in the woods dark and deep I offer you eternal sleep

[aarnethompson]

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

Comments

[wingwalker]

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.

[aarnethompson]

It's pretty far away from the shore - far enough that Baedal itself is a series of twinkling lights on the horizon, and the fog creeps closer with curious little tendrils - that the sound winds its way from under the waves and through the floor of Xas' boat. It's singing, but not like whalesong - but not human, either.

There is a light under the water, the impression of movement. That could be anything, but given that there's no other sign of life around except the distant lights of the city - what other option is there?

The sound and the light are coming from a small cave far enough under the water that someone who needed to breathe would be daunted by it, but not so far that it's impossible, and once inside there's air, there. A woman is seated before an antique mirror so old it's more green than silver, combing her long seaweed hair, her bottom half stretching out into the water as one long inky black line. She might be half-eel, or serpent. Her skin is as grey as a corpse and her smile, when she looks at him in the mirror's reflection, cuts at the corners of her mouth like a knife.

"Well, you found me," she says, and her voice, in contrast to the rest of her - it's like bells. She gives the impression she is not actually speaking English. "What can I do for you, darling?"

[wingwalker]

"Oh," Xas says, briefly distracted by a flash of his brother in her face. He doesn't have the time necessary to decide how to feel about that. He wrings water out of a fistful of his hair and blinks at her a few times before he manages to answer: "I'm looking for a key, for a tower. I was told you know where it is."

He looks back out of the cave - briefly, because he's learned the hard way not to show his back to anyone with a smile that sharp - as if he might be able to see his boat. He can't, of course. If this takes too long her might have to swim back, and apologize to the library - he left the books on one of the benches. Everything else could stand to get wet.

"I don't know what I can give you for it," he says, turning back to her. He doesn't come in any further than he has to to breathe. "I brought what I have."