[Private] Annihilation

Context mattered. Kai didn't have the full scope of the situation, but the Fairest had learned a few things about Oren at least. And himself.

Like being a masterpiece of a blender — it's a dream.

He watched Fawkes closely from the corner of non existent eyes. Or many, depending on perspective. With the Torrent's non-action, he lowered the weapon, reflecting on the fact that the rest of them had probably overdone it. Oren didn't answer the question, but he sort of got an answer if he stretched what he was listening to. The headache was like his illness had been made physical, every act causing another fiber scrape the inside of his cranium as it tried to unfurl, stopping when he stopped moving. The bleeding personas dotted his periphery and his jaw clenched.


Oren listened to Kai. Things were moving. People would recover.

"We need to have a talk at some point," he said to Oren, voice bouncing around the room but sounding like himself rather than the mournful angelic cacophony. He seemed determined to flit and move one to the next moment of progress, Mantle rippling across the ballroom's bloodied floor.

"I think our options right now-" the Taskmaster's face separated from the skull as the connective magnetic tissue finally failed, ripping as the Dancer turned it around where it was reflected back on the crystal plane. "-is we keep this up and try and escape through the Bastion's exit. Or we flip the switch and probably get crushed under the pressure of that ocean...desert..."

His body shivered on its own accord, either from the idea or the level of disturbed bottling he was doing to maintain a professional façade of calm for the rest.

Her touch was soft and his heart felt so full. Some names came to him then, and faces to match. He had no doubt that he could slide his way through this demense. A knife in the Dreaming that knew no shape. Only motion. 

He kept his mouth shut and only nodded; it seemed to sink in this time. As Kai offers cover and Fawkes follows along, Mitchell reads the Bastion. 

"Okay," he said softly, offering his hand and explaining the roles.

The Dancer had to tap the rest of his glamour, examining the cracks and fissures of the Glade as he mimicked the role of something that was meant to direct. He pried an artifact from the corpse of the eidolon, twisting paths and doors that sliced through light and distance. The game was to take the Elemental to get fixed while gunning for Outside, whatever that would mean.

The Escher reality folded and spun as they kept momentum, Oren keeping other eidolons reassured with his affect while Mitchell offered the basis of logic. The blood attracted attention, creatures rushing to rid it before it was seen and the Dancer having to direct as they paused in his wake and Oren spun the story to creatures that couldn't imagine. A titanic figure moved just beyond, like a passing colossus in a sea of quartz, causing everyone to freeze. In the silence, Fawkes started humming to himself again, and the attention had to be foisted onto another eidolon to be obliterated by the sudden aurora of eyes as the echo of their Keeper Itself tested the Mirror's lies.

With the victory, the Dreamer started to break shit.

The frenzied joyful sound broke off from the group, churning the environment to chaos, and the roles changed to a hunt. Mitchell sealed the passage behind them, opening the skin of the Bastion to the void beyond and blinding flashes. The storm blasted past them—the trickery resolved—lighting on fire as it rode the lightning and forged itself a face.

The other three hesitated, before the glamour was equalized from their motley pact, and their desires shifted with the Dancer's spinning with a nudge both psychic and physical.

Waking up was immolation.

Everyone was jolted from stupor as the Elemental kicked off, separating himself from the half-asleep group in a rapid crabwalk as he pressed himself into the nearest corner. It took another second to register the high pitched, pressurized whistle as something from Fawkes. His hands started crushing the mask of his face, teeth clenched in a silent sob.

Cracks bloomed across his features, scissoring across his body in a lightning pattern as ice split from within and forced the carapace to accommodate the new layer of Loss.

As Kai startled awake, her heart pounding and her teeth grit, the Summer Courtier instinctively moved away from the others. There was an incredible feeling of violation, of hate, but as Fawkes' Mantle poured through him, she realized two things simultaneously.

One: they were in danger.

Two: they were in the kind of danger that warranted Fawkes clearing the floor before they went into the dream.

"Fawkes, hey... you're through it..."

The aim of her speech? Bring him back from the brink, where the man had been broken down into nothing and forced through a hellish dream sequence that took away his sense of self. Start bringing him back together, reminding him where he began and ended, re-asserting his sense of agency and that his sacrifice had succeeded...

In that instant of emotional labor after her own trauma, she didn't even notice the new Hate that radiated from her, driving people around her to try to purge their weaknesses in an endless pursuit of Perfection.

He was scaring them. He felt the Iron Spear radiating against his nature at odds with Kai's gentle coaxing, but it was enough to shake him out of the scraping roar that tore his heart to pieces.

The audio split to ribbons as air bent around all the wrong angles, and he grit his teeth again, throat raw with the imagined limitation. He was not going to be mute again. It was in his head, he just needed

"A̴̧̤̻̽͜ ̸̛͖̝̎̂m̸̰̍i̷͈̫͇̎̔̽̚n̷̡̼̈́̓͊ủ̵͖͎̟̀̎͝t̴̙̤͓͈̊̋̄e̴̛̖̦͖̹̿̊," he gasped, wiping the sand from his face. The Onyx courtier reflexively held a hand to his chest, before letting go of the Glamour and shakily holding up a finger to make up for the discordant voice—he needed to feel it. Vapor like dry ice curls from his mouth as he nods, listening to Kai's sound in the low ringing. A light surged through the blistering cracks in the flash of a bolt, the room plunging into momentary silence. Fawkes dropped his hands, frowning to himself and looking exhausted as he leaned his head against the wall. The cracks had sealed, but stayed this time. The mannequin's face had regained most of its humanity as it moved with the new accommodations.

"It's safe. I'm not attacking anyone," he tried to reassure her.

"I believe you, brother. And I'm sorry about what that took." Kai gave the Sun Banisher a gentle thumbs up, emotion pouring off her as she permitted herself to Feel. It was rage to start with, pure, unadulterated Wrath as she leaned away and sat at the foot of the bed. Her own Mantle had shifted, dragging people into a moment of sharp self-reflection. As she breathed through it, a tear welled up in her eye. What the fuck else were you supposed to do after experiencing what they had just gone through? Anger, fear, sorrow -- it was all there, all threatening to pour out of her. Overwhelmed by it all, her colours went wild.

She started to cry. It was the only way to let it out, deep sobs of rage and regret as the human tried to process the Fae.

It took a couple of minutes, but then she noticed something.

"Fawkes... your face. It..." She chuckled a messy, bubbly chuckle as her tear-streaked face broke into a smile. "You can emote."