• Mature • Iota Divinitas

Kasoria, please.

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Re: Iota Divinitas

"Aye, well, y'know how it is..."

Kasoria did not much enjoy the knowing tone that Zarik put on, but he wasn't one with such thin skin he'd made a deal out of it. The mage had been treading The Veil for far longer than he; just as Kasoria was his peer and master when it came to affairs of corporeal... mortality, so Zarik was far ahead of him when it came to walking Dreams. He was more surprised than anything else, seeing his mentor and employer step into the same mind out of millions. The questions formed on his lips as to how that would be, until his mind kicked in-

The Brand. When he... y'know. He can find you anywhere, now. Especially in your dreams.

Kasoria frowned minutely as the impeccably-dressed man drifted off, focusing his attentions to Sybil. Yep, that was a thought to fester, for sure. He was a hard man to track if he didn't want to be (which was never), and knowing there was someone in the world who could find him whenever he closed his eyes for a nap? Well. It wasn't comforting. But as he observed the younger man awake the woman from her stupor - for that was what this state of dreaming truly was - he listened and he watched and he understood.

Zarik was not a threat to him. Not at this point, anyway. He was a teacher, and a traveler, and Kasoria would not even be here without him. So when the man turned back to him and started to educate, he paid attention. He looked closer at Sybil's face and... yes, yes, he could see it. There was clarity in her eyes, suddenly. An annoyance behind her surprise that he couldn't help but smile at with half his mouth. He recognized the expression: it was almost the same as one who realizes they've been fooled, and doesn't care much for the feeling.

Gurgling from the bloody stones. Scratching. Fumbling with broken nails and shattered fingers. Trying to shuffle closer to the blade in its throat. Kasoria cast a quick glance at the parasite and then turned away. This was more interesting.

"Wake... y'mean make 'em Lucid?" He said, watching Sybil, studying her with all the intent of a student would an experiment. "Aye. m'seein' the difference."

The woman spoke again, and it was not the same voice as before. Well, it was, but the tone, the rhythm, the... the gradient of it, was all wrong. There was nothing noble or courtly about her, like a tragic princess or well-schooled high lady. Her words were common, sprinkled with indignation and obscenity. Kasoria made a dry, crackling sound that passed for a chuckle. He nodded as the stunned young lady looked at him with fresh eyes.

"Much better." He nodded to Llyr, still observing all with the same knowing smile. "Ask dat one 'bout yer particulars, love. I'm jus' passin' through..."

He turned away and back to the Parasite. Lucid dreamer or not, this facet of the dream was not to be changed, apparently. The hate, the fury, the undying determination born out of both those things, they were all still there. Blazing out of her black eyes even as blood continued to spew from her neck. Kasoria frowned as he looked closer. The blood under her... it wasn't pooling or spreading anymore. It was falling between the stones, draining as if the mortar between the slabs was no longer there. Kasoria knelt down and watched it flow and dribble into the new darkness. He put his hand on a stone... and felt it give, as if there was space under it... and when it removed his hand, it bobbed up a fraction of an inch.

"Never... be rid... of me..."

The Etzori's gaze flickered to the woman, the construct, the parasite, the target dummy. Whatever she was, even a knife in the throat couldn't shut her the fuck up. With ruined limbs she pushed herself upright, as the Etzori crouched down before her again. Her hands bunched into what passed for fists. Half her knuckles seemed to be missing, the rest broken. But she still rested her emaciated body on them, and forced herself upright to face him on roughly the same level.

He waited for her to do that. It would make things easier. Then, with a scowl and a muted growl, he gripped his dagger again, snapping his hand back and drawing it just like before-

-only this time it came at the woman in an arc of gleaming white, not a short thrust-

THUNK

-as he slammed the blade into the side of the Parasite's head, making the serrated blade vanish inside her skull and the brain inside it. She twitched, spasmed, enraged rictus suddenly twisted into a demented expression of confusion. Her eyes rolled back to the whites and Kasoria grunted. Hopefully she could still hear.

"Yer not helpin'."

SHUUK

He ripped the blade free and let the corpse fall back to the stones. No blood, this time, or very little. Just the dram that was stored in the thin band of flesh between the skin and the skull. Whatever his dagger had impaled in her brain was already reforming, that he was sure of, but it bought him a few more bits. He sighed and got back to his feet. The stones seemed wider apart, too. Things were changing. Minutely, but definitely. But was that due to the dream, or the dreamer... or the thing he'd now killed thrice?

"Look, if youse two're finished wi' yer lesson," he said, barely keeping the irritation from his lilt. His tone caught their attention and they saw the little man point down. At the stones now starting to loose their grounded moorings and, well... fly. "Got somethin' y'might wanna see."
word count: 993
Common Speech | Thoughts | Ith'ession Speech | Speech of Others
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Llyr Llywelyn
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Re: Iota Divinitas

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“Lucid? Yes, that is what I mean,” answered Zarik - or was it Llyr - or was it Mr. Magpie - and he turned to look at Sybil again as Kasoria watched the student awaken. He smiled as a loving mother might toward their child learning how to walk, with tenderness, then he turned his smile from the Videnese onto the Etzori and his expression didn’t change in the slightest. His eyes glistened, no longer amber but with pale lavender colors that bled beyond the bounds of ordinary irises and submerged the entire orbs with the pigmented hue. “You have the ability to wake any dreamer you meet, yet every attempt could result in danger for them and yourself. However, if you do, realize that simply being woken up does not make them like you or I. Remember when I taught Karim how to acquire your hat?”

“If I had wished, I could have taken away your lucid mind then. I could have taken it away and never returned it. You likely would have never been the wiser. You would have forgotten you ever met me. Just another odd dream caused by something funny you drank. You would be asleep, Karim, still dreaming the same old dreams that haunted you without any say or anything to do about them. This is because you knew nothing of the Veil then,” explained the biqaj. “It wasn’t until I escorted you there that I initiated you into the wonders of walking dreams.”

“Sybil… or Miss Malach, for all the cleverness I have observed within the structure of their mind, shall also undergo similar,” Zarik returned to the platform. He held out a hand for Sybil to take. Whether the student accepted the offer or not, he nodded to Kasoria and said, “I have not done this with them yet though I intend to. And what better than now? In which I can show you how it might be performed and you can watch with a sharper eye than when I did the same with you.”

While Kasoria attended to the parasitic construct, Mr. Magpie placed his attention back onto the Videnese. He reached over and smoothed Sybil's hair. The biqaj gathered some of the strands and lifted them in a sort of admiration. “You remember me, don’t you? It hasn’t been long.”

“You are nearly barearsed because that is how you dreamt yourself, Malach. Don’t ask me why,” he teased. He unstrapped the wide belt, then took off his trenchcoat. The lanky biqaj pulled the coat on and over Sybil’s smaller form. He smiled and said, “There we are. Not a cloak, but close, yes?”

The etherist drew near with a single step. His gossamer wings fluttered, then folded neatly at his back again. He tightened the belt around Sybil’s narrow waist, almost too tight. He smiled again, the same tender look to the expression, then he whispered, “Do you recall our agreement?”

Behind him he could hear the THUNK and SHUUK of his other initiate’s violent nature playing out. He hoped it wouldn’t frighten the student, but he doubted so. From everything he’d observed in the layers of Sybil’s dreamscape, the symbolism of their mind, he suspected that the Videnese had a great tolerance for such things and thus, one of the reasons why he sought to initiate Sybil at all. Yet if his assumption proved wrong, he wouldn't be deterred for he had other plans in mind when it came to the academic... different plans than the ones he entertained about Kasoria in the quiet moments of contemplation when he thought of Idalos and Emea and what he intended for.

A sharp inhale sounded from Zarik, however, when he heard Kasoria - as if the other man’s irritation was contagious. He glanced over, with a look of this better be important clear upon his youthful features. The Etzori pointed down at the loosening stones.

“Is that all?” he asked, annoyance obvious and not the slightest anxiety about the stones that had started to come apart and drift upward. The etherist's wings outstretched. He closed his eyes, as if summoning patience, then commanded, “Join us on the platform before you get too far away. I’d hate to leave you in Sybil’s mind while we are in the Veil… I don’t know what would happen then.”

He didn't expect Kasoria to listen to him, nor respond favorably to that particular stringent tone of voice. It'd been purposeful. He looked at Sybil, then smiled with a raise of his dark brows and he lowered his voice when he spoke to the student, “Might be exciting to find out though? I’m certain he’d be fine… not crushed into dust in the slightest, I’m certain. Not lost forever and ever. No, no. He'll be fine. Let us go and find out together, Malach? What happens when a walker gets stuck in a dream that is no more! Shouldn’t take long, a quick step and a hop… maybe. Yes… yes… that’s it. I suspect no more than a trill needed for complete annihilation.”

Ether crackled around him and then he called to Kasoria, “Maybe you might find your way to the Veil on your own within that trill? Perhaps you might even find us! Oh, now that would be something extraordinary. I'd like to see you not be crushed into dust and then come find us. I believe in you, I do.”

He drew a dagger from the holster at the back of his belt, stabbed it into the fabric of Sybil’s dreamscape, then violently forced a door to the Veil into existence beside them. He peeled aside the layer of shimmered white iridescence, then offered his hand with an exaggerated flourish of a mocked bow to Sybil. “Shall we, my gem?”

He would leave it up to his newest initiate whether to bring his eldest, and first, initiate along or leave Kasoria to remain in the collapse of Sybil’s dream once they left. Without the Videnese’s consciousness to maintain the dreamscape, it would crumble into an empty vacuum or so it was assumed.

word count: 1043
Please — consider me a dream.
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Sybil Malach
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Re: Iota Divinitas

Saun 2nd, 719; Trills until midnight


Sybil's mind was misfiring as they tried to make sense of it all. The dreamscape was a part of them, yet so foreign. They could feel it as though it were some sort of tumorous existence upon their body, rather than some extension of it. Any direct sensory understanding of what this place was, was far less than the likes of using an arm. It wasn't instinctual. More did it have in common with the likes of a limb that had up until this point gone unused than something that was natural. A tail upon the human body, an extra finger that had been numb since childhood, gills that had not been used, a third eye that never once had the ability to see before now.

The dreamer's attention slowly slid between Kasoria and Llyr. Both of them speaking in what Sybil could only understand as 'tongues' at first. Mind struggling to keep up with the changing landscape of it all, once the reality had begun to be set into stone. Vision turning bleary, the cobbles began to push further up, blood lapping at the side of the stones themselves, as though it were some sort of gelatinous mass just beneath the surface. The grey stones were turning pinkish, the crimson fluid surrounding them seeming to pulse with every single movement, in tune with the unseen rhythm of a beating heart. It was as though the dream were operating according to the sensations of a claustrophobic migraine, however, rather than something directly calming or spiritual.

"Yes. I remember you. ... Magpie, wasn't it?" They asked of the man, their eyes sliding to the side in sheer confusion, before back towards Kasoria, stabbing the woman to death and back. Yet... Strangely, Sybil had very little sign of disgust at the sight. It was something that was entirely normal, in their mind at least. Shaking their head slowly, gaze returning to Llyr, "I remember the agreement. And I remember my side of it as well."

Yet it was at this moment that the room began to drain. Veins sprouted out from the Mistress' wrists, like some sort of miniature, perverse rendition of leeches, and began digging deeply within the pool of blood just beneath the surface. Her half-shaven head, within mere minutes, began to regrow. The eye that was stabbed in half, simply separated in two eyes. It seems, that with the awakening of Sybil, this... Creature, was beginning to awaken as well. Her hive of eyes opening, wildly, as her consciousness flowed within her mind once more. What was once numb, now flowed with the impassioned array of sensation, both vile and transcendental.

She was an old, powerful being, barely held back by the restraints of Sybil's mind. Something made obvious, as the blood itself turned corrupt and bilious, poisoning the very fluids her heart pumped, forcing her almost powerful body to slump over, into a coughing, gagging mess.

The gelatinous mess of corrupted blood and flying stones was enough to cement to Sybil that this was definitely a dream. This was too... Abstract, to be some hallucination or feverish nightmare. How can something be so abstract, yet so clear in its presentation? They rubbed at their eyes, as Llyr spoke.

"I've only been witness to my own dreams on occasions. I would suggest, Karim... Perhaps, not following through with remaining here. It could be quite... Dangerous." They offer, eyes turning to the side towards the man, as their arms work to try and cover whatever part of their body was exposed at the time. Which, outside of the hips down to the mid knee, and chest, was quite a bit, resulting in their arms moving rather rapidly, trying to make sure that as little of their body is seen as humanly possible. What was more strange, was the fact that their accent finally slipped back in, to a boring Videnese brutality.

Their eyes could only flutter, as Llyr cut a hole, literally, between reality and their dream. An eyebrow raised, they seemed to be completely stumped on how something would do that. It disobeyed almost everything that they believed in up until this point, bringing with it a level of uncertainty that could only be described as ineffable.

Glancing to the side, towards Kasoria though, they consider the hand that's offered to them. Letting out a soft breath, they simply push down their unending questions. Raising their hand to meet Llyr's, they grip the side of is palm, in direct affirmation in this approach. Though they would be hesitant to move, unless Kasoria makes his way over here, "Sure... I suppose there's very little other way to move forward."
word count: 794
"No mass graves."

-Vri 720, scolding Sybil for disposing of necromancers.

NPCs: Karlsson, Margaret
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Kasoria
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Re: Iota Divinitas

Know when to fucking fold 'em, old boy.

It was ancient wisdom cast into language more common than, well, Common, but Kasoria adhered well to the teaching. Let the heroes in the bards' tales push through no matter what, fighting ever-larger and more fearsome monsters, with steel and wits and magic tokens to protect them. The stories always found a way to have them triumph. That was the purpose of them, after all. But life was not a song, Kasoria had learned very young, and the best way to survive a fight was simply not to bother with it.

"You... ssscccccc.... rraaaahhhh..."

Whatever it was that Sybil had chained within her, the bonds were starting to slip. Upon her becoming Lucid, Kasoria had noticed the dream start to... tremble. To fall apart in the most subtle of ways. He felt a twitch on his nose and wiped away... dust. He looked up, and saw soft clouds of the stuff falling from the blackness above them. A distant rumbling, like great stone slabs grinding together. Opening. Closing. It didn't matter. The sign was clear enough-

-and if it wasn't, the thing in front of them was.

A mass of tendrils, red and black tubes like veins ripped from the body and put to use as feeders, plunged into the bloody grout. Kasoria could see them pulse and quiver as raw sustenance was sucked up into the monster. Now her regeneration was taking trills, not bits. He backed away, fearsome dagger now feeling more like a toothpick as the Parasite grew and regrew... and remembered.

"Youuuu will... will paaaaayyy... alll ooofffffff-"

Soft words at odds with the unraveling scene around him caught his ear. Llyr's confidence sounded insane when faced with the Parasite, reborn and raging, but how common were such things for the mage? What was grisly and original for Kasoria could be humdrum for Llyr. How many other nightmares and buried monsters had he seen in the Veil? How many daemons crafted from fears and memories-

That's not what this is, a rational part of his mind barked suddenly. This isn't a part of her. Well... it is, but it didn't come from her. This is... something else. From outside. Possess-

The word finished in his head, and Kasoria huffed with surprise.

"Well, fuck me."

He turned to face the two figures, standing before the portal torn into reality, or what passed for reality in this place. A slash, a slice, a carving knife, and there it was. Liberty and escape, all at once. Kasoria couldn't see what was beyond it and, honestly, didn't much care. It would be better than staying in this crumbling Dream, which would not fall fast enough before the Parasite skinned him living and ate him from the toes up.

"Y'know, love," he said with forced cheer, wiping the blood from his blade on his breeches and sheathing it. "When yer right, yer right. Let's fuck off, shall-"

"Sccccuuummmmmm... noooonneeeee shalll-"

Kasoria grasped Sybil's hand, and the three odd travelers were ready. The assassin, the mage, the maiden. All staring into the portal Llyr had wrought, while a monster ancient and slavering keened behind them. He waited a moment before he felt a jet of hot, fetid breath over his shoulder. Then he looked over at Llyr and fixed him with a hard stare.

"... well any fuckin' time, mate?!"
word count: 576
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Re: Iota Divinitas



Review Is In!
Kasoria
Knowledge:
Blades (Dagger): Quick Draw
Blades (Dagger): Draw and Thrust in the Same Motion
Blades (Dagger): Stab Through the Temple, into the Brain
Blades (Dagger): Thrust Through the Eye
Detection: Falling Dust Can Indicate a Weakening Roof
Detection: Noticing When a Place is Becoming Unstable
Investigation: Using Answers to Remove Future Questions
Investigation: Drawing a Conclusion from Intelligence Gathered
Logic: Deducing the Meaning of Words Used
Rhetoric: Convincing Another that You're "Real"
Throwing (Knives): Aiming to Silence, Not Just Kill

The Emea: A Whole World of Dreams to Explore
Dreams: Can Contain Invincible (but not invulnerable) Constructs
Dreamwalking: Making a Dreamer Lucid
Dreamwalking: Experienced Walkers Can "Cut" Their Way Out of a Dream
NPC "Parasite": Mistaken for the Manifestation of a Disease, More Likely a Spirit Possessing Sybil
PC Sybil: Disturbed Young Lady
PC Sybil: Quite a Different Person When Lucid
PC Zarik: Annoyingly Confident, But Not Without Reason (in the Emea)
PC Zarik: Able to Cut Between Dreams

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A
Renown: N/A

Points: 15 May not be used for Magic

Sybil
Knowledge:
Discipline: Simple solutions can strengthen conviction
Discipline: Alternative perspectives solve internal stalemates
Discipline: Remaining impartial during brutal displays
Psychology: Catharsis can be achieved even through torture
Psychology: One must dehumanize something to enjoy its suffering
Psychology: Motive: Normalcy
Meditation: A long moment of silence to consider morality
Meditation: Peace with the understanding that all is grey
Meditation: Forming a connection with one's dream and mind
Politics: Also come in dream form
Torture: Healing to invoke even more suffering

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A
Renown: N/A

Points: 15 May not be used for Magic

Llyr
Knowledges:
Seduction: The Importance of Presentation.
Meditation: Connections between dreams and the corresponding mind.
Blades (Dagger): To wield as an Athame.
Etiquette: Introducing your initiates to one another.
Teaching: Everyone Has a Different Background.
Teaching: Keeping calm helps keep the initiates calm as well.
Teaching: Practical lessons are as important as Academic ones.
Teaching: Interrupting your initiate's attempts.

Emea: The Veil: My perceptions have changed how the Veil appears.
Dreamwalking: When a dreamer departs their dreamscape, the dream collapses.
Dreamwalking: Recognizing from the Veil when two brands are interacting with each other.
Dreamwalking: Waking a dreamer is different than Initiating them.
Dreamwalking: The Veil is required for Initiation.
Dreamwalking: Cloaking.
Dreamwalking: The use of a "dagger" as an act of focused will (Athame).
Kasoria: Possibly acting reckless in Emea.
Sybil: Possibly struggling with lucidity in Emea?
Sybil: My Gem.

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A
Renown: N/A

Points: 15 May not be used for Magic


Great atmosphere, slow dive into one's own madness, voices of reason may not grasp. Trying to tell someone it is not a dream does not always work Kasoria. That, and Sybil is to thick headed in their dreams. Lucky that Llyr has a brand or two that he can work with, with the angelic entrance of their's. Only have a complaint about the request, the rest seems to be in order though. Dream threads are always fun to read, especially if there is a Walker and a unawakened.

Any injures are based on a 1d100 roll using applicable skills
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word count: 538
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