718 Vhalar 14...
“I thought you said we were safe?” Mathias’ voice was low and not nearly accusing as it might should have been. The overpowering onset of emotion had begun to settle, and while his heart beat fearful and rapid against the bottom of his throat, he was at least able to keep himself from trying to aggravate the only other person around whom might be able to help him. It would have been much easier if the familiar chill of his spark hadn’t been… warmed by whatever it was she’d done. Emotions were difficult enough for him to sort through when he wasn’t trapped in some sort of waking dream and being chased by a soul eating horror.
The now empty expanse of the Veil spread out all around them. The carefully placed cobbles of a street he, no doubt, had seen somewhere along the various alleyways of the Gleam extended out in every direction. There was no sky nor horizon, and the thin, shimmering outlines that had only just caught his attention when they had been present were sorely missed. There was no other detail there, none beyond himself, the cobbles, and Fiona.
Another screech split through the emptiness, and he flinched at its sound, recoiling into himself as it seemed to come from every direction all at once. Fiona seemed undaunted by the scream, staring at the closest approximation of where the ear-splitting sound came from defiantly, but the slight tremble in her arms betrayed her true emotions.
“Well, we’re not!”
Clearly. He nodded instead of speaking his mind. He didn’t trust himself when he was feeling; they were such dirty and chaotic things, emotions. Emulating them to achieve a specific goal? They were tools. When they became something he couldn’t avoid, parts of a person he’d never really been and had no intention of being, they were as grave an injury as a lost limb - several limbs, really. “What do we do then?”
“You can’t fight.” It was a statement, not a question. He had been spewing his guts out not 5 bits ago. “And I have nothing to use here.” The etherist’s tools - the earth and the metal and the wood of Idalos - were denied to her in this place without form and substance. He was overextended, she was crippled. “This one’s big. This one’s stupid big. We’ve drained it to kingdom fuckin’ come and it still keeps going. The smaller ones would have cut their losses by now and gone after another scape.”
“Another… you mean most invade someone else’s dream if they- if they cannot catch their intended target?” Curiosity was still his strongest drive, and while it was tempered with the clammy touch of fear and the sickly wet grip of uncertainty, it wasn’t easily suppressed. “Then, can we- you not lure in someone else to appease it?”
“What do you know of Immortals, shield maiden?” An etherist was said to be able to sense ether more keenly than almost any other mage and Fiona was looking in another direction every 2 or 3 trills, as if the the presence that was trying to infest its way into this formless place was spiraling -or worse, attacking- in a dozen different directions.
“I thought you said we were safe?” Mathias’ voice was low and not nearly accusing as it might should have been. The overpowering onset of emotion had begun to settle, and while his heart beat fearful and rapid against the bottom of his throat, he was at least able to keep himself from trying to aggravate the only other person around whom might be able to help him. It would have been much easier if the familiar chill of his spark hadn’t been… warmed by whatever it was she’d done. Emotions were difficult enough for him to sort through when he wasn’t trapped in some sort of waking dream and being chased by a soul eating horror.
The now empty expanse of the Veil spread out all around them. The carefully placed cobbles of a street he, no doubt, had seen somewhere along the various alleyways of the Gleam extended out in every direction. There was no sky nor horizon, and the thin, shimmering outlines that had only just caught his attention when they had been present were sorely missed. There was no other detail there, none beyond himself, the cobbles, and Fiona.
Another screech split through the emptiness, and he flinched at its sound, recoiling into himself as it seemed to come from every direction all at once. Fiona seemed undaunted by the scream, staring at the closest approximation of where the ear-splitting sound came from defiantly, but the slight tremble in her arms betrayed her true emotions.
“Well, we’re not!”
Clearly. He nodded instead of speaking his mind. He didn’t trust himself when he was feeling; they were such dirty and chaotic things, emotions. Emulating them to achieve a specific goal? They were tools. When they became something he couldn’t avoid, parts of a person he’d never really been and had no intention of being, they were as grave an injury as a lost limb - several limbs, really. “What do we do then?”
“You can’t fight.” It was a statement, not a question. He had been spewing his guts out not 5 bits ago. “And I have nothing to use here.” The etherist’s tools - the earth and the metal and the wood of Idalos - were denied to her in this place without form and substance. He was overextended, she was crippled. “This one’s big. This one’s stupid big. We’ve drained it to kingdom fuckin’ come and it still keeps going. The smaller ones would have cut their losses by now and gone after another scape.”
“Another… you mean most invade someone else’s dream if they- if they cannot catch their intended target?” Curiosity was still his strongest drive, and while it was tempered with the clammy touch of fear and the sickly wet grip of uncertainty, it wasn’t easily suppressed. “Then, can we- you not lure in someone else to appease it?”
“What do you know of Immortals, shield maiden?” An etherist was said to be able to sense ether more keenly than almost any other mage and Fiona was looking in another direction every 2 or 3 trills, as if the the presence that was trying to infest its way into this formless place was spiraling -or worse, attacking- in a dozen different directions.
