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 Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 10:39 pm
Tree branches were splitting off from the mask, curling around the edges of the door, unable to come inside.
"My eye," it said, but the words were strange and twisted, the meaning of eye itself a thousand different possibilities. Maybe it had said key instead of heart or secret. It was only speaking simple words because there was no way for Rep to process the visitor otherwise.
The branches were still growing, searching around for an opening, and the child opened its hand to reveal just one odd, glowing green orb, simple enough to comprehend as a crystal of some sort.
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Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 10:53 pm
Rep refused to come closer to the door but listened regardless.
"I don't have ******** anything belonging to you." he said coldly. He had a lot of things and wanted even more, always wanted more in fact. "I think someone else has it. If we have it, then it's out of my authority, you are bugging the wrong guy."
He didn't want to become some undying husk because this thing had decided he'd stolen something.
"If anything we are here trying to ******** help you, trying to retrieve pieces of you that were taken." If that was what Mark meant by the fragments and their tendency to multiply.
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Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2017 11:48 pm
It made a strange noise, similar to a hiss, placing the eye back into his mask. "I don't like the island," this part was easy enough to understand, "it is of notmine and ANGERDEATHREVENGE."
It paused, and then narrowed the one still glowing eye. "YOU ARE CHOSEN."
The branches became less brittle, developing thorns, scraping against the house. Everything began to shake unsteadily. "I HATELOATHEFEAR PROTECTIONCHOSEN."
With one final shake, the house shattered, and the vines, the trees and branches and roots all crashed down, ends forming into hands, grabbing at Rep, at Tracy-
- Only to be stopped by the Blue King.
Only to be stopped by Rep as the Blue King.
It was the Blue King but it was more, it was something calling to him, beckoning. Do you want power, it whispered, and it almost sounded like he was asking himself.
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Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2017 3:43 am
Tracey leaned protectively into Rep as the world around them shattered, both of them naturally tuned to reach for one another when faced with a threat, if Harrison had been there he'd have reached for him too, which was the part that made it feel almost normal that he halted the invasion with the hands of the blue king. What lay beyond this point was important and the creature in front of him sounded mad, an infectious madness that he'd witnessed twist and contort people into monstrosities.
He didn't know what chosen meant, he hadn't asked for anything in his life, things just seemed to occur, one after the other without warning, this was another, he didn't walk a path, he made choices, constant choices based on what was important to him at that moment in time.
Did he want power?
It was a question that for Rep, the answer was always the same. Yes he wanted power. Power was what made people fear and respect you, it brought love of a sort, it was the only thing that could ever fill the void in him that was left in the wake of a lifetime of insecurity and childhood neglect. The word became worth, it became a tool to be used to earn the regard of others, it was worth itself. He was unworthy and he wanted nothing more deeply than to be worth something. There was no hesitation at all in him, nothing to lose, as always what worth was he when set against a version of himself that was worth being?
"Yes." he said.
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Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2017 7:15 pm
And in his hands materialized the sword.
Rep knew it's name, he knew it just as much as it had chosen him, and it did not just give him power, it gave him and his weapon a surge in strength.
With the power came a precaution, as if a second sword had materialized above Rep, threaded together by a single strand of silk. Use me only where necessary, it whispered, with a very clear sense of urgency.
Searing blue, and then Rep was back at the strange basement again, back surrounded by the roots, and the strange pulsating green coming from the other room. That was what that thing that had invaded his memories had been, and now he could see beyond the green the shape of that strange child, a sore blight of sickness against what needed to be protected.
Every step he took, the vines and roots visibly withdrew around him. It wasn't just a sword in his hands now, it was his weapon, wrapped entirely in blue-white crystals. It felt impossibly light, even the slightest motion holding it made his head swim.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 2:46 am
Rep knew the sword and there was a dizzying moment where he realised while holding it how very very far he'd come. He remembered the cave and being led through it by H with a gaggle of others and he remembered looking at Excalibur and thinking it'd be a cool wee chib to fight his very human enemies with when he got back to Glasgow. He hadn't understood then - five years ago - what he understood now, and all of his goals had been so petty and small. Most power he'd misuse immediately, the way he had with even the experimental runics on his first catastrophic promotion but this was different. This sword to him represented everything he loved, the island, his way of life, Harrison, everyone before and after this point, his emotional attachment to it as a symbol meant he'd never dare frivolously utilise it as a real object in whatever shape it chose to manifest.
Only in the back of his mind was Tracey's reminder that contact with an unguarded Excalibur could kill you and was reinforced by the the sharp and vivid image of a single pair of hands detached from their owner being all that remained.
Back in the basement he felt calm and strangely lucid, able to see what was a threat in a logical sort of way. He felt like he was floating through the world, detached somewhat from the usual clumsy sort of panic he tended to navigate everything in. There was satisfaction as the vines pulled back, but it wasn't an inherently selfish sort of satisfaction, it meant they wouldn't harm anyone else, they wouldn't harm the island, they wouldn't harm Harrison. Whatever the sickness before him was, it reminded him of the way addiction had crawled into his mother's veins, blackening them and taking her away from him, denying him the love protection he'd always wanted and needed as a child.
"I'm still here." he said quietly and coolly, in case the headset picked it up, not wanting the others to leave without him, everything was blue in his peripheral vision and it had a strange effect on him, instilling a hope somewhere in his fragile self esteem that perhaps briefly in this world too that blue kingdom could spill over and he could be worthy too.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 12:48 pm
If someone was saying anything through the headset, it was impossible to make through to the ringing in Rep's ears. Through the haze of blue there was just green, and it lost the shape of vines and became as it was, pure Knowledge.
The green folded in on itself, a moment's hesitation, before solidifying into that of a giant serpent, coiling longer and longer until there was no room except snake that bared its fangs and threatened yet again to swallow him whole.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 1:02 pm
The calm pervaded everything around him, making the world simpler to handle and for a moment he was sure he could do this, that somehow he could overcome whatever was happening.
And then it became a snake. Something that reached all the way back to the most primitive part of Rep's being kicked in, his heart picked up and a cold sweat broke out across his skin. He felt dizzy, like he might pass out and wanted more than anything to turn and run, to escape this thing that pushed every button of his phobia and held him captive.
But instead of flight, he pushed himself into fight, knowing that to run away wasn't an option. It wasn't a very concious act, he wasn't being brave, simply choosing from the two inherent options there were to defend himself. He lashed out with Tracey at the thing, in the panicked act unable to make a judgement call about whether that was at all the right thing to do.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 1:18 pm
For a moment it seemed like it was the wrong decision, as Tracey, even given this power, clashed against the snake only to have its fangs tear through some of the crystal in a sickening clang that sent fragments of blue and green scattering. Up close, Rep could see the serpent's eye, the other scarred shut, and could see every individual scale in perfect, repetitive, nauseating pattern of its massive head.
'Fight without hesitation!' commanded the voice, commanded his own voice, and in that moment Rep a cover draped over his fears and he felt comfortable.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 1:27 pm
Rep's whole life was about hesitation, about doubting himself and what he was capable of. The snake was doubt, it was everything he was afraid of given a shape and to be able to look at it and feel no terror was a liberation the man had never truly known.
He took a deep breath and felt Tracey mentally do the same, ready to pull together the way they always did. This time he swung and it was not the frantic slashing from before, desperate to push back something that could kill him, instead it was the swing of a man who'd spent the last four or five years of his life learning how to swing a massive and awkward weapon but who ultimately now knew how instinctually to use it.
So he used it, and as always let himself in some ways be used by Tracey, stepping where he needed to be to make the strike as brutal and true as he was able.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 1:34 pm
The swing was true, but the axe met resistance again, two distinct powers clashing against each other. The serpent pushed forward, and it felt for a quick moment Rep had lost-
- And then his own weapon pushed back, further and further, until it screeched at him to stop, until it folded-
- Until its head from jawline upwards was severed clean off, and both pieces fell and scattered, covered in blue-white crystals that began to overtake all of it. From the tips of Tracey's shape, the crystals also spread all directions, across the walls, ceilings, everywhere, purifying anything the further it stretched.
There was a sharp ringing again, and Rep could vaguely feel his nose bleeding. Through the haze, the beauty of light and crystal and protection, he could vaguely hear someone yelling at him, someone through the headset, to stop.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 1:44 pm
Everything was an action and a reaction, too quick in the moment to think, simply relying on his instincts to fight back, there was no fear of death this time, he didn't even know what he was doing but it felt right
Tracey hissed that it was too much, that it was TOO MUCH, but he wasn't afraid.
The crystals were familiar to him, and once again he was back in a cavern, new and dazzled by what he saw, the beginnings of a life he'd agreed to only because death had been all that waited for him. He was Death now, Death and maybe he'd be dead too after this, but he'd learned to live in the interim. He wasn't afraid.
The voice reached him distantly, feeling like it was from another world entirely. Use this power sparingly, he thought. Things seemed like they were over, so oblivious to the blood and to almost everything except how beautiful it all was, he tried to stop, but he didn't know how.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 1:55 pm
"Stop," warned a voice and it could have been Tracey again, it could have been Protection, it could have been Mark or anyone else, but the raw power had become uncontrollable. There was a sharp pain in Rep's heart as if he had been stabbed right through the chest with a blade himself, the single thread of the figurative Damocles sword finally finding its home.
Briefly, in the recesses of his fading vision, he could see the crystals circling himself and Tracey now, encasing him like thick amber. His body was unable to keep up as every part of him yelled to let go of this power. There were unintelligible shouts through the headset; it sounded like people screaming.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 2:05 pm
Rep felt the agony intensely, even through the numbed haze, every breath was stabbing pain that threatened to overwhelm ********." he exhaled, and the old fears and doubts came back, he wasn't strong enough to do this, to keep this up. Every instinct wanted to, wanted to hold on until he couldn't any longer, he'd probably die but he'd die strong. Maybe another version of him might have. But he was Rep. He was doomed to always chase power but in the end to never be able to handle it or keep it. It might have been the realisation of this which gave him the drive to finally decide. Whatever this power was, it wasn't for him, it - like the snake - probably wasn't for anyone.
He'd done what he could.
He tried to let go.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 2:15 pm
Things always happened in patterns. That was what Knowledge was created from, that was what Protection was forged in, that was what memories were founded on, every pinnacle founded on the acceptance of patterns.
Even Rep was no exception, even moments of pure unexpected chaos could be forged into a repeated pattern.
The second he tried to let go, he was at the room again, the Blue Kingdom behind him. He could see and hear and speak but he couldn't move, a long blue sword lodged into his chest, pinning him to the wall. Perhaps Tracey was vainly trying to pull it out, perhaps his Blue counterpart had tried as well, but the more he struggled, the less they became support and the more they became patterns of his personal failures.
Even entire lives happened from beginning to end in patterns, a life after all, was only a single mechanism, and for a very long moment Rep was consumed by it.
There was a presence at his door, and Rep recognized it immediately and knew what she was here for and why. She waited at the door, long, braided hair curling around her, her colours pale where it should have been just blue, leaning one hand against the doorframe. 'Just this once,' she whispered, 'Just this once, you should let me in'.
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