multiversallogs | in the woods dark and deep I offer you eternal sleep

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in the woods dark and deep I offer you eternal sleep

Who: Alba, Alexia Swiftdawn, Anna Demirovna, Bruce Wayne, Cliona Donovan, Data, Don Draper, Ilde Decima, Irene Adler, Jae-hyun Kim, Jaime Lannister, Kalinda Sharma, Marie-Sixtine St. Vincent, Martel, Nuray Amedi, Penelope Lane, Odessa Wander, Pepper Potts, Rex Lewis, Seoraj, Shrieky, Sunny, Wolfgang Einhorn, Xas
What: Something bad is afoot, and you must help.
Where: Abrogate Green, Badside, Barrackham, Chnum, Echomire, Flag Hill, Gallmarch, Ketch Heath, Pelorus Fields, Raven's Gate, Sangwine, Serpolet, Sobek Croix, Stoneshell, and the northern woods
When: July 22nd to the 30th
Notes: People are slow right now and a few are on hiatus, so slow-tagging and back-tagging are totally fine. Please check the accompanying OOC post for info and to coordinate.
Warnings: Disturbing content, will include violence, choking, drowning, body horror, and animal death.

Strange events tend to go unnoticed in Baedal, compared to the much stranger things happening around them. People don't tend to be noticed when they go missing, either. The city takes these things in stride. After all, people get called back to their homeworld all the time, or they die. Everyone knows this.

Still, rumors start cropping up around the city about the sudden appearance of twelve identical towers positioned around the city like the face of a clock...

ALBA ♞ Cliona Donovan
DON DRAPER ♞ Pepper Potts, Kalinda Sharma
ILDE DECIMA ♞ Irene Adler, Marie-Sixtine St. Vincent
JAE-HYUN KIM ♞ Sunny
MARTEL ♞ Data, Jaime Lannister
NURAY AMEDI ♞ Alexia Swiftdawn, Anna Demirovna
ODESSA WANDER ♞ Rex Lewis
SEORAJ ♞ Bruce Wayne
SHRIEKY ♞ Xas
WOLFGANG EINHORN ♞ Penelope Lane

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There's an old woman pacing outside of the tower. When she sees you, she looks relieved. "Oh, you've come!" she exclaims, taking you by the arm. She knows who did this, you see, and yes, your friend is trapped at the top of this tower, but you'll never find him on your own. Anyone who enters this tower will become hopelessly lost, and die.

She tells you what you need to enter the tower: a magic looking-glass. It's hers. Unfortunately it's been stolen from her by the same man responsible for these abductions, so you'll have to go fetch it. She's not sure where he's taken it, but she thinks it's somewhere along the Gross Tar. You'll know it when you find it, she tells you, because it's being guarded by a monstrous beast. Off you go, then, dear. You'd better hurry. Your friend in the tower is not alone.

In a bar or a club, you are approached by a handsome stranger who is charming, dashing, and exactly your type. Also, rich. He takes you dancing. you're drinking, dancing, having a good time - you start to lose track of time. At midnight, the bar/club/etc and everything in it vanishes and you find that you are locked in a tower in Badside, which is filthy; you are compelled to spend every moment cleaning it, but it never seems to get any cleaner. You cannot sleep or rest; you have to clean. Worse, you have to do it in glass slippers which you cannot remove.

There's an old woman pacing outside of the tower. When she sees you, she looks relieved. "Oh, you've come!" she exclaims, taking you by the arm. She knows who did this, you see, and yes, your friend - oh, did you not know...? Well, anyway, a woman is trapped at the top of this tower. You need seven keys to make it to the top of the tower, which she can make for you, but first you must collect the following items: a white pumpkin from the patch in Stoneshell; four mice; two rats; and a snake. What's are they for? Well...

Well, you'll see when you bring it. Just hurry, please; she's running out of time. You'll be rewarded if you do.

Edited 2012-08-13 23:29 (UTC)

You are approached by a feeble old man who requests for you to get him a drink from a nearby well. Should you comply, he smiles benevolently at you, thanks you for your kindness, and says he will give you a gift: every time you speak, diamonds and roses will fall from your mouth. (If you refuse, he curses you: snakes and toads will fall from your mouth whenever you speak.) Either way, while you're choking on them, he takes you to a tower in the Spatters.

There's an old woman pacing outside the tower. When she sees you, she looks relieved. "Oh, you came, you came!" she exclaims, and explains to you that the person you're looking for is indeed at the top of the tower, but they've been cursed and need your help.

You need to find a golden coin which belongs to a fairy queen in Barrackham. But she won't give it up for nothing, the woman warns you; you'll have to trade something of value of your own... And you'd better hurry, dear. You friend is running out of time.

It doesn't take Bruce long to notice Seoraj is missing, but longer than he'd have liked to ascertain it's not because he's been spirited away from the city. (The sensation at that initial thought - somewhere in his chest - isn't one he's looking into further.) They speak frequently enough (for him), usually in the mornings, sitting inside his wooden house with worn mugs full of tea, or just over the CiD. Beyond that, a gregarious fixture of the neighborhood running a rather noisy trade suddenly up and vanishing draws attention.

He finds the tower in a relative heartbeat. He argues with the woman (doesn't get anywhere), experiments with the party-goers (nothing), sends a series of highly irritable texts (that yield no help), finds the castle impenetrable and generally has every militant and scientific impulse in him shot down.

And so with extreme, grudging prejudice, he begins the errand he's sent on, impatient and very nearly pissed off - not worried, because being worried would imply he's over-invested and doubts Seoraj's ability to look after himself (though he did get kidnapped, so maybe he should be w- no). It's a puzzle and he'll sort it out; the likes of a magic tower aren't going to thwart him. Anger, he knows well, is the best of all motivators. The chill doesn't settle into his bones until he finds the first chest.

Somehow, he'd been imagining doll parts.

It's never been difficult to lure Ilde with fine things, inclined that way by temperament as well as nature; one of the few things she shares in common with her mother is a weakness for hair-combs, to go with the hair she also inherited, long and dark and blue-black when the illusions fade with her consciousness and leave her gleaming, eyes rolling back in her head as she crumples from the knees. If she hits the ground she doesn't know it, heartbeat (heartbeats) slowing until imperceptible, her body still, insensible and breathless with nothing to fog the glass that she's encased in.

(The gold design is intricate - before she slides it into her hair she turns it over in her hands, presses her fingers over the folds and grooves and can't for the life of her find where any of them lead. She's still thinking about that when she just isn't, any more.)

She was already cold; she dreams of roses.

Blood seeps from his temple down his face, his throat, into his hair. The mask sunk into bone and would not be moved, not by his hands and not by his chisel - he left a bloody mess in the forge, fighting the helmet and the abduction in that order, no more gentle with himself than his abductor. His head aches and he can barely see out, ignoring the revelers, acquainting himself with the walls of the tower by feel, methodical and as patient as a man wishing badly for a hammer can be.

There must be a way out.

(The first lesson he learned in Baedal was that magic doesn't care for his 'must'. It does him no good, now, so he sets it aside.)

On some level, Shrieky knows it's coming before it happens. The mermaid circles him in the water, and his tail is long and fat. It gleams with a lustre that Shrieky's never did, and he knows what's coming, because It's circling him, and he knows what he would have wanted to do.

So it's hard for Shrieky to be angry with him, when the Mermaid's fingers tangle in his hair and he drags Shrieky down. He does panic (never thought he'd be the type to panic, but it turns out he is) when he opens his mouth and has to see the cascade of bubbles, of escaping air, erupting from his lips, when automatically he tries to expel the water through his gills and it doesn't go, rushing instead down his throat, into his chest and stomach, into his lungs.

When he first feels the bite of iron against his chest, he's relieved, as if some part of him thinks that making a hole there will let the water out.

Then it hurts.

Then he feels nothing.

(Had the other Mermaid seemed lonely as well? Or is he just imagining things?)

In the tower, he presses his lips to the ceiling, trying to breathe in the slightest amount of air from the cracks in the roof. He doesn't understand this. He can't. It's not the same, there's no one else here, no fingers in his hair, no fat, glossy tail encircling him.

He's alone, kicking his awkward, gangling legs in the water and trying to keep from going under. He feels like a wounded animal, a lame bird or dying fish trapped on the surface of the moat. The kind of thing he used to watch from below for hours, sometimes. The kind of thing that he used to circle, before dragging it under.

Shrieky claws at his throat. He needs to breathe without breathing, needs to re-open that lost channel for the water that keeps pooling in his mouth to escape through.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

His neck hurts.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

There's blood under his fingernails.

He still can't breathe.

Jaime Lannister gets there first.

He isn't expecting to have any kind of companion, and so the fact he has hesitated has little to do with waiting on a second party. Pelorus Fields is not unknown to him -- it's expansive and rural and makes for good riding, and in fact sits astride a chestnut gelding as he approaches the location the stranger woman had bid him go. A hefty reward is a promising thing.

Which is new. It's a new desire that still fits awkwardly for him, the financial survival that comes with Baedal, that never had before. He isn't helpless, he can roll with almost anything thrown at him; but its necessity, its permanence, this is new, and he wishes Tyrion had remained, but the dastardly little imp had found his way out, in some form or another.

His gladness for that is grudging at best. Clear of the location that is supposedly guarded by monsters, Jaime swings his way off his horse, ties him off with a last brush of his hand between the mount's eyes, and begins his approach. He is dressed in leather and stiff cotton as opposed to full armoured regalia, but does have a sword at his side that he rests a hand on as he moves.

After he's stopped being skeptical of the old woman and looking for an easy way into the tower, Xas's hesitation still lasts longer than he will ever admit to anyone in Baedal - but not nearly as long as his kind would consider becoming. People die, one way or another. They drown, or their hearts fail, or they kill one another. There are no unnatural causes. What is unnatural is for Xas to care. It's uncouth for him to mourn. It's insulting for him to interfere, to try jealously to hold his friends out of time.

But he puts aside the thought of his Father's cold, gentle disappointment and his brothers' haughty disdain - because they're not here, and also fuck them - and heads for Gallmarch. On the way he sends a few unanswered messages to the mermaid's other friends and slides back into the quietly aggressive unapproachability that he used to wear all of the time.

It works: he passes a few familiar faces, but none of them would be useful, and none of them try to stop him. No one stops him when he unties a boat that doesn't belong to him, either, and drops his backpack into it and jumps in lightly behind it. He does it like he knows what he's doing, and it isn't until he's out in the water, peering first at the horizon and then over the edge of the boat, that he decides he doesn't actually have a clue.

Money is new to Data, as well—not as a concept, but as a personal need. He sees the reward as potentially useful, but not motivational. After all, what good would money be if they all were to die?

Thirty years of Starfleet training means that a cry for help and a warning of impending disaster is impossible to ignore. It takes some time to make his way across the city, even at a full run, but fortunately, when he arrives near the brambles in the Pelorus Fields, things still seem quiet. The location is also marked by a horse and a man who was likely its rider. Only his back is visible.

Slowing his approach to something quiet and cautionary some distance away from the target area, Data takes cover and begins to circle around in order to better see the other individual. Fortunately, it's not long before the man turns his head, and oddly, he's recognizable: Jaime Lannister, a member of Data's cohort.

“Excuse me, sir,” Data calls to him as he steps out from the brush, “but were you sent here by someone from a tower in Flag Hill?”

She'd been taking Cupcake for a bit of walkies when something changed. It took Alexia a few moments to figure out what it was, but—yes, she's sure: that tower wasn't there moments ago, and there's a definite whiff of strong magic in the air. Even though this city is filled with magic, she doesn't recall anyone ever using it to build a structure with that kind of rapidity. And—there's another one that she can see, and another; all apparently arriving from nowhere.

Well, this bodes ill.

She calls Cupcake away from a half-eaten rat and to heel, and sets out in the direction of the tower directly ahead of her. Something is not right here, and she feels she ought to find out what it is...

'Destiny' is a thing that follows Marie-Sixtine around like she owes it money (or blood); she's not surprised, any more, when she turns a corner and ends up somewhere she didn't quite mean to be, or when a series of events like closed streets or shops send her down unfamiliar corridors. When the old woman tells her that a river fae has been taken, she knows, instinctively, who that must be. It isn't that there aren't others in the city, but these things tend to follow in-cohort.

She doesn't want to kill the stag.

She doesn't want to kill anything, but especially not an animal, something big and -- not helpless, but blithe. A stag does what a stag does and nothing more.

But she's going to find it. Maybe she'll be able to pull the trigger (take the knife) when she gets there, maybe not, she feels anxious and unsure because her gut always says one thing and her head tells her another, but still, she stands on the street outside the tower, shoes scuffing the cobblestone, arms wrapped around herself, and feels the chill that always accompanies powerful magic.

"Sobek Croix," she says, half-to herself, "to start."

Chests: found. Bodies: re-assembled. Keys: obtained.

It's definitely one of the weirder checklists Bruce has ever had - he'd feel more grudging (more flippant) if his head wasn't starting to slip into that mindset where everything is a warring fire and coldness of fury and effectiveness. This has been grim, surreal, and constraining in a way that makes him feel certain they're being toyed with. 'They' being a large factor in his unrest; he'll be less angry when he finds Seoraj alive.

(No, he won't. He'll be relieved, though.)

Bruce enters the tower to immediate hostility. He kicks the ornate entrance doors hard enough to send them swinging as he darts back, where he drops his jacket and engages the stealth wards he carries with him (usually only for when he's out antagonizing the Militia). He sneaks back in as party-goers are glaring at the movement, searching - though the involvement of magic that even Hasibe was puzzled at on first look means he isn't banking on being fully undetectable for long.

It's a good thing he's an actual ninja.

Seoraj's head comes up when the doors swing open, but it's difficult for him to make out what's going on past the metal bone in his way; he hears the noise, can tell there's movement, which direction...that the suddenly sharpened attention of the revelers is not presently on him. They're going in one direction, so he's moving in the other - careful, close to the wall.

The doors are open. They need to stay distracted; what distracted them is a secondary concern to feeling his way back towards a brazier he found earlier.

Unfortunately, the doors close soon after, and the swirling mass of the party continues - in an even fuller swing, the patrons now on edge, ushering everyone to move, move, move, up spiraling stairs and across stone floors and even looming wooden beams.

Bruce keeps moving, never in one place long enough for anyone to notice him (or, at least, figure out what they saw). He begins to feel unnerved; he doesn't think these people are people. Constructs, maybe. Conjured or - the extended will of something else. It makes his skin crawl.

Even in the crowd Seoraj is easy to spot, and recognizable even with that mask - small miracles, his height - and Bruce makes some calculated passes around the main room, along with the flow of the dancers, until he's near him. The closer he gets the more detail he takes in, and he realizes the younger man can't get that thing off his face and probably can't really see. At least, he thinks bleakly, this erases the problem of wondering how he was going to make himself known to Seoraj without disarming his wards. Now it doesn't matter.

Finally near him, just behind to one side, Bruce paces him for a moment, lingering in frustrated inaction for a moment, but then - he reaches out. His touch is small but specific, and he hopes that despite his gloved fingers, the deliberateness of it (and the memory of how-and-where, after they came down off the mountain, after his ribs were broken) will bring identification but not alarm.

That-- is unexpected, although the part that takes him off-guard is not 'it's Bruce' so much as perhaps the last sense-memory he expected to have triggered here, of all places. Under his breath, “Don't tell me you broke your ribs again.”

(No, that's probably not what he means.)

His voice sounds off, even as quiet as he speaks; the mask is fixed in place and has little give, muffling him, making it harder to move his jaw, and though there's relief and grim humour in the words, there's pain that he's been gritting his teeth through since this began. He holds himself steady all the same - alert, keyed up in a way he'll crash from later (hard), listening and waiting and spoiling for a fight.

A small note in the back of his head: relief, that Seoraj isn't part of whatever hive mind controlling the party-goers. Bruce doesn't respond verbally, but the light touch on Seoraj's arm briefly turns into a pinch, effectively conveying the message of 'Shut up you ass, I came to help you', which even if he wasn't attempting to hide, he'd never say out loud anyway. That Seoraj is capable of sass mitigates hearing the sound of struggle and pain in his muffled voice. He'll be all right.

Once they get out, and he gets that thing off his face.

But he's been still for too long, and that teasing remark gave too much away - already the crowd is stalling, beginning to press closer, the nearest hands reaching out to grab and push. Bruce disengages at once and seems to vanish from Seoraj's side and things get tense for a bit, an uneasy crowd itching for revolt.

Suddenly, a soft-fabric and red-covered figured is shoved up against Seoraj's front, but seems to have - three arms? No - it's Bruce, one hand over the mouth of a party-goer, using the other to pin him to Seoraj. They look like they're dancing, though absurdly, and Bruce pushes them back, back, out of the immediate knot of bodies, then shoves his temporary captive aside and grabs Seoraj's hand to lead him very quickly towards the door.

That sense of not being alone is enough to turn Jaime's head, his hand immediately circling the hilt of his blade by the time Data is officially making his presence known. The knight turns readily without actually startling, allowing an inch or two of steel to shine above sheath. He steps towards Data as if to reclaim his own authority of the space, a mark of puzzlement writing between his brows.

It's an affect, rather than genuine bafflement (he's seen in Baedal too long to be off-put so easily), sort of designed to give the impression that Data ought to be answering questions rather than asking any.

But he nods, after a beat's worth of silence. "A crone," he clarifies, the corner of his mouth hooking up. "Is this the moment where you attempt to rob me or carry out some other conspiracy? She chose poorly her mark if so."

Edited 2012-07-31 11:09 (UTC)

The press of bodies isn't as inconvenient as all that, when Seoraj realizes where they are in relation to the rest of the room - the braziers are evenly spaced around the tower room, and he separates from Bruce (trusting his open back to him-- there is no question, no hesitation to do so) to lunge towards the nearest, snagging the base of the wrought iron with his foot and dragging it around, kicking it sideways and dancing backwards as hot, burning oil spreads the fire from its confines onto hair, fabric, skin, and when the screaming starts--

The way out is 'away', easy enough to navigate when chaos clears the rest of their path for them, and he isn't above fierce satisfaction.

He's seen Seoraj in the arena before, even gone a few rounds with him, but it's different now; now he's furious, and Bruce feels a faint echo of guilt that his first thought is that he hopes Seoraj doesn't hurt himself further - instead of being concerned for the people he's torching.

Chaos sets in. Some of them scatter and try to get away but the rest - like flocks of panicked birds - press even more aggressively against them, flinging themselves, violent, heedless, mindless, while others block the doors even as they scream from the rapidly spreading fire.

Bruce has to duck to get to Seoraj again and prevent from getting a candlestick in the eye, but he touches his back firmly, non-threateningly, and speaks over the din near his ears- "We have to go now."

(So stop beating the shit out of that guy for a few seconds so you don't end up burned to death with them, please.)

Seoraj's objection is sound and fury without an actual word, animal and angry under metal (heating under the closeness of the hot-burning flames; accordingly his objection lacks genuine determination to resist, a growled out acknowledgement of just how much he'd like to), and when he lets go it's - not so much 'letting go' as it is 'hurling face-first into the wall'.

These people may not be real, not really, but even now he's thinking about the scope of what's been done here (more even than he knows) and he's realistic about the likelihood he's going to get to do much with his own hands to whoever is responsible. It's just--

He has to fight somebody.

--he has to get out of here, like Bruce says. This time when he moves, it's for the stairs.

Bruce understands rage, all forms of it, but he's calm here because Seoraj isn't (because he doesn't want him to see that monster anyway).

He does kick somebody off the stairs, though.

The last few meters are a hellish experience through the crush of bodies, smoke, screaming, clawing hands - the contrast of being outside all at once, stumbling, unstable, is jarring like slamming into a wall and finding it pulled out from under you the second later. Before Bruce has even found his footing there's a roaring BANG!, and the doors have slammed shut behind them. He turns, still slowing to a staggering halt, jacket in hand and stealth wards disengaged. He starts to wonder what the hell just happened before he abandons it and immediately turns to Seoraj. "That thing--" on his face--

The body in the chest could be a doll. Almost. Curiously free of blood, and yet still gory - that is, after all, a real human body - she looks almost more like a wax figure. Up until she's assembled again, joints and muscles pressed into each other, and then her eyes open and she raises her head and gasps for air, a hoarse rasp.

She's maybe in her early to mid thirties, so not exactly the traditional definition of a maiden - but then, neither is Seoraj, really. She's xenian, but it's not immediately obvious, just when you look closely. Her fingers are webbed. Her eyes are bloodshot and roll back into her head slowly. There are thin pink lines in her skin where her body parts came back together, like doll joints, she'll probably always have the scars.

"Where..." But she knows where she is - the gold chest tucked in the backwaters of Chnum, where nobody should have been looking. Her eyes open, unfocus, focus, unfocus again. Her hand flies to her throat, there's nothing there. "The key." She turns and her eyes find Bruce for the first time and her voice is rusty and low, like she hasn't used it in a while; god knows how long she's been in there. "Did my mother send you?"

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in the woods dark and deep I offer you eternal sleep

rescue ♞ sunny.

abduction ♚ odessa.

rescue ♞ severus.

abduction ♚ don.

rescue ♞ kalinda, pepper.

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