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    1. Viatos 7 yrs ago

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The machine's head didn't tilt. My head. Right? But one eye focused on the Magician as he spoke; another slid to Elegance. Then another. Then a third.

White eyes, shining just enough to cut the hearts out of shadows and keep color in the darkening earth, to mingle with Elegance's own illuminating flame. Like lovers entwining fingers. Or soldiers leveling weapons across a no-man's land. Or things that weren't quite people assessing each other, radiant and choking back Madness. As the Magician turned and vanished into thin air, Tristan slid an eye away from Elegance, leaving two. He hated looking at her.

"Proverbs 23 again." He wasn't sure who he was talking to. He'd been in his head a long time, it felt like. An ocean of fear and paranoia, cold and clean and welcoming. Easiest to be terrified, to drown in it, to be alone and sinking always further. His relationship with his emotions had become something he wouldn't have understood before the Semblance, but he suspected the strangeness would pass. Already he was beginning to lose track of the despair that had first overwhelmed him, the dissonance associated with inhabiting the blood-slick biomachina of his body. It was too big to be felt, it had become something like panic, and panic was part of the ocean.

The substance coursing through his vascular system helped, too. Everything was clarified, jitters were impossible, he could map Elegance's face, his natural response to the threat she represented, and he didn't have to second-guess himself. Perfection wasn't a quality, it was a pattern, and he could fit himself into it - that's what it felt like. It felt like being fresh and cold and clean after a thousand years of squalor, the awful in-between of being dirty and too hot, your own sweat turning grime into fluid slithering filth. Even the thought of that couldn't bother him, because his present state was too pure to allow for feelings like that. Tristan was fine. Perfectly fine. What was Tabitha worrying about, again? Everyone was upset about something or other, it seemed, except for the man Keahi kept bound. Tristan felt a sympathy there, something that vibrated in a way that should probably have been uncomfortable. He's so completely what he is.

That was a kind of perfection, too, and likewise it was easy for Tristan to be what he was. What he was was drowning.

The hard part was surfacing again.

With an amount of effort that one of the clean, clear corners of his mind noted should probably have been uncomfortable, he surfaced.

"It's rude, isn't it?" This to Elegance, their impromptu guide. "Telling us about your obligations. Telling that poor kid he's - " Her words were boiling up in him, but he didn't have Koda to distract him now. They burned away before they could echo, his mind like killing starlight. "...and the Magician's not the puppet-master, but he doesn't say anything about who caused the accident. Except that it's unfortunate. When your enemies do it, it's clumsy, right? It wouldn't be an accident, it'd be a mistake."

Maybe that was the threat-response subroutines, dividing the world into foe and future-foe. Maybe not, though; his childhood at the preacher's feet was drifting through his head. Old, unhappy thoughts about fire and brimstone, about who in the congregation was faltering and must be corrected, or who outside it was soullessly wicked and must be destroyed. The same behaviors.

He was following the others, Zino and Stormy in particular. The keep itself caused an unexpected reaction and threatened to plunge him down below the level of conversation again; his eyes fell on Tabitha, Stormy's shoulder, Oedipus among the assortment of oddments, Keahi glaring, and on the Magician's servant. It was the architecture, he realized, once the nanosecond struggle for sanity had concluded. I want to... Inarticulate. Fix it? Destroy it? Rebuild, reform? Something about the lines and angles of the place seemed fertile to him in a way that was profoundly bizarre. Black earth awaiting its seeds. Blank canvas - but it's not blank, but that doesn't matter - begging for paint. It occurred to him that it was entirely possible he'd never have children, and it took him a minute to understand why the thought had occurred.

Tristan would have shaken his head to clear it, once upon a time. He didn't. He just kept moving, eyes roaming, waiting for the Magician to reappear. One stayed with Oedipus."Nobody's his parents, from the sound of it. No one to look after him." God, had surviving in Lightbridge once seemed daunting? His father had been his anchor, his deity, the boundaries of his world. Leaving home, even on mission, tumbling out into the indefinite void...he'd been such a kid. Such a scaredy-cat. He couldn't smile, and the tone of his voice only changed when he made it change, and he didn't. "All alone in a strange land. Not so different from us, when you think about it. Maybe a dead girl will make him a monster too." On a whim, Tristan tried to force a laugh. It didn't sound right to him, a brief discordance in his gleaming exalted state, a series of jangling wrong notes. He wasn't sure how it sounded to the others.

He turned to Ellard, holding out a hand of iron and bone for inspection. "Don't let it bother you. We're all fabrications here, I guess. Part of someone else's story. Your experience is still real - if nothing else, if it wasn't, the story would lose its meaning. We're the same that way, we're..." Tristan hesitated, then withdrew his hand. "...real enough."
The well-dressed man was nodding, gesturing. "She's trained," he said, as his companion approached. She was shaking, Cecilly knew, trembling like a leaf in high winds until she took a breath, and then another breath, and then - startling the man - slapped herself full across the face. Her body calmed and steadied, and it was with what was almost practiced ease that she approached Lee with the needle. Growing clarity brought the woman into sharper relief. Short hair, dyed with something - the unnatural texture was a giveaway - features too drawn and twisted with fear to be pretty. Well-muscled, not just a gym body. Sweater and slacks. Sneakers, incongruous with the outfit. She was in her early thirties; the man was older but not by a lot. Businesslike now. Efficient. Had they done this before?

"Here," said the woman, jogging, almost running to the door to retrieve a duffle bag and bring it to the bed. Clothing - shirts, jeans, socks and sneakers, underthings, the works - a first aid kit, various items. A flashlight, ironically.

And another gun. Heavy, again, a serious caliber. The woman was laying out clothes across the bed; she placed the gun without comment, an offering. It was loaded.

"It might help with trust," the man said. "I'm Caleb, by the way. It's our h-" The hesitation was brief but unmistakable. "Our pleasure to make your acquaintance. My associate is-"

"Jane," she said suddenly, seeming to startle herself with her own voice. Lee could feel her cheeks color as she leaned past to arrange more clothing. Jane smiled, then, a small and private thing.

Vanishing at noises from the direction of the elevator. The tension flooded back into the pair. Jane took her gun out of her purse, checked it, and flicked the safety off. "I'm sorry, ma'am. You're probably still a little woozy, but you're going to have to hurry."
The visitors filed quietly into Cecilly's room. Uneasy, heads turning. One twitchier than the other. She started to speak, but only got as far as "It's an honor-" before the other cut her off, a sharp gesture. His lips twitched, frown-smile-frown, hands in the pockets of nice slacks, belted around his nice shirt, tucked and unwrinkled. "We're not doctors. But you can...see that, can't you? I'm sorry, yes, your questions, your d-" This time the man cut himself off, gesturing again to his companion. She shifted a purse slung around her shoulder, retrieved something: a syringe. She approached the bed cautiously, almost reverently, laying it carefully on the sidetable where Cecilly could reach it without quite coming into reach herself.

Beneath the woman's clothing Lee can sense an unusually heavy necklace - a pendant or medallion of some kind, perhaps. And scars. The woman's skin bears notable scarring, straight and ordered lines at her stomach, other uglier marks elsewhere. C-section? But the rest seem more like injuries, the kind made by breaking glass, or knives, or other sharp things. There was a gun in her purse, heavier than a woman might choose to carry around for self-defense.

"You're under sedation," murmured the woman. "The needle will help counteract the effects, but you'll crash later, end up with a bad hangover."

"In reverse order: due to recent events beyond your control, you are being unjustly and unlawfully targeted by an organization we believe intends you harm. You're in the hospital because you're injured, and because it limits your movements. You...had an encounter, one that may seem impossible or unbelievable at present. If the details strain your memory, focus on this: whatever happened, there are people coming - now - who have questions about that encounter, who are not concerned with your safety, health, or rights as a citizen. And lastly, we're..."

He hesitated. "...private security. Hired by an employer who regrets your injury very much. We're not taking you to meet them; our orders are to get you home for now and remain in attendance. We can't do anything without your consent, but I'm sorry to say there isn't much time to decide. The people who want to take you away are in the building, and we have reason to believe they're armed. They'll be delayed-"

-

The lights flickered in the elevator, which slowed and then stopped, half a floor below Cecilly's.

Maya cursed. "You have to be fucking kidding me. Alright, Val. I don't want to be here any longer than we have to be and I am not loaded in armament or temperament for any more surprises tonight." She was already stretching up towards the service hatch, motioning Val forward to help her up. "Assume the situation just went pear-shaped. If this is just the mother of all coincidences and we scare some civilians they can dress me down in the next performance review." Technically, Blackthorne personnel were civilians. But technicalities like that had stopped making sense a long time ago. The world they walked in was an underworld, and the surface maps held little meaning down in the dark. She hadn't freed her weapon yet, but only because it would have made the climb awkward.

A quick summary and even faster orders saw the vehicle outside begin to boil with activity, S.C.A.R.E. collecting weapons and armor and mobilizing in efficient quiet, sped by the sudden current of fear that had passed through the squad. The routine was disrupted. None of the men and women were uncertain as to what that could mean.

Maya, too, focused on efficiency, heedless of the contrast she was presenting Val - the way she handled the younger woman like a sister,
the way she prepared herself to face whatever was waiting in room 509. 'Like you,' she'd said. But once she was on the roof of the elevator, she checked and rechecked her gun.

-

"-but not for long." As he stepped closer, Lee could see - feel - trace him. No necklace or pendant, but scarring, similar. The suit jacket he carried folded under one arm concealed a handgun much like the woman's. He was touching it nervously, his voice changing in apparent strength because he kept turning his head towards the hallway. Tense. They were both so tense.

"You'll have more questions. We can answer them later, but if we're to move, we have to move now."
I'm 200% down for this.
SILVER SPEAR
Elatreis, the Wolf-Haunted Kingdom


Night falls hard in Elatreis, a crush of darkness within which mortal hearts beat fast and mortal lungs breathe labored, and only the terrible music of distant howls moves clearly through the land after dusk. But here in the silver city, the falling night is pierced through by the great tower for which the city is named, and falls broken to be devoured by the light of ten thousand torches below. Those lights dance and flow, a great river of fire, and all the city's people are drowning within it - countless bodies moving through the mandala of streets, bodies whose faces are the slender masks of placid saints or heavy stone-shouldered helms made up in the image of wolves and worse beasts. The city sings with a greater music than any hunting pack could answer, and if something does howl in the dark beyond its edges, its counterpoint goes unheard. Somewhere within the city a stone statue is being hefted by a score of strong men and women, snarling and snapping playfully at children and youths who come too close to their ceremonial burden. Somewhere, too, wild-eyed legionnaires are fighting against a drunk, delighted crowd, too panicked and frantic to remember the routes set aside for emergencies, and in any case too late, for the doom they would prophecy walks now in their shadows.

It is the night of the First Festival.

The jangle of countless instruments and the roars, laughter, and song of countless throats shudders even the walls of Verimos Cathedral, a looming Gothic structure of flowing stone and spider-like arrangements of glass that serve as both window and warding rune. Like its overrun exterior, the inside of the cathedral is swarmed with beasts - serpentine, lupine, feline, a hundred chimera shapes crawling down pillars and along ceiling arches, curled beneath low tables and encircling the central altar. Their shadows move with black intent, their silver eyes glitter - but is only the flicker of lantern-light. With every window glowing by the light of the parade's torches, these gargoyles of stone and metal are clear enough for what they are.

And whyever should the ones gathered amid stone shadows fear the night? They are damned to it, after all, and to them - to you - there is a music sweeter and clearer than that of the festival refrain or the forgotten howls of hateful things. Power, sings the dark within the cathedral. Power is here.

So are the others like you. Eight faces, all in all, share the shifting shadow mysteries of Verimos' few tending lanterns. No druid attends the wandering this night, and the cathedral's god rests in a chamber above the vaulted ceiling, closer to the sky, the better to look out over its city. Its chamber doors are locked and sealed, and what danger to so enchanted a place on so enchanted a night? Who would dare disturb the undercroft below the cathedral, the spiralling catacombs where are interred a thousand years of Elatreis' royalty and city nobles? Who walks among the dead?

The cathedral has five great entrances and a few clandestine ones, but however you came to Verimos, here you are, arrayed in a circle with those who, like you, walk the night. It seems ridiculous to pretend you are here for some innocent purpose, but it seems ridiculous to admit your damnation to a stranger, if indeed strangers each of you be. Still - eight faces circle, cowled or masked or bare, and while silence is banished far from Silver Spear this night, within the cathedral a kind of hush exists. This is a place of sacred silences, and even conquered by the festival chorus, it remembers its nature and purpose.

Do you?

Alive above the dead.

How do you break from the symmetry of stares?
Congratulations to...

@Trivval, playing Amhimitl
@Redward, playing Korine Amaranthe
@NewShoesForever, playing Avers Lacht
@Oraculum, playing Prabhalocta Dhaumir
@Mammon, playing Rapture Blackvex
@Tut tu ru, playing Rozar and Rozana Repercutio
@Kala, playing Esha of Anshu


And my sincere thank you to everyone who applied! Selection was exceedingly difficult, and I thank you all for the time and creativity in depicting the amazing concepts that made it so.
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