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deercountry2022-03-02 10:45 pm
hearthebell) wrote in deercountry2022-03-02 10:45 pm
Entry tags:
Someone Kick Me Out of My Mind [L Lawliet, Open]
Who: Lazarus Sauveterre (L Lawliet) and YOU
What: Dreamwalking!
When: Following the events of Fated Leviathan, where most of the people he's on good terms with perished. He's playing the odds and trying to find a way, in dreams, it all could have turned out better, or at least with a lower death count.
Where: His body is technically in Cassandra, but for roughly the first week in March, your dreams are fair game. Either that or choose one of my starters, no harm no foul. I worked hard on them!
Content Warnings: Drug use to induce sleep, intentional evasion from detection while on sleep drugs. Various probable types of dream-violence and disturbing scenarios, including tiger attacks, environmental exposure, and nuclear detonation and fallout. If new prompts bring new content I'll update this.
[It was astonishing. It was visceral, and horrific, and then it was over. The carnage and receding waves were quiet enough, but there was a roaring in the ears of the survivors, or maybe it just sounded that way to the man who was perfect at his job in every way and still failed to keep those he tried to protect from death.
He leaves his things, taking only the clothes on his back and his anxiously bobbing orca whale omen with him when he starts off at a brisk pace toward Trench from the ruined aftermath of the beach's battle. He wants distance from it, and his steps take him to Cassandra, where he takes care to ensure that he's able to sneak into the Pale Sanctuary and conceal himself to swallow a fistful of herbs, and fall, and slumber and brace and dream in the way that he can take hold of the power he couldn't, there on the beach when the fighters were falling.
The tents are in their rows, the waves rear toward the sand. The players are arranged like chess pieces before him, and he can nudge Paul one way, Chara another, playing with Palamedes or Kaworu. They are just pieces, just pawns, but the arrangement could make all the difference, in the end.
The waves crash; the pawns die. L scrabbles in the sands of the dream, forgiving and elastic, rearranging them and bringing everyone back.]
Again!
[And there they are, back, affable and fierce in different measures. Yuri has made cake; Gideon is training by the waves.
More die, this time, including those that L saw alive and well when he left. Among them, a certain orange-haired and cheerful volleyball player is lying motionless and pale on the blood-stained sand.]
Again!
[This time, he moves his position. This time, many of the same die, and he does, as well, a casualty to shrapnel piercing through the tent.]
Again...
[And so it goes, for a hundred, a thousand iterations. L is tireless and determined, but some resource is waning, and his omen tugs at him, concerned for his sanity.]
No, Lycka, I...!
[She knows better, as she tends to in cases like these. Her jaws pull him by his jacket from his own dream into another, and this is where his fixations end, and something else entirely begins.
Who are you? What are your dreams like? If this Paleblooded, lost soul has chanced into your unconscious visions, what might he find, as his body languishes in Cassandra and his omen picks up the pieces of his fragmented mind?]
1. The Wild Jungle
[The air around you is heavy and humid. Unseen in the dense bush, the circle of life is rapid and repellent. Thrums and screeches announce the arrival of swift death, in various measures that one might or might not notice. A jaguar's kill, the soft extinguishment of a beetle, and they all weave themselves into the teeming tapestry that surrounds you in this quintessential rainforest.
You might be standing to fight, or running away. It doesn't matter, because a thin man with shaggy, dark hair who looks wide-eyed and younger than he should is beside you, closer than either of you want. He hands you a blunderbuss, an old weapon with a flared muzzle.]
The infrasound is what does it; the tiger is the voice darker than night.
[And, in fact, a growl chills and freezes you, splitting your chest asunder with a sound so low that your ears don't register it, but the atoms of your body react with cold, foreboding dread.]
2. The Stormy Desert
[A crack of thunder splits the sky above you before you've managed to recognize your dream's locale. You might hope for rain; so do the scorpions and long-tailed mice, the snakes in their dens and the cacti in their proud and stoic stature.
It won't rain. You can wish, and cry, and curse, but only the thunder will growl and thrash. The lightning may strike, so watch your head; stay low to the sand and find shelter if you can.
If you do, along the side of a cliff facing the west where the sun set rosy before the clouds rolled in, there is a young man with sunburned cheeks. His eyes are red, as though he's been staring at the sun, or it's been raining somewhere private and inward.]
I've been collecting scorpion venom. What for, I don't remember. But I have so much. What's the point of finding a cure when everyone is already dead?
3.The Grimy City
[The crowds are mostly faceless; when they aren't, they're grotesque, likely to sport the visages of rats or roaches rather than anything remotely humanlike. They actively shove you and trip you, doing their best to jostle you toward the entrance of a subway, and no matter how strong you are the impulse is incredibly difficult to resist.
You walk (or tumble) down the subway stairs. The tollbooth is manned by a young man with unruly dark hair, who seems determined to hear his headphones in spite of your desire to gather the attention of the one human-seeming creature in this dream.]
What? No, I can't hear you. Speak louder, please, I'm losing you!
4.The Nuclear Wasteland
[A brilliant flash lights the daytime sky; you might be blinded, or perhaps you had the good fortune to blink at the time. A roiling cloud rises in the sky, top-heavy and triumphant, blossoming into boiling and dusty vapor that will fall back to earth and condemn everything still living.
Perhaps you're staggering. Perhaps you're already feeling the fallout on your hair and shoulders. Perhaps you are sitting, forlorn and accepting, as the sirens blare and the screams fade. Regardless, someone has seized you bodily by your upper arms, hauling you into a shelter, spinning the vault's circular lock and wrapping you in a desperate embrace.]
I'm so glad. I thought you were lost... I thought I was the only one left.
[And he holds you, and holds you, with those frail and thin arms that clutch with the strength that only a dying or very guilty man might possess.]
V. Wildcard
[What did you dream about? If L is there, let me know and prompt this option to the moon and stars!]
What: Dreamwalking!
When: Following the events of Fated Leviathan, where most of the people he's on good terms with perished. He's playing the odds and trying to find a way, in dreams, it all could have turned out better, or at least with a lower death count.
Where: His body is technically in Cassandra, but for roughly the first week in March, your dreams are fair game. Either that or choose one of my starters, no harm no foul. I worked hard on them!
Content Warnings: Drug use to induce sleep, intentional evasion from detection while on sleep drugs. Various probable types of dream-violence and disturbing scenarios, including tiger attacks, environmental exposure, and nuclear detonation and fallout. If new prompts bring new content I'll update this.
[It was astonishing. It was visceral, and horrific, and then it was over. The carnage and receding waves were quiet enough, but there was a roaring in the ears of the survivors, or maybe it just sounded that way to the man who was perfect at his job in every way and still failed to keep those he tried to protect from death.
He leaves his things, taking only the clothes on his back and his anxiously bobbing orca whale omen with him when he starts off at a brisk pace toward Trench from the ruined aftermath of the beach's battle. He wants distance from it, and his steps take him to Cassandra, where he takes care to ensure that he's able to sneak into the Pale Sanctuary and conceal himself to swallow a fistful of herbs, and fall, and slumber and brace and dream in the way that he can take hold of the power he couldn't, there on the beach when the fighters were falling.
The tents are in their rows, the waves rear toward the sand. The players are arranged like chess pieces before him, and he can nudge Paul one way, Chara another, playing with Palamedes or Kaworu. They are just pieces, just pawns, but the arrangement could make all the difference, in the end.
The waves crash; the pawns die. L scrabbles in the sands of the dream, forgiving and elastic, rearranging them and bringing everyone back.]
Again!
[And there they are, back, affable and fierce in different measures. Yuri has made cake; Gideon is training by the waves.
More die, this time, including those that L saw alive and well when he left. Among them, a certain orange-haired and cheerful volleyball player is lying motionless and pale on the blood-stained sand.]
Again!
[This time, he moves his position. This time, many of the same die, and he does, as well, a casualty to shrapnel piercing through the tent.]
Again...
[And so it goes, for a hundred, a thousand iterations. L is tireless and determined, but some resource is waning, and his omen tugs at him, concerned for his sanity.]
No, Lycka, I...!
[She knows better, as she tends to in cases like these. Her jaws pull him by his jacket from his own dream into another, and this is where his fixations end, and something else entirely begins.
Who are you? What are your dreams like? If this Paleblooded, lost soul has chanced into your unconscious visions, what might he find, as his body languishes in Cassandra and his omen picks up the pieces of his fragmented mind?]
1. The Wild Jungle
[The air around you is heavy and humid. Unseen in the dense bush, the circle of life is rapid and repellent. Thrums and screeches announce the arrival of swift death, in various measures that one might or might not notice. A jaguar's kill, the soft extinguishment of a beetle, and they all weave themselves into the teeming tapestry that surrounds you in this quintessential rainforest.
You might be standing to fight, or running away. It doesn't matter, because a thin man with shaggy, dark hair who looks wide-eyed and younger than he should is beside you, closer than either of you want. He hands you a blunderbuss, an old weapon with a flared muzzle.]
The infrasound is what does it; the tiger is the voice darker than night.
[And, in fact, a growl chills and freezes you, splitting your chest asunder with a sound so low that your ears don't register it, but the atoms of your body react with cold, foreboding dread.]
2. The Stormy Desert
[A crack of thunder splits the sky above you before you've managed to recognize your dream's locale. You might hope for rain; so do the scorpions and long-tailed mice, the snakes in their dens and the cacti in their proud and stoic stature.
It won't rain. You can wish, and cry, and curse, but only the thunder will growl and thrash. The lightning may strike, so watch your head; stay low to the sand and find shelter if you can.
If you do, along the side of a cliff facing the west where the sun set rosy before the clouds rolled in, there is a young man with sunburned cheeks. His eyes are red, as though he's been staring at the sun, or it's been raining somewhere private and inward.]
I've been collecting scorpion venom. What for, I don't remember. But I have so much. What's the point of finding a cure when everyone is already dead?
3.The Grimy City
[The crowds are mostly faceless; when they aren't, they're grotesque, likely to sport the visages of rats or roaches rather than anything remotely humanlike. They actively shove you and trip you, doing their best to jostle you toward the entrance of a subway, and no matter how strong you are the impulse is incredibly difficult to resist.
You walk (or tumble) down the subway stairs. The tollbooth is manned by a young man with unruly dark hair, who seems determined to hear his headphones in spite of your desire to gather the attention of the one human-seeming creature in this dream.]
What? No, I can't hear you. Speak louder, please, I'm losing you!
4.The Nuclear Wasteland
[A brilliant flash lights the daytime sky; you might be blinded, or perhaps you had the good fortune to blink at the time. A roiling cloud rises in the sky, top-heavy and triumphant, blossoming into boiling and dusty vapor that will fall back to earth and condemn everything still living.
Perhaps you're staggering. Perhaps you're already feeling the fallout on your hair and shoulders. Perhaps you are sitting, forlorn and accepting, as the sirens blare and the screams fade. Regardless, someone has seized you bodily by your upper arms, hauling you into a shelter, spinning the vault's circular lock and wrapping you in a desperate embrace.]
I'm so glad. I thought you were lost... I thought I was the only one left.
[And he holds you, and holds you, with those frail and thin arms that clutch with the strength that only a dying or very guilty man might possess.]
V. Wildcard
[What did you dream about? If L is there, let me know and prompt this option to the moon and stars!]
cw: mention of a suicide cult
For a moment, he does think that he'll be murdered. Knowing what
Godis capable of, how he could surely unravel a molecule just as easily as mend it, he doesn't even tense. There's just a sudden rush of endorphins and a strange descending haze of preternatural calm. It's what happens to people in accidents, or rabbits ripped open by foxes. It is, in short, the body saying release your burden, because hope has already fled with it.He tries to overcome it with will alone.
God'stouch is both hateful and sorely craved, and the paradox fidgets in the back of his mind as hair is smoothed away from a damp and ugly face, that not even a mother could love, in the end.He closes his hands as the black-eyed man takes them, so they will tremble less noticeably. Loose fists at the end of scrawny wrists, half-hearted and conflicted symbols of resistance. They're just as easy to interpret as the Emperor's awful not-smile.
On the cusp of Heaven's Gate, did Applewhite wear that same smile? L reevaluates, regroups, and arranges his sharp and pale features into his closest facsimile of foreboding concern.]
It's human nature to strive... and to fight, when there's a better way.
[I'll fight you.]
Let me try, while we're resting. If I don't find what I'm looking for... I'll trust you.
[I'll let you.]
Like... Paul trusts you.
[He does trust you, in some way, though he might not choose that word.]
Is he out there, right now, with something you're owed?
[This is like defusing a bomb, he thinks. Maybe one like the one they fled; maybe one worse.]
no subject
God says: ]
Alright. Yeah, alright.
[ Then Lazarus says Paul, and his expression sharpens into alarm. He turns back to the bunker door as though he can see through it to the dead and dying city beyond. ]
He's out there. [ This he says slowly, as though deciding it as he goes. ] He'll be alright. We'll go and find him. If he's with me, he'll be alright.
no subject
The Emperor withdrawing is painful in the way reversing an entry wound is painful; one might not even feel the blade going in, but they certainly feel it being removed, once the weight of its meaning starts to sink in.
Paul is susceptible to this, too. Paul is a fish in a barrel, for this...]
He'll be alright.
[He affirms, in a voice stronger than he feels or looks.]
Sit. This is the rest, that you proposed, while I use my way to get us out. Paul's clever, and subject to prophecies; my guess is that he knew about the detonation already, and if you know him as well as I do, you also surmised that.
[He picks up another water bottle, for there's no shortage.]
Can you rinse your hair, or shall I do it? The radiation will be strongest right now, and decrease, but the faster you can get it away from your skin and scalp, the better.
no subject
He relents. He picks up the water bottles, the two he'd refused. ]
If I can't manage showering, we're really in trouble.
[ It's the first thing he's said that hasn't sounded shellshocked or dire. It's the first thing he's said that's almost more wry than desperate. There is still a deep, cracked pain here, just at the edge of spilling over: but Lazarus is treated to the sight of God scraping himself back together.
He turns away again. He uncaps a water bottle. Here in the concrete bunker— details blank at the edges, nothing really real to it but the impression of dead grey walls— he conducts his own horrible baptism, scrubbing fallout from his hair.
(It stays gone, this time.) ]
no subject
We both know that this is no indicator of what you can typically manage... and there's no shame in asking for assistance.
[L is a man conditioned, above all, to put together pictures that are in some way ruined or incomplete. The Emperor is just another one of those, clearly faltering, and he has no reason to strike.
If he did, this would be a different story, very much so. Instead, he reaches out his thin hands. Either to scrub, or to take the bottles, whichever John will permit.]
Botecelli... ribosome. Gentle medley... crepuscule.
[The words are spoken lower than a whisper, but true to his word, he's doing his part, figuring out the puzzle of the bunker so they can leave safely.]
no subject
[ He breathes it like a laugh, like a curse. He stares at the fallout and the drain. God stays like that, watching poisoned water collect and drip away, until Lazarus reaches out to comb skinny fingers through his short and holy hair. He shuts his eyes and allows it; he submits.
When Lazarus lifts his hands away to continue his puzzle-solving, God draws back to gather himself. He wipes water out of his eyes, and even rinses his hands with a splash from the bottles: rote, mechanical. He scrubs his fingers through each other and then is left staring at his own wet palms.
Lazarus has never seen him this way, but he cannot presently remember why that should matter. They are here under the shadow of the bomb; Lazarus is his, just as Paul is his; (this isn't how—) it almost makes sense. This vulnerability stretches bare and uninterrupted. He says, in a murmur: ]
I establish my covenant with you... So much for that.
no subject
The all have labels, unrelated to their contents, and there's some anagram, some cipher, some secret here, not unlike his absurd methods for navigating the archives that Palamedes had found utterly ridiculous, while being unable to deny the effectiveness.
Sometimes, intuition just defies logic. It's a paradox for a person to be adept in both, but L inhabits a lot of paradoxes just be existing. When he's satisfied that the particles are washed out of
God'shair, he withdraws a gentle and comforting touch that doesn't quite seem to fit someone so emotionally distant and at-odds with other humans.A cipher, he decides, noticing a new way the boxes fit together and read in a way that makes sense to a mind either very shrewd and clever, or one that's quite mad, or maybe just a dash of both... but he can't help but turn back to Tisketkenchak-Folgraboto at his murmured words.]
You seem to take your covenants seriously, and I can respect that, but unless you caused that detonation, this one's not on you. You've broken nothing, forfeited nothing, and nullified... nothing.
[He thinks it might be a time he can pry for more information. Red wire, green wire. Should he risk it?
Who is he? Who has he become if he fails to nudge and prod just a little further than most people would? Dead, maybe, if he manages to wake a dragon, but if he fails to wake up from this dream within the next couple of days, he's that, anyway.]
I don't suppose you've failed before, in a situation like this one.
1/2
Then Lazarus says unless you caused that detonation, and John looks at him.
John just looks at him.
His crown is gone. His hair is wet and rumpled by gentle hands. For the barest moment, there is nothing in him but the great heaving grief of that first embrace— the clenched desperation of a dying or very guilty man— for the barest moment, his eyes are yellow.
Then he rises (had he been sitting?) and he is taller than he ought to be. He is somehow more. The bunker is less real than his body, and his body is less real than his black-hole eyes. The universe bends around the gravity of God.
He says: ]
There won't be a lot of rainbows from here on out, mate.
2/2
His crown is back. But this time it's a laurel wreath of iridescent leaves, twined with delicate, bleached-clean baby's bones.
God says: ]
I'm up one-oh on apocalypses, actually. But we all have bad dreams.
no subject
Don't...!
[The bunker is gone, dissolved like a communion wafer in wine, and L's dread is at a higher and tenser peak than it's yet been in all his wanderings. He's well and truly off the map, now, separated from his omen and cut off from his sleeping body. If he was gradually getting closer to his home dream, someone has spun his boat around in a storm, left him to wait anxiously for the next clear night to reorient himself with the stars so he can at least determine the direction he should be heading.
The facility has no stars, no boat, no numbers or patterns. This is not for him, and therefore, it's more of a prison than any bunker or jungle or hostile city.
He's seen the Emperor's crown before, he thinks, his mind whirring along. It's louder, like a computer that's overheating but continuing operations, as it must, and so it does. He's just seen it in pieces, excavated and bagged and numbered. Evidence, of what strong things do to weak things, sometimes.
The precedent, it seems, is set. So is L's jaw. Dirty beaten shoes scuff and squeak against the cold, hard floor; he's never in his life expected rainbows, learning in fact to appreciate the rain, but a window, something, would be even more appreciated at this juncture.
There's one thing, always, that L considers most-appreciated. It's just the truth, a confirmation, knowing that he was right. Everything else, he thinks he can live with... or, on at least one notable all-in occasion, die with.]
Then it's happened, for you. "The End." Or... at least, it's happened for others.
[And in L's strange clash of features, his large gray eyes hold a question that teeters on the brink of an accusation.
Is your guilt a survivor's, or an instigator's?]
no subject
But God is lucid, now; he knows what path he's walking. This kid is not one of his. This kid is a remarkably ballsy, remarkably curious, genuinely brilliant nobody—
—except to Paul. To Paul he is someone, and so God checks his anger. He exhales through his nose. ]
Bit of both, really. We all went down in flames... I just have a talent for getting up again.
[ There is no more guilt in his face or posture; he does not look young anymore. He does not look much like a man at all. The leaves in his hair shiver with a constant, impossible breeze, as though those children's bones are forever slowly flexing. ]
To what do I owe the pleasure?
[ Read as: You trespass. ]
no subject
Quite a talent.
[One he shares. He doesn't say so; he shouldn't need to, for it to be true. Mentally, he divides the room into a grid, trying to make sense of the black-eyed man's features, in fearsome, foreboding motion even when he's standing still.]
You jumped the gun. My way was working.
[And then you stopped me, because I struck a nerve.]
You owe me another door, for the one you took away. Produce it.
[Worth the lip, probably, to see if he can. A paleblood can mold and influence a dream, reading secret meaning into its turns and bends; who is more powerful, here?]
no subject
[ He is genuinely impressed at the nerve! You have to give the kid that. God's tone is neatly polite, a thin skin of stillness over some great and building tension. ]
Did you come around just for a look at the scenery?
[ This is his third time meeting Paul's friend. With each, he has noticed the tenacity, the frankly unhinged pursuit of knowledge— like a boy wedging his fingers through the cracks to some dark cave, prodding for secrets, heedless of the bear that lives inside.
Sometimes his metaphors could use some work. It's a fun little distraction from cataloguing all he might have given away, and what a pain it'll be to manage. He is trying to keep a leash on the feeling that he has been spied upon; strung along through false intimacies; that he might, in fact, be pretty mad about it. ]
no subject
The scenery.
[His features don't shift much with the words, but his tone certainly does. Just a twist sour; a bit of a sneer.
Maybe it's enough to mask the fact that L fully grasps that the true "scenery" is hardly so many showerheads. He'll have his own cataloguing to do, regarding what he's learned here, and what he might yet so long as his nerve endures.]
Some craters have good reputations, for scenery. The Grand Canyon, for one... but not being partial to dry heat, I wouldn't go there on purpose. Not without an exit strategy.
[Where's the door to your crater, Tisketkenchak?]
Foolish thing to do, really.
[Does "all going down in flames" count as "dry heat", Tisketkenchak?]
no subject
Echoed back at him, it sounds like: your scenery. Your wasteland, your horror, this ruin you've made and hidden.
God is unmoved. ]
If you want to see the crater, I'm happy to give you a tour. [ Watch it. ] So, what: you just came for a quick poke around, to see what you could see? Maybe figured we'd have better weather?
[ If this is a whim of Trench, he wants to hear it admitted aloud. If this is something Lazarus can do, a secret weapon, a way to pry: well, he'd like to hear that admitted, too. They can have a chat about it. ]
no subject
How much he likes flaws and fallacies is, on any given day, roughly equivalent to how much he likes existing. In other words, it's somewhat variable, depending on whether inner drive or inner darkness happens to be winning that day.
They can feel the same to a hungry orphan heart, as riddled with cavities as sugar-sore teeth.]
Hm.
[Whatever a suspect offers, whether it's information or a service or some sort of demonstration, should probably be disregarded, or at least taken with a crushing boulder of salt. L's rejected it before on those grounds... but in this case, his curiosity wins out, pulling at him, bargaining that he's the Paleblood and has a gift for control over keeping dreams in check.
He decides to keep with the banter, toeing the line, seeing what he can prod and push into showing itself while still hedging his most risky bets.]
I came to see what the overfed and oblivious tourists overlook, of course. One misses things, when one's posing for that perfect family photo on a ledge.
[The obligatory jab, before he adds]
I’m trying to make it back to my home dream. We’re here because you interrupted my process; this is off the map. I don’t suppose there’s a gift shop with a selection of maps.
no subject
He really shouldn't let them meet. Good to know that, now. ]
So I'm not even the destination... just a pit stop along the way. Wrong turn, in this case.
[ It's getting less cute, the kid's insistence that God is inconveniencing him by being too thoroughly trespassed upon. This room is sacred, showerheads and all: this place is the cradle of a civilization. It shouldn't get trampled through for a gift shop. ]
It's polite to give a guy a heads-up before you drop in for a visit, you know.
no subject
Though L's pale, somewhat blank features can have a difficult time affecting emotions and expressions, "bewildered" is all wide eyes and raised brows. He can manage it just fine.]
You're not disappointed, are you?
[It's flattering that a burglar would target one's vault. It's even sort of an honor to be the object of an attempted murder, especially one of passion, because who would try to kill one if they didn't really care, if they weren't really fired up and incensed and obsessed with their rage and their snarling, spiteful affection?
He won't give Tisketkenchak-Folgraboto that. Earning that should be more difficult.
He cants his head, stretches his already-round eyes as wide as they can go. He affects a parody of the child Tisketkenchak-Folgraboto thinks of him as.]
I can be so polite when I try. May I please have the time, in this...
[Crater. This grotesque, nasty, sterile-but-stained place]
...vicinity... to show myself out? It might take longer. I might need more, than I had, if you had not interrupted my process and my extremely vital solution.
[He has a nice voice, smooth and soothing and dark, when he wants to make it that way. It drips with poisoned honey now, a put-upon effort to adhere to tedious rules of etiquette that he could give less than a shit about, but abides because others are stupid enough to care.]
no subject
For a minute there I felt a little important.
[ This is a hilarious joke, and they both know it. The magic of Deer Country is too unknown to him, too unreliable; he will not take his chances. He says, pleasantly: ]
Take your time, then. But show some respect. I am the final guardian of this place... even its memory. [ His smile is sharp and cold; his crown of children's bones is still flexing, a slow constant writhe. ] Especially its memory. Try not to break anything.
[ He turns, then, to that door blazed up and down with hazard striping. It opens for him because it always has; because he knows it will. Beyond is a hallway in the same stark metal and fluorescents, with darkened doorways beyond. ]
no subject
Because he was kicked from his own dream so suddenly, however necessary his removal, it has resulted in scrambling to recover nearly constantly with every dream he's since entered. This might as well be a primer for how not to dreamwalk safely, one he'll learn from, but for now, he's still very vulnerable, and figuratively stumbling or hitting his shins from one jump to the next is just the least of it.
He's afraid of any dreamer he drops in on waking up. Some experienced dreamwalkers can probably time their own waking to coincide with the warning signals, but this is L's first journey of this punishing length and intensity. Nearly a full week into his wandering, his body in the waking world is overtaxed, along with a mind that has been running constantly in REM and shredding him in other ways.
If the Emperor woke suddenly and stranded him here until the next time he dreamed, it would be bad for him and prolong something already straining his limits. But the Emperor could be considering this, too, and if he is... he realizes that it wouldn't exactly work in his favor either. Desperate people can do a lot of damage in a tight space with precious things on full display. Desperate people like L can accomplish it triple-fold, at least.]
I see.
[King of Somewhere, and somewhere includes here. It is a memory, so may or may not exist anymore, but he wants it unbroken.]
It's a deal, Tisketkenchak-Folgraboto.
[And a challenge. He wouldn't have thought of this himself, so the things that he can usually rely on will require some heavy improvising, at least. Exhausted as he is, the notion of that kind of challenge gets his blood going, like it always does, like nothing else in the universe can.
He believes that he is intended to follow. He does, though that hazard striping gives him pause. He's bold, not suicidal, and off the map he has no choice but to trust Paul's "Captain."
Still better than anyone's "God."]
You should know that any help you can give me will only allow me to move on faster.
[It's his way of incentivizing the self-serving ask: what am I looking at, sans welcome mats or convenient signage?]
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They aren't really in these halls, anyway. Not really.
He leads them to a crossroads, a set of labeled laboratory doors. Before them is Transference/Winnowing; before them is Diversion. Procedural Chamber. Avulsion! There are other, easier options: he could set them before the psychometry trial, which is toothless enough, if unsolvable. He could let his trespasser roam around chambers that won't likely kill him, and see what he can invent to fill the empty spaces— see how he can bastardize the puzzle into something he might solve. Or he could be a dick and let him walk into an accelerated senescence field.
He chooses a middle road. God leads them into the Transference trial; it's a fun one. It's a classic. And maybe it would do his young friend some good to see what a necromantic construct can look like. ]
This is a puzzle. I helped build it.
[ Two chambers stand before them: Response and Imaging. The door between them is neatly shut. The plinth stands peacefully inert, but ready to wake. ]
Go ahead and see what you can do with it.
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A nuisance, indeed.
Closer in the dim light, signage does indeed seem to exist, and L drinks in the letters and labels. Whatever he sees here, he will not just remember, he will memorize rapidly.
Transference?
If
Godwas going to kill him, he thinks, he would have done it already. There's a reason he hasn't; there's a reason he has chosen this room. The high stakes have his heart beating faster, his cheeks a little more flushed than their typical ashen pallor. He's enchanted, fully, with what he doesn't know and its endless possibilities. He's taken with what he's being given permission to break, eliminating all those possibilities to just one, pristine and golden.A pretty truth to stare at until it starts to bore him, and he needs another, prettier, bigger one to quiet the craving.
If he doesn't live to be bored by the secret, it will mean that it killed him, and there's enchantment to that, too. Not many men can boast that their deaths were considered and chosen just for them.
He rolls his hunched shoulders. Several somethings pop loudly in the dark.]
I have a 50% chance of knowing where I'm meant to go, so...
[No, it's not just that. This is a dream. He's a paleblood, and he can know things that would be hidden to others. He murmurs something in his strange but very useful learned language, a focus for his discernment abilities; the sentiment is finding what is hidden, returning it as though it always belonged to him.]
Kala nedakana shan, dajenet meskares tisketketvis. Piskalet sheffoles nekahr; vantalet visanthranosk. Dajenet! Piskalet!
[Imaging glows gold around the edges.]
I'm meant to be in Imaging,
[He says, unnecessarily.]
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John would kill him for it. It would be too crude. God does not have a cavalier, and if he did, it would not be this slouching and sneering young man. Even here, where none of it matters, he is terrified at the idea of overwriting her.
But Imaging lights up, and the tension drops from God's face and shoulders. He says, mildly: ]
Knock yourself out, then.
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God'sworld, he probably would have been born a necromancer.He might have had a shot at Lyctorhood, certainly the talent for it, but he has such a desire to tamper with things safer left idle. Just as likely that he'd meet a nasty end, possibly at the hands of someone he knew better than to trust, but found it too exciting to resist.
He steps toward the door without hesitating or rushing; in the dream, it opens for him easily. Once through, though, he can hear sounds, haunting and alien, but familiar. It sounds like it's coming from inside the chamber.]
My Omen...
[An orca whale matriarch, Lycka is his better nature, his guardian, his sense of self-preservation and hope gathered up in its disparate cracked pieces and bundled externally.
In other words, here? She's his cavalier.
He approaches the plinth, listening for the source of the clicks and keens, trying to locate her within the chamber.]
She's in Response... It's a partnered activity, then.
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John has decided he doesn't like it much. Call that his pronouncement of the day: here, drowned in memory and a half-step from drowning in emotion, he doesn't like this kid much.
An unkind thought for God to have, but his friend seems suicidally intent on not treating him as God. ]
Got it in one.
[ His Omen as cavalier. Of course that's a local law like gravity; of course that's how it works. This is John's dream. He knows who he holds in his heart as a horrible insectoid thrum of power. Trench has never been subtle, not once.
He is already so horribly tired of this: he gives a hint. ]
What can you see?
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