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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's an old woman slightly apart from the festivity outside the tower. She's the only one who will speak to you. She can help you enter the tower, she says; she knows who did this and his magic is more powerful than hers, but she knows how to get around it.

Here is what you must do:

There are two chests somewhere in this city. They contain the bodies of the last two abducted people the wizard tried this with. You will need to find those chests, open them, and reassemble the bodies; they will tell you where to find the keys to the tower. After that, you must somehow find a way to exit the tower without any of the people outside noticing, because they will stop you if they do - by killing you just like the last two...

You must hurry; we're all 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.

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?"

It's faintly disturbing to watch, and Bruce stays very still while it's happening, not sure what to expect. As she starts to stir in earnest, he takes the water-skein off of his belt and offers it to her, wordless. (Somehow his first thought when she touches his throat is 'Did she expect her head to be missing', bleak.)

"I hope so," is all he has to say to that. Her mother? That old woman? It doesn't sit well with him - how long has this woman been here, why couldn't someone ask for help for just this, why now, why...

It doesn't matter, he has to get through this, and get moving. Seoraj is still there, unreachable without these keys. And so, gentle but firm, he presses on: "What happened to you is happening again, and I need to stop it. Do you know where your key is?"

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.

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--

There's a sound like the grating of bone- a sick, wet pop- he staggers, breathes in so fast and so hard that it's ragged and startled and he's still bleeding, sluggishly, but the mask is in his hand, the way it had looked in the other man's hand, like...a helmet, bloody and ostentatious and ordinary, if no more harmless than any other piece of armor. He almost drops it - his hand flexes, his muscles tense, he wants it far, far away from him--

His fingers curl around it.

Bruce doesn't - really know what he feels, watching that, hearing that, and when he approaches his hand goes over Seoraj's over the mask; he's not trying to get it to drop the thing, just - being there. He doesn't really know.

He doesn't look at it though, instead he looks at the other man's face, expression somewhere in between a great many feelings but settling mostly on concern edged in indignant anger at everything. He just needs to know Seoraj is all right, and in the process he's completely forgotten to cover up the fact that even under the jacket he threw on, it's completely obvious that he's wearing the sort of gear only that invisible asshole the Militia is after would have on. His other hand comes up to his shoulder - searching.

The old woman's there again, sudden as a breath. She's watching the tower burn down, smoke pouring out of the top, some fierce satisfaction on her face. Of course - those two chests. Her children.

It's not just them, of course, but he had to go and make it personal. Daring her to get involved. So she did, and here they are, renewing her faith in the goodness of Baedal's citizens.

"Thank you," she says to the two of them, mostly to Bruce; when she turns to look at Seoraj her expression is as close to apologetic as she seems able to get. It is not her place, after all, to apologise for someone else's evil. Still, she cares. She shakes her head, unfocused and vague, then reaches into one of her voluminous sleeves and pulls out an object - a human skull covered in jewels, it's worth either of their weight in gold. "I'm sorry. This is all I have to offer. Please take it." For your time, for your help, either, both.

Yes.

Her children.

That thought - bodies cut into pieces put in boxes - is the only thing that keeps Bruce from being outwardly hostile, and is instead silent in the old woman's presence. He looks as harmlessly stone-faced as ever, but Seoraj can probably tell he's furious.

The idea of being rewarded for having to save his - friend, his lover - while there are screaming people (not people, constructs, he has to believe that, he has to believe in the cruel absurdity if magic and his investigations into the area, where no real people that numerous had turned up missing) burning behind them is beyond anything he can stomach. Maybe he's not mad at her, but at everything - regardless, he doesn't think he can take the damn thing.

He just nods, curtly, once.

Seoraj can - will - does; his anger is a roiling, unsteady thing that seems fit to spill out of the edges of him at any moment, something far less refined than the silence that Bruce is alarmingly, unhealthily good at, and there are certain things that he falls back on in moments like these. To hell with it, he is getting paid for this, this- whatever it is.

(He'll take the helmet and the skull both to Integra, to be sure, but that's the kind of clarity and care that will come later, when he's burned out the anger the same as the tower, when all this is just smoke in him that won't linger the way the scars will, six small, ugly and uniform wounds on his face.)

“I suppose you don't have an explanation in your sleeve as well.”

Well, she might; but Seoraj is accustomed to people not explaining things to him that might get him killed.

"He wants to burn this city to the ground. Or maybe own it; who knows what goes on in that mind." Where he is - presumably whoever's responsible for this. The young man Seoraj saw, only wearing the wrong face - probably someone else's, he could have stolen it. The woman (she does not think of herself as "the good witch," but in this story, she supposes she is) sighs not like she's exasperated or bored but like she is very tired.

"There are others that must be stopped. If he gets twelve - " The pause is ominous and they can fill in the blanks. "But he won't, and that's thanks to people like you. As long as his towers are up, I can't touch them."

And some people need a little nudge to get involved. Their anger offends her less than it pleases her.

But she looks anxiously to the east, knowing this is one out of - how many are there now, ten? Ten towers, ten missing people she has to take care of. "I'm sorry, I must go. I do thank you - farewell." And then she's just - gone, just like that, no flash or blink or smoke where she stood.

After she vanishes, Bruce just stands there for a moment, as if he's almost going to succumb to the impulse to want to punch something, or scream - but he doesn't, he just suppresses it with the disturbing skill he always does, before he turns back to Seoraj. Where he promptly doesn't know what to say. So he goes about being efficient instead, and fusses a bit with his equipment so he looks less conspicuous, take a microfiber pressed bag out of his belt and opens it so that Seoraj can stick the skull and mask in it, and once that's done he starts to look at his face in earnest with that faint mom-gleam in his eyes everyone - everyone - gets when they're considering making somebody sit down and put a band-aid on.

Edited 2012-07-31 20:32 (UTC)

The look he gets in response is almost comical in the obviousness of Seoraj's blank What? - he'd been calm until he could afford to be angry (until he had a way out and someone - Bruce - watching his back), and now his mind is on that and not the wounds on his face, the burn of smoke in his throat and the raw red patches where he got too close to the fire he'd started. To his credit, he doesn't actually say it; he palms Bruce's ribs, instead, like he's checking for a particular injury.

(Start worrying when he can't find a way to sass you.)

“Let's go,” he says - start moving again before stillness reminds him how tired he is, how much he aches. He can remember that when he's got something on which to fall.

"Thank you for tracking me down and going on a magical quest that involved reanimating two corpses to get the keys to get me out of there, Tom."

(He's not worried.)

(Anymore.)

But he does reach out and wipe some of the more visible blood off Seoraj's face as they walk. They're going to have to take the train, and he'd rather minimize the number of rubberneckers.

Edited (i accidentally a word) 2012-08-01 05:25 (UTC)

Heading for the train now - Seoraj isn't even sure where they are, at first, he'd been disoriented and half-blind when he was brought here - he tugs his hair loose from where he'd pulled it out of his way in the morning, running a sooty hand through it once to pull it back down around the sides of his face. It won't completely hide the wounds, but it's something.

After a moment, he says, “Thank you,” not grudgingly.

Bruce makes a soft noise like I know, it's fine, and leads the way to the train station. Fortunately the fire (which doesn't seem to be spreading) is attracting a lot of attention, so they manage to slip by. (Still, Bruce hops the turnstile.)

They get off at Bonetown, and he doesn't offer an explanation - but apparently he's not going to make (let?) Seoraj trudge clear to the other side of the city when he can crash nearby.

It should come as no surprise that Seoraj would, left to his own devices, trudge precisely that far; it should further not surprise anyone that he doesn't question not having to. That he's so disinterested in the people around him, this once...unusual for him, but maybe not for the situation they're in, his blood up and his mind elsewhere.

(He thinks briefly that the skull would cover any loss of business - more than - if he felt the need to sell it. He took it for the principle of the thing, though; he's not hurting for money.)

Eventually, he says, “Magic,” like it's a dirty word.

in the woods dark and deep I offer you eternal sleep

rescue ♞ fucking batman.

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