Poor hunted thing [In progress]

Alexander

[Stam+Med, Untiring Stamina specialty]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 ) [Doubling Tens]

Alexander

Things 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 )

oneiros

Alexander 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.

Alexander

This 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 )

oneiros

He 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.

Alexander

Here, 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 )

oneiros

Under 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.

Alexander

The 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 )

veritas

He 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.

Alexander

The 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 )

veritas

Down 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.

Alexander

The 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 )

veritas

He 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 )

Alexander

This 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]

veritas

And, 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.

Alexander

Alex 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 )

veritas

There 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.

Alexander

Compared 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.

veritas

Up, 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 )

Alexander

It 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 )

veritas

What 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.

Alexander

There 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 )

veritas

Radiance.

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.

Alexander

Any 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 )

veritas

He 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.

Alexander

The 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 )

veritas

He 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."

Alexander

Alexander’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.

Four paths: four choices

Alexander[Stam+Meditation]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
Alexander[Er, +2 successes because I forgot to tick the box for his Stamina spec.]
veritas[Buddha, somewhere: Dayum, son.]
veritasOne day is much like the next. Something has to break. He knows his cell with an intimacy he knows nothing else at all except perhaps his own body. How well does he know his own body? He knows how many paces it takes to compass its confines. He knows how the light will fall on his tray of food before it falls or as it falls no matter where it is slid. He knows how long it will take them to clean up his blood or bandage his knuckles should he punch the wall so hard. Be silent, be secret, be safe; Keller is on your side; this must look as though it is working. He knows how his voice will echo and he knows the dampening Effect of the walls. He knows the Sessions by now, the ambient wash of noise. He knows his own heart, perhaps, a little better; it is all he has to comfort him, and to keep him, and to see him through to the other side of -
This. This interminable imprisonment.
He has been meditating. He has been meditating for hours. He is gaunter, perhaps, Alexander Brandt; he is winnowed down to a harder man, and he has been for hours and hours and hours and hours boundless and flowing and not here and not there and his mind has been balanced perfectly and he has been at rest and he is open his mind is open he should be hungry he should be tired he should be distracted his body should want him but none of these things weigh on him or if they do he is boundless he is flowing he surpasses he is meditating and has been, very well, for a long, long, long time, what time? There is no time; come unhinged from time; let this be peace; let this be the moment of turning inward and
Here is Alexander.
He is inside his own head; perhaps meditation has gone over to dream, to sleep; perhaps he has trespassed on his own myth. He is inside his own head, but he seems to actually be:
in some wild grove, ringed by tall oak trees, their uppermost branches scorched and blackened; their leaves gold, rattling; their roots twisted, gaunt, reaching toward the center of the circle he stands in. Some wild grove; as he stands, one fat rain drop plops, and then another, and he knows he has something to Do -
knows also that he does not need to give in to this impulse, this feeling, this need; it is transitory, it is part of this place he has come willingly and with open eyes, and he can be whatever it is he wants to be here.
Maybe.
AlexanderTime, it flows. Second after minute, after hour, after day, after week, after... If flows but, here, it seems unchanging. Not Frozen any longer, but still Static. Trapped in a repeating cycle of: waking, washing, eating and drinking enough to take away the pain of hunger and the grip of thirst; the sessions with Keller, only to be returned to the cell again and left until the next meal is delivered.
The only alteration in the pattern is when Alexander gets to shower, and then only when he behaves. Every couple of days he was taken out of his cell and allowed a short time in an empty shower block. There was no sign of anyone else having been there. There was no sign of anything that he had tried to leave before: writing in the steam on a mirror, a message written on the wall in soap. There had, however, been freedom from the metal panelling in the cell and its ability to such any kind of dynamism from the air. It had been a brief opportunity to try to Work. It had been something simple, a small effect to work out how long he had been there.
He had been caught.
So now there wasn’t even that break in the endless repetition, and Alexander had lost track of how many meals and how many sessions and how many days he’d been here since then. There had been talk of getting the privilege back at some point, but he’d lost track of when that was too. Some day.
There had been days when Alexander had tried to at least do something – try to get some sort of exercise or movement in the cell, but its limited size made that difficult. He had even flicked through some of the books, although that hadn’t lasted long. Pages had been torn out and made into paper air planes, something to stave off boredom for a little while.
Alexander still made an occasional attempt at defiance. Some days he would refuse to walk from his cell to the white room where Keller would meet him. He was dragged. Once or twice he had tried to fight again. That had led to more guards and his being cuffed while out of the cell until he settled down again and the conditioning seemed to be taking effect again. He had punched and kicked and screamed at the walls, leaving bloody marks on the metal. He had drawn and written on them in his blood. He had tried to dig away at the corners of the panels with his fingers and with the plastic utensils that came with the food. There wasn’t a scratch in them, and the walls were always clean again after his daily counselling.
Alexander was trapped. Physically trapped, at least. He still had doubts as to whether he was still the same man who was brought here... some time ago. Keller still told him that the conditioning was a show, but it seemed to have been going on for so long that minor change after minor change could have been slipped into his mind: into who he was. He had no way to escape that: he just didn’t recognise the threads of Magick that were being used, he couldn't block or deflect or, even, understand if there was anything more going on.
Mentally, though? Alexander had found some small freedom there. He was left alone, for as long as he didn’t appear to be in any danger of seriously hurting himself. That left a lot of time. Time to look inwards, rather than outwards. Time to meditate and daydream and lose himself in the flow of thought. Sometimes he’d recall old memories, trying to run through them and pick out small details. Sometimes, he would just let his imagination go and see where his stream of consciousness would end up.
And so Alexander has been lying there, seemingly asleep, on his bed for what must be hours now. Since returning from Keller, however long ago that had been. A meal had been dropped off and taken away again, untouched. His body had barely moved, barring an occasional unconscious movement to remove pressure from some part or another. Time just continued to flow around him, and he just drifted along with it.
It is that drifting of his consciousness that settles in this grove. It’s not from memory, although certain aspects seem familiar: the blackened trees with their golden foliage. The sky above is aflame with the light of dusk: dark enough that the shadows of the trees stretch long into the grove, but still bright enough that the stars are not yet showing. Dark clouds break up the sky, glowing softly in the light as they bear the promise of oncoming darkness.
The grove is where his consciousness settles, and it is where it remains for now. That sensation of something to Do pulls against him, promises a chance to further break the bounds of his confinement and perhaps make a change to something. Alexander appears how he would have been before his interminable incarceration. Hearty and health and ready for the outdoors. Ready to explore.
Alexander[Per+Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
veritasExercise to stay sharp, fighting just to fight, paper airplanes when reading pales. He could make paper cranes. Isn't there a legend about folding a thousand and one paper cranes, and getting your wish? There's a slim children's book which is taught in most first grade classes about that particular legend. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr. It's a sad book, as many children's books taught in the American public school system seem to be, about dreams deferred and loyalty.
Here in the grove - the circle grove, the oak grove, the oaks crowned by blackened (lightning struck) branches but still thriving, still flourishing, here in that particular grove - where the sky is aflame, is molten behind the dark sketch of branch-work, where the shadows begin to grow long, and Alexander gives in to the quest this place has for him, the urgent need to -
He has something to do. He is ready to explore. The knowing what the thing to do is doesn't just come to him; he'll have to go forth, find it. But here are places he might go: to the east there seems to be a dense clot of brambles, of thorns and low-lying plants and there is a crooked path through it but the way there will be very hard. He might go to the west, where there is again a faint thread of path, on what seems to be a hill going down and down again - this grove is atop a hill, or mountain, and while the thorny bramble-y side makes the descent difficult to pick out, the fairer side does not. If Alexander goes to look down that-a-way, he'll see - very distant - a fire. It looks man-made; it strikes at him, a bronze bell swinging in his heart. If he looks toward the thorns, he'll see tufts of pale fur, caught here and there, and drops of blood - maybe that will strike him in a different way.
To the North, there is another hill; a small, narrow bridge swinging from one hill to a cliff face, sheer, which drops down and down again, and there seem to be clouds there glinting gold with the dying sun's last rays.
And to the South, there are more woods, more oak-trees interlaced, and a subtle change in the season - a lightening of the air.

Alexander[Wassat fur? If a bear went that way, I ain't]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
veritasThat fur belongs to no normal animal, no animal in the whole wide world that he has ever come across; he thinks - because this is a dream - that he remembers hearing about a fabulous beast the tears of which might cure any ailment, and this fur matches the story. Of course the story was dark; it probably had a German sensibility to it, and the fur is as soft as fresh-fallen snow, and also as glittersome.
AlexanderFour paths: four choices. Well, five; the choice to do nothing and stay here is already discarded. Alexander walks the edge of the grove for a few minutes, scanning the various views for what they have to offer. It’s almost something elemental: travelling towards the air, into the earth or towards the fire. He pauses by the brambles, crouching down to study the fur caught on the thorns. It isn’t from a living animal, if one considers the animals known to the mortal, material world. But this place isn’t the mortal world, and it probably isn’t material either. Not considering how he got here, anyway. This is a place of dreams and ideas and concepts, maybe with something of the spirit world combined.
Alexander doesn’t really know. This is all new ground to him, the exploration of dreams and guided meditations. Nobody had explained where the mind goes when the body sleeps; there had always been more pressing matters to worry about. Monsters and Nephandi and the Union. There had always been a promise of Wonder, but it had been an elusive promise to bring to reality for Alexander. Maybe now he’s starting to find his own.
But it is the path through the brambles that pulls him. The blood, there, doesn’t seem as if it was torn from the creature by the brambles there. The tuft of fur left behind could be something left in a panic to get away. The path looks hard, twisting and dark and edged with thorns. It’s the direction he wants to go, but then... this place isn’t exactly real. Alexander knows how easily Awakened are able to twist the material world to their wills. Surely it should be easier here. Hell, he’d already done it once by calling a Ferryman to look after little Alex. It doesn’t need to be much. Maybe the path just needs to be a little wider, or just a little less packed with brambles and thorns and plants that would try to grasp at his boots as he pushed through them.
Alexander[Per+Lucid Dreaming
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
veritasThere is no wind rakes through those brambles, the dense thicket of thorn and whip-slender branch; all which might catch, all which might keep, all which might make a way impassable, difficult to pick over, but Alexander decides to (through the path of righteousness go) concentrate and change the world around him just like he'd done when he was Seeking (does he feel closer, here, to his Avatar - whatever, whomever, it is? Could he summon it again, too?), and this is what happens:
The difficult way becomes less difficult. The path widens, and how difficult it is to catch; blink, and he will miss the subtle ballet of thorny vines diminishing, drawing back, ebbing, as a tide that leaves behind a gleaming lacery of foam a witch-way a walk-way and they draw up, too, draw above, so there is more of a tunnel for Alexander to go down should he still wish to follow this way, and the dirt beneath his boots will be packed. The path is more clear; the path after the animal is less, for the thorns and vines where there were blood-drops have changed their configuration, but he can still find the animal's way if he looks: some drops there, and some fur there, and it will darken the further he goes (those thorns have packed him in above, the path still wide and gracious for him now), and the ground is so rough-hewn it almost seems as though it might be stairs he walks down.
They were never stairs; the ground only holds that impression.
AlexanderIt’s different, here. Before, Working with the tools that Alexander had started to call his own, forcing his Will on the world seemed harder. The world fought back and resisted, the threat of Paradox always hanging overhead like some legendary sword waiting to fall on the unwary. Here, change seemed easier. He had nowhere near the ability to make these kinds of changes while awake, so it’s surprising when he pushes against the fabric of this reality and it shifts further than he expected. Where he had hoped for something smaller, a way through that was a little easier, this small part of the world changed as the plant life flowed back; separating like the biblical sea and curling up and around to create a clear path.
“Wow.” Alexander stands motionless for some seconds, stunned by the transformation. He looks around the rest of the clearing, checking the rest of the grove for change, before turning back to his path. Alex crouches down, pulling a tuft of fur away from where it had become caught, before stepping onto the path. The fur and the drops of blood lead the way: he simply follows where it leads.
Alexander[Wits+Survival]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Alexander[Dex+Athletics]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
veritasThe tuft of fur is so much gloaming in his hand; it has a nap to it, a weight; but it feels slinky-soft, there's a smoke-kink at the end where the pale fades away to a yellowing cream - truly it is beautiful fur; the animal's pelt must be lovely; the animal itself must be hunt-worthy, and maybe that is what happened. Maybe the beast was injured in a hunt, which would mean there are hunters besides Alexander; wouldn't it? And could he join them? And would he want to? Maybe he must find the beast before they do. Maybe he needs its tears. Maybe: there's something to the sheer fun of exploring.
He follows the blood trail. That's to the good. He doesn't lose it.
And he doesn't lose his footing, either; not even when the path suddenly plunges down, becomes almost vertical, or at least seems to. Those rocky not-stairs are carved into the hillside and he might be part mountain goat, for how well he follows. The thorns are still tangled around him and it might be tempting to reach out to them for purchase, something to hold on while he is making his descent, but Alexander knows better.
Up ahead, he can see a massive tree, with a hole beneath it: a cave. Beyond the tree, it looks as though the world is suddenly inverted, and after a dizzying moment he'll realize it is not inverted at all:
There just happens to be a lake so still, so calm, that the blazing sky is perfectly reflected, and everything is sharp and crisp which lies on its surface, and mirrors only dream of such perfection. The blood trail leads to the hole beneath the tree, but there is something strange at the water's edge.
Rows of shoes. High spiked ridiculous heels, like he has seen Serafíne wear, ballet shoes like he might've known Lucy and Delilah wear, and then boots like Ian has worn, shoes that look like standard issue shoes suggested by the police force of Seattle, shoes that look like his mother's after a long day's work, shoes that look like they belong to children: bright poppy red. Shoes that belong to every Awakened person he has met and half-remembers, even Keller. Shoes that belong to his ex, the one who cheated on him. They're all facing the water.
AlexanderAlexander holds the tuft in the palm of one hand, stroking and flattening it with the fingers of the other. It gives no clue as to the size or the shape of the animal that it came from, only that it’s likely to be wonderful. A thing of wonder, in this place that he thinks came from somewhere in his mind. A thing of wonder that might be hurt (if its tears can heal, can’t it heal itself?). Hunted, maybe. He had hunted, with snare and trap, or gun, or, on rare occasions, with a bow. But this isn’t a hunt for him, at least not in that sense of the word. He has no desire to kill this beast, to steal its skin and feed on its flesh. He tracks it to see it. He follows the trail of its blood and fur because of that push to Do something. To protect it? Maybe even that. Its tears? They are its own. What he is comes from his past: he doesn’t seek any miracle to take that past away from him, not even the pain.
The trail turns and drops and drops, but Alexander is able to keep his footing. Reaching out would be risky; likely to leave a trail of his own blood on the brambles, a spotted trail of his own essence dotted over the ground behind him. He manages to stay upright and negotiate the descent, keeping his feet steady on the treacherous ground.
Alexander pauses, again, when he reaches the bottom of the descent. He takes in the tree, standing unsteadily as his gaze skims past the line of shoes and over the perfect reflection of the water. (Is it water? It seems too perfect. Like the idea of a mirror given form, without the imperfections than are part of its physical creation.) The trail heads into the cave, and there is still the urge to follow it. But he steps to the edge of the lake, careful not to accidentally disturb the shoes. He stops next to the shoes that he recognises as Sara’s, the ex he left (ran away from: coward) in Seattle, nudging them slightly straighter with one of his own booted feet. He looks up from the shoes and across the surface of the lake, reflecting the fire in the sky.
Alex intends it to be a short stop: he intends to return another time to spend more time here, or exploring the rest of this place. He assumes that will be possible.
Alexander[Perc+Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
veritasAlexander is getting better at meditating, at going inside his own head. Here, where he is imprisoned (and he is still imprisoned; he should never forget), that is good. Will it still be good if (when) he escapes?
Because he does not disturb the shoes, they stand silent and empty sentinels. When Alex straightens Sara's, nothing happens to disturb the perfect surface of the lake, but off across it a lightning bug flickers in the gathering dusk, erratic and unsteady weaving brightness which seems to come out across the water. Water on fire; sky on fire; little luminous insect.
And he notices, too, the cresting of a tree in the center of the lake, and in the tree a cage. Easy to miss at first, for it is a cage that seems coaxed into shape by the tree itself, the tangle of branches so; and inside the cage there is something, or someone. Can he tell from this distance?
He cannot.
AlexanderWho knows what will happen if Alexander escapes his cage: nothing is Fated. Assuming Keller wasn’t lying, he might find a way to get Alexander out. Or he might run out time in his stall to protect Alex, and some other jailer might end his life. Weston, maybe. If Keller is lying and the daily sessions are slowly changing the man that Alexander is, then the question may well be moot when the person he becomes loses the need to find some way to break free. If some other breaks him out? Well, who would be insane enough to try to break him out of here. For now, and unless someone chooses to skim the probable or potential flows of time into the future, the future is uncertain. Fluid.
But for now, this is his escape. His way, in some form, to escape his cage. A thought crosses his mind, a question of whether he would be able to stay here. Leave his body behind to whatever the Union wanted to do with it while his mind continued to explore. Maybe even find some way of contacting the other Awakened who were still in Denver. But, then, would that just bring them here looking for him? A difficult question. One for another time.
Another tree, this one in the lake, pulls in his attention. This one with a cage; no, forming a cage, trapping something inside its branches. It’s not something he can make out from this distance, but it’s a sight that gets something burning inside Alexander. Fire in the water, in the air, and now in Alexander. There’s a temptation to try to tear it open from here, releasing what’s inside. But he isn’t reckless here, as this world of dreams is still mostly unknown to him. For all he knows, there could be something dangerous caught and held. A nightmare? He doesn’t know. But he’s never going to work that out from here. He needs to get closer, but the question is how.
Wings? Could he pull free from the bounds of gravity and fly there? Hell, one way to work that one out. And at least the water should be a forgiving surface if he should fall.
Alexander[Per+Dreaming, so doing the WP thing because it would be a shame to disturb the water]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
veritasHe thinks he should have wings to aid him, pulling free from the bounds (be boundless) of gravity, and so with a push of effort, he has them. They unsheathe from his shoulder-blades, pinching the skin and tugging it taut it is not painful exactly but it feels strange that awareness of new appendages he has never had before or felt before certainly not in this life anyway and they are wings that an owl might have, but sized for his body, and somewhat cumbersome on land except that they sheath so neatly against his back and he can feel the muscles strain and ache when he opens them. He can flap to gain altitude but it would be easier to leap from some high thing, altitude already a grace-boon given. His wings will make no sound; they are an owl's wings.
AlexanderIt’s a strange thing that happens, but this has already proven itself to be a strange place. It seems right that he should be able to change himself – at least his ‘physical’ self – as much as the world, so it’s not entirely surprising when the wings sprout from his back. As the skin stretches out and bone and feather and cartilage push upwards and outwards, the shirt this embodiment wears tears and shreds as they pass through.
It’s a brief thing, this change that brings owl wings to his back. Alexander steps away from the shore, and its line of shoes, before working out how to stretch them out. It’s an experimental thing, but one which seems to be tying into memory quickly. He experiments a little more, flapping them to try to get some lift. It’s difficult, but he could fly from here. Less effort, maybe, to climb the tree a little first. He scans its surface, checking for hand and foot holds that would left him gain a little height before flinging himself into the air, with a route that wouldn’t catch at his new appendages.
Alexander[Str+Athletics]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
Alexander[Dex+Ath too]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
veritasHe is fleet-footed on land, traversing a steep path. He is fleet-footed leaving land, going nimble up a tree that has few handholds and is awkward to climb those wings dragging as they do but his body still human and this might be what Icarus found when he leapt from a cliff and flew toward the sun. Alexander is not flying just for the joy of flying, however. He is flying because he wants to check something out. He is caution-fueled, ready and readied, and in spite of the wings he makes it to a low branch, avoiding anything and everything that might cage him in the tree, might bump up against his wings: they aren't just some objects attached to him, that he must guess at how they relate to everything around him based on their weight, must remember the general shape of them. They are part of him and he can feel how close they are to branches.
And when he finds a high place, and launches himself from it, he glides and then he flies.
Out across the water, toward the tree which is also a cage, and whatever lies within it.
And it is work, carrying himself like that. Hard work, but good work.
--
And then Alex wakes up; he is woken. It is time for his next 'session' with Keller, and on this point, no matter what it is he is doing, the Technocratic Guards are very firm.

You could be a bastion, Alexander

katabasis

[An ominous entry message for one's Seeking, but we'll take it. You remember my rules I hope.

Flavor, perhaps some light rolls, lots of trust please, and we'll see what happens. I'd like to open with a Perception and Awareness roll from Alexander.]

Alexander

[Hey, he survived being shot through the knee! The heart should be easy, right..? Anyhoo, Per+Awareness]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Alexander

It’s impossible for Alexander to guess how long he’s been here, now. He’d arrived unconscious, shot with a tranquiliser dart. Then he’d only been conscious and awake for, what... minutes? Minutes before pain and blood loss had beaten him into blissful unconsciousness again. But how long had it taken for him to be put back together again? Hours? Days? Weeks? Fuck, what the hell was going on with his life while he was stuck here? What did his colleagues think? Had any of the other Awakened noticed his absence yet? Or had he just slipped through the cracks in the world and been forgotten about. He expected (hoped?) that Sasha would at least have heard through the grapevine that something had happened, but how would he know? And, realistically, what chance would they have of getting him out of here? Yeah, probably none.

But the days and nights all merged into one indeterminate length of time. The cell has no windows and no doors, no clocks. No way of measuring the passage of time. Alex had tried setting the tap to drip a little. It broke the silence, but after a while the sound just got annoying and he’d turned it off again. There was the routine that these people seemed to have him running through, but how the hell does he know if it’s regular or not. Meals are dropped off. The first few had been ignored, taken away again untouched. Who knew what the hell they were putting in it? Even the water was ignored until the thirst got too much to bear. He had started eating a little too, although he only really picked at the meals enough to stave of hunger pains before they’re left, abandoned, and taken away again by one of the guards.

Alexander is taken (dragged at least once early on, when he refused to get up and cooperate) into the meeting with Keller. Then he's left for Keller to violate his mind, session after session. Alexander hadn’t – yet – tried to actively, physically resist again. There didn’t seem much point. But he wasn’t particularly cooperating either. Oh, he’d answer the occasional question. Nothing personal, though. Nothing related to his Awakening or his Magick. The questions about other mages are flat out ignored. He’s told that there’s possibly a plan to get him out, but he doesn’t believe it. This whole thing, it’s just part of what they’re trying to do to him. Conditioning, or whatever Keller called it. What, he’s supposed to rely on this Technocrat to get him out? Trust him? Believe a word that he says? Seriously, with the power at this man’s disposal is Alexander really supposed to believe that he’s going to be aware of everything that the guy was doing in his head during these sessions? Or while he slept? No. No way.

Which leaves an awful lot of time. Sleep takes up some of it, but Alexander had never needed a massive amount of sleep. Maybe he’s sleeping more, now? But how could he tell. The books he’d been left, about the Union’s twisted view of the world? He’d flicked through them early on and mostly ignored them. Books had never really been his thing at the best of times. Even less so when the material is about how he’s a threat to reality and needing to be controlled. Really? Who the fuck’s controlling these guys then?

Occasionally Alexander daydreams. Sometimes he tries to meditate. He’d started picturing other places in his mind when he did, places he’d never been before. Details would be added, sounds and smells, until he lost the concentration and it faded back into memory again.

Right now, Alexander is lying on the bed that he’d been left and staring at the ceiling. He’s singing to himself quietly, some childhood rhyme that his mother had taught him at some point.

Alle Leut, alle Leut gehen jetzt nach Haus. [All the people, all the people go home now...]

Alle Leut außer für mich. [All the people except for me.]

katabasis

He is intransigent. He is difficult. He is Alexander Brandt and he is screwed.

He is lying on the bed and it is not uncomfortable but it is not comfortable either. The bed is neutral, his body has thinned; his spine feels the mattress and the fabric of the beige jumpsuit. His ear hears the echo of his own voice; it is an intimate thing, one's voice - one only ever hears it properly, while the rest of the world gets its projection. Even a Mind mage cannot hear the marriage between mental voice and audio the same way an individual does, because it is one or it is the other; it is an image, it is not true. He is singing an melancholy-cheerful German song for children; maybe he is thinking about his mother.

The ceiling is boring. The cold he can feel spreading comes from within. He is Aware of it, as he is Aware of some things some times: he knows the sudden nip in the air, the sudden frost; it is something immanent, something internal. He is not doing it (or is he? Debates), and it scrapes him out behind the ribs: leaves him with an urgent ache, there in the hollow -

reach (for me). find (me). come (my love [to me]).

His singing seems to have an echo to it; it is disorientating, or it is time-lapse disorientating - like looking at the shadow of water when light sluices through a glass of it, but that shadow of water which is clear and lightful is a voice running counter to his, but it is his. Subtle things, but

urgency. Need. Push.

Alexander

He is a stubborn pain the ass. A stubborn pain in the ass who has been accused of trying to deal with everything on his own. But who else can he really rely on at the moment, surrounded by those who think of him as dangerous, a threat to their reality that needs to be caged and controlled and brought around to their way of thinking?

The song is something to fill the silence, something that has stuck with him more memorably than the forgettable, manufactured music that seems to be produced these days. It could be the effect of youthful memory keeping a better hold, or it could be the attachment to his mother that keeps the words close enough to recall. Memories from youth that link to other memories of other times. Lying on another bed, staring at another ceiling. He starts singing a different song.

Daddy's flown across the ocean. Leaving just a memory. Snapshot in the family album...

We don't need no education. We dont need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teachers leave them kids alone...

All in all it’s just another brick in the wall...

There’s a change in the room. The overly-conditioned (static) air had always seemed to hold at the same temperature, just as the (static) light hadn’t wavered or flickered or dimmed or brightened or changed.

There’s a change and an ache and a calling. To reach, to search, to find.

No.

It was something to do with Keller. Or the food. Or something else that his captors have under their infinitely fine control. Some other way of fucking with his mind to bring him round to their way of thinking.

No, Alexander closes his eyes and rolls onto his side. His body curls into a ball as he tries to leave the room behind and find somewhere else to be in his mind where he had some sort of control.

Alexander

[WP]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

katabasis

Alexander Brandt is a tall man at 6'2, but even the big ones eventually crack. Size is no protection. He curls into a fetal position, that oldest and safest of position, and he tries to go somewhere safe in his head.

The urgency does not fade; it is his urgency (a lie?), his ache (planted? How can he trust himself now? He can't, can he?), his desire (a kick in the ass, Alexander Brandt, that's what you need), and -

His eyes are closed. (I close my eyes and all the world drops dead.)

He is in the last place he felt safe, truly safe.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Alexander

Metal walls and white light and the pressure of the bed fall away from conscious thought as Alexander grasps for somewhere else to be. Another time, another place. Maybe not so long ago, but who knows how far away? It’s strange how disconcerting it is to lose those anchors, leaving your own mind as the only thing seemingly tying you to reality. When there’s nowhere physically to retreat to and it seems as if others are trying to pry you loose from that one last attachment, you find some way to hang on, hoping that there’s somewhere that they can’t find.

Screwed he may be, but not hopeless that he will find some way to survive this. He will survive.

That isn’t something for conscious thought now, though. This (another) moment is lying on a blanket. Something thick and warm, maybe it had a nebula pattern on it but he can’t really remember. It’s not really important. The blanket separates him from the cold ground, the damp grass of the paddock near the Chantry. The sky is clear and cool and night has fallen, revealing the stars. There are patterns in the stars: Orion’s belt, the Big Dipper and the rest of the Great Bear.

Hera’s Handbag. Nuns having an orgy on a carousel.

Somewhere nearby would be Sera, barefoot and shivering on the blanket close by. Some ridiculously-spiked heels abandoned next to a wine bottle. Ian sat nearby, too, dressed more and less bothered by the cold. They had laid there, making up their own constellations after deciding that they didn’t make any less sense than the traditional ones. They had talked comfortably – the first time Alexander had with Ian – and drunk beer. Asked later, he wouldn’t be sure if there was a fire burning that time or if that had been another place and time, but there’s one there now. There’s an occasional crack from a piece of burning wood, or maybe a stone, breaking in two. The conversation has ended and the others lie still, but their presence is still felt. Other than the fire, it feels like everything is frozen.

katabasis

Not everything, not quite.

Serafíne and Ian are there, fulfilling their roles as statuary in this safe-place memory-room that Alexander has sought. Found. Discovered. The urgency is still a pang; it is lodged under his breast-bone, and there is a strand attached to it. There might be an actual strand attached to it if he looks just so, a line leading from his heart up and out. How cold the ground is; the same immanence he felt before turning from it and, in turning from it, seeking it. Alexander Brandt, ladies and gentlemen:

There are patterns in the stars.

One star falls; the wind flicks up and a shred of paper comes whisking, the edges burning gilt fire-ember glow out of the flames; singes Alexander's face when it smacks him there, drops. He can see the words and as soon as he sees the words he knows what they say (reads them [internal]).

Favoured by sailors and people who have broken their compass. Do you think you'd do something if you had the North Star?

Sparks spray out from the fire; there is writing on the ground, too, but that takes effort to read.

And there is an addition to the scene.

A six year old, familiar of face but only from photographs and perhaps some long-ago memories, tow-headed and squatting down by one of Sera's shoes, holding the other and squinting at its heel with a look of bafflement.

Alexander

Wait, this isn’t right.

There had been no shooting (falling) star that night, nothing thrown from the sky or the fire to scorch and burn him. This wasn’t what he remembered and imagined, cobbled together with fragments of other memories. This wasn’t his.

“Fuck off, Keller!” Oh, he’s angry again, ready to swing and charge and rail against the intrusion. Alexander stands, looking out away from (where he remembers/imagines) the house to be and out into the dark forest. “Stop playing your fucking games and get this over with!” He stands breathing heavily, hand curling around the charred sliver of paper that had caught him, waiting (hoping?) for something that he can do. Something he can scream and shout and kick and tear and do something with. That something doesn’t come, but something else does. A thought that this doesn’t feel like Keller. The man hadn’t made any attempt to mask what he was, what he felt like. There’s no potency, no incisiveness, no reflection. Just something cold tying him to... to what?

Alex looks down, looking to see if there’s anything physical there and he finally notices the paper. He looks and knows what’s there without reading. Because this his memory/imagination/dream? The fire flares, spitting out sparks and words but not something he knows. Not his, then? Someone else’s words? Someone other than Keller? Who? Another ‘Crat? Someone from outside trying to get a message in? He’s sceptical, wary, as he steps closer to the words and tries to make them out.

There’s another presence felt, one which gets Alex ready to fight again. He swings round from the writing, hands balled into fists, crouched and ready to spring forward at a threat. There’s pause, though, when he sees the figure. The face is familiar, but from a long distance. A face that still looks out from a bookshelf in his mother’s apartment, taken years ago when all that mattered was when’s dad coming home?

“Oh, yes, very clever. I’d have expected something a little more subtle from you.” He’s speaking to nobody in particular, assuming that there would be someone observing. Everything he did was observed, why would this be any different? Alex opens his hands, letting the fragment of paper fall away, and swings his arms open wide as he looks up at the sky. “What, are you going to tell me how I was kept safe by the glorious Technocratic Union? Oh, please.”

katabasis

The sparks on the ground, when he looks and tries to make the words read out, Because you haven't looked for me in that right way and we're fucked now.

The kid looks up at Alexander in surprise, then gets up, smiling bright - "Dad!"

The kid (the little Alexander) runs right for Alexander, Alexander whose arms are open wide and who is looking up a the sky, and those skinny arms circle 'round his legs and hug. He has had a sharp chin, dug it into his Dad's thighs sometimes.

The stars glitter in a pattern, too; more words, if he tries to read them - words that (sing, song) seem to spell something out in German.

[This would require an Int + Enigmas roll!]

Alexander

[He'll look. Int+Enigmas]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

katabasis

The stars glitter out, in a slant-wise not-quite German - you are observed (my love [failing]), we are observed, you have not observed me, there is no observation; the observation is outer observation, where is the inner observation: o b s e r v e m e. LOOK. DECIDE. LOOK. HELP.

Alexander

Alexander cocks his head and studies the words that the sparks form, but they don’t quite make sense. “We’re fucked? Who the hell is we?” He’d been alone here, apart from the guards and Keller and whoever had put his leg back together, since he’d arrived. “Wait, are you in another cell..?”

...you haven’t looked for me...

It could be someone else held here, finding some way to break through the walls and make contact. But why would he be looking for them? Hell, he’s the only person being held here for all he knows. Now, anyway, which is about all that he’s had in the way of time. Could someone be using Magick to send a message through time? Something about the looking, though. Why’s that important?

The chain of thought shifts when the kid yells out and grabs hold of Alexander’s leg. “What the hell...” His arms and his head drop as he takes hold. “Hey, kid, I’m not your dad. He left, remember? Packed his bags and just walked out on us.” Didn’t even say goodbye, goes unvoiced, but who knows whether the words still make it through. Alex had been an only-child, he mother had never remarried or had any other kids. Alex had never babysat or even spent that much time around children, so it’s always felt awkward when he’s had to deal with them. It had always been so much easier to let someone else deal with them. He’s not heartless, though. He rests a hand on the kid’s (his?) shoulder, for whatever comfort that might offer.

Alex looks back to address the sky, leaving his hand where it is. “But then you knew that, right?” The stars shine and glitter and there’s something in them. Not a constellation, no ballerinas dancing on rhino horns. Words. Words that catch his eyes and hold them and there’s something familiar from figures in a storm and a bike ride and a call for help and...

...and Sera telling him to look and to search... That’s why it seemed important.

“You have got to be kidding me. Now you decide to show up?! Your timing sucks!”

katabasis

"You did come back," the kid (little Alex) says. Hair silked and fine under Alexander's palm, chin burrowing deeper, insistent. He sounds shy but like there's a joke happening, and he wants to be in on it. He wants to show that he can be in on it, and he, still holding on tight, looks up at Alex eyes wide a big hopeful smile look look Dad I totally get this joke I am laughing too you love me right you will stay. "You'd never walk out on us."

But, as Alexander has (perhaps correctly) deduced, this is different, this place he's in: metaphor-rich, deeper meanings to be found - maybe. Maybe the stars are just casting the words of his colleagues and friends up, re-arranging them for his benefit.

His benefit. His Avatar. Where is it? What is it? Another star falls; this one just a streak across the horizon - a horizon which is becoming smudged. Another log breaks, or a stone; yes, a stone; it's the crack of a stone he hears. The forest is dark.

Alexander

You have got to be kidding me, Alexander repeats in his mind as the stars go silent. The kid was insistent that he’d found who he was looking for, but this Alex wasn’t Alexander. Alexander had never had that moment of desperate joy where his father had appeared at the door, saying it had all been a mistake. Because, truthfully, he hadn’t expected that to ever happen. Oh, he’d hoped – prayed even, until it became painfully obvious that either nothing was listening or even remotely cared – that it would happen. But he’d lain in bed at night, kept awake by his parents arguing. He might not have understood what they were arguing about, but they had always tried to keep it to when they had thought he was asleep. They had always pretended that everything was ok between them and they were happy together.

It hadn’t worked. Alexander had known, but pretended that he hadn’t. Pretended that they were still one happy family.

Pretended that it wasn’t his fault.

Because what other reason was there for his parents to split at the time? He didn’t understand how his parents could have come to the realisation that they didn’t actually like each other once the spark of the romance had faded. Oh, they had tried for his sake. But the constant pretence was poisoning all of them. So his father had left without a word.

Bastard.

That wasn’t this Alex, though. Alexander takes a sigh and gently loosens the arms of the kid so that he could kneel in front of him and meet him face to face. He rests his hands on Alex’s shoulder. “I think I get it now. I didn’t know how to find you. Hell, I didn’t really know I needed to look. You know?

“I think there’s someone else we need to find, though. I don’t know who or where they are, though. Do you?” Alexander looks around at the blurring horizon and the welcome warmth and light of the fire. He glances at the woods and has a sinking feeling.

Alexander

[Perc+Alert, because there are never enough big nasty beasties to ruin your day]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

katabasis

The kid looks around as if for help when Alexander removes his arms, but then chews on his knuckle and stares back at Alexander, his own eyes (their own eyes) solemn and serious. Alexander thinks he gets it. The child's forehead crinkles up, his knuckle shiny with spit. Alexander didn't really know he needed to look. Little Alex tries to look invested in what 'Dad' is saying, and he reaches out with one spit-slimed hand to tug on Alexander's pocket. "Why though?"

Why does he get it now.

Why didn't he know how to find 'you.'

Why didn't he know he had to look.

Why is there someone else to find.

Why doesn't he know who or where they are.

Take your pick of why questions, Alex.

The gathering gloom is the same gloom that always precedes rainfall, the kind of rainfall which sluices suddenly on the roof of houses come night, more sound than water until you look out your window and see you're in a drowned apartment, mudslides and swollen rivers. A wind rakes through the dark of the forest.

The house is that way. The woods are that way. A night bird (owl) cries, and another star falls; the thread (drifting hair, fine-filament - see how it floats) which is cold and attached to Alexander's breastbone shivers with light. There is indeed a cracked stone, just on the outskirts of the fire: it has letters on it - another thing to be read, though part of it is obscured.

Alexander

Why though?

It’s a simple word and a simple question, but one with so many meanings. Which one is intended? Is that part of the test, then? (Assuming he isn’t being played with by Keller or someone like him – there’s still some scepticism about that, after his questions about Alexander’s Awakening.)

“Because I didn’t even know I had to ask the questions. Not really. It’s not like I was handed a study guide to Awakened life, you know? People tell me stuff and it doesn’t always make sense or feel right when I try it, but I’m trying to cobble things together and figure out what works. Like... where things, the world even, came from, right? Honestly, I didn’t really care before I left Seattle. It never really seemed important, it didn’t change anything. But then it became a question that I knew that I couldn’t answer. I’m not sure anyone can, really. Blind men and ropes, and all that.” Alexander shrugs, referring to Grace’s nutshell explanation of three blind men describing an elephant. “But asking made me wonder what happens if the world has always been here and will always carry on. What people have done before affects what happens now, just as what happens now affects what happens in the future. It means that there’s a point to trying to make the world a little better, rather than saying ‘screw it’ and letting things turn to crap. It maybe gives a little more meaning to what I – we – do.”

Something else Sera had once said comes to mind. Something about them always being in a time and a place – that Alexander and Sera and Kalen would always be sat around a camp fire in Wash Park, drinking beer, watching the stars and talking about god and creation. Alexander smiles a little at the thought. “I might be wrong, but I think that just asking the question can change things. Or at least... open possibilities.”

“I hope that makes sense. But right now, I think that you’re me, or part of me, or something that I’m sure s psychologist would have a fancy name for. I think the father you’re looking for is your – our – Avatar. I think that’s who’s out there and who we need to find. I have no idea what he or she looks like, but I’m going to guess that we’re looking for Dad. The man’s got to be good for something in the end, right?”

He looks up at the sky, almost feeling the pressure of the oncoming rain. They’re going to get soaked soon, if that’s a thing that happens in something that you imagine. (Can you dream yourself warm and dry?)

Something cracks loudly in the fire and Alexander turns to look, noticing the stone. He stands and holds out a hand for Alex to take hold of, if he wants to, before he gets a little closer to the fire. The stone is covered, so he crouches to retrieve a stick from the fire so that he can clear the stone off or pull it out of the fire. He chooses a stick that looks like it will double as a torch, for as long as it lasts.

He knows what’s in the house, he’s been there before. The woods, though? He’s never been there before, and he’s going to need some light.

katabasis

Six-year-old Alex hangs onto almost-twenty nine (almost-thirty) Alex and the solemnity of his gaze does not dispell. There is no way a six-year-old would understand what Alexander is saying, but this kid seems to be attentive if a little baffled. Eager, like he wants to learn or like he's just happy being in Alexander's presence. Eager, like he thinks that's what he should be, like if he pretends to be eager, it's okay. Everything's okay because he's being good - get it? This six-year-old is good. Is there a gleam in six-year-old Alex's eye (or a quiver to that thread-wisp which is cold lodged beneath Alexander's breastbone) when Alex says maybe gives a little more meaning and then the word 'do'? There might be a gleam. There might be a quiver. There might be - there is - another spray of sparks from the fire as the wind kicks up, tugging on Alexander's clothes, almost knocking little six-year-old Alex down to the ground. He clings to Big Alex, though, screwing up his face in fierce determination. The wind's gone again.

Big Alex has more ideas. Just asking the question can change things or open possibilities. Little Alex kicks at the ground and looks distracted. Big Alex thinks Little Alex is him, or part of him, or something that a psychologist - flash of a look from the kid - might have a fancy name for. The father is your/our Avatar. That's who's out there. Little Alex thrusts out his lower lip, but it's a thoughtful pout. The man's got to be good for something in the end, right.

Half the stars are gone, when Alex looks up. They're not blotted out, except on the horizon - and encroaching. The horizon is certainly encroaching. But half the stars are gone nonetheless, burnt-out sparkless drownt in a river something. He finds a good stick, a whole stack of fire-wood sticks culled from the woods meant to be used as kindling, he can take his pick. Easy to pull the stone out of the fire, but it's not a whole word. Looks like it's chipped off something, belongs to some larger piece of stone: fragment.

Easy, too, to find a stick that will double as a torch. The kid says, suddenly and too loud -- a piercing voice: "But what if they get you."

Alexander

Alexander steps back when the wind blows up, bracing himself – and little Alex – against its force, but then it’s gone just as soon as it arrived. There will be more gusts, of that he’s sure. Wind and rain. It’ll be miserable soon, but at least it won’t be a 15’ square metal box. There’s freedom here. The freedom to choose and move and do. The missing stars are curious, though. Worrying? It’s difficult to know what should be worrying at the moment.

While he’s fishing the stone out of the fire, Alexander looks at Alex. The kid hadn’t been massively vocal so far, but he still seems quiet. “You ok?” He scrapes the fire with the stick, knocking the stone to the side where it can cool enough to grab. A fragment of something else. Another puzzle. Another question.

Stick chosen, one out of many, Alexander steps to the blanket for a moment to tear a strip off. Something to wrap around the end of the stick, hopefully prolong its life. There’s nothing to soak it in – nothing that will burn well enough – but it will just have to do. Alex’s piercing question, but what if they get you, catches Alexander as he’s working. Alexander pauses knotting the material around the end of the stick. “What if who get me?”

The Union? Or was there something else here? Alexander starts searching for another stick, but this time a much longer one. One that could be used as a staff. Just in case.

katabasis

You ok? Nodnodnod. Of course he's okay. He's always okay. Brave kid, right? Brave kid, pretending.

The air is beginning to taste of ozone, and another night-bird cry (shriek [rusty scrape, something from a feathered throat that could conjure souls one side to the next]), but the ozone-full air is also getting colder. There is freedom in that, sure; in the rising storm, in the fact that he is - at least in his head - not in the fucking cell any longer.

The stone is cool when he picks it up, perhaps colder than he'd expect, and rough. Not quite as heavy as he'd expect too, but still solid. It has a good weight in the palm of his hand; there are sharp edges, mica flecks in it; scratches over the word-picture.

Most of the kindling seems spindly, but there is one log which is solid enough for one whack. Pinecones still attached here and there, and those would hurt. Nothing large enough for a staff, but he's planning on going into the woods - isn't he?

"They." Duh, Alexander. Six-year-old Alex stays close to Alexander, almost tripping over his heels. "What if they get you."

He sounds - scared. Of course he sounds scared - tight voice, white face.

Alexander

They’re more alike than Alexander probably realises right now. Two kids messing around with stuff that they don’t really understand and has a good chance of doing them hard. But they pretend and they carry on and they just do the best that they can and hope it’s enough to get them out the other end.

Picking the rock up, Alexander runs his hand over it before flipping it over and checking the other side. There are marks there, but is it something he can make out or realise? He rubs the pad of his thumb over the crystals embedded in the rock, feeling the sharp edges as he tries to study the lines or shapes or colours.

What if they get you?

Alexander crouches again, facing little Alex. “I think they,” whoever they are, “have just as much finding me as they do if I’m out there looking. And I’ve got a much better chance of finding something out there. I’ll be ok.” He gives the kid a smile, trying to be reassuring. But now that he has that thought again, that they are out there, he’s just pretending again.

“I’m going to go out there. You can stay in the house if you want, I’ll come back and find you later. Or you can come with me. Piggyback?” If Alex chooses to come, Alexander if happy to heft him onto his shoulder. He’ll light the torch and pass it to Alex to hold, keeping what might pass as a club for himself. If not, then he’ll take Alex to the door of the house before setting off by himself.

He’s expecting Alex to come with him. It’s what he’d want to do.

katabasis

There is a sort of dim radiance to the mica chips and the marks on the stone, but Alexander will feel - in his gut - that he just does not have enough of the puzzle to work out.

The child stares into Alexander's eyes, and it's a wary stare - judging, evaluating, considering. He doesn't smile back right now, because he is not reassured, especially not since Alexander is going to go out there. He shake shake shakes his head he doesn't want to stay in the house. Piggyback?

Little Alex nodnodnods and will jump (oof, the kid is heavier than he looks) onto Alex's back, one skinny arm wrapped tight around Alexander's adam's apple, knees digging into his ribs. It is not the most comfortable thing in the world. He does hold the torch though and can be convinced to loosen his grip on Alexander's throat, at least enough for him to breathe.

The woods aren't very far, and the torch smells remarkably good - like autumn, heath-fire, bon-fire - there's something about the warm smell of fire when it is diffuse, when it is pine -

The woods aren't very far, but they are very, very dark. As Alexander approaches the edge, he can see the trees toss and turn like a sea during storm, like monsters at a metal concert banging their heads, and then the leading edge of rain coming straight for him and the kid.

Alexander

[Perc+Alert]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

katabasis

He notices a number of things.

The filament hooked under his breast, that lone thread, has a bit of a drag; the same sort of drag a balloon might have.

He notices a number of things, such as:

There are four lean shadows in the general shadowiness of the woods, crouched low and smiling - they do not give off a sense of menace or hunger, but they might be wolves, vigilant watchers. They might be something else, too.

He notices a number of things, beat cop that he is. The cat's paw on the ground, the wing feather - soft, creams and browns, an owl feather.

A dying salmon, gasping.

A gun, half-buried by weeds, a-glinting. Three bullet casings. A curl of kodak film, old-fashioned.

And distant, but not that distant, behind the sound of rain: the sound of water, running.

Alexander

Alexander notices. (Shouldn’t he know? Isn’t this all in his mind?) His body may lie dormant somewhere, but his mind is very much awake and active, doing something and it feels good. Right? Maybe. He’s aware of the thread and rubs a hand over his chest as he circles the items on the ground.

The feather, the paw, the salmon: it seems like things that a predator would leave. A hunter. Who was hunting? Alexander’s gaze swings over the watching figures, looking for movement.

The gun draws his attention, as a better weapon that the club that he’s holding. (Assuming it had any shots still to fire, assuming that it would hurt anything here, but why wouldn’t it..?) Alexander steps closer, kneeling to pick it up and check it over. The film, too, is picked up and looked at more closely. It’s old-fashioned, but Alexander isn’t so young that it’s an unknown.

“Hold the torch forward a little,” he asks little Alex. He wants the light to see what the film holds.

katabasis

The gun is the standard issue side arm for the Seattle police force; a Glock, probably. It is warm to the touch, a mellow sort of after-glow warmth; when he touches it, the thread attached below the breastbone seems to tug; this could be good or bad. Little Alex's torch comes dangerously close (or seems to come dangerously close) to the thread, and to Alexander's face, when he holds the torch close to the film. He waves the torch around and it's difficult to see the film indeed, but Alexander can make out a number of faces: people he has met over the last two years, although they're in an office-setting, dressed as he has probably never seen them -- in fact, he can barely notice their faces. He gets more of a taste of resonance, and the taste of resonance is what the film captured. At an office.

And then there's what looks like it might be a body, frozen (frozen), half-in half-out of - something. A lake? The film catches fire and begins to curl as soon as Alexander looks closer, and little Alex is laughing.

The dark things in the woods don't move, but he can feel them. He can feel their awareness, though not their awareness of HIS awareness. That's something, isn't it? The salmon's tail flops weakly.

Alexander

The gun is familiar and fits easily into Alexander’s right hand as he feels the warmth (recently fired? Had that been one of the cracks earlier?). He slides the magazine out of the handgrip and counts the rounds. If there are still rounds to fire, the magazine slides back in with a firm click before he checks the safety and tucks the pistol into his waistband. He runs a hand over the empty casings, feeling for warmth there too.

He ducks a little when Alex swings the torch around, almost unseating the little guy from his back. He isn’t singed, though. And whatever it is tied to him seems ok. It’s still there, anyway. (What the hell is it, though?) He catches glimpses of people, but the setting is all wrong. The people there are wrong. Sera in a thick sweater, slacks and comfortable shoes, clutching a file across her chest as she looks awkward in front of the camera. Kalen in thick-rimmed glasses, standing at a photocopier seemingly bored watching it do its thing. Alyssa standing formally by a water cooler, clad in a skirted business suit, hair pulled back into a tight bun and not a sign of makeup.

And the body. The film doesn’t last long enough for him to see much, but it didn’t seem like the lake that the corrupted spirit had infested a couple of years ago. Assuming that was even a lake – or water – that it was caught in. Alex laughs as the film catches and burns quickly to ash, and something about it grates on Alexander’s nerves. Did you do that on purpose?

The figures aren’t – currently – a threat. He keeps them in mind, keeps an eye on them, in case that changes.

The fish, though. The fish was dying. (Can anything die here?) Quite literally out of water. There was water nearby. It seemed right to try to return it. Alexander tries to scoop it up with one hand, keeping the club in the other, and sets off in the direction of the sound of something running.

Alexander

[Perc+Alert]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Alexander

[Dex+Ath]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

katabasis

(Did you do that on purpose?)

Under the murmur of the rain, which is coming down now, falling to the ground in long silver arrows just there before Alexander and his six-year-old doppelgänger, there is a voice. The voice is rain-song, is fire-song; the fire is going to go out when the rain reaches it. But the voice might be an echo, 'did you do that on purpose? did who do that on purpose?' Except things do not echo during a storm, not like that.

Little Alex's breath catches in his throat when Alexander scoops up the fish and the torch almost conks Alexander in the head again, the young child's arms making a vise against Alexander's chest; clearly the kid was scared by the sudden swoop.

He does get the fish, though. And he sets off in the direction of the sound of water running, and it's not at all hard to follow, even with the rain - the sound is a conversation, is light and shadow rippling meditative is white noise susurration, and he must go into the woods.

The leaves are rain-drenched; silvery pearls of water spray out as Alexander hurries, leaf-mulch is damp and wet and has that after-rain during-rain clean-scrubbed-fresh smell. As soon as Alexander is in the woods, Little Alex begins to have trouble breathing, but he is scared; he is terrified. The woods don't seem so bad: although they are dark - insidious, even, with the darkness; lattice-work branches fallen here and there, the forest not around Denver and not around Seattle but the storeyed forests of Germany. The Black Forest.

Black oaks, gold leaves.

And there, there is a river - a dark river running, and the fish flops in his hand.

Alexander

Hello?

He thinks it, rather than saying it, testing for a similar reaction. Although something about the echo, the reflected question, did who do that on purpose, catches Alexander. The kid. Was there something there that I wasn’t supposed to see? He isn’t entirely sure if he expects an answer.

Alex clings on tighter and his shivering is obvious to Alexander. It wasn’t particularly cold – not yet, the rain might change that – but the forest is dark and full of shadows. Full of the unknown. Alexander speaks gently, trying to calm the kid down. “Hey. It’s ok. I’m here. We’ll be ok.” He keeps repeating the words, a constant reminder that they are together. Not alone.

The trees are unfamiliar. Alexander has never left the US – not counting the two trips into the Umbra – and never been to the Black Forest. The name couldn’t be any more apt for where he finds himself, though. It is black. With the canopy getting thicker and the rain and the clouds hanging overhead, the darkness is almost enough to feel.

They emerge from the tree line and see the river. Dark. Black? Like another black river? Like the one corrupted by a Fallen? Tainted and twisted by Zane’s beliefs, his darkness. A river where spirits were meant to sleep, to find eternal rest, when they had finished travelling. Somewhere safe, protected by the boatmen. (Will I ever see them again before it's my turn to rest?)

From a distance, it’s difficult to know if this is a similar, corrupted river or simply a trick of the failing light. Alexander remembers looking into that first river – remembers the unbridled hate and anger that had almost sent him running back – and it’s hard to risk the same again. But this fish needed water. Alexander needed to make sure he wouldn't be consigning it to eternity in that before he releases it. Alexander goes to look.

katabasis

Hello. Hello. Echo. Echo. Hello. He might feel as if his thoughts have weight. He doesn't know if anybody is going to reply, but he's figured out some of it hasn't he? His Avatar is here. If he finds it. Or the kid is his Avatar, and they need to find something else. They need to do. They are together. Not alone. Alexander (Dad) and the abandoned kid Alexander was, the first big betrayal of his life (if it was a betrayal [the world is dark and mistakes are made]). We'll be ok. What a mantra. I'm here.

Black the river is. Black is the color of true love's hair in the old ballad. Black is the color of the last flag on the battlefield. Black is the color of a grave-stone after too long left alone. Black the river is, and black the belly of a storm, and black entrails left out to rot and ruin. Black is ruin, and black is the inside of the body where the heat is engendered and no light ever reaches. Not all that is lightless is bad.

Black the river is when he comes to it with the fish, which will be dead in a handful of seconds. The fish's scales glimmer, dull soap-bubble iridescence: that beauty which only fish have. Its eye has no terror, or only terror. It is a fish-eye, and they have a certain look. The water is running quickly because of the rain, higher than it might normally be; little wavelets lap at the bank, and there is a massive root structure from a tree just there, curling down into the river, little white crests there, and it if there is something about the river that is different -

well, it seems sweet. And cold. And deep, and swift.

Alexander

Alexander thinks he’s worked parts of this out, but he doesn’t have any idea if he’s right or wrong, or if there is a right or a wrong. Right? Correct, rather. One thing that can be said of Alexander, at least since he grew out of the casual cruelty and selfishness that childhood naiveté carries with it, was that he tried to do the right thing. That is why he looks after Alex – not because it might be his Avatar testing him, or some part of his mind begging to be let out and put to rest, but because it would be wrong to leave a scared child alone in the cold, wet, dark forest.

The river may be black, but it isn’t that river. Whatever else it may be, it seems to be water. Is probably water. Is probably better for the fish to live in than spending its last few moments drowning in air. He tells Alex, “Hey, hop down a minute.” If he’s going to close with the bank, he doesn’t want to fall in with Alex clinging onto his back. It would be too easy to slip, for Alex to shift his balance and topple the both of them in. He isn’t sure if he’d be able to save them both if they did.

Alexander drops the club before kneeling by the bank of this black and deep (it has a bottom, right?) river. He holds the fish close to the surface of the water before letting it slide into the flow.

Is this what you want me to do, then? Help spirits find the river before something else happens to them? His Avatar may be out there somewhere, but is it (he/she?) listening? Will it give some glorious sign that Alexander might finally be getting it? Or will it stay as vague and distant as it had for nearly two years?

katabasis

The child loosens his death grip on Alexander's ('his Dad's') throat and stands back. The torch is now held in two hands. The torch is somewhat hefty for a child to carry, and Little Alex does it solemnly now. He looks at Alexander as if Alexander is going to disappear. As if Alexander is going to leave him, and he just knows it. Little Alex is already bracing for the abandonment, but children can't brace the same way adults can. They are resilient but they are also hurt in deep ways. This child has already been scarred, has already been left. Already knows he's going to be scarred, going to be left.

He plants the torch in the sand, digging with the non-fiery end.

The fish begins to wriggle when Alex holds it over the water. The water reflects the fish's struggle and Alexander's hands, the minute ripples of colour: silver like a smudge of pastel, tan like a smudge of more pastel, shadowed -

and there is something joyful about it when it makes it to the river, slides beneath the surface. Lengthens into this suggestion of radiance, and of brilliance. Just a river? Just a river in the rain, just a river churning forward except when Alexander held his hand above the river he felt something from it:

something - what - some newness. Some - what - warmth? A measured music, half-heard - as if it is coming from two rooms over. The rain drowns it; the river drowns it.

Alexander

As Alex clambers down, Alexander rests a hand on his shoulder for a moment. It’s intended as a comfort. A way of saying I’m not going anywhere. But the fish is not long for this world and the touch is short. Alexander glances back at the sound of digging, seeing Alex making a hole to plant the torch in. (Plant? Will it grow?) A strange thought. But Alexander leaves him to it – this shouldn’t take long.

Alexander smiles as the fish slides away into the water, although it’s only his reflection in the water that sees it. It is something of joy to save something from death. And he can’t help but wonder if that’s something that he’d not seen a lot of over the past two years. Sera's wonder.

Oh, he’d been there when The Message had uncovered its identity - there had been something close to a birth in that moment. He knew, in the abstract, that he’d helped to save lives from Victoria and her pack, and from the spirit by the reservoir. But he’d seen more people dead, beyond saving, and death where people had seemed beyond the point of saving in that moment. The corpse of Kozlowski. The torpid spirits in the Black Orchid. The remains around the reservoir. Too late. Too weak. Not trying hard enough. Were these his thoughts, or of the disappointment of his (strangely silent) Avatar? He glances back at Alex again, still wondering what the boy really was.

Only a glance, though. Something about the water keeps his attention. Something keeps him looking down into the water, seeing himself looking back. Alexander holds his hand just above the water, waving it between his face and his reflection, feeling the warmth. “Hey, come take a look. There’s something strange about the water.” Another glance at Alex, to see if the boy is coming to join him on the bank. If he comes, Alexander asks him to hold his hand over the water. “Feel that?”

He squints a little, cocking his head to try to hear the music. He hums the parts he can make out, trying to work out if they’re something familiar.

Alexander

[Wits+Empathy]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

katabasis

Sera's wonder. Alex's wonder? He is in the least wonderful place of all right now. This is something internal, this is a long dark night of the soul. This might be harrowing, this might wring him out turn him inside out and then back again. But he is in a Technocratic holding cell. Dr. Keller is pretending (?) to go through his mind every day, pretending (?) to brainwash him. He may survive it. He may not. He may become treachery for every Tradition mage he has ever met. There is no wonder in the kind of holding cell he is being kept in.

He is there right now.

He is not there right now. He is here. He is on a long dark night of the soul. He is by a river and it is not just a river and it reminds him of another river but it seems a good river, all told. Even though the water is rising; has he noticed that yet? How it encroaches on his feet. The part of the song he can make out Alex has no problem humming, catches onto the melody, latches onto it; he still can't hear it all, but by trying to follow along he builds this feeling of -

light. But dawn-light, aching-light; the kind of light that makes somebody giddy, wistful; the warmth is in it, and the warmth is in his voice his chest playing on resonant in his mouth when he hums.

Little Alex drops the torch or at least leaves off digging with it trying to plant it when Alexander calls him over and the torch falls into the mud, still burning. But the burning licks along the wood, slow and gold and building just like that feeling see in Alexander's mouth and the

(the wind suddenly howls; it wails like a banshee, and the dark woods move with savagery behind him - )

rain starts coming down at an angle. Little Alex crouches and leans far over the river holds his hand out and then he just SHOOTS right up, eyes wide, mouth slack, before, "Yeah! Yeah I can feel it!!! Is it bad???"

Alexander

Alexander is in the cell. He’s here. He could even be lying on a blanket, watching the stars with Sera and Ian. Or dancing in Omega, trying to find a way to Seek. Riding along a road in the plains to the east of Denver, just about to swerve around a lamed owl and wipe out on a patch of ice. Spending the night in a cheap motel somewhere south of Boise, rental truck with his belongings parked in the lot. Weaving through traffic on a cycle, racing to deliver a package. Curled up under a blanket, praying to a god who didn’t exist.

Maybe he is still in all of those places in some way. Parts of those times and places are still with him, still in him. Memories. Scars. It’s all part of who he is now, the good and the bad, changing him. Changed him. Made him. Will break him?

There’s light within him, light on his tongue, on his lips. Alex asks if it’s bad. “I don’t think so.” He speaks, but the wind and the rain and the river drown out his voice. He tries again, shouting. I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel bad, it feels too... right. You know?” He probably doesn’t. But then Alex might be part of him, so maybe he will. He looks for some kind of recognition of what’s happening, some kind of awareness or knowledge of it all.

Alexander looks at his hands, the palms first then the backs, seeing if they’ve changed somehow. See if something’s there, something he’s picked up from the water. Alexander holds a hand out for Alex, who could be starting to panic at the storm and the strangeness right now. Terrified that he’ll be left alone again.

The building flames of the torch catch his eye, pulling his attention as something about it echoes inside of him. (Or is it echoing something inside of him?) It seems somehow important that he keeps the flame alive. Alexander will try to rescue the torch before the rising water quenches the flames, or maybe try to light the club from the fire if there’s too little left to hold.

And then? Then it’s time to work out what he’s going to do about the water. It’s rising and the bank of the river is getting more slippery and more treacherous to be on. Alexander doesn’t know how high the water will rise, but the flow isn’t slowing and neither is the driving rain. He’s wet and cold. Alex is wet and cold. Maybe the fire will keep them safe until they fine high ground. Alexander studies the tree line again, searching round for some idea of where that high ground might be.

Alexander

[Perception+Alertness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Alexander

[Wits+Survival]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )

katabasis

He rescues the torch. The fire is liquid gold, how it leaps; how it crackles, almost foliate. Little Alex took a moment before he reached out and took Alexander's hand, but when he did Alex's smaller grasp was tight. Clinging, right. He doesn't want to be left behind at all.

"But what if it's not. Do you trust him?" Little Alex began speaking, but 'Do you trust him?' sounds like it comes from the wind; sounds like it comes from the hiss of rain, hitting the mud; like it comes from just over his shoulder.

To look for high ground, Alexander had to take his eyes from the torch, though it is lighting his way; when he looks toward the sound, or even toward Little Alex next, or just turns: the torch in his hand has changed, transformed; it is now a many-branched thing, each tine of the branch burning with its own little flame. More light for Alexander to see by.

More light for Alexander to see that the wolves (if that's what they were) have come near again, are watching him. No malice, but they are ominous. Harbingers.

The wood seems to be mostly in a valley, a bowl; but he thinks that he spies a place where the trees are higher, perhaps because the ground goes up in a ridge: it's to the east. The real high ground is across the river, but there's no safe passage: not that-a-way.

Alexander

Alexander studies the torch-thing in his hand, as it seems to grow away from the earth and in spite of the water. There must be something else nourishing it, feeding it, growing it. The fire and the light grow until there’s almost a tree in his hand. Almost a blaming bonsai, withstanding the flames. But even then, it’s not something that’s burning him. He doesn’t burn and blister and char. If his other hand was free, he might try touching the flame.

Alex holds it. But what if it’s not? “No. This is right. It’s meant to be here.” He forgets to shout, lost in the flames, but maybe the message still carries.

Do you trust him?

Shouldn’t I? Isn’t he me?

Alexander looks around and finds the pack figures standing close by again, sheltered by the trees. Alexander holds the torch up, trying to make out some kind of detail. Something of the faces, what they’re wearing, what they may be carrying. Something about who they might be. Alex, though, hadn’t he said something about they. He remembers to shout while he studies them. “You seem to know who they are and what they want. Tell me.”

The water, though, continues to rise. With the valley they’re all stood in, maybe all of the rain from the storm is being funnelled down this river. It would only get worse. There’s high ground around, the safest looking like it’s over the river. A river too wide and fast to swim. But maybe one where they wouldn’t be able to follow him across.

This is a river that reminds him of another river. One protected and guarded and watched over by the Boatmen. Alexander really isn’t sure if this is going to work, but perhaps it was finally time he actually tried when it came to things that sat outside the mundane world that he still kept a tight hold of. Two worlds that he tried to keep separate. One of which he was still relatively new to, even with his experience over the past years. One of which he’d only just started to explore.

One that he needed to Seek, one where he needed to Try.

This place, he thinks it’s of his own making. A place that he’d put together in him mind to escape to, a place that he has some control over. A place where he fucking Wills a Boatman to help him cross the water.

Maybe it will come. Maybe it won’t. But it’s time to fucking try.

Alexander

[Per+Lucid Dreaming type stuff.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (4, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

katabasis

After that initial, golden flame-up, flare-up, candled branches dawn-bright dawn-gleaming, the branch simmers down into a much more starry torch; each tine is still on fire, and it does not seem to be burning the branch up to ash, though when he breathes in he can smell woodsmoke woodsmoke fills his lungs.

The rain is beginning to feel like it has an icy edge; it stings. He tastes blood, or smells it; the rain sharpens up its knives. The storm is wild, singing in the trees; lightning somewhere, the flash of it; the troubled quaver of it over the other trees, and Little Alex is backing away from the edge of the river, hauling on Alexander's hand, afraid afraid afraid.

There is a voice in the wind, still; but he feels it at his ear, so-close, so-careful. What is the point of trusting anybody? What is the point of trying to cross this river? Do you want to go head of the class pass your detective exam?

He is trying to will a Boatman to help him cross the water. He is straining; one of the wolves - it begins to insinuate itself closer, a streak of blacker-than-black shadow. There's mostly dark now, except for the river and the burning torch and something silver subtle in the water, and the lightning when it trembles over the scene -

But there is a boat, drifting silent to shore. A coracle, with one man standing in it. A hood, of course, facelessness: something strange about the body, hands hidden by the folds of a cloak. Tatter-cloak, thistle-cloak; is it a cloak? Hard to tell; he has a pole, uses it to bring the coracle to shore in spite of the torrential river-flow, still rising. Little Alex jumps up suddenly, "It got my shoe, Dad!"

Alexander

There’s blood in the air and in the rain, but Alexander doesn’t have a hand spare to check if it’s coming from him. The rain begins to turn to shards of ice, slivers of cold building up to shred anything in their way. The wind blasts past them and through them, making it harder to stand. Waves race across the surface of the river, blown by the wind towards wherever it finally ends. (Does it ever end?) Alexander keeps a grip on Alex’s hand, holding the flaming branch up in front of him.

First, to see the ferryman gliding towards him. Just as he’d imagined, as he remembered, the craft glides across the surface of the water unhindered by the wind and the waves. It comes closer...

It comes closer, as the questions are whispered in his ear. Almost as if someone were whispering to him, but there’s nobody there. Nobody he can see, at least. He assumes it’s the voice that goes with whoever (whatever?) had been writing in the fire and the stars earlier.

What is the point of trusting anybody?

It’s tempting to shout into the wind, but those figures are still there. Still watching. Still listening. It’s not exactly clear why, but he’s suddenly conscious of just how much they seem to be studying him. Perhaps they don’t feel like a threat because they don’t need to be threatening. So assured of their superiority that they just know that they can take what they want.

Because if we don’t then we’re alone. We need other people to be better people.

Alexander turns his back to the river as the ferry approaches, holding up the torch to light the wolves and to somehow guard against them. Wound one and the pack goes running, right? He hopes he’ll be on the ferry before he has to test the theory.

What is the point of trying to cross this river?

To reach the high ground. To find safety. To get away from them. Because this might not work, but I’ve got to try.

One of the wolves begins to close and Alexander turns the torch in its direction. Oh, the others are there, maybe trying to surround him and catch him against the rising water. But that’s ok. He has his route away. He just needs to hold them at bay for now.

Do you want to go head of the class pass your detective exam?

I want to do more than I am. Be more than I am. I’ve had it with being stuck and waiting for life to happen.

Alex jumps up and cries out about his shoe. Alexander doesn’t turn to look, he’s still watching the approaching shadow. It’s getting harder to see them, between the driving rain and failing light. Maybe soon it will only be the torchlight that any of them are seeing by.

“I’m not your Dad!” he shouts, tension building in him and finding a release. “I’m nobody’s father! If you’re part of me, you know he left and never came back. That wasn’t my fault.

If you’re not part of me, then what are you?”

Who the hell is he? he asks the voice. Part of him wonders: Keller?

katabasis

[Pause!]

katabasis

Here is the coracle and the Ferryman. The coracle bumps against the the shore. The Ferryman plants his (?) pole into the ground and keeps the boat from being swept away by the flood. Because it is a flood, now; swelling, and dark. The hint of silver still there now and again, leaping, a vague blur over the rest.

Alexander will get a sense that the thoughts he shapes, as if to respond to that voice the wind keeps bringing to him in snatches, in scraps, well he will get a sense that the thoughts are heard.

He is trying so deliberately to answer, after all.

We need other people to be better people.

To find the high ground. Safety. Might not work, got to try.

Do more than I am. Be more than I am.

Then: he lashes out at the child, as savage as the wind around him. The child who might be a younger Alexander, who might be something other, but who is here regardless. The child stares at Alexander in absolute blank terror, a complete lack of understanding: his face crumples, and he sucks in a very deep deep deep deep deep breath, so as not to cry. Little Alex wrenches his hand away, crouches down shoulders hunched and bends his head to touch his forehead to his knees.

If you're not part of me, then what are you?

Who is he?

The Ferryman says, in a voice that's like a swathe of a clear night sky; a voice that is star-studded, that insinuates itself then slips away, You crossing the river or taking your chance in the woods? You need any help there?

Alexander

Alexander throws questions at the voice, but there are no answers. No response. The storm rages, the river swells and grows. But there’s no answer. No guidance.

Well, that’s great. Complain when I get it wrong, but don’t bother helping me get it right.

He yells at Alex, and the boy curls up and tries hard not to cry. The Ferryman waits patiently, waiting for him. Or, at least, waiting for some sort of decision. Alexander feels lost, so out of his depth. There’s no sign that he’s doing the right thing, the wrong thing, the correct thing, or even if anything he’s doing actually matters. Only that the voice is silent and this, apparently, is something he has to work out and work through himself.

The boy is still a mystery. Is it part of him? The part that felt abandoned, lost, desperate for dad to come home? Part of him that holds him back, somehow? A weight on his back, around his neck, burning away things that could be important to him somehow? Or is he simply a boy who’s scared of being alone again.

The river might not be That River, but that doesn’t mean there might not be similarities. It has a Ferryman now. Someone who will watch over it, protect it. Always be there.

Maybe this whole thing is trying to get him to let go of his childhood regrets. Put them to rest. He looks from the huddled-over Alex and back at the Ferryman. It seems… right, somehow. Alexander takes the torch and stabs the part that he’s holding down into the ground, planting it firmly so that the flames are above the water. He’ll come back for it but, for the moment, he’ll need both hands.

Alex is crouched and huddled, but isn’t making any attempt to get away. Alexander picks him up, strong hands on the kid’s arms. “It’s ok. You’ll be ok. I’m not your Dad, but I’ll make sure that you’re taken care of. But it wasn't your fault. Never think that. ”

He carries Alex to the Ferryman. “You watch over the river. Now you watch over him too.” Alexander passes Alex over to the hooded figure, resting a hand on the kid’s back as the weight is taken. “Be there for him. Go.”

Alexander turns back to the forest and takes up the torch again, holding it sword-like against the creeping shadows. He still has a chance with the hills on this side of the river, but he still has this pack stalking him. Maybe they'll hinder him, maybe they won't. But he wants them gone.

Alexander

[Per+Alertness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

katabasis

Difficult to tell if Little Alex is listening to him, sodden and bedraggled as he is. Difficult, also, to tell if he ever actually began to cry; the rainwater looks much like tears. He stares rather defiantly (scared, hopeful, hopeless) into Alexander's eyes.

The Ferryman is implacable. Deep eyes, wide eyes; avian eyes, hunter moon eyes; Alex gets a glimpse of that in a sharp, Valentine-heart face, when the hood shifts and light almost coaxes features out from under the wood. But the Ferryman's hands are strong, and he takes the child from Alex and nods shortly. Valentine heart face, sharp; but now a mouth, human, a faint smile.

As you wish.

"It isn't fair," Little Alex says, angrily - or perhaps not angrily: beseechingly. The Ferryman pushes the boat away. The kid leans against the side, leans dangerously over the river. Alex is facing the wolves now, but the kid yells, "Why isn't it fair!"

The wind rips his words apart, dragging them off and away flicking over the shadow-lean shadow-rippling shade-shark wolfish creatures that Alexander wants gone which circle him. Their eyes are the opposite of bright but as he turns the burning branch on them, the darkness of their eyes deepens. Beyond them in the woods, a flit of white;

an owl, see. An owl, or a woman, or an owl and a woman.

The voice is back, That's a good question. Now you want to do, now you recognize the importance of trust and community, but what place has justice?

He can run for the woods. He'll be running against the wind.

He can attack the wolf-shadows. Maybe they'll retreat from him.

He is ankle deep in water; when did that happen?

Alexander

Alex’s yelling, pleading?, is lost on the wind as the Ferryman pushes away and they disappear into the storm. Alexander’s reply is whispered, and he knows it will have no chance of meeting the boy’s ears. But he still answers. Maybe more for himself than for Alex.

“Nobody ever said life was fair.”

He turns to face the shadows, torch-sword held up as if to ward them off. The light had faded and the shadows are longer, deeper, darker. The light of the flames only seem to serve to highlight the darkness, especially once they shine on the eyes of these things.

What place has justice?

The question gives him pause, and he glances around him – at the owl/woman/thing above and beyond the forest. The owl that shouldn’t be there, but tucked away somewhere warm and safe until the storm dies away. Is it you..?

You seriously have to ask that? What would the world be if murderers were left to it? How far would Victoria have gone if there hadn’t been justice? Or Zane? Justice is the community protecting itself from that. Justice is making things better for everybody. Justice is stopping the world getting lost in this.

He waves the branch at the shadows. He has a choice. He could run, but the flood and the wind would hold him back. Or he could attack the wolves. Fight back the shadows.

Thank you, finally something I can understand.

There isn’t really a choice there, any more than there had been a choice when he’d fired at Victoria.

He doesn’t know if this is his fight alone, or whether the woman will join in or simply watch. He doesn’t know how this will end. But it’s something that he does, just as he had before, just as he will again.

He’d changed this world once, bringing the Ferryman. He could change it again. Is that light still within him? The light and the heat and the fire? Light and fire that can push back the shadows. Alexander pushes his will at this place, again, willing the fire to spread from the branch and through the tree line.

Alexander

[WP]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

katabasis

But what about when it is Just to kill?

He waves the branch at the shadows; they seem to thicken, drifting around him in a loose circle a seething of tendrils not-quite-dissipating nebulous but no the heart is thickening, and still they do not attack.

What is Better? Why is it Just that you should do it?

And - does the storm itself scoff at him?

The owl disappears between the branches up ahead, flying when no bird of its ilk should; or was it a woman? Was there ever a woman, white-as-the-dead?

The woods do nothing so dramatic as burst into flame, but there is a relief of pressure, the wind slacks a little;

lightning strikes one of the trees. There's a smouldering, quickly damped by the sleet; lightning strikes again, this time near Alexander.

He can hear another strike behind him, hitting the water. Fast as a rattle-snake strike one-two onetwo.

Alexander

But what about when it is Just to kill?

The shadows drift and coalesce and dispearse, one mass circling and seething and threatening.

When it is the last resort. The only option left. When it’s the only way to protect people, or protect myself. When the only thing that a life has nothing left to offer the world apart from death and destruction and despair.

Alexander stabs out with the branch at the shadows, watching them recoil before closing in darker and tighter.

What is Better? Why is it Just that you should do it?

He turns, studying the shadows. Looking for some gap in them that he can rush through so he’s not completely surrounded by them.

Better? Better is people being able to sleep at night without being scared for their lives or their familiar. Better is not having sons and daughters vanish without a trace, never knowing whether they’re alive or dead. Better is having the chance to live. Why is it Just that I do it? Because I will do it. Somebody has to do it instead of running away and hiding and assuming someone else will.

Alexander startles as the lightning strikes, the static in the air making the hairs on his body stand on end. The sound should be deafening, but the rest of the storm is already so loud that the impact of the sound is lessened.

katabasis

The storm scoffs, again. By standing still now, waving his burning multi-candled branch at the shadows-that-are-not-wolves, the water has risen to mid-calf; it would suck him back, were he not careful. The strand under his ribs, that invisible thread, the fire makes it gleam; of course it is still there.

And there is a gap he can move through, should he choose. It's a narrow one, made because one of the shadows-that-are-not-wolves, wolves-that-are-not-shadows is beginning to drift fog-mist closer to him again -

How it would love to eat him up.

(There is still no malice.)

I want you to succeed; you had such promise. The voice: this is as direct as it has sounded. In winter, you had promise, and your bones wintered, and your spirit wintered.

There's a solitary wolf come slinking low, close enough to strike with the branch if Alexander is quick; close enough that it has broken the circle.

Alexander

Oh, the anger is coming back. He’s been abducted, invaded, and incarcerated with little hope of ever seeing daylight as himself again. (Is he still himself? Right now, he doesn’t care.)

Had such promise? Are you giving up on me, then? I’ve been trying to keep people safe. I’ve been trying to fight the dark things. I’ve been trying to work out how this whole damn Awakened thing works. And after ignoring me for two years you’ve decided to stop by and yank my chain? Well, screw you! Either you’re going to help me, or you aren’t. But it’s time for you to get off the wall and decide if you’re actually going to do something, or just hide in the shadows and hope it’ll all be ok in the end. I’m probably fucked anyway once this is all over, but at least show me that you give a shit. Show me what I’ve done hasn’t been one massive waste of time.

Show me what I can be.

Alexander’s voice – his thoughts – turn from shouting to pleading at the end. He wants there to a point to it all, rather than a vast joke at his expense.

The wolf approaches and Alexander? Well, he doesn’t hesitate. There’s a gap now, he could run, but he doesn’t. He screams – vocally this time, voice without form - and swings the flame at the shadow.

Alexander

[Dex+Melee - WP because we're pissed and working out some Stuff]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

anabasis

The Disparate (wintering, his Avatar called him; frozen, his Time-stopping Awakening had shaped into, Pause, and reverse, and rewind, and Spring just after, but wintering) holds that branching piece of wood fire on each tine burning in spite of the driving rain, (oh but that is not quite true; Alexander will perhaps become aware that the little fires go out, and then blink back to life as soon as there is a surcease) as if he has found his weapon he has found the extension of his Will (a fiery club), and how he uses it!

Every man has his own martial style. Perhaps Alexander's is Power, is a clean Just sweep. Perhaps Alexander's is fluidity, right now, but perhaps his is scrappy physicality, perhaps it is one hit where it counts -- or maybe it is flashier!

Either way, his branch meets the shadow wolf's open maw (Unrelenting Darkness, how is there a suggestion of teeth?), catches under its throat and sends a spark dying in its eyes something swallowed immediately, and instead of blood darkness rises from it like steam like smoke rises around the wound, and then his branch (and he can feel the strength in his arm, can't he) gets under and through the throat and belly, and he flips the wolf shadow shadow wolf not a wolf and not a shadow some Thing over. The shape of it becomes more tenuous -- threads of its dark aura dissipating upward, re-connecting; this is its blood, perhaps. And it has suffered another change, so direct was his strike, and in its darkness there is a change. Golden sparks, scintillating, starry night streaking here and there, coal-fire glinting

And of course the circle around him is breaking, they're uncertain (perhaps) or at least bent (by such force), another looks like it wants to take a bite out of him but the one he'd struck is listing to the ground dissipating smoke thread and his path to the woods is clear.

He wants there to be a point to this. A point to the flood, a point to the tempest. A point to his Awakening, perhaps, a point to What He Is and Who He Is.

Pleading. Show me what I can be.

--

Very well.

He is walking. He is striding, actually. Purposeful, self-assured. He is going somewhere right now, and he is not Alexander Brandt, but Alexander Brandt was him and it is not easy to dig this deep even to show one's current incarnation tool for the job what projects one has worked on before and they don't always get it but this is not Alexander Brandt. This is Alexander Brandt. Striding down a hall, and Alexander can almost remember a sense of anxiety and pleasure both, of determination which heightens as oh there are servants opening the door (their clothes are modern, but no they're not. This isn't Now, this is years ago. He thinks nothing of their clothes because they belong to his time but they don't belong to Alexander's time), and another door behind that door, and a Spoken word which unseals it a blaze of Luminous Gold, of Relentless and Kinetic Drive, and inside the room is a collection of Awakened individuals. This is difficult; Alexander cannot quite remember their faces. He remembers in the moment but as soon as the moment it is too misty.

"Apologies for my lateness," and as the door closes behind him (Alexander [Not Alexander]), and a shadow swoops over his shoulder.

--

His perspective is now. The dark woods. A shadow, swooping over his shoulder.

--

His perspective is then. A shadow swoops over his shoulder, and the owl settles on a music stand near the wooden desk. "We have a problem with the school's funding, but the building, in spite of our Qlippothic friend's best efforts, continues over the Wellspring and the Grove will not be corrupted. There was new Music yesterday, ladies and gentlemen! Now when we go into the city meeting, I think we should,"

He hears himself say all of this. He has a flash, too, of what it means: or at least of knowing what it means, of this drive and this passion to build something leave something (some Body) better off than they were, weary sorrow because of a recent sacrifice but shake-it-off move-forward and these people are (mostly) looking to him.

His cabal.

The owl (Familiar) regards him, and he knows its name and will take that name out of this vision with him.

One of my favourites! An Architect. He was never still and oh how we argued when he wanted more contemplation but I wanted movement.

(and a brief flash, anxiety; it costs to never be still, to always be trying and trying, and sleepless nights and insomnia scattered among exhileration this person was always striving against a dark background always striving to prove)

You could be a bastion, Alexander. You could be a force for justice,

--

you have been a force for justice before. You have been an artist, and a force of

He can see somebody else's face, crumpling uncertain. He can feel the corruption which eats at their spirit he can feel the anger and the suffering he can feel the pain. Well, he has felt these things before, and it is blunt, and it is distant, blunted by passage of well this is not his memory but it is. He can hear himself speaking to this somebody, they're underground somewhere and there is dim dusk light, can see himself reaching out and when knives fling themselves at him they transform to smoke and dissipate he is still speaking the face is more and more uncertain it is a mask he can peel off and the somebody else crumples, sagging,

"I'll do this right. It won't hurt," and a consecrated knife flashes -

creation.

[Sparks, hammer. Tongs, water. Hiss.]

As long as you create, as long as you make,

His perspective shifts again. Now there is a golden forest, black trunks. An owl feather on the ground, lovely creams and golds. A river. Not unlike the forest he is in now (Now? Perspective shift: A circle of mushrooms, and he is in the mud up to his knees but there is a branch there he can reach for and unless he has dropped it he still has the burning branch and it's not too too too far until he reaches the high ground as long as he doesn't get turned around SLIP and another perspective shift), and he knows -

He is chanting, and his body is working; the air around him is thinning, scraped clearer and cleaner, and he is stepping through

in order to, and he knows this, find somebody who has forged him a

[memory won't tell him; something potent, something Powerful]

and been snatched. Golden eyes regard him, big and round. And snow, the edge of it. A shiver. He'll find them because and when he pulls up from the ground though there is frost (there IS frost, lacing the fallen gold leaves and the brown, ice-edged) there are also flowers beginning to spring up.

As long as you do. Go. Decide. Be. You want me to show you what you can be?

A suggestion of two more memories, too difficult to hold even here and even now with his Avatar (for it must be) trying to Show Him. It's never easy, he's not gone far enough.

YOU SHOW ME WHAT YOU CAN BE.

SEEK ME. LOOK FOR ME. FIND THEM. FIND YOUR PEOPLE. ACT. ACT. ACT.

Perspective switch, and he is in the woods.

Alexander

There is, perhaps, less of Alexander in that swing in some respects and more of Alexander in other. There’s little thought in the swing, little control, nothing you’d call finesse. But there is emotion: rage and frustration blazing, burning away hopelessness and doubt and... And there is Will. His Will is done and the blow his true, spearing the creature with light and fire. Stars in the smoke, instead of in the night sky.

Maybe not so dissimilar to wolves, these things. Most of them seemed to be wary, hesitatant in their approach. Cautious that they might be next. One is less cautious and it’s this one Alexander turns to face. He could run, but this isn’t over yet. He raises the fiery branch in both hands, wielding it above his right shoulder and preparing to swing again.

But his perspective skips.

There is a moment of withdrawl, a flash back to the first session with Keller – the session when he’d pulled out the memories of Leah, of Trinity, of the Chantry. For that moment there’s dread that this could still be part of those mind games. But this feels different. This is something shared rather than forced and taken. Something about this feels right. Feels like him.

These memories – His memories? Or memories from his Avatar? Is there a difference? – may be hazy, details indistinct in the way that long-distant recollection smears and fades and distorts, and they may slide away from his memory like a dream, as difficult to cling to as smoke. But the thoughts, the questions, they raise will remain.

I’ve been all these people? Chorister? Euthanatos? Others too?

Thoughts and questions about where they come from, and where they go once each life ends. Is that river the final resting place, or just a temporary one? What else happens to the spirit in its journey? What had he done before? What did he still have to do in this life?

A thought that if he’d been those people, been in those places, part of him always would be. Maybe a part that he could find again later.

A doubt that there were lives where he’d failed and fallen and stumbled into the shadows.

But that hadn’t stopped him trying again and again and again to build and create and bring the fire with him.

The perspective shifts back to now, to wherever here might be. Back to the edge of the forest, to the overflowing river. Back to the raging storm and the circling, cowering shadows. Back to Alexander and his flaming club. (A thought: if justice is part of me, wouldn’t this be better as a sword?)

And rather than screaming and swinging in blind emotion? He sings. The tune that he’s picked out early comes back to his mouth as he takes a more careful aim at the shadow that still threatens him and swings again.

I’ll do this right.

Alexander

[Dex+Melee *cringes at the inevitable botch]

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

anabasis

[O.O]

Alexander

[Alexander: O.O]

anabasis

[Wolvethings: D8]

anabasis

Others too?

Yes.

They are in the flood-water thaw-water storm-water too. The shadow wolves the wolves that are shadow the shadow that is right now wolfish and were they not so (Dire [Giant]) large the water would be up to their chests. Instead the water is past their knees and when they move it sprays up, the leading edge of water some dim and effulgent silver, churning toward a dirty snow white. They are in it with him and this time there is nothing about his swing that is not perfect. There is no flaw to it. This is the exact right note his arm was meant to take if he was to beat the other shadow back. This time: the branches dip below the flood-water, beneath it the fires dance greentinted he can almost see figures under the water almost or could if it weren't honeygoldgreen where the fires are burning out blinking out reflections of those tines still on fire above the water dancing over the surface a layered thing, and when the branches are whipped out again a shower of water and fire the branch is (shouldn't this be a sword) breaking, breaks off in the wolf's chest and continues through and hidden by the bark encased by the wood there was a sword something shining and white [or Verdisgris Copper, a monument's sword] and this shadow too becomes a cloud of darkenss in the vague shape of some monster but light lancing through it igniting sparks and

the reflection of this battle, see, it is echoed on the water. Hand on Alex's calf, or something grabbing him. YES YES WE HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO we have so much work to do don't disappoint me don't DON'T BE QUENCHED

and that voice; is it still on the wind? Yes; it is still on the wind.

But he can feel it in his bones; the water is dark now, up to his waist in a sudden surge -

bird's reflection glides across it. His legs are numb bark-flakes drifting around him as more of the sword is revealed, and

Like that, Alexander. The right moment and pow-chicka-plao!

Wistful as a child:

We have so much work to do.

This is when lightning strikes the water; it blazes up, purple as twilight and silver and

He comes back to himself. In his bed. In his beige pantsuit. Imprisoned.

Alexander

There’s something single-minded in that strike. Something that pulls all of what he is and moulds it and shapes it and guides it into a perfect swing that impales the closest wolf. Starfire glitters in the wisps of shadow that rise into the storm winds before being blasted apart by the swirling energy. Maybe something, too, of the Avatar.

Approval.

Alexander had once asked if Seeking was finding a way to get closer to the Avatar, and right now it feels like that’s exactly what’s happening. Even if it’s only for now, there’s the feeling of the two of them together. He finally realises that he has so much potential; there’s so much that he can be and do, to create and defend.

Lightning strikes and there’s a split second where all of his reality is filled with impossibly intense light and sound, where the static-becoming-dynamic energy runs over his skin and raises every hair on his body.

A blissful fragment of time before he’s dumped back into his cell, just as physically trapped as he’d been before the world had, once again, lurched sideways.

Only now he doesn’t feel as trapped. Oh, his body still has no way of getting out of this place. But his mind is freer than it had been before, with the thought of all those places – all those people – that he had been. People that were still a part of him, somehow.

For the first time in days (Weeks? Months?), he smiles. He smiles and hums the tune that he remembers from another world away as he picks up the card table and turns to the mirrored panel in one corner of the room.

I’ll do this right.

It might not be long before guards appear to stop him, but until they do he’ll be trying his damnedest to smash the thing.

To do.