ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ ᴜɴᴅʏɪɴɢ (
necrolord) wrote in
deercountry2022-03-06 02:02 pm
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Entry tags:
06 . the sleepy town expedition.
Who:
necrolord, Gideon, Harrow, Paul, Kaworu, "Shannon," Mako, Ford, Shiro, Ruby, Luna, Faith, Willow, Ezra, Zhongli, Perell.
What: An intentional family-and-friends roadtrip to a forbidden holy ruin. A less-intentional catacombs adventure.
When: 3/14.
Where: Sleepy Town and the Catacombs.
Content Warnings: Sleepy Town-typical themes of grief, loss, and surreal landscapes. Catacombs-typical horror per the March event. Also, note all the usual warnings of this character.
[ See this doc for info! ]
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What: An intentional family-and-friends roadtrip to a forbidden holy ruin. A less-intentional catacombs adventure.
When: 3/14.
Where: Sleepy Town and the Catacombs.
Content Warnings: Sleepy Town-typical themes of grief, loss, and surreal landscapes. Catacombs-typical horror per the March event. Also, note all the usual warnings of this character.
no subject
They didn't speak much in the catacombs. Not in a way that mattered; not compared to his embrace of the other children. But God has a certain eye for the exhausted set of her shoulders, and he has been waiting for it to tip over into voice like this. When he steps towards her, his footsteps are the only sound. ]
If it's in my power.
[ Most things are. ]
no subject
The bile must be drained for the wound to close, as ugly as the process may look.
She raises an eyebrow when he nearly completes the quote, but lets it pass without interrogation. It always catches Sayo off guard when The Necromancer catches one of the many literary references she litters through her speech like a chainsmoker discarding their cigarettes. From her conversations with Gideon, she'd assumed the world she and her "family" had hailed from was as alien as that of the inhabitants of Clockhouse, yet the man the others thought of as God picked up the ends and flicked them into the trash without missing a beat every time with a familiarity that couldn't be picked up from Ford's rambling cultural detritus.]
...Kanon.
He should have a vessel that's more comfortable than a skull. Not to insult your craftsmanship, but I imagine it's boring in there if nothing else. [A twitch of the lips, a ghost of a smirk before it fades.] I've made him suffer enough just by forcing him to "exist."
Thankfully, [her omen appears, a massive golden butterfly forming from the smoke,] I have a replacement in mind.
Baphomet doesn't have much of... anything. I've kept it secluded; it would've made my former roommates ask far too many questions. Unfortunately, that means my soul companion hasn't had a chance to develop a personality. Fortunately, that means that there should be room for Kanon.
[A pause.]
And... I'd talk to you, afterwards. If you'd like.
no subject
No insult taken. A human soul isn't meant to be bound to something inert... not for very long. Not if you want them sane and whole on the other end.
[ He looks at her when he says it, and there's something in his face: it's not quite pity. Something wry, something tired. He can guess what she'd say about any part of her called sane or whole. It's like leaving her the space for a punchline over a game board, but vastly sadder.
He reaches out, palm up and open, to take the skull. His other hand lifts as a perch for the butterfly. ]
Let me see what I can do.
no subject
All empty.
It's no wonder that it remained hollow since Sayo refused to shape it. The omen is as formless of all of Sayo's magic.
True to John's guess, Sayo cackles harshly when he mentions sanity. The bags under her eyes, the tension between her, Kaworu, and Paul as they left that room, even the sheer ridiculousness of what she's asking him to do in the first place, all speak for themselves.]
I wonder what it says about me that the fragmented shard of my soul that embodies all of my worst traits is more stable than I am, [she muses as she directs the butterfly to land on John's hand. It follows without question.]
no subject
Her soul alights upon his wrist. He can tell the difference with a touch; the few Omens he has put his hands upon (including her, but she is something altogether else) thrummed with the impossible energy of a human soul, on however stark or muted a level. He has never met one as muted as this. The butterfly is a barely-there impression of Sayo, all shape without substance. It is objectively fascinating.
And it makes it very easy to do this.
John is not in the practice of merging souls past unpicking. Not these days. Not lightly. But these are all pieces of a whole, and they come together beautifully: the empty space reshapes around the missing piece of itself. He can see just how to pin Kanon such that he doesn't bleed away at the edges. He has an idea of how to weave the bone in with the living light, and an idea is enough. He is no master of Blood Magic, not yet, but this is near enough to his domain that it responds under his hands like an almost-familiar instrument.
When it's finished, he drops the hand which had held the skull, now empty. He rotates his wrist for the changed butterfly to settle more comfortably upon his palm. ]
There we go.
no subject
Sayo staggers when she feels the connection flood back in, Kanon returning to his own awareness beyond the dull boredom of being locked within a cage of calcium and blood. Kanon had always been part of her, expressed through smoke and funhouse mirrors, but for the first time it felt as if he could reach through the reflection and touch her, move on his own rather than according to a director's cue.
Or punch her, in this case.
The butterfly swoops away from Sasha's outstretched hand and begins ineffectually diving at Sayo, as if attempting to ram into her with its insubstantiality. She squeaks with surprise, waving it away, and it falls back, bobs up and down as if huffing... and slaps her with the very solid bone that The Necromancer wove into his wing. Not hard enough to hurt, or even to leave a mark; really, it has the same impact as a giant paper fan, but Sayo reels nonetheless.]
Why, you WRETCHED-
Aren't little brothers supposed to RESPECT their older sisters, you pathetic coatrack!?
[Kanon flips away, turning his back slash wings to her. Despite the harshness in Sayo's words, there's a certain... levity. A fondness at finally seeing family again, even if they were face to face as people for the first time.
Sayo's half smile turns into a laugh, much unlike her regular cackle.]
Thank you, Sasha. And...
[A weighty pause, some of the old weight settling back into her expression.]
I'm sorry.
[Clutching her arm (Kanon rolls his antenna in place of eyes), Sayo locks gazes with The Necromancer.]
Down there, in the catacombs, I...
I crossed a line.
I knew all of us were grieving, with the ghosts that place set after us. It was... unbearable. That pressure, the look in their eyes, I...
They left me right before I came here, you know? No, no. That isn't right. [She shakes her head.] I was the one who pushed them away in the first place. And into the path of the reaper, whether I intended to or not.
S- Sorry. This isn't about me. [Sayo brushes a lock of hair behind her ear.] I... I was looking for a way to distract myself from all that pain. All that love. And I thought that you'd yes-and and with me, just like with Ford. Keep the bit going so I wouldn't have to confront it. [A weak laugh.] I was being selfish. I never considered that if she was following you, that... that the catacombs conjured her for the same reason they made those illusions of Battler and George for me.
So... for the third time, um... I'm sorry.
I... I know what I said must've hurt.
no subject
Then it's gone, bundled in again like a covered wound. She calls him Sasha like they're around a game board, like they're laughing over inconsequential improv and Ford's shit rolls. He cracks a smile to match, but it's hollow.
A good mask, though. A good show of it. He's wrung-out, but it looks almost no different from usual, and that's telling in itself, isn't it? ]
I appreciate that.
[ He says it soft and low. The silence hangs for a long moment, a sudden weight between words. She says, into the path of the reaper. She says, all that pain; all that love. God's levity is hollow, and tired, and patient. He wears a weary little smile like I appreciate that, like an apology politely deflected.
There is something under it. She might begin to sense how vast it is, the ocean behind the smile. It had been at the surface for a moment there, for a glimpse, when he had wrapped his arms around that corpse and clung to her like a man dying. ]
To put a bad situation lightly, I have a lot of ghosts. [ This is hilarious understatement. A lot of things are hilarious only to him, and only in the worst way. ] I've lived with them a while now... some are still fresh. They can feel fresh for a long time... that's the bad news.
[ For a moment the smile seems real, because there is no humor in the slant of it. ]
Nobody reacts well grief. I don't think so, anyway, and I've been making a study of it for a hell of a long time now.
[ It's said like forgiveness. ]
no subject
That's why you have to paint your emotions onto the canvas of your lie. The barest hint, a single stroke... enough to fool the other person into thinking that you're telling the truth when you say that you're not fine but you'll get better. A sad twist of the mouth, a shrug and a nod, all signposts of being shaken, but recovering.
And all the perfect lie to cover up the truth of the endless, empty ache inside.
Sayo is particularly practiced at this brand of deception, so when Sasha has that sad twist to his smile, makes that small shrug, she feels suddenly as if she's teetering on the edge of a vast abyss.
She doesn't know him that well. He was just her coplayer and Gideon's weird... uncle? older brother? figure. It's not as if they were close. Part of her says she should leave well enough alone.
The other part of her remembers all those small moments with George and Jessica when she made that exact same expression and plead to the heavens that they'd notice and was never, ever answered.]
The thing about ghosts... [she clutches her shoulder, looking away.] Once they've shown up, they're, er, still there even if it looks like they've disappeared.
Just because the poltergeist's stopped rattling its chains, um, doesn't mean it's not haunting the house anymore, or that it wasn't there before. It's just that the memory's fresher, especially if you convinced yourself that you already exorcised it before it started staring you in the face again.
And if you tell someone else the ghost story... it makes you less crazy, I think. Because it's real to another person now, and they can see it too, and they can go, "wow, living in a place with a ghost really sucks," and that means someone else gets it a little bit even though they're not the one haunted by it.
[A pause.] It might, um, turn out that they're haunted by something similar too.
[A longer pause.] ...shit, that was all hackneyed even by my awful standards, huh? [Sayo laughs nervously.]
no subject
But John knows what he is. That's the sad, old trick of it. No one knows what he is better than he does, bar one person, and she's not even really a person. She's a monster in a box.
He has never needed the mirror; anyone who offers it doesn't really see him, not in his full scope. I have a lot of ghosts is funny because it is blasphemy, full and profound. Against him, against her, against a whole dead and forgotten world. Sometimes he cannot bear Trench for the ways it rubs all three in his face.
He cannot tell her I am every one of my ghosts; I am their sum total; there may be no man left beneath the haunting. She would think he means it like a man and not like a god. She wouldn't comprehend the scale of it. ]
I think it was kind of poignant, actually. [ His smile is a small, sad twist without humor. He has retreated to the other side of that vast chasm between them; on his face, it looks horribly like pity. ] I think you're on to something. There's a power in ghost stories, you know? It matters how we tell it.
Still. [ He is closing off, with the smile and the pity and something cold and faraway behind it all. ] It was a good bit. Rough timing, maybe... but don't beat yourself up on my account.
no subject
What rank myopia. Had the Golden Witch, whose core was bitterness, really fallen so far? Into such perverted sentimentality to reflect herself onto everyone else?
But that was always her problem, wasn't it.
Sayo's face falls as The Necromancer tries to keep up the momentum of the bit, not bothering to keep rolling with it.]
...I probably should've learned to stop being so egotistical by now, huh? After everything.
[She can't reach him now, yet she can still apologize for her mistake. He'll know what she means.]
I'm sorry. [There's a difference in quality between that apology and the previous ones that she'd stuttered out in a chain. Those were genuine, but their nature was an intellectual understanding of how she had trespassed, having not known the sacred ground she'd trod upon.
This was wholehearted regret of an error she comprehended all too well.
Sayo considers reaching out one last time... but no, no. That would only go to show one final misunderstanding, one that she could ill afford to make.]
...c'mon. The other team will be back soon.
We need to get the place ready. I'll help.
[An act of service, freely given instead of self-compelled.]