes Shiro's hand before he lets it go, a little handclasp like a much-delayed handshake of hello. They never quite got to introductions on the slaver boat, or crossing paths in Gaze, or crowded into a bathroom that does not— maybe never did— exist. ]
Thanks for letting me have a look at it.
[ It sounds very much like Thanks for letting me help. ]
no subject
Ah. You're welcome?
[He's not resisting the handshake though. Just baffled by it.]