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Post by Gavin Graves on Oct 16, 2021 18:02:58 GMT -8
The Beast unleashed a flow of glamour to a purpose. The Wyrd, hearing Gavin's call, rose up to wrestle the words of agreement into a Promise. As the Wyrd and the Dollmaker came to a fight or a handshake, he moved cautiously into the creature's parlor of business. Eying the tools and equipment of its trade, finding unusual probing implements, curiously bent armatures, and an unnervingly specialized tool for doing precisely what he'd asked, he was not any more at ease than when he started down the path with Henley.
He was about to have an eye replaced with a piece of a Goblin. The location of the arrangement made the concept surreal, almost to the point of obscenity. Who voluntarily gets an eye removed by a creepy monster from another world in a backroom booth at a metal concert?
When the Wyrd settled the question heavy in the air, Gavin moved toward the questionable repurposed chair and its more conspicuously suspicious attendants. Theoretically he thought himself ready for what he'd signed up for. Moments of panic and adrenaline frequently arose and required taming. He occasioned a glance toward Henley, making sure he was still there. A small comfort was gleaned from knowing that if it all went wrong, there would at least be a witness and perhaps some help.
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Post by Henley on Oct 17, 2021 9:21:31 GMT -8
Henley did the only thing that made sense in a moment when one was about to observe the consensual removal of an eye without anesthetic.
He took his belt off, folded it in half, and offered it to Gavin.
"You might want to bite down on that."
He was still there. Standing over near the door, where the murder chicken's inevitable flailing wouldn't get him.
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Post by Krakenbox on Oct 19, 2021 14:33:44 GMT -8
The Dollmaker sniffed, head tilting as she examined Gavin's claws. "Change those out," she ordered the imp-like hobs, indicating the leather restraints before disappearing into the shadows. As the Autumn was considering that he could just escape with a little bit of glamour, and the new straps looked just as mundane as the last, he realized that the crude looking clasps were likely hammered and bent Cold Iron. The intent was to nullify his magic over touching and mutilating his skin. They were loose enough where his Bestial instincts didn't start screaming against being held down, but she was definitely intelligent enough to work around a swiping paw in blind panic. It was like going to the dentist, really, as the hobs eagerly angling the light as they shifted his legs and dropped the chair. There was a rattle from above, echoing his memories of the market as the Ningyō-shi descended from red strings, flipping to reveal her autonomous shadow. Hollow sockets click as the mannequin raises articulated hands, the flesh knitted on the reflection twisting her fingers as if she were piloting it. A Swiss Army knife of implements splay and scroll until the fingertips were a combination of sewing needles and crystal. "Concentrate on what you want me to see," she instructed, voice much older and mechanical as the blunt tips of her other hand stretched his left eye wide. He didn't have much time to overthink as what he could only assume was a laser blinded his vision, splitting it between seeing the Hobgoblin on her periphery as a kaleidoscope of memory being shuffled through like a deck of cards, reflected back in the empty sockets of the construct. As the doll blinked, the click would stop and hold a scene, running through the images of a film. Gavin's eye was freely watering, and he felt something drip as an imp applied a drop of salve. At least she wasn't looking to torture him. "This one," she chirped, stopping on the Lost's former mentor. At first he thought she was taking his face, but the context of the scene was draining from his mind, losing the emotional weight of patience and care when faced with something new and alien. The gratitude no longer held meaning, and so it must be just the knowledge imbibed, right? Neurons course corrected to rewrite the narrative as threads were snipped, and the Autumn distantly reflected on how this process might be similar to Arcadian attentions. He was beginning to hope that his eye would just shrivel out or be swapped with the memory purchase, but the sharp precision that invaded his face told him otherwise. Stark rejection of the invading tools boiled his fight or flight, soaking in a cold sweat as logic fought with instinct.
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Post by Gavin Graves on Oct 19, 2021 14:59:37 GMT -8
Gavin restrained his savage instincts to writhe and dismember and concentrated his gaze on the mundane details of the ceiling and the requested memories the creature wanted to explore. He counted the drops as they welled and slowly fell from a tile that had soaked through from a leaky pipe somewhere in the structure.
As the surging panic threatened to overwhelm, he needed to keep the need for escape thoughtful and at least productive should he feel the procedure was going out of bounds. Dropping his shoulders he pressed his forearms down further into the restraints buying him marginally greater reach with the vicious tips of his claws. Making like he was gripping his hands with tension in anticipation of something unpleasant, his talons felt their way around the underside of the chair-arms feeling for a weakness in the restraints' anchoring points or the arms themselves. It was all a desperate outlet for focusing and creating a semblance of control.
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Post by Krakenbox on Oct 20, 2021 13:26:00 GMT -8
Pain pinches, sharp and jabbing deep as she slides what she is looking for. Much to Gavin's mind numbing shock, he hovers in limbo of the surgery as the mechanism halts extraction. Henley sees an imp running from the shadows to join its mistress at the table, with a jar and something floating inside. His stomach flipped.
"The Contract will be written with a verbal agreement of transaction."
He might have swore or roared something in the affirmative, and the smell of smoke like a soldering iron swaps one organ for another, connecting to the optic nerve with magic and stitching in smooth, precise movements. Somewhere his occult mind argued that he was supposed to swallow it, but the questions were bulldozed by the flood if information written into his being, reworking the rules of his existence. He did feel a literal pit in his stomach; like the Goblins had a sense of humour around literal interpretations of intuition.
Plop.
His old eye went into the jar, turning yellow with age. The Dollmaker's imp offered it to Gavin like a treat or toy for his participation: his surgeon clearly didn't want it, as he had already paid. The Hobgoblin spun her hands in antiseptic, clicking the needles as the eyeless mannequin examined them, before the strings pulled and the flesh returned to facing her patient.
"Smear the wisdom of the owl to cheat the Wyrd. But you won't be able to cheat us."
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Post by Henley on Oct 20, 2021 13:31:06 GMT -8
When the mechanisms went to work and he saw the Imp move, the Ogre looked away. Flesh-trading was a nasty business, and agony and organ removal was not something he wanted to see. In fact, it all made him want to puke a little.
He let out a long, deep breath when it was over, giving her a breathless farewell.
"Charmed, as always, Dollmaker..."
The price of Autumn's power was pain, it seemed.
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Post by Gavin Graves on Oct 21, 2021 16:32:53 GMT -8
"Knowledge always comes with a price. That's a lesson I've already learned. Thanks though." He knew there would be a rider on its every use. The ambulatory thorn that was the Dollmaker would extract its due on behalf of its greater whole. It was the way the Hedge worked.
"So what's the aftercare on this, Advil and some eyedrops, yeah?" He changed the subject, his voice directed at the surgeon while looking impatiently for one of the scampering imps.
Barking at one of the servile creatures, "Would you get these off me," he shook the restraints. A deliberately calming breath later, "Please."
The imp simply glowered up at the pinned Beast for a time, then looking to the Dollmaker for assent, before slowly attending to his request. It went for the feet first, forcing him to wait longer with the iron around his wrists. Apparently it liked to flirt with danger.
The creature got a pass on violent reprisal as the relief from being held down overtook the Beast's inflamed impatience.
Gavin saw a familiar orb floating in a fluid. An alien place for it to be, to be sure. He skimmed passed that, for the moment, looking for a reflective surface hungry to get a look at the results.
Pulling up a sideview mirror that had been harvested for some other purpose, he absorbed the outward changes. There weren't any differences made to his mask, its magic was resilient. The mien was another case entirely. What was once a textured and vibrant orange cassowary eye, was now an even yellow like a mountain lion or an owl. He wasn't quite sure yet. There would be no hiding this mismatched set from the others.
Standing up he finally noticed Henley had stuck around throughout the ordeal. The battle with panic that had consumed his focus was won and broader awareness returned. A smile of gratitude grew, "How's it look?"
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Post by Henley on Oct 23, 2021 14:44:03 GMT -8
"Like you're all set to pounce on a mystery from a tree-top," Henley replied tightly. He had remained there by the door, politely not watching too closely as the horrific mauling of the Beast's eye socket had occurred. It was all very unpleasant, but it was an unpleasant business he was in sometimes. Still. "Did you get what you were looking for, Mr. Graves?"
He hoped so.
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Post by Gavin Graves on Oct 25, 2021 14:42:43 GMT -8
Scooping up the container with the haunting reminder of what he'd just had done, he tried not to think about it. He knew now he could draw on the wisdom of the Hedge to reveal hidden truths, but he already began to feel alien about it. Some other creature's eye now filtered the world for him. Would he run into some poor Hedgebeast wandering the thorns looking for its missing eye, he wondered.
"Yeah, that's the lot of it," he said self-reassuring trying to convince himself that he wanted what he got.
The orb in the small jar bumped up against the glass sending vibrations through his hand, reminding him of its presence, as if to say 'ask why did you do this to me?'
"Enhh," he tacked on, and lingered with a haunted pause trying to shake himself out of it. "I think I need a drink, but yeah, I'm done here at the 'Swap Meat.'" A pun he found amusing.
"Cheers, Dollmaker," a reflexive courtesy offered to the anthropomorphic thorn as the pair moved to exit the horror show that would surely haunt at least one of them.
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