unsheathedfromreality: (that i have made)
Illarion Albireo ([personal profile] unsheathedfromreality) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-03-02 01:14 am

Real & Half-Real: Prologue | closed to Sayo

Who: Illarion Albireo and Sayo Yasuda
What: Attempting to heist their way out of the horse plinko dimension. It doesn't exactly work.
When: ~Feb 25 - early March
Where: Illarion's pocket dimension time-out corner
cw: Wartime imagery, potentially gore, potentially trauma, eventual murder.

Somewhere, Illarion is written out of reality.

In another place, he is written back into it, and someone else with him. He's much as he left--corrupted, soaked, a feathered horror in gold and fuligin and dawn-pink--though by the time he's staggered a step and gone to a knee the eyes and eyes and feathers are gone to leave behind the much-diminished elf. Complete dislocation from the icy shallows (the shattering grief) of the Pthumerian Sea hits him with all the crushing weight of shock, eradicating thought, eradicating feeling. They are not where they had been.

Some slow instinct finally stirs him to determine where they are. He tips his head back and stares at a sky he can't see. One moon's setting, another's rising, and the planetary ring that braids between them catches the light of the distant sun. The stars are too close, too blue, the largest of them haloed in ephemeral lines of force. A thin high spire of a mountain rises somewhere behind him, its base lapped by the shallow waves of a warm sea. Something about it demands attention; something about it speaks significance.

Noise begins to filter through. The omnipresent rattle of gunfire and the screams of men and horses rend the evening air, too much and too close.

It isn't these he recognizes--he can't--but a feeling beneath his breastbone, a glow of reciprocated devotion that's turned to magic. It is a miracle that should have died with his dead Prince.

It is the potency to protect through more ways than violence. He blinks once, thought restarting, and turns toward Sayo. "Are you injured?"
forwantofahorse: (Default)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-03-04 03:39 am (UTC)(link)
[The person lying next to Illarion, theatrically groaning with pain, is not the Sayo Yasuda he knows.

She's slightly taller, first off. Her hair is swept up in a painfully complex bun of spun gold, her eyes are a piercing blue, and her facial features have subtly shifted toward something more... Italian. And none of that's mentioning the formal dress she's been shoved into. (Or the fact that she has actual breasts and they are both substantial.)

After all, when you isolate Shannon away from the rest of the soul and cut away Kanon... only Beatrice remains. At least in theory.

Muttering, Beatrice sways to her feet, then almost immediately loses her balance since Sayo is not used to being so top-heavy.]


I'm fine, I'm fine.

What in the blazes...
forwantofahorse: (Shouting)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-03-04 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)
The fact that you're asking leads me to believe that the number won't be what I'm expecting, [Sayo says, droll, as she stares up at the sky. She feels... detached, both physically and mentally. Like she's floating in a violet abyss rather than standing on questionably material ground.

(Pay no attention to how she's feeling herself up with one hand, Illarion. Let Sayo have this.)]


Two. And a planetary ring. I'd ask if this is what the rest of the Waking World is like, but your words belie a certain... familiarity, so I assume that we're somewhere else.

My question is how did this even HAPPEN?! I lost track of you for two minutes and suddenly we're dragged into... wherever this is? Ugh. [Sayo huffs, pouting in an unconscious Beatrice-ism.]
forwantofahorse: (Laughing)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-03-07 12:01 am (UTC)(link)
Believe me, I'm familiar with the principle! I'm less an expert and more a guru. [Sayo awkwardly hikes Beatrice's dress up and begins half-jogging, half-stumbling across the battlefield as she scrambles to hide behind the nearest convenient boulder or something similar. For once, the dress didn't make her feel awful wearing it, but that was vastly outweighed by its bulk having the potential to actually kill her while she's in such a dangerous situation.] Although given your apparent breadth of experience, perhaps even you've got me beat, kyahaha!

[Leaning against the back of the cover, Sayo takes great, heaving breaths for a number of reasons as she desperately reaches out to catch her breath.] I admit... you struck me more as the type come from more of a straight fantasy world. I hardly expected automatic rifles and grenades in place of bows and magic fireballs. [She wiggles her fingers for emphasis.]
forwantofahorse: (Nervous)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-03-09 07:05 pm (UTC)(link)
[The warped architecture and strange landscape are delightfully alien to (Sayo? Beatrice? SAYO Beatrice? "Sayo" will work for now), satisfying her lust for fantasy that Trench, with its drearily familiar gothic stylings that reminded her too much of Rokkenjima, couldn't sate. She'd stop to admire the scenery, maybe sketch some of it into her grimoire, but alas being shot at takes priority over tourism.

*cackle*cackle*cackle*]
Looks like both of us are no match for the millennium of experience the Golden Witch has to screwing everything up for herself! Although given that I've apparently taken her form, perhaps I should be the one owning up to her myriad mistakes, hmmm?

So war outgrew bows, yet you still tear apart Beasts with your bare claws and knives? My, my. [Sayo grimaces at Illarion's question, shaking her head.] I haven't made much use of Baphomet, but... I can't reach her either. While in isolation I'd believe it the fault of the master, it may be an ill omen.

Er. Not like the familiar, but, um... [She gestures awkwardly.] You know!
forwantofahorse: (Default)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-03-12 09:23 am (UTC)(link)
[The roar of gunfire, the smell of blood—no matter how esoteric the color—was... disquietingly familiar, no, disquietingly comforting. This was Beatrice's element, where she was most powerful. In some numb, human corner of her mind, Sayo shivers are how detached she feels to all the violence with so many pieces of her soul splintered off; it's easy to see how "Beatrice" reached such heights of cruelty- no, that wasn't real. Or was it? She's losing track.

She laughs again, although it's far less cackle-y and far more resigned.]
I'm worried I'm not doing much better, Forneus... And alas, I'm afraid it's not as simple as that.

...but I can give in the old Golden Land try anyways. Come, come, try to remember... what form did you have? Surely it was that of a guardian, a protector, a home for the defenseless...

[Concentrate. Beatrice still didn't have much power to her name—most of it was claimed by her successor, Eva (where did that thought come from?). Yet she was still a witch, tenuous as her hold was, and the illusion she wove around those six locked rooms that gave rise to the first mystery of the game remained unpierced. Not total belief, but a foothold.

A few golden butterflies flit away from her outstretched hand, and the cover they're hiding behind grows to further conceal them... although the added ramparts are about as substantial as paper. At least the enemy(?) can't see where they are.

Normally, Sayo would be ecstatic at this display of real magic, but between taking the red with Alisaie and the snug mantle of Beatrice, it's less impressive to her than it is worrisome that the illusion won't provide substantial protection if anyone looks too closely.]


That should give us some breathing room, at least.

...do you still breathe, come to think of it?
forwantofahorse: (Default)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-03-23 06:29 pm (UTC)(link)
[The brief flash of almost awe from Forneus doesn't escape Sayo's notice. It looks almost like what Sayo felt when she saw Battler for the first time after six years: a miracle that she had long convinced herself had never come, only to return to her with a smile that left a dagger in her heart. For a moment, she's tempted to ask what he "saw" in her magic that evoked an emotion like that... but they have fare more urgent priorities at the moment.

Beatrice's gameboard had three rules that defined it: X (different accomplices each time), Y (whatever all present and alive in a scene agree is the truth is depicted as such, non-accomplices only see the golden butterflies up to thirty minutes before their deaths), and Z (someone, please, solve the epitaph and stop her). The three pillars of her mystery that held up the world above, no matter how much it shook under the weight of her grief.

But there's no debate to be had on this twisted reflection of Forneus's home; no asinine red-headed wannabe detective to say this is really a mystery.]


...this place is fantasy. Magic is real. [She laughs airily.] Never thought I'd be able to say that in red.

To be quite honest, I've never put in much thought as to Beatrice's system of magic in an uncontested fantasy. That was more Maria's area of expertise.

Yet... [She slides down the wall, cupping her chin.] Part of the epitaph was completed, and its mystery was never pierced. So I, "Beatrice," can be proven to exist and have some degree of magic independently. But proving that tiny sliver of magic is nothing compared in a world that doesn't even know of my legend. Beatrice might "exist," but Beatrice doesn't exist here. All I have are parlor tricks.

[She snorts.] Normally, that would be more accurate than you'd think... but today, it is in fact just me.