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 Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2017 5:11 pm
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His spidey sense was tingling.
Okay, maybe Horace didn't have spidey sense, and perhaps it was simply that, after asking, someone had said they'd seen Shiloh Beaumont in the library (with the candlestick). And he desperately needed to talk to Shiloh and not over text or that listserv, which was honestly full of weirdly angry people he didn't know. He shouldered his backpack and glanced around. If he were a planty sort, where would he sit?
He walked over towards the back of the library, where a few tables sat, largely abandoned. And there was Shiloh, looking at a book as if it might eat him, so Horace slid into a seat across from him. "Hey, mind if I sit, Shiloh?" He was already sitting by this point.
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Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2017 5:20 pm
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Shiloh Beaumont was in fact studying, or at least trying to. His pencil was jammed into his mouth eraser end first, the butt of the writing utensil already littered in little teeth marks as he gnawed on it angrily. His demeanor looked tensed and tired, but this was normal; the tiny travel pack of tissues nearby was an oddity to anyone who knew him, because why the ******** would Shiloh have chamomile infused napkins handy, but whatever. It was a little more evident in the bloodshot sclera of his eyes, the way his cheeks and his nose and his ears were a little flushed looking.
Horace spoke and he jumped, apparently too immersed in his book to notice him. "Jesus ******** man," His voice was slightly hoarse, "You scared the s**t out of me."
He sighed as he shoved the book away, apparently done with it now. "Sure, whatever, I don't give a ********. Nothing's sticking right now anyway." Why the ******** was he even in college anyway? He hated this bullshit.
"What's up?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 6:20 am
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"Noeh? Whatever her name, she's been following my, uh, house-guest. Telling her she can't run, stuff like that." Horace merely raised his eyebrow at Shiloh's question. He was here, she was at his house, there wasn't any kind of turning back, even if he'd wanted to.
"I know. I know she... she hears a voice calling her sometimes. It's her but not her and she hurts people like that. I want to fix this. Let me help, do whatever." He swiped his hand over the stubble of his undercut, a nervous habit. "Tell me whatever you're comfortable with. She's so scared, Shiloh, but I don't know enough and she can't talk about it or she starts hearing that voice. And, yeah, whatever you tell me doesn't have to leave this table if it's personal."
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Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 3:51 pm
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This time when Shiloh sighed it was a sharp, agitated sort of sound. "Of course she is..." He mumbled, something scalding and irritated cutting through with his tone. His head leaned forward only to be caught by his hand, his fingertips rubbing at his forehead contemplatively. For nineteen, Shiloh sure had a lot of s**t on his mind. It showed. It showed in the bloodshot rims of his eyes, the frantic energy he seemed to give off, the delirious depth of his thought way too heavy on his shoulders. The way he sat there was reminiscent of a statue.
"It might help," He sounded a little rushed for a moment, "You're not affiliated with the Court. I mean, you're not a Noble, so it might be good. The other Nobles, they're—" He looked over, "Did you see it? On the listserv? I want to trust them, but I feel like I can't. I thought I could, but..." He shook his head.
He sat up straight and reached into his bag. From it he produced a sketchbook, flipped it to a page that was already littered with chicken scratch and notes. Among the messy handwriting was a series of names, organized under 'warg', 'were', 'noble'; Horace was under '???' with a few others, along with (left) along side it. In the center was a subrosa, not unlike the one from the Court document itself. "This is what it looks like." He looked at Horace, "The mark on her back, right? Have you seen it? I think it bleeds when she comes out. That's where she is. The Spinel Lady." He tapped the drawing.
"In the other universe," He spoke quietly, "My universe, we had this... this thing. The Ball, and they have it every... I-I forget. It's not important. The Court does these sacrifices and it keeps the cage strong." He knew he was doing a terrible job of explaining this, "The ones in the Court, they're the Nobles. When you're a Noble, you escape the cycles, you live through them. See? Around... around November, it's probably going to reset again, and you're all going to forget about everything that's happened, and all the Nobles are going to carry over to the next cycle like it was nothing." He held his breath, "Nobles... Nobles are strong, but only because they're made to be that way. Nobles kidnap people. Nobles build their Court on the foundations of abuse, and torture, and they make you suffer and suffer and suffer until you're strong enough to become a Noble yourself." His gaze fell back down to the paper, "That's what happened to me, and a bunch of other people. I got abducted out of my science class on the last day of Senior year. By the Spinel Lady."
He let that settle.
"When we moved over to this universe, something shifted." He went on, "The world was held together by this sigil, yeah? Heliodora, Micheal, Aodelle... they were the original principals, the people the magic latched onto, the ones that kept the world together. They... they died, and then we had to make a new one, and it made things really messy. I guess at some point a lot of cycles back, they made another sigil, one for the Court. Are you following?" He paused, but kept talking even if Horace wasn't, "The wargs and the moonwalkers, I guess they... they used to be kind of dangerous? They weren't monitored well and did whatever they wanted. Used to be like, the same thing I think, and so Aodelle made a charter that split them into two groups, and then also created the Nobles. A group of people with more power than they had, so they could police them, and so the moonwalkers and wargs could police the Nobles. Except, they didn't have anything to attached the sigil to I guess." He was looking more and more and more sick. "So they picked someone to attach it to."
"You get what I'm saying, right?" His eyes were wide and almost frenzied in their disgust, "They—Micheal, and Heliodora, and Aodelle—they took her," He swallowed, the sound dry, "With three others—Pax, Pride and, and Noeh—and they took her into the halls of that Court, and they put the sigil on her. They put it in her. They carved it into her back, clean down through her skin, and etched it into her ******** bones." He sounded shaken. He looked shaken. "People aren't meant to be sigils, Horace. It twisted her. It made her into the Spinel Lady. They thought it was okay, y'know? That one for the good of many was worth it. They killed her. They unmade her and stitched her back together into what they wanted."
His hands had found their way to his lap.
"So, this universe, and suddenly she's normal. I couldn't approach her at first, not after all the things the Spinel Lady had done. But... but it's not her fault. She didn't chose to have this done to her. She was drugged and held down and forced. It's ******** sick Horace, it's so sick. The voice she's hearing? When people start talking about the other universe, or things pertaining to Court, or anything, it triggers the Madame. She comes out. She knows she's hurt people—that she's hurt me—and I'm supposed to be her best friend. She thinks I'm her best friend, I can't fill those shoes, I want to but I can't do anything and—"
He stopped himself when he suddenly started coughing. He reached into his bag to produce another bottle of water.
"Sorry," He croaked, "Too much talking."
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Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 6:42 pm
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Shiloh was carrying the weight of the world, all Atlas-ing it up and he was going to break if he kept it up, Horace thought. He needed a vacation far away from Ashdown, but there apparently wasn't time for that.
"I saw the listserv." He pulled out a notebook when Shiloh produced his sketchbook. It seemed like it would be one of those kind of sessions. "You have to decide who you can trust ultimately - it makes me wonder how many agendas are in play. Also, you can shuffle my name under warg if you want." He pointed to the sketchbook.
He held up a hand, scribbling with his left. Horace was trying to take many, many notes. "Yes, I've seen her back. I was there when the doctor put the stitches in. I dressed it before taking her to urgent care; I thought she'd never stop bleeding." He sighed. "And Shiloh, it's... okay. It's okay that you can't be suddenly her best friend, because you weren't and I would never, ever expect you to be. The... the normal girl of her, she knows, even if it's buried deep, she knows what's lurking. She's so hurt over Ezra's distance, too, and if that's got anything to do with the Lady, then..." He rubbed his hand over his face and wrote something else down. It was hard to reconcile the two of them: Melany and the Spinel Lady. He knew they coexisted, in some horrible symbiotic way.
"Look, you-" Horace wanted to tell Shiloh it was okay to walk away, that he never had to try to save someone who had abused him. And it had clearly been that; it didn't take a rocket scientist to deduce that when Shiloh said 'suffer', he meant it. "Just because it was done to her unwillingly, because she was hurt doesn't make it okay for her to do so in return. And these sides of her just aren't... reconcilable." He didn't understand why the court was made on such abuse, why they'd chosen a young girl to bear the effort of their bad decisions.
"If you need to walk away, just... do it, Shiloh." He tried to put himself in Shiloh's shoes and all he felt was fear, thready and sharp. Horace shivered a bit and looked up at Shiloh. "Don't take this of all things on yourself - it doesn't have to be your battle. I know it's all un-ignorable because it's right there, but don't do this to yourself." Horace breathed in slowly, and out. "I want her to be the only girl I know her as - the one from before the sigil. I want to kill the Spinel Lady."
"But I don't know how. Can I sand down her bone? Burn the magic out of her flesh?" He'd almost said 'we' instead of 'I', but he refused to put this on Shiloh. This was something that Shiloh should have never had to deal with. "The meeting - that letter, it's tied to all of this, isn't it?"
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 10:43 am
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"Warg, huh..." His expression looked perplexed as he did just that, his hand slowly scrawling out (warg) next to his name. "I guess that makes a lot more sense now, yeah."
The majority of the ones under the ??? catagory were simply there because Shiloh didn't know anything about their status. It was peculiar since so many on the list where either a Moonwalker, or a warg, or Nobility. "It's all tied together, yeah. The meeting is for the undifferentiated I guess. The people who aren't just regular visitors, or whatever." He flipped to another page in his sketchbook. The notes were even more messy and illegible here, with pictures of the new sigil (the tree, the knot, the key) and the old one (the stars, the crown, the sword) depicted here. It looked like he was trying to draw parallels, maybe organize his thoughts, who know. Shiloh-writing was its on language all by itself.
"I don't want her to hurt anymore." He confessed, "Even if what the Spinel Lady did to me was terrible, it wasn't her. She's just as much of a victim as I was." His hand gleaned over the paper. "When they first made the—we call it the Court sigil—they needed a lot of magic to make sure it was stable. They took thirteen people, pressed their fingerprints into the charter, and basically gave the magic permission to change them."
He looked up at Horace, "I thought since maybe you didn't remember anything from my world, you weren't caught up in this like a lot of us are. It's uh—" He sighed, "—We've been... caught in cycles. They haven't really ended yet, I don't know how many of them have happened, but it hits this specific date in November—which is when the first sigil was cast—" He tapped the sword, stars and crown, "And it launches you back like... hundreds of years, or something, and then it gets back to that date and Groundhog day's you back again. I don't know why or the specifics but it does."
"So what I mean is, I've done these cycles however many times, and so has Jamie, and so has my brother, and so has every single person on this Court charter." He was procrastinating, "If everyone on that Court charter gave their blood for it again, the Spinel Lady said it could be carved out of her bones. If she were just killed, then the magic filter would be removed and it'd likely kill the deer triplets, and they're the ones we pull out magic from. Like, Noeh is what helps focus my powers as a Noble, and Pride is the same thing but for the moonwalkers 'n the wargs. Pax is for the visitors who don't have anything going on." He took another sip of his water, cleared his throat, flipped back to the previous page.
"What I'm saying is, some version of you decided you were going to sign that charter." He was frowning, "...so did Jamie, and Oliver, and a bunch of other people—like, everyone—and... I don't know." He ran a hand through his hair, knocking his beanie off in the process, but he seemed too distracted to even notice (or maybe care). "Everyone on this list. Pretty much everyone that I'm guessing got an invite to the thing."
"I have the actual document if you want proof, but it's in Court." He said quietly.
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 2:40 pm
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"No, I don't remember anything from your world because this is my world. Y'all are aliens. And moreso than that, it sounds like I'm just the supporting cast in Groundhog Day and you're Bill Murray." The names meant absolutely nothing to Horace, but he wrote them down anyway.
He frowned. Horace didn't like the idea of him ever agreeing to sign this weird charter. What could have driven him to do that? "Your hat's fallen off," he pointed out. "No, I believe you." There was no reason for him not to. This was just another weird speed bump in the magical stuff and it was just easier to accept it all.
"So, potentially, if everyone bleeds on the charter again, then my house-guest could be... freed? Or do we really need to sand down her bones?" He scribbled more things down in his notebook - a flowchart of names and relationships.
"Look, I honestly don't care what we've got to do - I'll bleed all over the town if I should. And if we need to sand the... the sigil off her bones, let's get some anesthesia and do it. Whatever will save her." He fell silent. "I meant it, though, if you need to not be involved in it."
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:09 pm
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"My—? Oh." He looked over at the hat on the ground and stooped over to pick it up. He regarded it for a moment, and then set it on the table without placing back on his head. His hair was a bedheaded mess of curls, but he didn't seem to care. Obviously there were more important things going on. "I don't know how... how literal she meant it. The bone sanding." He sighed. "I wanna see if I can lock her away, but I feel like locking the Spinel Lady is... like, a short term fix and possibly an unhealthy one too. I dunno." He rubbed the space between his eyes.
He paused for a moment, "Sorry, I should explain. I can lock things. I'm uh... a key." He put it bluntly. "We could do that, or there's the possibility of making an entirely new charter, but... if we do that, there'd still need to be something to attach the sigil to. Something that isn't another ******** human. What that is, I dunno." A schema maybe? He thought about the one Jamie had. "It's just this stupid cycle of going in circles over and over and over. The thing is, I don't wanna just... do things blindly. We did that with the second charter, and now we made a ******** up parallel universe. I'm tired of doing things without knowing anything, but we're in a time crunch too, so..."
He sighed.
"It is... literally carved into her bones, though." He mumbled miserably as he finally donned his hat, "I don't want anymore people to die. Anyway, Groundhog Day is banned at my house. It's funny until you realize that's basically going to be your life and then it gets depressing as ********." He laughed, sadly, "Everyone's going to experience the reset normally, except for me, and the other Nobles, and the principals..."
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Posted: Wed May 10, 2017 1:11 pm
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Shiloh thought about this, his jaw set. "I... it's so hard to say."
"The thing is, the charter, the... the everything about Melany; it was all set into place by people who don't exist anymore. I don't know how the cycles work, or how anything works, or what anything even means." He sighed, "I don't even know if Court was the same here, or if it existed, or what. All I know is us—" He spoke broadly, "—coming into this world shifted things around. Melany never knew about the Spinel Lady inside of her, and she didn't start experiencing problems until the shift."
"And that's the other bit. The other principals attached it to her as a failsafe, I think. I mean, there's the charter that exists as a document, that decided all the rules for the Nobles and the Moonwalkers and the Wargs, but that's not the entire thing. The Spinel Lady is the court, but Melany is the charter too. She's the second half."
Shiloh sighed. "So it's like, I can't just alter the document without weird s**t probably happening, or no s**t happening at all. I like to think it could be anchored to something else, but I just don't know enough." He sounded so frustrated, the angry to the point of crying sort, "If anything, the lock would be a temporary thing, to keep the Madame from getting triggered outward again. Talking about anything from the previous cycle seems to summon her. If I could take that stress off of her shoulders... just... just for a little bit..."
His eyes closed, cheeks still flushed and feverish looking.
"I don't want the reset either." He added quietly.
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