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 Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2015 5:18 pm
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Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 2:01 am
 The Gates
But this dream would not go away.
Night after night he saw them - great black gates illuminated by flickering purplish light, strange scenes folding and unfolding across them.
They always came just before waking, and left him feeling strange and unsettled.
But they were just dreams, surely?
Except Rhys had never had a dream that repeated itself over and over and over again, every night, replaying and replaying, for two weeks straight.
And the longer it went, the stranger it got. At first, it was just the gates, or doors, or whatever they were, but it felt like he was seeing a bit more each time, and the "more" just got stranger and stranger.
A hand, marked with dragon scales drawn in purple light on the back, curled in a fist and banging, desperately.
A voice, words unclear but anger and frustration obvious.
A grand but ruined-looking cathedral in the middle of a strange alien landscape. (The gates were inside, which struck Rhys as strange. Why put gates inside a building when they didn't seem to lead anywhere? Not that any of this made much sense. Dreams were strange like that.)
Rhys had considered talking to Alistair about it, because if anyone wouldn't laugh him off, it was Ali. But undoubtedly Lance would be around, and he couldn't help being bitter and uncomfortable in the blond's presence. Never mind that the thought of having Lance overhear him complaining about dreams, even creepy repetitive ones, made his skin crawl.
So no, talking about them was not a possibility on the table. They weren't interrupting his sleep, coming as they seemed to so gently just before he woke, and so he was likely just overworrying.
When he began to dream of a name, when the word Ploutonion whispered itself across his mind as he dreamt of the gates, well, that was something he could find. The Ploutonion, he discovered, was a shrine in Heirapolis, Greece. "Pluto's Gate." Believed to be an entrance to the underworld, really a door leading to a cavern full of sulphur gas.
Perhaps he had read about it, he decided, and the rest was just his mind creating something out of nothing. There was absolutely nothing to be concerned about, surely, except that it was a little odd that he would dream of something he couldn't have known of in anything more than brief passing.
When he went to sleep on the fourteenth night since he had begun dreaming, Rhys slept deeply.
He dreamt deeply, too.
Once again, the great black gates, and the whisper of a name.
'Ploutonion. Ploutonion.'
But this time he could see the entire figure of the man with the dragonscale-marked hand.
Long blue hair, pulled into a braid. Clothes in purples and black and white, all fine materials, and a grand cape. Dragon scalesnon his hands, and on his cheeks.
He was Rhys. Older, perhaps, but recognizable. And he banged on the gates in desperation, pleading with them to open, or to give him a sign - something, anything..
Rhys jolted awake with a mounting sense of horror.
And still the name whispered in his mind.
Ploutonion. Ploutonion.
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Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2015 5:31 pm
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Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2015 5:52 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2015 5:23 pm
Click, Click, Click It was the night after his little across-the-universe adventure to Saturn, and Ploutonion was once again powered up. This time, however, he wasn’t wandering the city, or travelling to other planets, or anything like that. Instead, he was examining the strange blueprint that had appeared in his hands when he’d powered up.
Apparently, it was an upgrade for the shiny, odd ring he’d acquired on his trip to space. He considered it – the whole thing looked buildable, and while he certainly wasn’t a mechanic, he was fairly certain he could follow directions and put something together. If he couldn’t even accomplish that, what the hell was he doing?
So he went hunting for the parts depicted in the little blueprint, and once he had everything he appeared to need together, he sat back and started clicking. It was surprisingly soothing, to sit on a park bench and work, putting together pieces and parts of this odd little thing that would, apparently, allow him to make calls with what was ordinarily a device for sealing letters. All of this magic was nonsense to him, but as long as it worked – as long as he could call for help – that was what mattered. He never wanted to be in a position like he had bene his first night, ever again. That Lieutenant would have killed him if Aegir – Colin, and it was sort of ridiculous to think that the handsome dancer he’d known in London was a magical warrior who had saved his life – hadn’t arrived when he did, and dying was absolutely not part of Ploutonion’s plan.
So even though he was terrible with mechanics of any sort, he worked on it, because he could follow a damn blueprint and put together some damn pieces and make something that would, someday, probably save his damn life. If he could make a call rather than screaming and hoping that someone would hear him, he might make it out of his next battle intact and alive.
That was all he wanted, to stay alive. So far, he was fairly convinced that there wasn’t much more he could do, because no one seemed to have any answers except for the most basic and an unlucky moment with your back turned would lead to your death. There were monsters – human and nonhuman – that given the opportunity would end his life for nothing more than the fact that he was, apparently, what Aegir had called a Knight.
A Knight – or, well, a Page – of Saturn. What that meant, he couldn’t say, except that the place he was named for was there and he supposed that maybe he was meant to be loyal to that world, or something.
As his mind wandered, his hands worked, and with one last click, the small object came together in his hand. He pressed it to the ring, and it integrated seamlessly, so that when he slid it back on he could barely tell he’d changed anything.
Good. Now he had another tool in his arsenal. He would not be caught alone again.
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Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2015 5:25 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2015 5:26 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2015 5:28 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2015 5:30 pm
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Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2015 10:48 pm
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2015 10:55 pm
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Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 12:48 am
Parental Interference Rhys should have known that an invitation home to dinner with his parents was a trap. Dinner with his parents was almost always a trap. If he was lucky, it would be a short-lived one.
He was not lucky.
About the only good thing about the meal was that he didn’t cook it, so that he didn’t have to listen to his parents pick at his cooking while they picked at everything else. Because apparently that was, indeed, what was on the menu for the evening.
He knew it was going to go terribly as soon as he sat down at the table, because both of his parents had that “serious-concerned” look that only meant terrible, condescending things. The sort of things he had moved out of the house to avoid, or at least to put at arm’s length. He could ignore a phone call until he was in a position to deal with it – he could not ignore an in-person conversation.
“Rhys, darling,” his mother began, and he wished that he was anywhere but where he was sitting, “we’re concerned about some of your…lifestyle choices.”
“My what?” Rhys asked, and his voice got very sharp, very fast. There was no way this was going anywhere good. If anything, it was probably going somewhere worse than he had anticipated. Wonderful. He had been prepared to hear about grades, about school, about a subtle reminder of how much more successful Tobias was and how Tobias would have his pick of law schools and how he would have to work very hard to live up to his brother’s example, but whatever this was? This was something he had been wholly and completely unprepared for.
“You’ve been making what we’re concerned are some…unfortunate choices of company, lately.” His mother said, but apparently shew wasn’t going to get to play “soft parent” for long.
“Two completely different men in the space of a week, Rhys?” His father asked sharply. “We’ve tolerated these experiments in sexuality from you and from your brother, but that’s too far. If that’s what you expect to be doing with your own apartment, we may have to insist you move back home.”
“Two men in…Ezra and Shale? Shale and I aren’t – he’s a friend,” Rhys said, and it didn’t matter that he was nineteen and he knew how to speak to people and he was clever and witty, he might as well have been thirteen being interrogated about being caught kissing Alistair again. “There’s nothing going on there. He wanted to know about theater, I -”
“And so you took him out for coffee and a movie? Don’t lie, Rhys,” his father said.
“How do you even know about this?” Rhys asked, feeling something cold and frightful settle in his stomach. “Do you have people following me?”
“We worry about you,” his mother said, gently.
“Obviously not without reason!” His father said sharply. “You’ll be coming home, Rhys.”
Rhys did something then that surprised even himself. He stood up, pushed in his chair, and said, “no.”
“Excuse me?” His father asked.
“No,” Rhys repeated. “I will not be coming home simply because you don’t approve of who I choose to see, or how many people I choose to see, or the types of relationships I choose to have. I am an adult, a college student, and if I have to find a job working as a fry cook to continue to pay for my own apartment, I will do so.”
He had never defied his parents this openly before – but then, they had never given him so much reason to do so. Stalking, threatening his living situation – that was a bit beyond making him feel like s**t.
Both of them were staring at him in stunned silence, and he took the opportunity to bolt for the door. There was no reason for him to stay.
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 8:55 pm
Trapped Rhys made it back to his apartment, but he was still angry – practically shaking as he tried to turn the keys in the door and get inside. He had never been this furious at his parents. Everything else had been forgivable, one way or another, or simply incorporated into his generally horrible view of himself. He had let them tear him apart because he didn’t care enough about himself to disagree.
But this? This was beyond what even he could be expected to take, he was sure. Having him followed, questioning his relationship choices, threatening to force him to move back home because they weren’t happy with the company he kept? Ridiculous. Beyond the pale, even for them. He was going to be looking over his shoulder wherever he went, from now on, watching for anyone who seemed too interested, who watched too closely, who seemed to be showing up in too many places he was – because he had no faith that his parents would stop having him followed.
Perhaps he ought to look into separating out his bank accounts, starting to get some actual independence from them – at least if he did that, he would be able to get out from under this sort of bullshit in the future.
But what would he do if they actually cut him off? He was, if he were being honest, totally dependent on their money for the lifestyle he was accustomed to living. If they diddecide to stop supporting him, he would be screwed. He had few other means of income, and the idea of living off the generosity of others made him a little ill.
But he couldn’t afford college unless his parents kept paying. He had no extraordinary talents, as far as he was concerned; there were no scholarships for him to try for. Loans would trap him in an endless cycle of debt and repayment and struggling to get a job, any job, to pay them off. That did not sound like any kind of life he wanted to live.
He hated that his choices were “submit to his parents’ tyrannical will” or “well, sorry, better completely uproot your life.”
And all of this over a misunderstanding, over his parents assuming that anyone he was out with in public was someone he was romantically involved with – over his parents, in essence, assuming the worst of the situation.
His phone rang, and his first instinct was to hurl it across the room, particularly when he checked who it was and saw that it was his parents. Likely with the intent of trying to guilt him into coming back. He even brought his hand back to throw, but stopped himself at the last minute and dropped it on the kitchen table instead.
At least he didn’t have a roommate, so when he shut himself up in his bedroom and curled into a ball and cried like a child, there was no one he had to answer to.
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 9:36 pm
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Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2015 10:40 pm
I Want to Live Ploutonion Page of Saturn was exhausted, alone, and cornered. He had been fleeing the same damn youma for what felt like hours now - and it just kept coming, because its energy was endless, when his was not. He had pegged it with his pathetic pomegranate over and over, and nothing.
He had encountered it menacing some poor civilian, and drawn it off with the tease of something much better and tastier than a civilian starseed - the power of a Page of Saturn.
He regretted it. The thing was built like a gryphon, but with saliva that, he had discovered quickly, burned on contact with his skin. Its claws were long and sharp and vicious, and it could ******** fly. He had tried to lure it away and then start running, but that hadn’t worked - it had caught up with ease, and had clawed open a gash down his shoulder with its foreclaws. Ploutonion had kept running, because he had no other choice, until he had found himself at a dead end with the thing’s screeches echoing in his ears.
He sagged back against the wall of the alleyway, and coughed, pressing his hand to the clawed-up shoulder.
He was, he realized, probably going to die here.
It was not a pleasant realization to come to.
It felt like a waste - he had so much ahead of him. He was nineteen, for God’s sake, he had his entire life to live. Potentially even a brand new one, if he chose to corrupt. And instead of getting all that, he was going to bleed to death in an alley, mauled by a ******** mishmosh of bird and lion. His shredded body would be found eventually; there would be blood everywhere, no one could ignore that forever. And no one would know how he died, because no one would know he was a Knight. It would be categorized as a mysterious death, he was sure, because an animal mauling didn’t exactly look like a human stabbing.
Every bit of that, in Ploutonion’s opinion, was absolute bullshit.
The gryphon-thing landed in front of him, and he pushed himself off the wall.
He was probably going to die, but that didn’t matter.
“I want to live,” he said, mostly to himself. There was no one around to hear, really, and if they did they likely wouldn’t have cared - but he needed to say it.
“I want to live,” he repeated, and then, firmly, “I’m going to live.”
And something in the universe felt his determination.
And it answered.
Ploutonion felt something form in his hands - a wand, short, but solid in his grip, and firm enough to swing. His uniform shifted around him, and he felt a brief surge of energy - enough to charge forward and swing the wand at the youma, hitting it square in the throat.
With a gargled screech, it collapsed into dust, and Ploutonion Squire of Saturn stood triumphant.
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