[Stam+Med, Untiring Stamina specialty]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]
AlexanderThings may have changed, although whether that was for the better or the worse remained to be seen. The visits with Keller had stopped; a woman had told him of his upcoming release. Although for release, read people are coming to break you out because we can’t just let you walk out without others noticing, but we’ll try to get people looking the wrong way. Hardly the stuff to inspire confidence, especially when part of this play needs him to take some kind of preparation to fake his death. But given the option of that unknown, or the known of his death or the loss of who he is if he didn’t go along with it? There isn’t really a choice to make.
The various newspapers and magazines had continued to appear with each meal, and Alexander had started skimming the contents to catch up on what had happened in fuck, it really is two months? He still has more than enough spare time, though. Time that he still spends inside his head, rather than staring at the walls.
Lying on his back on the bed, feeling the press of the unforgiving mattress against his bones, Alex tries to quiet his mind again. Rather than letting his mind skip and skim over random memories and ideas, there’s one particular one that he has in mind this time. A forest grove, under a twilight sky. The same grove he’s come across before.
Alexander[Per+Lucid Dreaming]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
oneirosAlexander has a particular grove in mind.
A ring of oaks, their crowns blasted; their branches, charred black; their leaves, golden - pale; three paths (more?) to follow. Here he is again, and again with a lonely sense of something to Do, should he choose to accept that emotional weight draped over him, a mantle, by this dreamscape he has come to (which will belong to him? A sanctuary, safe-house? The kingdoms of the mind are dangerous, and full of strange things). Here he is again, the sky a bowl of aching copper and fire; burnished gold, dusk falling; dusk drifting into the grays of twilight.
To the east there is still that dense wall of thorns, of brambles, except - not so dense. The path he made remains, though it feels as though (of course it feels as though) some more time has passed since he last stood in this place. Perhaps his earlier self is just reaching the lake, sprouting owl wings, and soon will launch himself forward -
But he, his current self, is in the grove, lagging behind, or waiting to catch up, or just: waiting for the right moment.
AlexanderThis is still something new to Alexander, something still to be uncovered and explored and understood. Something that he might be more cautious about had he known more about what he was doing, but, well, he didn’t. The exploration is very much a blind endeavour, and very much about learning to rules and the limitations to this place. It’s an assumption that this place, this grove, is the entrance into the dream, or the meditation, or whatever else this could be that he hasn't begun to realise yet. It’s an assumption that he isn’t able to enter elsewhere: perched in a tree by a fire-tinged lake, wings ready to take him into the air again. Some of the lessons about belief and will still need to be learned.
So it is the grove that Alexander reaches out for, and finds it in much the same state that he last saw it. That the path he’d created the last time was still there is a little surprising, but again: is that simply because it’s how his mind pictured the grove when he went looking, or is there something more to this place than he really understands.
The urge is there, once again: to Do. Something new? Something unfinished? Because there are two unfinished tasks that he has. The first, to track some injured, mythical beast. The other, to find out what had been trapped in the middle of that impossibly still lake. There are other places to explore here, but those two tasks both lie in the same direction. So rather than strike out in a new direction, Alexander follows his previous footsteps. Along the path, down its twists and descents, and back to the lake with its line of shoes standing sentinel over the water.
Alexander[Perc+Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
oneirosHe can, quite literally, follow his own footsteps, see where the impression of his boots has made a mark in the hard-scrabble dust or the soft-giving loam, can see where he trode last time on his way down the stairs that were not quite stairs, the ledges set into the steepening slant of the hill. He comes once more to a massive tree: there is a sharp drop, a foot perhaps, and then there is the lake. The lake is still still and calm, and the burnished sky - oh, heavens! How it smoulders - is mirrored back at itself. Narcissus sky; perhaps here it will drown in its own beauty. The trail of blood looks - less fresh than it was before. And the line of shoes by the lake's edge are still standing, row by row, pointing out toward the lake. There is a difference he will spy: a feather, caught in Sara's shoes (which are still straightened; still the way he left them).
And there is the cave, at the root of the tree;
a cave leading down, down, down,
blood-road.
And there, because he knows to look for it, are the cresting spires of a drowned tree, twisted into (perhaps) some form of cage out there in the center of the lake, some Thing inside them caught. He can see some movement.
AlexanderHere, now, there is a more of a choice. The place, almost the same as last time. An addition – a feather, his? – sits forlornly, tangled in a shoe. Like the small changes in the grove, it raises questions. Whether this was down to his memory, and the vagaries and variances that naturally creep in, or if this really was a place that continued to exist when he wasn’t here. (But, then, he can’t use magic in this cell so how is he getting here? Odd.)
The choice, though. To fly again, to check out the tree. Or to follow the trail of blood. It seemed as if time had passed, so the creature was likely still in trouble. Or dead, hunted down by whatever had attacked it. Whatever was in the cage didn’t seem to be in any great, immediate danger. The thought of leaving it stranded and confined rankled, but it seemed like the better thing to do to follow the more immediate thread. And, hell, he’d gotten back here once then he could do it again, right? If it came down to it, the cage could be investigated on another trip.
Rather than the air, Alexander heads into the earth and follows the trail of blood.
Alexander[Dex+Athletics]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Alexander[Wits]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Alexander[Wits + Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
oneirosUnder the oak, the trail narrows immediately; the blood goes this way, and so the beast must have gone this way, the poor hunted thing - and under the massive tree, the darkness is a cobwebby darkness, which is not to say that there are cobwebs, but that the darkness feels tacky, almost like it might cling to and gather at Alexander's joints, any place his body casts a natural shadow on itself or is darker, might hover there like moths to a flame but the opposite. The darkness is not total; he can still see; it is a blue, evening darkness; a dismal gray, which turns everything chiaroscuro, blurred charcoal sketches. Down he goes; he can do that. Even when the path begins to wind, becomes to become laborious, he is dextrous enough to slip through, climb over juts of roots, follow the blood. He puts his hand down in it once; or almost does. His hand hovers just above it and he has a moment in which he can stop himself;
he can feel, from that drop of blood, this golden radiance; his hand cups it; it touches his hand. It is the dream of what holding hands might be, just the halo kicking off a mere drop of the blood mixed with this dark dirt under the tree.
He begins to hear the sound of water, whooshing gently, sea-shell echoes;
and he picks out the change in texture of the darkness where the shadowy dirt under-root path suddenly steeps off into water. He's beneath the tree, which is beneath the lake?, which is flooding; the path continues beyond the water, but to take it he will need to hold his breath or drown and perhaps still drown, unless there is another way.
This is his dream; the beast must have gone that way.
There is no fork in the path; not yet.
Except: off to the side - this slender glint of light.
AlexanderThe cave may be dark, but dark isn’t necessarily something to be afraid of. There is, usually, no malice in it. It is simply the absence of light. Had the way become too much harder, Alexander might have tried to change things again. To bring more light, or straighten the path. But, so far, it wasn’t impassable. Challenging, yes, but – as had been pointed out not so long ago (two months or more, maybe it had been that long ago) – worthwhile things are rarely easy. So he climbs and clambers and reaches out...
But he stops himself before he reaches out and touches the blood, bracing himself against a root with his other hand. There’s something about it that holds him back; the power of it, buried as the few drops are in the dirt. It’s something that brings back the thoughts from last time: that the tears of whatever this beast was could cure all. It doesn’t seem far-fetched right now.
So Alexander moves on, careful not to touch the blood as he does. He doesn’t know what will happen if he does, but there’s no rush to test that out right now. The push is still forward, to track the beast. And maybe its hunters.
He reaches the water and stops in his tracks, puzzled. Perhaps this creature can breathe underwater? Perhaps it’s something like an otter or a beaver, just as happy swimming the depth as it is on land. He crouches to get a closer look at the edge of the water, perhaps looking to trace blood or tracks, when the glint of something at the edge of his vision causes him to turn and look. No, darkness has its uses. He may not have spotted that if it had been lighter. He looks towards the light, straightening again – as much as he can in the cave.
Alexander[Per+Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
veritasHe sees nothing when he looks directly toward the glint, but enough when he turns his head again to realize that he caught a hint of something half-buried in the dirt and the roots - something that looks like a seal, or a door-knocker, something metallic and - well who's to say what its shape is? It is mostly buried; just this sinuous little twist visible for a moment.
AlexanderThe lake, with its shoes and its tree and its (potential) cage was something of a distraction the last time he came here. This glimmer of light tied to something metal is potentially another, something else to pull him away from tracking this injured (hunted?) beast. It’s something that draws his curiosity, but it could be something that could wait until another time. Unless, of course, that the beast somehow went that way before the wall collapsed in around it.
Alexander scans the floor of the cave again, but the twilight doesn’t penetrate well this deep into the cave. The darkness makes it harder. Light, then. It’s a cave, dark and gloomy and wet. Surely a place that some glowing moss would grow? Maybe luminescent crystal formations? Anything, really, that would grant a little more light for his study of the ground. He places his hand on an overhanging root and runs his palm along it as he tries to make another change to this world.
Alexander[Per+Lucid Dreaming]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 6) ( success x 1 )
veritasDown by the water, trailing underneath it and up the wood-dirt-rootwork walls, nascent glimmering moss - the light is scant, but sufficient for Alexander to tell that, no, no, the beast certainly went down through the water, down into that darkness (somewhat illumined by the moss, which is golden), and then up again where ever the water comes out.
He can also see that it is almost certainly a door, half-buried in that dirt, and the root under his palm is wet and slimy, and the moss that his palm has left behind is as tangled as a goat's beard and as coarse.
AlexanderThe door was a temptation. Something to be unearthed and explored, to see where else this almost-literal rabbit hole led. It was tempting, but Alex had the feeling that he’d lost some time in between visits here. Who knew how much longer he’d have this visit. So, as with the cage, this is something that he resolves to return to another time. (Assuming that it would still be here, assuming that there isn’t anything else shaping this place than his mind. So many assumptions.)
No, it’s the trail of blood that draws him onwards this time. The trail that leads down into the water, down into deeper darkness. It’s too dark to tell how far it leads. If it had been short he might have just dived straight in and followed the cave onwards. A little longer and he might have pushed to change the world again. To seal and clear the tunnel, to force an open path through the water, to change the world and hold the deluge back.
No, this time it’s himself he tries to change. But how? Surround himself with a bubble of air? How long would he be under water for? Would it burst as soon as it touched something sharp? (Were those kinds of rules present here?) Simpler, maybe, to breathe water then. It would give him the freedom to travel, if the cave was long or branched out or – maybe – opened up into the lake itself.
[Dreaming, etc. Please don't drown.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )
Alexander[Wits. Wits can't kill you, right?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )
veritasHe can breathe water.
He can no longer breathe air, but that hasn't yet become a problem that he needs to fix in his dream, and under he goes. The water feels cold; he will remember it as feeling cold; and the further he swims along the tunnel (the faint trail of glowing moss trickles out, but not before he sees what looks like a patch of fur, caught by a jagged rock - oh, yes, there are jagged rocks; crumbling stones, sharp bits of - metal? Yes, metal - ).
The tunnel narrows; his lungs don't ache. He could swim beneath this water forever, but the tunnel also, as it narrows, begins to angle upward.
There's a place where it is so narrow he can feel it on all sides of him. He can feel the part that goes up - and he can feel what might be, just perhaps, another branch of submerged tunnel, going to the left. Which way, Alexander?
Alexander[WP, just for me]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
AlexanderThis place – this world? – splits and branches, paths leading towards different destinations. Is it the journey that matters? Maybe, but then there are so many of those potential journeys here too. How long would it take to explore them all? What would happen if he spent too long here? Questions, always more questions.
Alexander throws himself into the water, confident that the world has twisted again and will allow him to do what he feels that he needs to – to breathe water. It’s an interesting sensation, that. To be floating under water, but without the increasingly burning urge for air. Another form of freedom? Well, maybe.
The tunnel continues, narrowing. It’s not enough to stop his progress, but it is enough to start getting claustrophobic. He’d been distracted enough to not really notice how the walls of the caves blocked the sky. There had been enough space before he’d dove in to be able to spin around and head back the way he’d come, back out to the burning sky and the mirrored lake. Now, with the walls narrowing and closing and constricting, it gets harder to ignore. Alexander’s breathing gets faster, shallower, as he begins to panic. He worries that he may become stuck, trapped again. (How do I get out? Just wake up? What if I can’t? Nobody knows I’m here...)
There’s a choice of paths to follow, but it’s not a choice immediately made. He still has control of himself, closes his eyes and wills his breathing a little slower, as he really pushes this time to make a change.
Space. Need space.
Alexander[Dreamydreamy, not messing around this time]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
veritasAnd, although it takes a concerted push, he has more space. The tunnel no longer brushes against him; he could raise one arm in one direction and his fingers would not touch the wall. He could raise one arm in the other direction and - and his knuckles would scrape stone or dirt or jagged pieces of metal, the root-laced tumble-fall of hard things which make this tunnel solid. But it is more space, and the choice still waits for him:
Up, or to the side.
AlexanderAlex pushes against the walls, although he isn’t sure if it’s his physical (or whatever passes for physical here) hands or his will that makes the push. All he knows is that it’s tootightoosmall and that he needs space. And space he gets. Not a massive amount of it, but enough to move. Enough to turn and return, and that is just enough to stop him doing that right this second. The knowledge that there is some path to freedom. (Freedom? When his body is still trapped?)
His breathing deepens, but there’s still a rapidity about it that hadn’t been there before. The fear was simply held at bay, not extinguished altogether. But, tamed for now, it let his attention spread out around him again. It came back to the choice. Up or to the side. Is there any sign of which way the beast went? Some tuft of fur or slip of blood caught on a rock? Light, first. As before, a push for something to light the way.
[Yeah yeah, twisting the dream again.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
veritasThere is no tuft of fur other than the one a few feet behind him, but Alexander may well guess that it continued going up, rather than bounding to the side from where-ever the fur was hooked; that seems like the easier path for a panicked beast to take, dripping blood, frightened for its life - not the end of its life, perhaps, because a dead animal cannot cry now, can it? (Which would mean - what instead?)
He pushes for more light: make it so, make it bright,
that is the first Word, and it is good, light,
luminous, bright, shining -
And here it is a flashlight, a torch, which the current must have twisted so it would shine on, bright beam strong and sure and the flashlight itself wedged between the twisty metal tines metal veins metal - metal swords? Metal swords, mishapen, half-melted, pouring out of the wall, running in rivulets into the stone. He can take the flashlight up easily, shine it up ahead, shine it to the side.
To the side:
a shoal of silver fish, glinting; another tunnel, this one more root-impacted than ever, and what looks like an apple.
Up ahead: the tunnel seems to broaden (did he do that?), and the melting swords seem to have melted from that angle; one wall coalesces into - stone? Stone, root-tangled? And the other remains dirt - and then -
well he has to go further to see more, doesn't he?
He does.
AlexanderCompared to the effort it took to even sense something in the waking world, it seems almost effortless to change the world here. Perhaps this is how it used to be, where Awakened could twist reality to their whim when its fabric has been fluid rather than tightly woven, where the hanging sword of Paradox was less of a concern. There’s a twisting of this world as Alexander wants it to be otherwise, and the change is there.
The torch is pulled out of its nook, light blazing out as it gets diffracted by the water. Walls, molten blades twisted together, line the way ahead. It makes him wonder, what this had been before. Had it been something before? Or was this simply how this place had been created? Again, a curiosity about whether this was all his doing or if there were other things with influence here. The hunters, maybe?
It’s the larger path that Alexander follows. Partly, maybe, an unconscious nudge towards the space; partly because it seems the more logical path to follow if he wants to catch up with this beast. He holds one arm ahead, grasping the torch and angling its blade of light ahead, before pushing off with his legs. Onwards and upwards.
veritasUp, and up, and up again, and then:
the light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel becomes essentially a pool (he knows how deep it is: very), and the pool opens up into a stone room. Tall, almost a Cathedral, if a Cathedral were to be modeled after a great ship turned downward and made of stone. The light is green; the windows, thick-glass and shield-worthy, keeping water back. Until the very highest window, a circular one, which is open onto clear sweet air, the whole (monstrous large) church-room is under water. Drowned. The air he's breathing might have been around for ages: a strange pocket.
Air he's breathing? He isn't breathing any air at all. He breathes water now, so as soon as he takes his face out of the water, he starts to suffocate (to drown).
But in the flash before the realization of that sets in, he spies:
the blood trail, now evidenced by hoof-shaped blood prints. They lead across the underwater cathedral's floor, to behind what might be an altar, except it isn't really an altar at all: it's just a stone covered in greenery, in flowering branches, candles between. The candles are not burning; there's only so much air.
And here is clearly where the swords came from, shattered from, melted from; the wall behind the pool must have at least a thousand swords and axes blasted there, dripping downward; so, too, the floor nearest the pool (perhaps the pool itself was shaped of whatever blast took up these weapons and malformed them, so, sent them plunging downward) is streaked in metal.
Alexander[Dreams, breathing air, yadda]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
AlexanderIt takes some time for Alexander to break the surface of the water, some time swimming up with the blade of his flashlight piercing the darkness of the water and leading the way. Eventually, there’s some lightening of the water around him, some slight source of light radiating down to meet his approach. He passes more swords, twisted and molten into the walls of the passage, distorted by whatever heat and force had met them at some point in the past. Finally, there’s an easing of his passage as first his hand, and then the rest of his upper body, break the surface of the water. He bobs back a little, as buoyancy finds its balance, and it gives him time to look around. There’s some light passing through the thick-thick-glass – stained glass, or was that simply the colour of the light after it had passed through the water? – but the narrow beam of light from his flashlight started to pick out details.
Alexander reaches out suddenly, losing the flashlight to roll away a little on the solid surface of the cathedral, bracing himself against the bent-blade edge of the pool that he’d surfaced in. Something clawed at his chest, something there trying to pull the breath out of him. A burning began; the burning that comes from holding your breath for too long. He slips, falling back into the water, and suddenly there’s breath again. He grasps out at the walls, for something solid to hold his position, as he gasps and breaths and settles back to normal. It was a simple thing, that assumption: that he would be able to breathe air as simply as water. And, perhaps, a lesson to this place. That precision matters.
It’s another twisting of the world that brings back his air breathing, a twist that he makes just as he breaks the water a second time. Swimming up, he uses his buoyancy to propel him up a little, enough to swing himself up and onto the edge of the pool. There he sits, retrieving the flashlight, to study the place in more detail. He shines the light across the huge window, following the line of the frames up to the small, round, open window at the very top. The light passes over the walls, over the blasted and molten weapons that had melted and flowed and fallen from their place there. Had this been some kind of armoury, some place for crusaders to prepare for war?
The light skims over the blood trail on the floor, and then skips back again as Alexander notices it there. He follows it with the flashlight, still sat on the edge of the pool as he dripped and slowly began to dry. It leads around some altar thing, its end lost behind the stonework and plant life somewhere. Levering himself up and out of the water, his free hand braced on the solid ground of the cathedral, it’s a trail that he follows.
veritas[Stealth.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Alexander[Hey, you stole my 10's! Per+Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
veritasWhat manner of war might crusaders prepare for in a place such as this? What manner of blast had made the swords warp, lose their shape, be frozen into stone and Hell-ward drip? What manner of place is his Mind, that this is where he comes? What is there to learn here? Does it matter, when it is away from the place he has become so familiar with? He will soon be gone for it; he does not know that quite yet. The imprisoned never knows they will be released, even when they've been told: they must feel it. Free air on their face; a decision made without any barrier.
Precision matters here. Alexander follows the trail of blood. He trails water in his wake as he follows it down, the green haze light (water pressing in at the windows, under-water ambience) all diffuse with shadow all soft, to that altar.
He spies nothing moving; certainly, nothing moving in this room, near him, just out of his line of sight - sticking ever to just beyond the periphery, surety and careful cunning and perhaps what is not seen (and what is not heard [and what is not felt]) does not exist at all. But this is a dream; nothing really exists, is that not so?
On the opposite side of the altar, he can see a great deal of blood - and it is wet, and fresh. The sweetness of it, the golden aura of it, is stronger; heady. For a moment, he might want summer, might want the bite of a strawberry on a summer's evening, might want the rapture of a firefly blinking away, the clear surety of spreading his wings and - he might even be able to have it, for a moment.
The altar has a cubby, and inside the cubby is a doll. The doll looks a little like it is supposed to be him.
AlexanderThere have been changes in Alexander since his incarceration. Beyond the physical – the injuries, healed or healing – are the mental. The knowledge that he has lived before and will likely to live again. That gift from his Avatar, the flashes of previous lives, raises questions about this life. Questions for another time, surely, when there are other people to talk to about the way things work. But questions that still linger. One such question is how much those previous lives affect this one. The question of which Tradition he may belong to, is that difficult to answer because of his previous affiliation with several (all?) of them? Do those lives affect this place, something potentially created completely from his mind? Is this place a remnant of a Chorister, or some other crusader? Or is this from the crusader that this Alexander has been, is, or could be?
The trail, though, leads away from the water. There’s nothing there to pull his attention away from where it leads, so his movement is slow – cautious that the floor may be hazardous under the water that he’s trailing – but it’s not a halting thing, held back by faint noises or half-seen glimpses or some sixth sense warning. The trail leads to a pool. The spread of warm, fresh blood there isn’t something unknown, and neither is the vaguely metallic tinge to the air. It seems to be something Magickal, the way that the aura surrounding it feels. Something of the summer, something of growth; something without an obvious source. The blood must have come from somewhere (must have, right?), so where was the animal? Alexander looks back along the trail that he’s followed, wondering if this was the start of it rather than the end...
Wondering that, until the doll catches his attention. The little thing, nestled in a small space carved into the altar, pulls his gaze and his curiosity. Careful not to step in the pool of blood, he reaches an arm out towards it. There’s no contact, though. Not yet. This is feeling without touching, searching for any kind of radiance or resonance in the same way that the blood had one.
Alexander[Per+Awareness]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
veritasRadiance.
Funny word, that. Metal is radiant when it is hot; when it is heated, gone white with skin-melting fervor - radiant can blind; can hurt, though it seem gentle; radiant is a funny word. And the little doll is Radiant, like it would burn Alexander's shadow into the ground for people to wonder over, be frightened by, saddened by. There is no malevolence, no will to hurt, but it is a strongly magickal thing, and the magick that is attached to it is Radiant, and the Radiance is White Hot Fury, an Anger that will leave no ash. The expression sewn on its rag-doll face (for it is a doll constructed of cloth and thread) is an angry one.
There's another doll behind it, half-hidden, but he would have to touch the Alexander doll to see what this other one looked like.
This is when the monster might strike in a movie; the moment that Alexander is looking down at the doll.
This is not the moment when the monster strikes.
He can see the smears and smudges of the animal having picked up, stumbled on (this is not the beginning; this is the end), can follow those tracks too if he wants - it gets harder, but he'll turn and perhaps he'll see, behind him, new signs of the beast's passage, where he just walked mere moments before. There is a hall; a stair leading upward. Cathedrals have organs, and organs must be got to somehow.
But separate from the trail, there is movement, at last:
he can feel a knot of Dream-Alexander anticipation; a knot of it behind his ribs. He can choose to be beyond Dream-Alexander's anticipation, and go into whatever it heralds without hints and suggestions and half-memories.
AlexanderAny temptation to reach further vanishes when Alexander feels that scorching Radiance from the doll. The anger there feels unlike the bursts of his own anger in the past. Those tended to be something cold, frigidity-that-burns, rather than something that blazes. Until, at least, that time when he had Sought and Found and that anger had blazed in the dark and the rain and flared as he speared shadows. So maybe this was part of what he would become. Or, maybe, still part of what he had been. There is another doll – maybe more – tucked away, something that pulls his attention and curiosity. But, as with the lake and the door, this is something to be returned to later. (He assumes: he’d returned once, surely he could do it again.)
Again, it’s the blood that pulls him up and back and round. The trail of something hurt and hunted, now that he notices, is something that leads back and upwards. Maybe this had just been a place to rest, maybe sleep, before moving on. This creature, though, much surely be weak. Or maybe something huge, that wouldn’t notice losing so much of its own fluid on the ground.
Alexander turns once, slowly, taking in the room again and trying to commit it to memory. How much of this dream he’ll remember will remain to be seen, but there was enough retained from the last time to return to this place again. Perhaps there was a way to get back here without having to risk the cave and the water again..?
He surveys the cathedral and turns to follow the trail once again. It leads towards stairs. Alexander begins to hum quietly as he follows: the strangely familiar tune that he’d heard (been reminded of?) in another place in his mind.
Alexander[Per+Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
veritasHe hears the faint scuffing of somebody's soles against the stone, and then just where the stairs begin, just through the arch, a shadow is thrown down; it stretches toward him.
The shadow is followed by a man. The man is in his late forties, perhaps early fifties. His hair is shot with gray, but his face is not an old man's face. He seems vital; primal, even. Lids low, lashes blonde and pale, eyes a watery gray, a sword gray. The anticipation that Alexander finds himself feeling, the knot of it suddenly snaps, tenses. He seems to remember speaking to this man before, and that it was dangerous, and that he should not be here. There is no remembered animosity, per se. If he thought about it, tried to explore his own thoughts (how much more can he explore them?), perhaps he'd remember what happened.
The man says, in tones of surprise, "Alexander, how did you get here?"
He is blocking Alexander's way, seeming by pure chance.
AlexanderThe sound of shoes against the stone stair brings Alexander’s approach to a halt, a cock of his head showing the curiosity that lies behind it. He hadn’t seen or heard anyone else here, and had begun to wonder if there was anyone here. There was the possibility of hunters, but that wasn’t guaranteed. Creature attacks creature just as well as man does, although maybe for better reasons.
A slight squinting of Alexander’s eyes accompanies the tilt of his head as the man appears. There’s a familiarity there, but it’s not something that he can readily place. He certainly isn’t anyone from recent memory, and it doesn’t feel right that it’s someone from further back. Not in this life, anyway. Well, not unless they had encountered each other in an older dream and the memory had drifted away like smoke once Alexander had woken. The man seems just as surprised to see Alexander, although there is recognition there.
Alexander runs his eyes over the man quickly, checking for wounds or blood. The gray hair might have been paired with the gray of the fur..?
“I swam here. And... do I know you?” There’s a brief pause as the question is reconsidered. “Or, rather, how do I know you? It feels like I’ve forgotten who you are.” It may not be the most endearing of greetings, but it has the virtue of honesty. There’s no hidden lie there, but there is an expectation of something to nudge his memory. Perhaps it’s a reason, too, why Alexander is somewhere that he maybe shouldn’t be.
Alexander[Per+Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
veritasHe sees no wounds and no blood.
He does see a scar across the man's throat, very, very faint, a scimitar thin line that might have come from a rope, and note that the man has a gun at his back tucked into his trousers behind the belt and that his right pocket has a dead bird in it. The small curl of claws over the pocket, just cresting, just visible; a snare. Alexander will also notice that the man has, coiled around his wrist, something that dream Alexander tells him is a whip, is a snare, can become a net; maybe it is just a dream memory that he can't quite remember, something he's being plugged back into: He knows he's seen that whip in action; the net, too.
Maybe this man is one of the hunters.
"You don't remember me? Well well. I don't know whether you are truly honest. You seem to be truly honest but seemings often lie; you and I knew that, once. We are brothers, of sorts."
AlexanderAlexander’s gaze changes a little as he takes in the other man. No, not the source of the blood. But perhaps the cause. There’s the memory of a dream, that something telling Alex that the man is dangerous. That he carries weapons and traps and knows how to use them. Likely to trap Alexander? Hard to tell, given that there’s little in the way of definite memory of the man, but Alex is still wary now. Wary of anything that could trap.
“Brothers? How so? Did we work together, somehow?” The vagueness of work allows for a variety of meanings. Hunting. Magick. Others. “I’m sorry, I still can’t quite place you. You already know my name. Would you tell me yours?”
veritas[Manipulation + Subterfuge. Do dee do.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Alexander[Per+Empathy? Alertness? Same dice pool either way.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
veritas[NO TIES]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Alexander[Again!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
veritas"Ulrich." Ulrich does not seem quite right. Almost, but not quite right. There's more than just a feeling telling Alexander this, however. The cop can read a certain slyness in the man's eyes, a certain deadpan blandness which is put on. Behind it, an ace tucked away like a trick. "And we worked together," they were doing something that was the same; they did not work 'together,' however; that's another lead-astray, a not-quite-truth, something that is half-true half-lie.
"But if you remember nothing of our time together, then I don't think I should tell you. You would find it altogether too fantastical, though the fact that you have found your way here makes me wonder whether or not you are trying to trick me."
That is all true.
Alexander“You seem an honest man, Ulrich.” This, also, a truth. The man does seem honest, at first glance. But as he’d already said, seemings can lie. And this man? This man was lying, but there wasn’t enough there to guess why or what the truth really was. The feeling that they were both doing the same thing: Hunting? Was he hunting this Ulrich?
There’s what might have been a short laugh, had recent circumstances been different, but it passes as a snort when “Ulrich” says that Alexander would find the story of their time together too fantastical. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. I’ve seen things that other people would find unbelievable. Why don’t you try me? Unless I’m keeping you from something? I wouldn’t want to keep you.”
Had this been the waking world, he might have tried a small piece of Work to tell more easily if the man was lying or not. But Alexander isn’t sure of the rules of this place or whether the walls of the cell that his body is trapped in would have an effect here too. Something to try at another time, then, when there isn’t someone who strikes Alex as dangerous is stood in front of him and trying to skirt around the truth. But, then, he’d managed to change himself in quite amazing ways without too much effort – given himself wings, and the ability to breathe water. Perhaps a small push of the world to make it easier to pick up on the small details around the man.
[So, er, Dreaming himself more perception. Right? WP because this guy is dangerous and it would be embarassing to botch now. 2nd WP spent.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
veritas[More lies???]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 6 )
Alexander[ORLY?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (4, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Alexander[Yep, really.]
veritas"Then I should be offended that you have forgotten our contest," Ulrich offers, serenely. He takes a step forward, and no alarm bells go off in Alexander's mind. He offers his hand, too, with as much serenity as he'd offered his remark, a thin smile riding behind it and a keen glance. A lock of hair falls over his brow, with a knight's errantry. Alexander can feel how much sharper his perceptions have grown; how much deeper, the slight edge to: everything. Colour is more vibrant; he notices more. Perhaps he has an easier time reading Ulrich, too.
"But if you insist on a re-hash, I'm happy to provide."
Provided, it seems, that Alexander takes Ulrich's hand and clasps it: brotherhood.
