|
Post by Linyü on May 14, 2020 0:49:21 GMT -6
He was only just beginning to turn, but a voice called him from the living room. “Mother,” he said, his voice high and clear. No, not him--- he saw a blur run by, only half his height, tousled dark hair and bright eyes, dressed in the soft robes of a child.
No. No, no, no.
“Mother, mother, look what I found.” The child disappeared around a corner, but their voices drifted back.
“What have I told you about running in the house with your shoes on?”
San’s throat closed at the sound of his mother’s voice. He had forgotten it--- he had tried to hold on, but he had forgotten--- and yet, confronted with it now, it felt so achingly familiar that he wondered how he could ever have left it behind. Even as she scolded him, there was a warmth to it; he had known, even then, that she hadn't been truly cross with him.
14
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 14, 2020 0:52:34 GMT -6
"Now, what have you got, my darling?"
Slowly, as though in a trance, he traced the same path that his child self had tread, filled with a terrible dread, as though they might go up in smoke as soon as he arrived, as though they had never existed to begin with.
Her face, he thought. The scent of the perfume she wore--- what had it been--- he couldn’t remember…
"---n!"
Past the receiving hall, past the sitting room, past the room where father entertained his guests. He wandered through each one, tracing shadows of himself through them, year after year of comfortable recollections that had blurred at the edges. Here was a lamp with painted animals; there was a vase that his father never let him touch. There, the table where the liquor was served, where the air hung heavy with smoke long into the evening when his father met with his friends.
15
|
|
|
Post by Fiera Ferella on May 14, 2020 16:20:59 GMT -6
Something is very wrong here- but you're pretty sure you already knew that. The sounds of the world outside, the light coming through the window, all of it changes to match this dream, if it wasn't already. It looks like you'll be here for a while yet.
(The next 5 posts give no reward.)
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 1:47:50 GMT -6
And then, at last, the door to the sitting room.
He paused for a moment before the threshold. Dread and longing intermingled in his chest, reaching a suffocating crescendo. The voices within drifted out, but he couldn’t make out the words; he knew them only as the high, fluting tones of a child and the gentle murmurs of his mother.
He took a step closer, and then another. There was no door to open; the room came into view, and the dark-haired boy turned, as though---
As though they could see him.
Instinct and training sent a shot of adrenaline through him then. His first instinct was still to hide, and for a moment, he thought irrationally that he had failed, he had been exposed. He tensed, reaching for his weapon, only to find that nothing was there. No, of course not, he’d lost his weapons in… in… How had he lost them again?
16
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 1:48:05 GMT -6
“Mama,” said the boy; San looked up from where he had been staring at the empty space where he had habitually kept his daggers. The boy was staring at him, wide eyed, dressed in plain thin nightclothes, his face washed pale by the moonlight flooding in through the windows. “Mama, there’s a strange man… Mama…”
His mother was at the child’s feet, spilled across the floor as though she had taken a fall, and couldn’t get back up.
No.
“Mama,” said the boy, and for a moment the voice distorted, deepening--- For a moment, he hardly knew who was speaking; the voice seemed as though it might be his. The details were all wrong; he had been a little older when it happened, not quite the soft faced child that he saw within the dream, the one who fell to his knees beside the corpse. And his father--- His father was---
17
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 1:48:22 GMT -6
“Give them back,” said the boy. His eyes filled with tears as he stared balefully at San, his small and feeble hands clutching into fists. “You had no right! Give them back!” He rushed at San, screaming, and----
--- and fell, a dagger in his throat. San looked down, blood on his hands, blood all over his clothes, his boots, the smell of it thick and terrible, the child’s gurgling last attempts at speech punctuating the nausea blurring the edges of his vision.
”San!”
He turned.
Rei. Rei was there, standing where he had stood, framed by the doorway. His vision swam; it was only training that kept him steady. He couldn’t read her face, but he could see her pause, then see her drifting closer---
“Stay away!” he said.
She didn’t listen, drifting forward the breadth of another step. San took a step back, and then another, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “It’s not safe. Don’t---”
18
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 1:48:39 GMT -6
“Brother?”
They turned together at the sound of that voice. His sister stood in the doorway, dressed in the clinging dark garments of the Watchful Ones, watching him with the same cold impassivity she had worn since their graduation. Her gaze flickered from him to the corpses on the ground, the mother and the child.
“Good,” she said. “I’ve taken care of the husband. We should return.” She turned, and past her, he could make out their father laid out on the ground, his features stricken in an expression of agony.
The smell of smoke filled the air, acrid and foul.
He stumbled after her, only to stop as something tugged at his sleeve. He shook it off without thinking before a muffled noise of pain brought him back to his senses. “Rei,” he said, casting around hurriedly, only to find her struggling back to her feet on the ground a few feet away.
19
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 1:48:55 GMT -6
He knelt, checking her for any sign of serious injury. “Are you hurt?” he said.
Slowly, she shook her head, then raised her eyes to his face, looking as though she was searching for something. After a moment, she relaxed somewhat, and her gaze fell to the door, where the body of the man still lay on the ground.
“Your sister,” she said softly. “Shi?”
“... That’s right,” San said.
He knew, then, that it was all a hallucination. He didn’t know how, but he had been warned. And he had been a fool not to take the warnings to heart, or at least not enough to be careful, to think about what he had seen before he went chasing after a figment of his past. But in that moment it had been so…
He couldn’t put it into words, what he felt, stepping into his own childhood home like a ghost.
20
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 1:56:33 GMT -6
He couldn’t put into words the feeling of hearing his mother’s voice, even if it had only been a lie created by a monstrous magicked house. In those two years he spent training, even as they were starving and beating the memories out of him, he would have given anything to see her again. And then, his sister… Everything that came after…
Shame unfurled in his chest, coiling with the dread and nausea that had already made their homes there. “Thanks,” he said.
Rei acknowledged it with a small nod. “You were somewhere else,” she said. “I had to bring you back.”
He fell silent. He didn’t know what to say in the face of that. But it was a habit with them not to talk about the things they couldn’t talk about, and Rei knew better than to press him, just as he knew better than to ask her uncomfortable questions.
21
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 1:57:41 GMT -6
It was a familiar thing, to tiptoe around the edges of each other’s boundaries, each other’s wounds. It was almost a relief to return to something so familiar after everything that had just taken place here.
“We should leave,” he said. “This place isn’t safe.”
But contrary to what he expected, Rei shook her head. “Look,” she said, and pointed up. San did as she instructed, despite his doubts, only to pause when he saw what she was indicating.
Above them, the ceiling was gone. The walls rose as though they were infinitely tall, framing a square of the night sky, dappled with stars. It shouldn’t have been possible--- wasn't possible, he knew. There were so many things wrong with the vision that he hardly knew where to begin. The light pollution alone, here in the city, made it impossible for stars of such brightness to exist here, and yet…
22
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 2:05:23 GMT -6
“It’s not your dream anymore,” she said.
Is it yours? he thought, but he couldn’t speak it aloud. And yet, as soon as the thought came to him, he realized it wasn’t. Rei best loved to look at the moon, but the night reflected here was a moonless one.
As he watched, a single star fell, and then another, and then a third, until they were all raining down from the sky in their myriads.
San knew that he ought to leave, ought to be urging Rei out along with him, but the sight of it was strangely mesmerising. That in itself was dangerous, but before he could pry his eyes away, one of the stars grew rapidly bigger, as though it was hurtling towards them. San tensed, and had just enough time to pull Rei with him, out of its path, rolling across the floor and back up, tensed to run.
23
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 2:05:36 GMT -6
There was no impact. The star that had drifted down was a strange, translucent thing, floating in the center of the room. It gave off a faint light, and something seemed to shift within its amorphous center, which drew the eye the same way that the star shower had done. San felt as though, if he looked long enough, he could puzzle out the shape within.
Immediately, he looked away.
But as luck would have it, the star--- whatever it was--- didn’t care for this, and drifted back into his field of view. San looked in a different direction, and the star changed course again. The corners of San’s mouth tightened into a frown, though he didn’t dare close his eyes entirely.
“It doesn’t want to hurt us,” said Rei.
He wanted to ask her how she knew, but he had been working with her long enough to know that she seldom answered, especially when a simple answer wouldn’t have sufficed.
24
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 2:09:45 GMT -6
But trusting her judgement had become habitual in almost the same way that not asking questions had been, and if he were to introduce a little more logic into the equation, it was also true that her judgement tended to be correct, in the end. San had no idea what it was; he had learned since coming here that, aside from their capability for flight a few sensory advantages, the Harachiu--- as Rei's kind were called--- had no more magic or mental prowess than a human. Whatever she was doing, it was something specific to herself, or at least something that she had learned.
"It wants us to follow," said Rei, after studying the star for a moment. Now that San wasn't actively trying to look away anymore, the star had reverted to its original position in the center of the room. At her words, it drifted to one side, as though beseeching them to look in that direction.
25
|
|
|
Post by Linyü on May 15, 2020 20:02:30 GMT -6
There, in the direction that it drifted, was a door that had not been there before.
San frowned, but Rei was already drifting after it, stopping only to look back at him, a silent invitation for him to do the same. A part of him wondered if she was the one who was lost now, and not him, but even if she was, then he was obliged to keep her safe, the way she had come after him when he had been bewitched by the strange magic of this place.
And so, despite his misgivings, he followed; and the three of them made an odd procession as they walked through the door: the light, the fae girl, and a very human San following behind them like a dark colored ghost. They passed into what might have been called a hallway, though certainly not one that San had ever encountered in any normal house.
26
|
|
|
Post by Jack on May 15, 2020 20:18:49 GMT -6
SLAM!
The sound reverberated throughout the area as asteroids struck the earth outside of the Mansion. It's a good thing you went inside, but it must have spooked you a bit.
[The next 5 posts give no reward]
|
|