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

[unsheathedfromreality]

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. ]]

Comments

TARGET | Prince of Thundering (N. Sinfonia) - 1.5A

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Some copies of the above note have text on the back of them, nearly invisible.

Those who can see kata or ana of the world, like a shrike would, can read it much more clearly.]

He's a shadow of himself here. As they all are. He is less twisted than most--enough he doesn't attack me on approach, though he startles like he'd seen a revenant. You were dead and burned, he says. How did you come back? Are the gates of hell thrown open for the Conflagration?

I don't have an answer for him. (I don't have one for myself. It is and isn't the vision we all had from the p̷̹̫̝̋͑i̶͈͎̓̒̕l̶̲̺͎̋͐͝l̷̦̊a̵̛̬r̴͙͕̹͠, the All-War. If not there, where am I?)

Would you still contract with me? he asks.

I promise only myself, but you can have me. What do you bid for?

Clear enough from the look on his face I wouldn't be sufficient for the job. Kill all of them. The Empire, the Skilled, the colonies. Erase it and put them out of their misery. That's what you've always wanted, isn't it?

Isn't it?

We wanted peace as much as you and your sworn-brother. Where is he? Why do you keep him away with storms?

I ((feel)) his face twist; I ((feel)) him turn away. I can't bear his grief. He hasn't forgiven me. He shouldn't. I haven't forgiven him.

What, I start to say, and he interrupts: Will you free us, butcher?

The price to kill a kingdom and a people would be staggering beyond his ability to pay. Yet we don't ask mortals to pay for the inevitable, whether or not we ease it along. You will submit yourself to my knife when I call your turn, I tell him, as payment, and for that, I will end the Empire and the Skilled and the colonies. All these people. All these warriors. Are they real? Am I?

Will you contract? I ask him, and he takes my hand in his own.