deercountry | Real & Half-Real: Iskierka's Notes

Who: Illarion's Omen Iskierka and anyone who happens to stumble across her notes.
What: Receiving messages from hell.
When: March 5 onward, after Sayo's full return to the Waking World.
Where: Throughout Trench and the Levels

Content warnings: All of the following are mentioned or discussed obliquely: magical zombies, mind control, emotional manipulation, war-time violence, murder of family members, drug use, cannibalism, suicide, hallucinations/derealization, existential horror, apocalyptic setting, kidnapping, enslavement.

Iskierka has not been idle while her Sleeper is missing from Trench. Somewhere, he's wandering a hell far removed from the Waking World; somewhere, he rehearses to himself the briefing he might give to any would-be rescuers when they arrive, what is necessary to survive and sufficient for Sayo's ritual. When hoping for rescue pales on him, he dictates his thoughts to the air or an animal or a corpse's patient ear, and she hears it.

She hears every word of it, and she cannot respond; she listens faithfully, and the words fill her head to the point of forgetting. When there's no more room for them, she writes. With whatever comes to hand--beg buy borrow or steal--on whatever surface she can find, she writes--scratches out--rewrites. Notes and letters emerge beneath her pen, and she takes them where she thinks they belong. Some she abandons in significant places and others she brings to significant people, urging them to take this fragment of her lost Sleeper.

 It may help, when they go to rescue him. If anyone can.

[[ OOC: Real & Half-Real Plot Write-Up and Interest Check, for those just joining us. Even if you haven't left a comment there you're more than welcome to join in on finding notes!

See comments for how to use this post and tasty tasty plot hooks. ]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Note location: In the Catacombs; in Gaze; on altars to the Doorway; within the Archives
Number available: Several
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Most likely to award to Arcane Scholars and those with Doorway's patronage

I never had much traffic with the Archlich beyond what all the Unearthed did: His necromancers were responsible for my creation. He may have put a hand in directly--I never asked--and ensured the success of his experiment. ~~His prototype. How many did they make like me? Did they even know what they did to us? Why would they tell us if they did?~~

He is named the Father of Necromancy and in truth, he has earned it. He is named the Archlich, the first of those mortal necromancers who learned to put their souls elsewhere. He eschewed the traditional needle in the egg in the hare in etcetera for something easier to catch and harder to kill: a glacier in Kirminai. So long as it's intact, he can't--strictly--die, so getting rid of him is already a pretty puzzle. This is without considering his stitched-together menagerie and the doting azhdarch guards given him by the Prince of Frost.

I never had much traffic with him. But anyone with eyes (ha) could see the way he was around his Fext, our Prince of Locusts. They were friends as much as allies, her torments more teasing than torture when it came to him; his biting wit with only fangs enough to sting her to wiser action. He loved her, and she--perhaps; I am a romantic, after all--him.

He watched that woman wither away into the Prince as she walked the path his hands pushed her onto--his hands among dozens, but impelling her still. He watched his friend, sister of his heart, consumed.

How does it feel, o Archlich, to see your masterwork devour itself and your dear ones with it?

Edited 2022-03-17 05:50 (UTC)

The Archives are bordering on a second home for Ford, and the nice thing about home is that you start to relax after a while. And in Ford's case, 'relaxing' means leaving his notes and papers unattended for a few moments while he slips off to grab another book on the shelf.

Not completely unattended, however. He leaves Castor there to keep an eye on things, the little bat Omen contentedly hanging from a candelabra on the desk. So when Iskierka decides to show up and help herself to his pen and journal, she has a witness. Just... not a witness interested in interfering. Castor turns her head to watch, her ears tilting this way and that as she attempts to puzzle out the scene in front of her. It's only once Iskierka has made substantial headway on her task that Castor thinks to inform Ford that he should return.

She doesn't tell him why, however. So when Ford rounds the corner he is completely unprepared to witness some sort of bizarre bird-slash-moth Omen filching his writing tools. It's a sight that's weird even by Trench's standards, weird enough to have Ford drawing up short. Normally he'd immediately whip out his journal and start scribbling down notes, but since she has both his journal and his pen...

"Do you need help with that?"

Omens talk, on occasion, and if this one is forward enough to take his stuff maybe it'll be forward enough for actual words.

Always an Omen of very little (apparent) mind, Iskierka's got even less of one lately in service to her task. As the days have worn on since Illarion's disappearance from Trench, the words in her head have gotten more insistent, piling up beyond her ability to record them. She's eager to seize any opportunity to snatch a writing implement and something to write on; Ford's journal was a plum find. That there was another Omen around keeping an eye on it didn't deter her, though she had taken a long look at Castor--only the one--before settling down to write with monomaniacal determination.

(She's a day or two from realizing she should carry a pen and paper of her own. Bear with her.)

He watched that woman wither away, she's writing, as Ford arrives and asks if she wants help. Her antennae twitch at the sound of his voice but she--reactions slowed and dulled by how busy her oversoul is, wherever it is--doesn't respond beyond that. Not until she's finished with writing the note does she lift her head, goggling at Ford with faceted red eyes.

This goes on for several seconds. Then she looks back down at the note, and crosses out several sentences with a neat line through them. She is not one of those Omens who speaks--easily, in words--but she can formulate a message from herself if she thinks about it long enough. Eventually, painstakingly, she manages an image of Ford reading the note.

It's probably pretty weird to look at, even by his standards, given her higher-dimensional sight. His organs are looking good today, though!

There's no force in the multiverse that could have stopped Ford from reading that note, but it's nice to have the encouragement all the same. And such an interesting sort of encouragement, too! It's a good thing it's already in his journal; now he doesn't have to put any thought into how he can keep it for further study.

So he turns the journal enough to read the note, realizing with growing fascination that he doesn't have the faintest idea what it's talking about. He knows plenty of the terms, of course, and the concept of a phylactery registers even though the word itself isn't used. It's also clear that this is information being written about someone that is, at the very least, a potential threat, if not an outright enemy. He has absolutely zero context for what he just read, however, and no idea how to go about getting more.

"I don't suppose this archlich is here, is he?"

She takes the time Ford requires to read the note to release the pen--an oddly painstaking process, one claw at a time--and lay it politely down on the table where she found it. With that task completed she's ready as she ever is for a new question to work on--and bless all Pthumerians and gods that might look after an Omen such as her, it's an easy one.

no. It isn't a formed word, more an impression of negation of here. The archlich is not here, not in the Archives or Trench or Deer Country or the Waking World.

It does not occur to her to say where he might be, instead. She is too busy staring at the contents of Ford's pockets.

Well, no is easy enough to understand. At least he doesn't have to worry about a zombie riding a glacier crashing through the library or anything so dramatic as that. But it still leaves him at something of a loss for what to do. Iskierka has given him some very interesting information, but not much he can actually work with. He picks up his journal and, absently, starts to pace the length of the table. He doesn't notice Iskierka staring at his pockets, nor the way Castor finally lets herself down from the candelabra.

"I don't suppose your Sleeper is nearby, are they?"

He watched his friend, sister of his heart, consumed. Ford's not great at reading between the emotional lines, but that's parses as pretty personal despite the third person perspective. So why share it with a complete stranger if this archlich isn't even here? Why write it down at all? And why choose him, assuming it's even a choice? And--

Ford lapses into the sort of thought that can only be interrupted by an answer to his question a moment ago. Castor is aware of this, and take the opportunity to carefully scuttle closer to Iskierka and study her new friend.

Real & Half-Real: Iskierka's Notes | OTA

TARGET | Kirsi, Archlich - 1A

for Iskierka

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