necrolord: <user name="thebutt"> (brick and mortar thick as scripture)
ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ ᴜɴᴅʏɪɴɢ ([personal profile] necrolord) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-03-06 02:02 pm

06 . the sleepy town expedition.

Who: [personal profile] 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! ]
forwantofahorse: (Smug)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-03-30 05:47 pm (UTC)(link)
[Only by removing the dirty bandage can an infected wound heal. The same principle seems to apply to the curious case of Sayo Yasuda. The woman before John may seem half-mad and constantly pirouettes across the line between witchly wrath and all-too-human, all-consuming grief, yet looking at her soul now... the scars from the fractal fracturing are still present, but the slow disintegration of her soul has halted, even started to heal. The place where Kanon once was is a hard, gnarled scar, but no longer a bleeding, mangled mess.

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.
forwantofahorse: (Default)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-04-01 08:40 pm (UTC)(link)
[For Sayo, the golden butterfly is magic. It's what deluded her into thinking there was a light at the end of the tunnel, it's what gave her the strength to move forward when she should've given up. Hope. Illusion. Release. Fantasy.

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.]
forwantofahorse: (Shocked)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-04-06 07:35 pm (UTC)(link)
[Kanon's fragment of Sayo's soul fits into "Baphomet" as naturally as a puzzle piece clicks into place in a jigsaw--a piece that was always intended to fit, cut off into from the whole for the sake of eventually being put together back again.

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.
forwantofahorse: (Default)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-04-11 09:55 pm (UTC)(link)
[There's a reason why deception is an art rather than a science. Twisting your face into the right shape and shifting your voice into the right register could only get you so far. For better or worse, humans could tell when something rang hollow even if they couldn't place their fingers directly on it.

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.]
forwantofahorse: (Weary)

[personal profile] forwantofahorse 2022-04-14 12:20 am (UTC)(link)
[It's only too late that Sayo realizes that she made the exact same mistake that Jessica had, one that chased her to the other side of the abyss that Sasha was fleeing to now.

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.]