[center][img]https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/5d103581d124.gif[/img][/center] [sup][h1][b][center][color=black] E M M A F R O S T[/color] [color=#98c0b7]E M M A F R O S T[/color][/center] [/b][/h1][/sup] [hr] [indent] [color=silver]I first notice it because I can’t change it. I know it’s wrong here because I diffuse nothing into images and story the moment my power engages. Normally when something brushes the edges of my mind I smooth it instinctively. I can make it symbolic and give it a narrative spine with which to model and create with. Even nightmares provide material I can work with, but this? Oh it is [i]nothing [/i]but a hollow pressure. This place refuses my metaphor and my imaginations and my symbols and I wonder to myself if I have always been here. Where am I? Every attempt I make to find a memory collapses back on me. I am irritated. Even my irritation should become a dream and instead it just sits there. All of this pressure with no image and no emotional cue. The inside of a thought. Everything tightens around my body and around my expectations. Before I can even form colour in the space it is drained - it is all white, but it’s not light. The white of every comforting association is quietly revoked so I try again, sharper this time, letting my power attempt to coax a narrative into this void. To create anything. This reality is all depth and harbours nothing and yet it is finished. I pull at the suggestion of meaning only for the construct to absorb it away. I am angry. “Fine,” I speak aloud, pushing harder. “Be difficult.” The moment I speak is the moment that this space slows me down. There is no resistance and no wall around me; instead the dragging feeling of every thought of mine stretching. Lengthened out enough until I am forced to notice them forming and I feel my own impatience begin to unspool me into components. None of it is landing but someone is here. I simply feel correction as it tugs at my mind like a constant; an axis that [i]my[/i] thoughts bend around whether I want them to or not and suddenly the gravity is accounted for. Emma Frost. Of course it’s her. [/color][right][color=8cafe0]ℂ𝕙𝕖𝕖𝕜𝕪.[/color][/right][color=silver] That thought is slapped free of me and amplified into the space and I’m embarrassed that I thought it and that she was there to volley it around her void. She is too clean and too exact; dreams are collaborative but Emma Frost has taken all of my tools from me– [/color][right][color=8cafe0]𝕀𝕟𝕔𝕠𝕣𝕣𝕖𝕔𝕥.[/color][/right][color=silver] I try weaponised irritation again. Emotional pressure. Visualisation and manipulation that is both subtle and pointed; to invite a response or rebuke from her hand or mind but it simply dilates and loses coherence and returns to me stripped of intent. [/color][right][color=8cafe0]𝕐𝕠𝕦'𝕣𝕖 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕗𝕠𝕣t.[/color][/right][color=silver] Her thought just arrives to me fully formed. [/color][right][color=8cafe0]𝕊𝕥𝕠𝕡.[/color][/right][color=silver] “I’m... figuring this out,” I snap back. “You dropped me into nothing.” [/color][right][color=8cafe0]𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕚𝕤 𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕟𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘. 𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕚𝕤 𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕦𝕔𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕖.[/color][/right][color=silver] I want to argue back, I want to sleep and find the dreamthread. [/color][right][color=8cafe0]ℕ𝕠 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕕𝕠𝕟'𝕥. 𝔽𝕠𝕝𝕕.[/color][/right][color=silver] I don’t know what she means. [/color][right][color=8cafe0]𝕐𝕖𝕤 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕕𝕠.[/color][/right][color=silver] I keep trying. Reaching for the habits that have always saved me before. A softening of edges and my willing of a sequence to create shape. I attempt to seed the space with my dream-logic, with my power, but it does not land. I am trapped here and my panic flares all sharp and unhelpful which only makes me push harder. Impose sensation and identity from my hands, from my mind. God, I reach for the familiar ache of sleep and lucid dreaming and yet again I’m corrected by this oppressive, barren plane. I am growing louder in my own mind and above that swirling booming noise is the racing of my own heartbeat as it thunders in my ears at the start. Then it clicks. I am… I am not the centre of everything; for this is no dream and no dream world. I know what she means now. I know what it means now. The same way that I know when I’m about to wake up and don’t want to admit it yet. [i]Fold.[/i] I then collapse inward and stop projecting myself as the centre of reference. I have to stop narrating. The construct tightens and then the pressure is no longer external, it’s internalised and it’s bending me instead of the space around me. My thoughts begin to stack. Awareness watches awareness and awareness watches me right back. I try to hold onto myself. Hold onto the I at the centre of everything but it’s now so obvious how much work it is taking me... I want to argue. I want to scream that this is how my power manifests and this is what I do. I am the dreamweaver and this is who I am but that thought doesn’t– and can’t even finish forming because she’s already there correcting it. [/color][right][color=8cafe0]𝔽𝕠𝕝𝕕, ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕝.[/color][/right][color=silver] [right]I am…[/right] My narration is not necessary. The construct changes. The construct changed. What had been white and infinite began to resolve and solidify into depth as each plane of it intersected. Angles began to assert their hierarchy and the space was no longer an overwhelming void. Carl Valentino was no longer inside the construct but within it; standing physically now on a smooth and pale surface that reflected nothing personal back at him. He kept his posture careful and instinctively balanced and before him, Emma Frost finally appeared. The woman was dressed impeccably and illuminated by a mindlight that did not flicker but beheld her in wonder as the master of this domain. She regarded Carl with a cool appraisal and her head tilted just enough to suggest an interest. “There,” she said aloud at last. “That wasn’t so difficult.” Carl inhaled sharply and the breath surprised him; for it was earned, and his chest felt lighter. “That felt like I was disappearing. That felt like… Like I was lost.” Emma’s gaze sharpened upon him. “Not quite. You mistake the two because you’re so accustomed to being in charge, and being the artist.” She stepped closer. “Dreams indulge in first person and reward identification. Psionic constructs do not.” Carl swallowed, his irritation still sat within him, but no longer controlled the space. “So… Stop being me?” He asked as a brow quirked to denote his confusion. Emma took in a breath that almost seemed as though it would be a sardonic laugh upon exhale. Instead, her lips just curved ever-so. “Oh don’t be so dramatic,” she sighed. “You’re still yourself. I merely had you comprehend another point of view.” She gestured at the construct and it responded almost instantly; layers peeling back to show the rules of her mind-physics. Carl looked at the space, and at his instructor. “I… What if I don’t remember how to do this?” Emma met his gaze evenly until her eyes narrowed. “Then we’ll do it again,” she said without any immediate elaboration. She let her construct hold as it was. Clean and comprehensible. She hoped that Carl would exist inside this understanding long enough to feel her lesson take root. “You experience the world emotionally.” Carl inclined his head, uncertain of whether this was a diagnosis of fault. “It makes you generous and imaginative,” she continued, “but this also exposes you.” With little more than a blink, the space around them destabilised and what had just been suddenly began to feel antagonistic. “This,” Emma explained, holding out a hand as the construct glitched and pulsed by her design, “is what it feels like when a telepath constructs around you as a trap.” Once again Carl felt a pressure form around him and around his mind and thoughts. The very awareness of himself while the architecture of Emma’s diamond palace softened and instinct urged him to open up to it and accommodate. He resisted and Emma observed without comment. “So this is about shielding?” he asked, voice strained with effort. Emma smirked, “No. This is about unmaking.” She stepped closer to him; close enough to sharpen his awareness of her disciplined presence. “A psionic construct is an agreement. Bound and created faster than a subject can object.” She raised a hand to tap the air between them and it reverberated with a painful sonic sound that vibrated through him uncomfortably. “If I can hold you like this then I can enter your mind and find everything I need. I am teaching you to identify rules so you can dismantle a construct.” “Like folding myself… Out of it?” “Yes.” Emma’s expression cooled. “You did not disappear. You withdrew yourself from the narrative centre and without that subject, the construct lost all strength.” Slowly but surely the implications unfurled. Carl felt his irritation quiet with the sudden context. “And what if I can’t… What if I can’t learn the rules? What if I can’t fold?” “Then someone will get to decide what you are and what they can do with that knowledge,” Emma replied coldly and a silence followed. “This is not academic, Carl. You will encounter telepaths who will mistake your openness for invitation and if you are very unlucky, you will encounter structures designed to cradle, soothe, and trap you. Keep you compliant.” Almost imperceptibly, her mouth tightened. “You will not always wake quickly.” Her construct began to unwind, not by collapsing, but by deliberately releasing him layer by layer. “Remember this lesson,” Emma said with a finality. The space dissolved and ceased abruptly. His body reacted first. A sharp intake of breath and muscles locking themselves. Heart stuttering. Carl Valentino was back in his bed searching for familiarity in the geometry of his bedroom and Emma Frost was nowhere to be seen. He sat for several seconds as he catalogued the sensations. The pressure was gone and so was that strange metaphysical weight and overwhelming brightness. He had not been prepared for this; she had found his mind open and used the opportunity. A lesson delivered where he was least defended. Carl sat then, for some time, with the violent certainty that he had never been awake like this before. [/color] [/indent]