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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!]
cws continue; Throne-space is grody
There is an overwhelming, smothering sense of Presence in the writhing dark--the feeling of sharing a room with another being hideously magnified a hundred thousand times. Except what is Present, what Speaks, is so far beyond personhood as L understands it that no conversation is possible. Will I die if I don't? he asks, and the writhing swarm beneath his feet, the Song that calls to the brainstem, the Presence that perfuses them all answer: All will kill. All will die.
An instance of the red-haired man erupts in L's path, corona-in-oilslick eyes rolling in his head, mouth working--HELP ME--before he's torn to pieces again. Dunes and hillocks of writhing bodies heave around him, throwing up great rows of tombstones, tumescent piles of skulls.
Distantly, the one other person here--the fractional person--the beacon leading L through the red-washed blackness hears him speak and stops. She turns back (it is all she can do; she cannot walk back against the call of the Throne) and holds her feathered arms wide, awaiting his approach. (Nothing hinders him yet except the sucking shifting devouring sink of substrate beneath his feet; the chitin is sharp, it may pierce, but they do not turn on him yet.
Not yet.)
She will embrace him as he reaches her, and cup taloned hands over his too-small shell-like ears. don't listen. she expresses. walk.
Behind her, unnoticed--her small capacity for attention is fixed on him--the floor undulates, insects draining away like the ominous outgoing tide before a killing wave.
Something looms in the distance, texture more than shadow in the dark, arching high and starred with blood-red pinprick stars of consumption.]
no subject
There's a kind of comfort to the repetition of the locusts. There's a kind of comfort to knowing that one is right, and feeling it in one's bones (or exoskeleton). The certainty, and the peace of acceptance to follow, and for a moment his steps start to falter.
He might even take a moment to kneel on the teeming ground, but the sudden eruption of the red-haired man sends him reeling back, compensating with his balance in the other direction entirely. His hands curl against his chest in shock and revulsion; he doesn't reach out to help, and by the time it occurs to him, the man has already vanished.
It takes real willpower to move forward, but acceptance quails in the face of that kind of pain and death. He treads gently and with no small amount of trepidation towards Iskierka's open arms, because certainty, now, is probably the only thing that can get them through, or at least pretty staunch confidence. Perhaps the fact that she is merely a part of something whole allows her to guide with as much, and he allows the embrace, resting his head against shoulder, or carapace.
He doesn't listen. He wears her like a pair of earmuffs, and walks. He keeps his eyes wide open; as unpleasant as the sights and the skulls and the tombstones are, amid writhing masses of endless deadly consumption, the sound of that voice is so much worse. The sight allows him to keep walking, in fact motivates him to walk even faster so that more locusts are behind him post-haste.
He feels that something is changing behind him, and starts to turn to look... but the horizon before him demands his attention. His breath catches, and those stars stand out vibrant red in the liquid dark of his eyes.]
Omen?
[He's never been told Iskierka's name, and it feels wrong to use Lycka's, even if it comes the most naturally to him.]
no subject
For red reflected stars in his eyes. Omen? he asks, and she cranes her too-long neck back to regard what comes for them in an inverted angle. She considers what she is seeing for almost too long, as it crests and foams and begins to break.
Then all around them is feather and mothscale and filament as her wings erupt, more than she should have, and she clutches him to her chest in an infolding gesture like closing a luminous cocoon.
A drowning wave of insects falls on them with both force and malice behind it. The pale thin aegis of feather protects against both crushing and submersion, buoying them up--but now the locusts begin to chew.]
no subject
The locusts roil underfoot, but do not trip him. This much, he can do; this much is going well, better, in fact, than much of this fraught dreamwalking experiment has.
Red-flecked, though, he stares, and starts to falter. Red-flecked, his eyes don't immediately go to Iskierka as she reacts; they're fixed forward, instead, in the direction she too is looking. He snaps out of it and starts looking for a way to save them, some pattern to cling to and use, but she's faster, cocooning and sheltering his scrawny body.
There's are sounds of protests, almost wordless, almost without language entirely, and L realizes after a second that he's the one making them.]
Omen!
[A word, at least, and he can hear the sound of mandibles snipping and pulping grotesquely far too close to his ears.]
Omen...
[This time it sounds vaguely like begging, and it's not for Iskierka to give more than she already has. He's calling what's lost, and sorely needed. She's coming? He thinks he can feel Lycka coming, but maybe it's the delusion of hope after all the exhaustion and fear and doubt.]
cw: character death by insect
Omen... L calls, not to her but his own, yet she hears, and she hears. The locusts will chew through her ragged wings in a second more, and she will not let them. Thin-fingered insect-jointed arms wrap around L and Iskierka warps, Iskierka grows into something vast and feathered and unbearably bright in the dark.
The locusts still chew, but they must now chew through massed feather and skin and muscle and bone and eyes and
eyesthick as three men, to get at the precious burden she holds cradled against the down of her chest. A basso warble rumbles from her fanged maw; it does not deter their attackers, but perhaps some deep fundamental note carries to the lost part of L's soul, braided with the detective's own call. help. come.Somewhere that is not Trench--that is not anywhere at all, for Throne-space is space out of space and time out of time even when it is not wrapped into a self-singular bubble made out of one man's stories--Illarion staggers and falls beneath another tide of insects.
They feast.]
cw: character death by insect
Iskierka still has something she can do, and as he curls more tightly in her wings and the chewing gets louder, she does it, increasing in mass and turning a lettuce leaf into a banquet for the ravenous locusts. Iskierka's call thrums through his chest, and something else connects there, rushing, charging. Lycka breaks through whatever barrier had separated them before, nudging unsqueamishly through Iskierka's tattered remains and retrieving her dreamer.
He clings, and doesn't stop clinging.]
no subject
Then from glitter and milk-white traces of torn pneuma, Iskierka reforms in her accustomed shape. Nothing comes with her--a profound and echoing nothing, a transmission cut short. Her Sleeper is nothing, experiencing nothing, and for a moment she is here by herself.
She drifts to L and Lycka on feather-and-scale wings, not bothering to beat them, and bumps gently into the pair to ascertain their reality.
safe. she expresses to them both; the lift of her antennae make it a question.]
no subject
Safe...
[He confirms it breathlessly as Lycka circles back, fingertips brushing her antennae as she bumps close.]
no subject
It has not gone: The risks of remaining in a dream where the dreamer's died have not changed since Sodder's death. She risks them further by delaying Lycka's flight even this brief moment.
go. wake. Find a better dream than this one--one that does not exit on the mouth of hell.
With that sentiment her tiny light winks out, leaving Sleeper and Omen alone in the black.
Where L's body rests fetal-curled in the Pale Sanctuary, tiny insectile hands tuck a folded note into his larger one. A black-tipped beak tidies his scarecrow hair, its owner little caring the act may be in vain.
wake. safe. Iskierka bids him, and flits away through a wall.]