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Post by Mitchell Carr on Apr 25, 2021 11:22:46 GMT -8
With Kai's warning, one of the wings stretched to brush in the way of Fawkes' exit from the bombarded structure and regain his focus.
"So, I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure we have to interact with the dream and build up our power over the narrative, and then we can shift it in the direction we want. You don't just fall asleep in the memory of your Durance because we want that to happen. I think you're unconsciously avoiding it? That would make sense; I don't think any of us would be excited to relive this." the Fairest offered.
"I mean it's cool you hammered everything out where we're at a tipping point for being taken." He chose not to point out that it was a chaotic mess of fragments forced together. The fact that the Elemental got this far spoke to a surprising level of creativity. The weightless being of shard and feather folded his arms, and regarded the eidolons. It wasn't normal for everything to be stiff, bare and silent; things moved around, offered interactions, created scenes that revealed someone's experience.
He was glad his concerned expression wasn't immediately readable, keeping a positive tone.
"So if Arcadia is that way," he gestured to the horizon, "What was the issue here? You were pinned down...? It's the last memory you have of these people, so I assume it's important."
Can we not avoid it?
The shimmer of glamour bends the world, and Mitchell looked like his Mask in a US army military uniform. It was his best guess that Fawkes wasn't from another country. The image occasionally stuttered as white cracked and fluttered, trying to re-emerge from beneath the skin. He also still moved in an uncanny matter. The Fairest sighed quietly to himself; it wasn't perfect, and didn't offer to store up any power with dream weaving.
"Did you get anything? Kai? From the other timeline where I guess we blundered? Details might help. Sound cues seems to be a theme. Oren's talented at that sort of thing."
The Dancer thought for a moment, deciding in this moment the only thing he could really offer was an abstract concept of art therapy. Sure! That made sense. Everything was so removed from reality with harsh, stark whites void of any emotion or humanity. Flowing across the scene with flawless motion, colour filled the space, though the eidolons remained blank flickers without identity.
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Post by Fawkes on Apr 25, 2021 15:30:49 GMT -8
The Elemental blinked as his path was blocked, turning to properly listen to Kai as his face flushed a bit.
"Oh."
Fawkes shoulders hunched, trying to parse the math on how he just got everyone shredded, and embarrassed with the idea. "Um- sorry I...put you through that..." he said with gravity. The guilt clear on his face as he watched the Wizened flicker and recover from the memory. He opened his mouth to answer Oren's cacophony of questioning before Mitch overrode. Carr's Fairest nature was starting to bubble to the surface once Kai had signaled that the Torrent was trying to fight his own shit rather than work it safely.
Fawkes fidgeted, jaw working as his negligence was outlined in the nicest way possible.
"Don't patronize him!" one of the eidolons snapped from their position, head turning from the scope as they lowered the sniper rifle. Fawkes maintained a neutral expression, brushing past the aggression in his psyche that he didn't have control over. He had signed up for this.
"The issue? Yeah, we were stuck for... a while? That I can recall," he said after a moment, focusing on the thread in front of him and watching for prompts as Mitchell tried to fill some details. He dug his hand into the blasted concrete and adobe amalgamation, trying and tear the landscape to his will like Mitchell had suggested. However, human flesh simply scratched at the wall with a harmless brush.
A cigarette appeared in Fawkes' mouth as he sat down to think, attention narrowing as one of the eidolons handed him a blank piece of paper. "What do I do with this?" he asked, but the response was further, audible white noise. Something started to bleed from the bare canvas, before a violent flash of red snapped the paper back to nothing.
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Post by Kai Rose on Apr 25, 2021 19:47:22 GMT -8
"You dug too far. A detail would be lost, then red..." Blink. She shivered, and a tear slid down her face as she sought emotional connection to the moment. What was going on? Why were these people nothing to him anymore, like they'd been deleted with precision? "When we left this building and moved ahead, there was a mirage and the world sliced apart. We can't reach that point without planning."
She knew. She'd chosen the timeline, but the memory was there.
"We..." She let out a long, slow breath, then breathed in, her colors going wild. "Someone did this to you. This was deliberate. The loss of everything identifying about this situation." She gestured to the paper that was blank. "We can't stop here, Fawkes. We need to work together, all of us. Maybe we look for a way out of this position, look for a way out and help you build up the power to push through. If we work alone, we're fucked. But as a team..."
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Oren
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written by Hiver
Posts: 242
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Post by Oren on Apr 29, 2021 1:47:37 GMT -8
Perspective was important, even when your eyes are cracked and leaking. There was a line drawn in the sand. Sand that would eventually be struck and formed into the man Oren was simply captivated by. Frost and fulgurite. But Oren couldn't just stand and gawk at the beautiful destruction oscillating on a hairline fracture.
He needed perspective.
And so he looks for the moment. Where force coalesces into the Hand That Takes. If not here, it will be arriving soon. The long stretch that snaked from Arcadia into this tall grass. The Switcheroo. The Bedlam. The overture heralding Durance. He would find it and tear its chest open, and use the cavity as a doorway in and of itself. And if he couldn't kill it, he'd take its shape. Let Fawkes tear him open instead.
He would dissolve into the scene. Become the watcher on the hill. The jarhead who brought a Playboy. The obsessive-compulsive who spent too much time cleaning his gun.
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Post by Mitchell Carr on Apr 29, 2021 11:30:08 GMT -8
The Fairest watched the paper, concern no longer lost behind the crystalline plane while he listened to Kai. He was hoping Fawkes was going to be the occult expert in this venture, but he worked with the Elemental enough to know that his tone never matched his mood. With each violent flash and scrubbed human attachment, Mitchell tensed, following the light with a practiced eye for detail. His hand extended as he traced the pattern, eventually landing on Kai.
"That's interesting," he muttered. "He's connecting the cutting to you. I'll watch for the next one, see if I can pick up more when I'm not taken by surprise."
Watching the lack of prompt or action from the dreamscape, he starting to regret not doing more research on Onreiomancy. Oren blended with the scene more seamlessly than the Fairest, colour fading as if he was supposed to remain hidden, while he personally had a sharper quality to draw attention. Was he dangerous? Mitchell chewed the inside of his cheek, regretting his lack of intelligence to diagnose the subtle cues. None of them stood out more than the other in the waking world for that to factor in.
"I think digging into the narrative is a bit beyond us. Forcing the dream past the mental blocks and into the Durance should work unless we're purging our glamour enough to just get shredded on the other side. Umm...looking for a safe path...? How did the mirage work?" His attention turned to Fawkes, "We don't need to physically approach it. It's in your head somewhere. You dodged the destruction, right? You must have some kind of idea how to survive it."
The Fairest seemed unaware, but as he prodded and incentivized Fawkes, the other's expression twitched as he flinched back. Mitchell's image stuttered to a more terrifying realization of the alien being of refracting light and glittering limbs, the audio of his voice bending to an angelic chorus. It only lasted a moment, before he was the human soldier again.
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Post by Fawkes on Apr 30, 2021 9:05:02 GMT -8
Fawkes listened to Kai and Mitchell, expression flat enough to echo his mien in the waking world as he crumpled the paper and tossed it, the prop turning a lifeless grey as it drifted and dissolve like ash on the wind. He pointedly looked elsewhere as his jaw clenched, flushing while Mitchell analyzed his Bastion and Kai radiated pity; the empathetic gesture flew over his head. Whatever scrap of humanity his psyche wanted him to grab onto, he was thoroughly convinced it wasn't going to happen. "Okay, fine. Lets get some reconnaissance," he muttered quietly, exiting through one of the blistered holes that wasn't a direct path to the death trap that Kai had indicated and listening to her assessment of the memory while studying the shifting landscape for pattern. The silica followed Oren like an excited lurking shark, occasionally dusting him into nothingness. The environment bent to pop him back out and ambush the rest, flickering into a being of mirrored edges and graceful, predatory movement. The Bastion made it into a morbid game; bright slithering cords of sound flowing from the feigned attacks, with thundering static and the punch of corrupted percussion. The Fairest looked back at the scene they were leaving behind, a little frustrated himself as the Torrent flipped onto another target rather than stay and plan and process like what they were initially getting at. Rather than dwell on a possible failure of tone or lack of care and patience, Mitchell made up for it in picking out the unusual prompts and details on the dreamscape. Plying his sharp perfectionism to the problematic environment, Mitchell tried to further assist Fawkes as the other flirted with the edge of disaster as he hunted the mirage. The Bastion screeched, light and sound cracking from fissures and spiraling through the dream, the sand beneath them slowly eroding in solid consistency and everything fought to return back to the mirrored ocean.
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Post by Kai Rose on May 1, 2021 19:43:58 GMT -8
Kai sighed, shaking her head as the Fairest suggested that the red, the cutting, had to do with her. A memory from their shelter under bombardment came to mind, and she grit her teeth beneath her lips. Her skin flashed toward red before she calmed it down with a pulse of gold, inadvertently proving Mitchell's point. "All right," she said, connecting dots and memories and the snippets of visions. She had no idea what it all meant, but it certainly didn't suggest her involvement was anything good.
"Nothing," she said with a sigh as the dream began pulling, begging to return. "All right. That's okay. Let's find our way back -- and look for a way through. Something we can lean in to, with all our might. All of us, together. Perhaps blending in with the soldiers, use it as a way to move forward? I'm going to be shit at that, but you three might be able to make some real progress."
She gestured at Mitchell and Oren's excellent disguises. Fawkes was a Winter Courtier. Together, tricking the world around them might net them the power they needed to push through without the necessity of walking into a blender.
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Post by Mitchell Carr on May 3, 2021 23:00:07 GMT -8
"Maybe you can...lie...to the..." The what? The concept of the sand burying an abyssal ocean of drowned and crushed information? The lethal mirage that butchers his military unit? Fawkes' psyche didn't have a scene or narrative. He had cobbled this thread together to appease the rest of them. It was just a wipe. The frustration in his own confusion and lack of ability tightened his jaw as the words of encouragement died. The Fairest's attention rolled back to what was in front of him, rather than the grasping Elemental that dragged him into an experimental occult project. They weren't even sworn to Autumn. Sweat beaded under the raw heat and the searing light that bounced off the colourless dune. Why was he even here? The song of Arcadia rang through him, demanding more of the Muse and grating the nerves as the wave patterns re-emerged. Bleeding scar tissue — hissing as the brands were cauterized. The smoke bent and curled around cracks that he couldn't see. Taking a breath, the light on stained glass danced around him, slicing through unseen planes and fractures. He had been working with the Torrent for a couple of years. He was familiar with the ticks. The odd, obsessive fixations. They fact that the Sandharrowed overrode and suffocated — until he didn't — crumpling under the slightest stressor and razoring the hand that pressed it. The slipstream of raw, chaotic noise billowed around and through them, and against logic, the Dancer flicked his hand against it, spreading droplets of mercury as he lost a few of his fingers. He blinked. They had been fighting it the whole time. "That's interesting," he muttered, sounding uncharacteristically intense. "So- this whole...situation," Mitchell thought out loud, his hand was replaced with razored diamond tips as he gestured. The Lost's sight was hollow with the refracted prism of the Durance. "The Keeper's done everything in Its power to orchestrate a fail safe- it's a- every time you fight it, it destroys you with your own chaos," he emphasized, pitch oscillating with the ghost of a silent chorus, "You don't sleep. You can't. You hate it- right? Everything you fucking do is a walking protest. Because that's all you are, Fawkes, is how you Other yourself from this." The truth hurt, but it was laid bare. No wonder the butcher for the Cartel stained his time in smoky drug hazes and bloody contracts. He felt sick with what he was doing, but it was what was required — what was needed for them to Succeed. They had asked him to help. Humanity began flaking away as the Fairest was restored to his original purpose, growing taller as angelic glass, mineral and feather synched with the howling music with flawless precision. Fawkes flinched, more bits and pieces coming loose and cracking against the soft sand. A Swan Song as the world began melded rather than fractured; a joyful cacophony of the downfall. Faster than reality, a spinning chorus wove with the dancing shards. The claws and whirlwind struck through the ribs, tearing upward to lift the mannequin with surprising strength. The Invader overpowered the Dreamer, synching with his Bastion like he was designed for the nightmare. Reality shimmered with the herald of a thousand angles; the ringing hymn of matter unmade; the horns of brass wheels quartering the mind; the soul found wanting. "You want to fight?
The answer is you don't.
You already know that,
Onyx adherent.
You're Nothing."
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Oren
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written by Hiver
Posts: 242
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Post by Oren on May 7, 2021 5:44:03 GMT -8
You're Nothing You're Nothing You're Nothing You're Nothing You're Nothing You're Nothing
The Bastion shook and Oren was loosed from his menagerie. Gone were the jarheads and all too present was the studio. The wooden beam. Those four mirrors. Blisters. Pirouette. Blood. Second Position. Hard claps. Soft skin. Keep the time. Sleeping Beauty. Swan Lake. Why couldn't he fly anymore? Danse Hongroise. His body was so stiff. He wasn't good enough. He wanted to be good. Please, give me another chance....
"Stand up straight, Oren."
YOU'RE NOTHING
"Sorry, Mitch..."
YOU'RE NOTHING
"Mister Carr."
YOU'RE NOTHING
He tapped his foot. Crossed his arms. He sighed. Oren was going to die.
YOU'RE NOTHING
"Alvin Ailey would weep at the sight of you. You're not coordinated. You're not balanced. You shake and shamble across this studio like a roads sign stripped from the concrete in a hurricane. Do you want to dance, Oren? Do you want to perform?
NOTHING
"More than any--"
NOTHING
"You don't sound like you want it. You don't act like you want it. I'm starting to believe that you're not taking this as seriously as you should." "I'll be better, I promise."
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Post by Kai Rose on May 8, 2021 17:11:15 GMT -8
Holy shit.
As Mitch seemed to crack Fawkes and the world began to turn, Kai looked around, her head on a swivel as her emotions started to whirl beneath her skin. What was the Fairest doing? What was happening here?
And why did the notion of a psychological failsafe ring?
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Post by Fawkes on May 12, 2021 8:32:04 GMT -8
As the Elemental dropped, colour drained from flesh, and then the surrounding itself. A wind without feeling picked up, dusting everyone's vision as everything started to fall to static, pits forming on their mien as features started to wear away. Fawkes held shaking hands to his face, trying to keep the shards from breaking apart and dissolving. The dunes flickered, spiking into icy waves as the world turned on its axis, pressure and ocean slam into the Lost. Time slowed, organs popping and blowing out as the diaphragm collapsed with flattening ribs. Shards and granules scrubbed like frenzied ants, eating away the marrow and meat as the form expanded and twisted into something palatable. Heat forged the shattered fragments, stuttering as the Bastion honed a new idea. They were housed in a crystalline palace of mirror pools and glass geodes. The structure appears to have Dali-esque physics and is largely impassible for mundane navigation. The twisting corridors are vast, with light coming from beyond but never from a clear, single source. The sterile air held no dust motes in the bright light. No wayward denizens or signs of life.
The room is a chamber of fractal light of various brightness, the walls splitting into endless mirrors, like a mosaic.
Fawkes was still on the floor, though they were only able to recognize one another with the placement. There was a low hum as the storm of silica held itself together, a barely audible screeching from within the shards as he tried to restore his face.
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Post by Kai Rose on May 12, 2021 19:46:03 GMT -8
Flesh and clothing tore away, stretching and sharpening. Kai gasped with the transition, her residual self-image trashed in this whirlwind of memory and glass. The pain was staggering, almost enough to drag her from the dream. Her Arcadian form was nearly seven feet tall, all slender, crystalline angles and a whirlwind of color that reflected emotions of those around her like a storybook of reds, blues and greens. Her fingers were long, narrowing down to probe-like points.
"Wonderful."
There was barely a crack in the crystalline face for a mouth. Rather, the sound came out almost like a disembodied voice. Telepathy? Or just a trick of sound?
"No need to panic, Fawkes... we came here knowingly. Leaning in is the only way forward."
Through the message of acceptance that allowed them here in the first place, she sought to weave the Dream to the next phase with all her might, but she could not get purchase.
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Oren
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written by Hiver
Posts: 242
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Post by Oren on May 13, 2021 4:57:11 GMT -8
" Don't you want the lightning to run? The thunder to gallop? You can peel it off here. I won't run from...." " ...It." "...This." "...YOU!""...CAN'T YOU SEE HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE?"
In this den of glass and fulgurite, Oren is invisible. There is no recognizable face or fixture. He is a PANOPLY in six dimensions. A tesseract folding a Platonic Figure. Glass powdered, blown, and sculpted. A quicksilver marvel of Forms. The face of every star-crossed lover and every war torn country. Apollo's smile. Alecto's laugh. Linden's sheepish countenance reflected in steel. Kai's radiance filtered through his filaments and made him a terrifying wonder to behold. The boy was lathered in a skin, not of his own making, but one that was undeniably his. Galatea split into a multitude and held so many it hurt to count the ways Oren felt.
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Post by Mitchell Carr on May 16, 2021 23:32:47 GMT -8
Okay, well, everyone seemed to be locking step.
Mitchell knew Fawkes would hate it, but that's what the alterations were for. A switch flipped to give the Fairest a wash of relief at the idea, paired with a mild, self-aware disgust that he was doing Well in comparison to his peers entirely due to a lack of spine. The Dancer didn't fight what was needed, just adapted, and because of that the Keeper didn't tear away everything he had as rewards were grafted and reinforced. Erosion of his humanity had not been necessary—he had survived as a honed extension of the Gentry's will, and paid for it with his ticks.
Vibrating with the realization, the swirling, smoking gashes hissed as he shook it off. The seraphim watched the environment continue to shift and stabilize as the other two build off of the nightmare he started.
Looking down was a dizzying experience of shifting fractals as the floors layered as deep as the imagination dared to go, and clear enough to behold without disruption. Mitchell tilted his head as he started to follow a circular pattern of the concentric circles, kicking off the floor as and earsplitting grinding started to rotate the diamond plates like a grindstone.
His head slowly turned toward Fawkes, flinching as he worked out the impossible puzzle from his own connection to Arcadia. "It's a sieve."
He wasn't sure how he knew that. He had a general idea of why he sounded like Eurydice.
There you are.
An eidolon manifested from the splitting glass in a replication of Kai, synching in a mirror image of reflecting colour. They gestured for her to follow, I need you below, to fix it. It broke ●̴͖̪͚̙̜̝͇̮̼̝̭̮͒͒ͅ●̷̫͈͚͍͚͙̯̪͓̜̭̐̈́͋●̵̱̥̱̙͑̒͋̓●̶̢̢̻̱̩̙̫̳̼͖̝̍́̄̉͑̈́̎͘͝͝͝●̵̨̧͖͎̤͈̼̬̰̞̬̹͙͉͐̒̐̑͌̍͋͒ again, and we need to start over.
They nodded to Oren, If the Muse did its job, that one's docile. Erode it down. The way it's trying to hold onto the idea is pathetic and ruining everything.
Kai's surroundings flickered to an identical room, except the diamond-like construct narrowed and opened into a floating prism. The eidolon hovered it's hand, shining brightly as the pyramid started reflecting the spectrum back, expanding into a range the Polychromatic didn't conceive before. It gestured for Kai to take over.
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Oren
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written by Hiver
Posts: 242
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Post by Oren on May 18, 2021 17:45:03 GMT -8
The scene fractures. Glass splits like hairs, splinters heating and re-weaving until the spindles form something crude and yet altogether smooth. A raised dais. Static curtains that look more like statues. Empty eidolons, the mere figments of an amateur weaver, stand controposto. The Dream asked of him ensnare this Storm-of-A-Man, to bring him low and grind him to a fine dust. Oren could see no other way than to take what little he did know and embellish. He would only ask that his body be filled with mere traces of the truth, so that Arcadia could spin the thread in whichever way Fawkes' broken mind could more easily sink the dagger deeper into his malformed countenance. " Ladies and Gentlemen..." The Mirror would simply clap his hands. The vibrato of porcelain brought with it a hallow harmony of emotions he had never heard Fawkes express. They were present all the same. If he wouldn't speak it with his mouth, Oren would proclaim it with his body and lay it bare before him instead. " The Man of the Hour." He hadn't had a chance to really stretch in what felt like an eternity. A certain limberness returned to his muscles as he played out the wicked fantasy of Fawkes's Durance. Right in front of him. He remembers a baton tapping a structure wrought of bone and sapphire. Its sharp point waving in the airless space. Counting time in an unknowable measure. His soles, though glass, bled. His throat, though porous stone, cried. His body twisted in the shape of an aria.
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