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 Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2014 4:45 pm
The rustle of wind through the trees sounded foreign by now. Only a month since the incident, yet Bischofite found all manner of minutia once before now the focus of his attentions. Bark, how it curved against the trunk of the tree, and even the manner in which it formed knots piqued his interest. However, he knew he lingered in areas given to powered activity - for he himself encountered a fair amount of wayward souls here, in different circumstances.
Those times felt eons past now.
In the outskirts of the park, Bischofite lingered in a thicket for some time. While preening, the whisper of the winds and slow filter of moonlight kept company far better than the yearning maws in the Rift. More so, he watched for activity stirring in the park itself - those very powered souls that often clashed so heavily among metal playground equipment and rubberized benches. If only a show, now, it provided a slow reintroduction to the life he always led - even if he lacked weapons to defend himself. There he whittled through a solid hour, shedding a cluster of feathers among the trees during his practices. Surely enough, the acerbic brush of an Order signature accosted his senses.
Experience dictated that its owner held little power, likely equal to a lieutenant. The source possessed a different, yet still irksome, aura from senshi - thus potentially a page. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the moonlit slats between clustered trees for any semblance of appearance. Nothing - he would have to approach.
Yet even as he began the slow journey toward the park's clearing, he found the acidic touch of anxiety paring away his nerves. A hand braced against a tree trunk shook slightly, his breath came in shallow bursts, eyes dilated from adrenaline. A Negaverse general, a creature at that, fostering trepidation toward approaching a page? Were I anyone else, I'd scoff at my position. Iscariot should've ended me a month ago. These damnable fears... They benefit no one. My questions will not find answers through a tongue bound by panic.
Finally he emerged from between the trees, wings readily tucked to shoulders to prevent the seeping whispers of mouths buried beneath the feathers. Surely enough, a bench not far from the sidewalk housed a single woman in white - likely the page he sought before.
Against better judgment, Bischofite approached. "I'm not here to fight," he ventured, hoping his declaration might solicit some scrap of trust from the unfamiliar figure.
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2014 5:32 pm
If Bischofite was looking to avoid a fight, he'd chosen a lucky target indeed. Hvergelmir had come here for just that purpose -- to try and assume her powered form for something more benign than going on patrol for youma. She'd intended to wait here on her bench for the third time this week, reading Stoppard's Arcadia, hoping someone would come by -- but in this case someone did come by, and it was almost immediate. He must have been there already. (The thought caused her a little bit of guilty chagrin -- she'd always sort of thought of North End Park as her place, and now had to resign herself to the possibility of sharing it.) Hvergelmir folded Arcadia closed again and set it down on the bench beside her. The aura she felt was powerful, but not in the wild way of the corrupted senshi she'd had such a harrowing run-in with recently -- this one was power contained, like Avalon. A General. But he'd come in peace. None of them ever came in peace. It was hard to believe, in its way -- and the man she saw (but was it a man, after all? The hands she could see, if they were real, weren't quite hands, and his face . . . it was hard to make out what might be under that gruesome, skeletal mask.) -- well, he didn't inspire confidence. But that was the Negaverse, she remembered. It smothered people in black and set smoke in their eyes until the person within became the dark shell they inhabited. And even if it was a trick . . . for all that, she still had to try. "That's okay," she said softly, instinctively lowering her voice like she was dealing with a skittish animal and not a dangerous human being. Negaversers, in her experience, were kind of skittish anyway. "I'm not here to fight either. I can't, actually," she elaborated. "It's against my vow." She pointed to the glittering seal on her shoulder, the star-in-the-well, offering a smile that she hoped bespoke sincerity. There was no point in having sworn her oath if people didn't know about it. "How can I help you?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2014 6:05 pm
"Your vow?" Her disinclination to attack came as a fortunate surprise, but the expression was lost behind the mask. His gaze drifted to her bare shoulder, at one time a sensual display, and scrutinized the golden image therein. A star, a well... Was this image supposed to symbolize her unwillingness to fight? How curious.
She won't last long, he thought in amusement.
Bischofite neither advanced nor retreated at her tone. "I am looking for somesing. Answers." You likely have none, given your rank, but... You may know someone with the answers I seek. If nothing else, your ilk possesses the propensity to know a vast amount of people. A hand strayed to his chest, where warped fingers rubbed against the skin surrounding his half-healed wound. It itched, ached, burnt against the addition of cool night air. It felt too exposed, yet his tattered coat afforded no remedy. Everyone will know the mark of betrayal on my chest - even enemies, such as she. Damning the victim (the sinner?) to the crime.
Finally Bischofite flared the pair of wings, displaying ostensibly avian wings that held the skeletal structure of a bat's. A host of hidden mouths uttered small sighs nary above a light breeze in volume; those inattentive to the hints of tone therein might think it nothing more than such. He flexed the fingers slightly; they felt stiff from ages spent in one position. "Zese wings - zey belong to a youma. Zey belong to a particular youma who saw fit to betray me. Now we bos' stand damned into ze same body. I am certain you know what zis means." Even now, he found it far too difficult to speak of the losses surrounding a life suddenly cut off - especially a life that finally flourished.
The whispers started, only perceptible due to the harshness of consonants. Most echoed the name Iscariot while the rest interlaced with his own speech. "I need to know how to excise zese from my body - how to eliminate her presence wis'in me by whatever means necessary. Cut it out, burn it out, blast me wis' magic until all zese atrocious youma appendages crumble to dust from my body. It doesn't matter how. I just need zem gone." My folly damned me to this fate; is redemption still so far from grasp? Or were such tales only that - legends offered through religions, anecdotes, fables? Am I clinging to trite children's stories to wrench myself from this position? I fear it is so.
Quenton... I need answers. He swallowed heavily; grief coated the back of his throat like sticky tar. "Do you know how I might remof'e zem?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2014 7:00 pm
Hvergelmir ignored his question about her vow. Not because she didn't want to talk about it -- she certainly did -- but because his own story, however briefly summarized, commanded more of her attention and a great deal of her sympathy. She'd always been a sucker for a good bit of tragedy and pathos. Her heartstrings were easily tugged. She cupped a hand over her mouth sorrowfully, taking in his meaning. Those wings -- they weren't like the corrupted eternal senshi she'd met, wearing them as a decorative part of her costume. They were just a few ugly, beastly appendages that had been grafted onto him without his consent, invading his body in a worse way than even Chaos had managed to do. "I'm so sorry," she offered, knowing there was little her words could do but provide the momentary comfort of one human being acknowledging another one's pain. Still -- even that much was always worth doing. "No one deserves something like that. I can't begin to imagine how you must feel." Nor did she want to. The very idea of it was the stuff of nightmares -- waking up to find your body unfamiliar, changed, partly consumed, partly distended beyond your recognition. And the voices . . . ! Little, quiet voices that spoke when he spoke, echoing, haunting, mocking. That alone would've broken Hvergelmir quite easily by now if it had been her, she suspected. It was too much. But if his own people hadn't been able to help him remove the -- parasite -- or if they wouldn't -- She thought about what she'd been told, everything she'd learned from Zee, and from the other people she'd met, and the answers she'd been given at Olympus. There was no clear statement that had addressed this situation. "A purificaton, maybe," she said, moving her hand down to her chin to mull it over to herself as much as to him. "We could try it, but -- I can't be sure. You see, youma may have been knights once, like you and me, but they're too far gone -- the Code says it's impossible to purify them back to what they were." She looked down at Arcadia, sitting on the bench. "But . . . there are two things -- two odd things I can't help thinking are different. The first thing is, obviously, you're not a youma. Chaos starts here -- " She tapped the place over her heart with two fingers. " -- but you're still you up here." She tapped the side of her forehead. "The human will's incredibly powerful, don't you think . . . " She trailed off quietly, noticing she was starting to ramble, letting that thought go for now. "The second thing is -- this youma -- it set itself against you. It resisted you. Whatever happened, there was a person in there once, a person who would've wanted to fight just as hard, in their way. So I'd like to think -- maybe it was different from the other youma. Closer to human. So maybe there's hope in that, too." She wouldn't be able to give a better answer than that. Maybe it would heal him -- or maybe it would kill him. She didn't know. "I can't say for sure," she decided. "And for all I know, it could hurt you, or worse. But I do know at least one person who can purify knights. I'm so sorry -- I wish I could be more sure."
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2014 7:25 pm
Bischofite could not suppress the mirthless laugh that bubbled from the back of his throat. He approached slowly, one hand pressed to the wound on his chest, while the other clasped the beak of his mask. "No one deserves it, you say. No one... Oh, how tens, hundreds would disagree wis' you, Page - half on my own side, no less! In ze days after I woke to zis condition, I had one of my subordinates accost me, fully intent on breaking my bones! I'f been sreatened, beaten, and stripped of rank following zis atrocious fusion of youma to my frame, Page, all on ze notion zat I deserf'e it. How... how audacious it sounds to hear somesing so contrary come from your mous'. It's almost endearing, were it not so tragically misplaced."
The general drew to a stop just behind the bench, and he placed the hand that once obscured his wound atop the slats marking its zenith. As he drew breath, so did the obscured mouths. Gold eyes bore down on her form, scrutinizing every golden curve adorning the crown of her white dress, eyeing the way her hair swirled into its meticulous style. His voice dropped low, above a whisper yet clearly meant for her alone. "You are a bleeding heart, Page." Yet you know not who to bleed for.
If you do not recognize what remains of my uniform, then I could offer my name. If Bischofite earns no memory from you, then either you've spent far too long with your head buried in the sand or my efforts were truly ineffectual. At least this bitterness fuels better than stagnation - than wallowing in despair until these warped bones rotted into dust.
However, the information she provided held some marginal hope, though mitigated by her continued insistence that she held no certainty. The snarl cooled into a slight frown, and his gaze found a single street lamp far in the distance. It flickered repeatedly, offering only flecks of light, as the bulb inside died slowly. His wings sank with his shoulders in a sigh. "Youma haf' shattered starseeds. When a general infuses ze civilian wis' enough chaotic energy, and zeir starseed cannot sustain ze influx, it shatters and a youma is formed from ze corpse. One cannot reconstruct it - not to my knowledge. But... In zis condition, I suspect my starseed is still intact. If zat is ze case..."
His grip tightened on the bench. "It's a chance of resolution. If purification chases away zese second appendages - even if it severs zese warped hands from my body, it's a chance." To never know the song of piano again, not from my own fingertips... Am I not already in that position? Am I not already disfigured, as I would be after these fetid additions leave my body? "And if it fails... If I die, no one will grief' beyond zose who already haf'. Zis fate is far worse zan perishing in an experiment." I suspect a few might rejoice at the news.
Finally Bischofite pulled at the half-mask obscuring his face. Initially it hardly budged, until the mask drew out in great, thick strains of tar. Once the mask strayed far enough away, the tar parted from his skin and snapped into the bone of the article. "Tell me who you know zat can purify, Page, and I will gif' you my name in return." You'll either know it or you won't.
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2014 9:30 pm
Hvergelmir had never been good at detecting malice. She was good at detecting pain, sorrow, heartbreak -- because she was good at seeing what she wanted to see. To her, the man in the mask was a wounded animal, in need of help, but snapping, fearful and vicious even as it approached in need. It hurt to be spurned and attacked by ones' comrades. She supposed maybe it hurt worse, in that situation, to then be offered kindness and pity from someone who was supposed to be your enemy. It hurt to have to trust blindly, in desperation. To her, it still made him sympathetic -- but the corrupted senshi she'd met had been sympathetic too, in Hvergelmir's eyes, taken by some kind of madness as she was. It hadn't made her any less dangerous. She shivered as he spoke over her shoulder; she felt his breath stirring her hair by her ear. She couldn't deny being frightened. His words, though, had a different effect. Something in his overwhelming, utter certainty that should've bowled her over, instead, curiously, made her want to dig in her heels. " Tradition is the enemy of progress and of free thought," she said aloud, looking stiffly ahead, trying to focus on her words and not his reactions. " Doctrine is the tool of oppression." Hvergelmir had written that, long ago, in another life. Laney had never been quite so eloquent as that, on the fly, but the sentiment resonated with her. "I don't remember asking what you have or haven't done before now. You're the one who decided that mattered -- you and a hundred other people who also don't think for me. But you came to me for help, not the other way around. After tens and hundreds of people condemned you, still, here you are, right? So either you were hoping I'd kill your last hope for you and end your uncertainty, or else you were hoping a single person was capable of being better than a mob. So my answer's the same. I'm sorry for what happened to you." For all that, she laced her fingers together in her lap to steady their shaking. His proximity made her uncomfortable, even when his mood seemed to cool. It was hard not to remember that he was two tiers above her in power, or that he could snap her neck at this distance faster than she could move to escape. She tried, instead, to focus on the belief that he wouldn't. He'd asked her for help, after all -- help he still needed. It was difficult to school her expression when the general began pulling off his mask. It was a gruesome scene -- the skull mask clinging desperately to his face, fighting his grip, and then finally peeling away with great effort to reveal a kind of tar that bound it to his very skin, bleeding into the paint on his face like it would've rather torn off his skin than be removed. When even that let go, she studied the face she found beneath, trying to picture all its angles not dusted with black paint. She didn't recognize it. "His name is Camelot, of the Earth," she answered his question. "If you tell me your name, I can ask him if he'll help you." Then, after a pause, she added, "I'm Hvergelmir, of the Cosmos," not because it was owed, but because she didn't want him to keep calling her page. Aeeth sorry for the double quote, this post is so terrible it did not even have words appearing in the right order XD
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Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2014 10:59 pm
The pair of quotes provided a desperately-sought balm of like mind. I remember damning guest rites to Quenton so long ago, now. In abandoning old shackles of tradition, we gain so much more freedom. Rename what we wish, repurpose what we want, reinvent what we seek... I could've wrought a thousand worlds with him, each more potent than the last, if time and foresight afforded me such blessings...
However, her continued speech provided an interesting departure from previous phrases. Her voice never fully departed from the proper, conversational tone she adopted before; he found it rather curious. And her phrases... Oh, how they roused a smile to his lips, excitement settling into his bones as an ld friend. He missed it greatly. "Brazen," came his response, charged with lilting enunciation. He leaned over the bench to a fuller extent, with arms crossed and braced against its zenith. "You haf' gall for asserting yourself around someone who possesses significantly more power zan yourself. It's quite refreshing." And sorely missed.
But I cannot deny that she raises a necessary point - I am making assumptions again, even after I damned myself by doing so earlier. These habits... they prove difficult to break. That bears further consideration, then - with purification comes the possibility of death alongside the possibility of freedom from this accursed form, but what if there were a third option? A fourth? A tenth? Prediction only provides so much vision into the fog of the future, yet we still bumble around with hands outstretched in hopes of grasping what awaits us before it strikes us down. I never would've guessed that the operation might end with my very form twisted, and my aims nothing more than a springboard for another's insipid motives.
Perhaps enduring the stubbornness of habit is my pain to procure change.
He offered no indication toward his ruminations beyond a fixated stare on a distant point of focus. His attentions snapped back to Hvergelmir rather suddenly. "Tell Camelot zat Bischofite is looking for him. If he can assist, we'll need a means of contact. If not... I suppose I will pursue ozzer remedies."
He paused, huffing as a wry smirk traced his lips. "And Hvergelmir... Sank you." I almost forgot what voiced gratitudes sounded like. He straightened up, hands still braced on the back of the bench. With wings tucked and unable to voice more broken phrases, he felt closer to himself than he had in the past month. "It's been ages since I knew challenge." Quenton offered as much, more than I ever would've asked, but most roll over and flash their undersides as groveling dogs do when they meet greater dominance.Shazari pfft your posts are excellent shaz
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Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:47 pm
Hvergelmir couldn't really manage to suppress a smile at being labeled 'brazen' for her behavior. In her life, no one had ever accused Laney, of all people, of being brazen before. Maybe she really was changing. "Everyone possesses more power than me," she answered, without any real grief over that particular admission. "At least, if we're talking about punching and hitting and stabbing. But I guess you could say I was never really interested in that particular competition?" Hvergelmir scratched at the base of the seal on her arm, where her skin was limned in glittery white and gold, iridescent under the glow of the lamps high overhead. "I mean, I'd like to think that's not the sum of anyone's worth, giving and taking life. That life's more than just being allowed to continue to exist. I don't want to waste it by just going along for the ride. I want to be the best possible version of me, and see what that looks like. Camus says that, right? Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. And I'll never become anything I want to just by skiing the bunny slopes all the time." Hvergelmir shrugged. "Besides, you said you weren't here to fight. Considering you and considering me, I couldn't see any reason why you'd need to lie about that." He was lost in his own thoughts, though, or maybe just tuning her out. She was pretty used to that -- people tended to go glaze-eyed and stop listening when she started to prattle on about things as she tended to do. She'd never been good at short conversations. "I come here on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to read, so you can always find me if you need to," she said, gesturing toward her book and the bench, as though recreational reading in powered form was something knights did all the time. "I'll give Camelot your message. And if he can't help, I'll find someone who can, okay?" She wasn't sure how to respond to his gratitude. Being grateful for being challenged -- it was kind of a weird sentiment, wasn't it? The kind of thing people said who had trouble hanging on to a reason to live, maybe, or something like that. Bischofite was a strange, eerie person with, according to him, a pretty checkered past. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. "I hope you find an answer," she settled on, looking at his folded wings with concern, thinking about how he'd taken off his mask and it had fought him all the way. It hadn't wanted him to have a face. Chaos corrupted people, subsuming their wills to its own. Everyone told her so. And it happened quickly enough just with the people it toyed with -- how much worse could it be for someone with a situation -- an infection -- like this? How long could a person hold on to their humanity? Long enough, she hoped. As long as they had to. God, the world was a cruel, difficult place.
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Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 10:34 pm
"If you know of Camus, zen you know l'Etranger. Mersault metes out a random act of murder, much like how ze universe metes out random acts of life. Our wors' is nossing more zan chaff - for what little influence we wield over each ozzer is pissing into ze wind when put in perspectif'. Even zis war... means little overall. And zat meaninglessness composes our freedom." As he spoke the phrases, he doubted them. He doubted the credibility of his statements, despite philosophy offering no more fact than art itself. Still, he floundered in his convictions, showcasing his uncertainty through a thin frown creasing his features.
Straightening up, Bischofite kept his hands braced atop the bench. A slow breeze stirred the tattered remains of half his coat, and the peculiar shifting of feathered stalks in his skin produced a sensation akin to fingers brushing through hair. He shuddered slightly, goosebumps rising on his arms. "I will look for you in a week's time, zen... Concurrently if you bring no news of Camelot. Try to keep zis matter quiet; I doubt ze Negaverse will appreciate my delving into zese matters. If you haf' to solicit ozzers, try to avoid jeopardizing my life." He knew little about Hvergelmir, and her propensity for secrecy remained a mystery. She may yet advertise his name and intent for purification halfway across the globe before she found the figure in question.
He bristled slightly at the thought.
Finally the creature drew to leave, half-turning toward the woods from whence he came. He paused then, a quick glance cast over feathered shoulder to regard the blisteringly bright woman on the bench. "And Hvergelmir, try not to make too many waves. If you're identified as a sreat, whezzer in philosophy or in strengs', you will soon find zose unwilling to lay down blade for conversation. And at zat time, you'd best hope your allies might find it prudent to aid you. Can you imagine yourself as a youma?" He uttered a quiet, whistling laugh before relinquishing his grasp on the wood entirely.
The trek toward the woods trailed a dragging noise in its wake from the ragged hem of his coat. The size of a fly, the doom mark crawls down the wall, he thought as he looked at his hands in passing. Regardless of my choice, this fetid pit will fill in again.Shazari wrap! thank you so much shaz!
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Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2014 3:39 pm
Hvergelmir couldn't really imagine herself as a youma, no. To be fair, she couldn't imagine herself being much of a threat in anyone's eyes, either: her ideas of philosophy weren't very sophisticated, and they were usually held hostage to the fickle nature of her own poor conversational tendencies. She said too much sometimes, she talked in circles, she put her foot in her mouth -- when she managed to get a point across without putting someone to sleep or confusing them utterly, it was usually a huge relief. She'd never finished high school -- the things she thought and believed about the world mostly just came as a byproduct of being an unemployed high school dropout with a Kindle and lots of free time. She didn't think what she'd gotten out of l'Etranger was going to be of much interest to most Negaversers. This one had only indulged her because he'd already wanted something from her, after all.
So she didn't really harbor any delusions that she'd become Public Enemy #1 with that kind of a track record.
Camus had been a notorious pacifist, though, and a socialist. She didn't think he would've thought of anyone as being chaff in a practical sense. Hvergelmir wondered what kind of outlook on the world made Bischofite see it that way. Was it just that he was unhappy currently, or had he always seen the world that way?
She didn't suppose she'd find out. Ah, well.
Hvergelmir picked up Arcadia from where she'd left it, thumbing back over to the page where she'd left off when she sat down. She spared a last glance at Bischofite's retreating back, at the monstrous black wings that mocked him. She thought of the way he'd stared at the black line of the horizon while they spoke, his gaze so very far off.
When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.
[fin]
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