The bathroom routine grew easier with each passing month. Now, he could manage moderately passable eyeliner with his left hand, and with enough blending of dark shadows, one might not even notice the scalloped, shaking lines unless they looked closely. Blending out all the edges of his makeup routine left him with the simple task of ensuring it looked even on each side. Lopsidedness was a perpetual problem for him, and he hadn't yet corrected it in full for his evening escapades.
But he intended to. leaning close to the bathroom mirror, with a mascara stick poised dangerously above his lashes, Isaiah struggled with its application. Flecks of the thick blend touched the mirror in parts, causing him to shift away from them. But he aimed true, concentrated hard, and just as he timed his first stroke…
The mascara vanished from his hand. And his hand vanished into a glove. And his room vanished into a space upon which he never once laid eyes.
The sudden, drastic change startled Scholomance so immensely that he knew hot how to respond emotionally. He turned back, half-expecting to see his bathroom, and met little more than blank room comprised of smoke.
And, as he realized in short time, he wasn't alone either. Even as the room ebbed and flowed and widened and narrowed in a cryptic dance, a heavy chaotic signature weighed upon the place. It felt unmistakeably identical to the Negaverse, to its sense-occluding, throat-choking modus operandi, and left Scholomance decisively disinterested in their new setting. Now he faced one of their ensorcelled eternal senshi, likely trapped in a dimension engineered by their forces.
Now he cared little of mascara, of going out, of maintaining the slow salvage of his life. Now he trained pinpoint ire about the room until he found mint hair, a tanned face. "What the hell is this?" He barked at her,as he brought his whip to hand.
xxdaekie
setting edit
Posted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:41 pm
As of late, Poppy had spent more time in front of a mirror than she had in the years since her corruption; it was important, Stroud said, to look properly presented at all times. Especially when she was patroned by someone, and what she did reflected back to people greater than her. The intricacies of such personal design did not come easy to her, perhaps they never would - but with each passing day, some of the basic handiwork came easier and easier. Concealer for her dark circles, hairclips to pull her bangs back in perfect symmetry - things she'd never really had the idea to try, prior.
It was a shame that didn't carry over when she henshined. The amount of times she'd turned her head too fast and been smacked in the face by her own curls was kind of disgusting, honestly; it was easier now that she had a ponytail instead of a wild mass of hair, but what was sort-of her bangs were never clipped back. It was a little embarrassing to try to threaten a Page and get brought down to size by her own hair. So she was pushing it back into place with a storefront mirror, and maybe Chrysocolla had done something wrong, because she leaned forward and tipped a little offbalance - hands reaching for the wall to make sure all was alright - and there wasn't any wall, there wasn't any mirror, there was just an eerie shifting blackness completely unfamiliar to her.
She would have known Negaspace at a glance, maybe even the Rift; this was neither of those. It lacked walls of dark crystal and rugged openings - it was too clear, too manmade for that - but the furniture didn't seem to stay, and her teleporting wasn't working, and her communicator only reached static when she went through routine steps and that was when the room felt too small, suffocating, crippling - deep breaths, one, two, three. If it was a trap, she wasn't otherwise restrained; there were no manacles on her wrists and no views to an outside.
Chrysocolla waited. She wasn't sure how long.
Something about the man who appeared seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite place it aside from a nagging thought; he was a Knight of equal power to her own, with the symbols of Saturn covering him and a bone whip in his hand - surely she would remember that? But nothing seemed to come to mind. And with his tone, he was already irritated, but she hadn't done anything wrong, not this time - "If I knew I wouldn't be here," she stammered, defensive, "but it's nothing to do with the Negaverse, okay?"
That was a fact, sure as the sky was blue, sure as her starseed glittered in the nowhere-space beneath her sternum. She knew it without worry, without hesitance. This has nothing to do with the Negaverse, Chrysocolla thought, and as far as she cared she was right.
The way she said it - 'It's nothing to do with the Negaverse' - sounded so trite and convinced and flippant that Scholomance wanted to wring her neck for it. The Negaverse, the sweeping organization built off of energy theft and life destruction and bone-breaking domination, exonerated so simply, so matter-of-factly. He wondered, briefly: did she have a thought in her head, or was she that damn brainwashed that the Negaverse could do no wrong?
His anger boiled, ever rising. Ever searching for an outlet. He looked through the room, hoping for an exit. Hazel eyes caught a remarkable lack of windows, lack of doors. Light diffused through the room from nowhere in particular. She seemed correct at a glance - such strange and fleeting aspects lacked all the brute force and obviousness of the Negaverse. There weren't grandiose plans cropping up now to murder him wholesale, or reclaim his starseed for the greater evil. This place held no tactical advantages for either party, and the Negaverse would undoubtedly prefer to pit more than one officer of equal value against a knight. Even his new company looked and felt out of place here. Certainly Scholomance felt much the same to her.
So Scholomance looked her over, took in the full cheeks and the mussed hair, the outfit not fully exempt from the current of sexuality that Scholomance found in corrupted senshi uniforms. The gaping hole in her chest stared back at him, daring him to claim her starseed in a sorely-needed reversal of roles. She looked tired, acted dangerous, sounded huffy. Clearly she was the pinnacle of Negaverse professionalism.
"Let's say I believe you. Then whatever it is that put us here either has a terribly ironic sense of humor, or it doesn't give a damn that we're diametrically opposed to one another." He wanted - oh, how he wanted - to strike her once, twice, four times, eight times, it didn't matter how many times. The allure of repaid violence begged him harshy, and he wanted with every fiber to give in, to hurt, to hunt. But they each sat in a room with no doors, no windows, and seldom stable walls, with nothing for company but themselves and their memories. He shouldn't simply kill her.
But he wanted to.
"Help find a way out," he urged at last, his grip slackening marginally on his whip. "We got in somehow. We should be able to get out. I doubt it'd be too much of a stretch to phase out whole bodies." To who knows where. Deeper into this strange mess, perhaps. But we're already doomed here with no food, no water, no exit.
xdaekie
setting edit
Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 6:42 pm
"I've already tried," Chrysocolla snapped, and she was still searching for where she knew him from - the thoughts wouldn't connect, wouldn't snap together; and the fact she knew that she knew but couldn't place it was irritating her. She shook her head slightly to dismiss the thought, folding her arms in front of her chest, petulant. "If teleporting doesn't work, the odds there's some sort of easy way to leave this place are really low, okay? And besides, even if I could find a way out - you're not my friend. Why would I help you?"
(Her tone was easy, clear, stating a fact; but her eyes said she would have attacked him for his starseed if it didn't mean she could be stuck in a room with a corpse if she won. The morality had nothing to do with it. He was a Knight, not a person, and if it wouldn't have lead to further problems she wouldn't have bothered treating him like one. After all - Chrysocolla was no stranger to looks that spoke of impending violence.)
"This has nothing to do with the Negaverse because even if it did, we'd be in Negaspace, or we'd be in the Rift. This isn't either of those places. It's too manmade."
"I've seen Negaspace," Scholomance muttered lowly. "And I've seen that the Negaverse can possess buildings and subways if they're dedicated enough. They'd also lock their own in place if it suited their needs. You're a corrupted senshi, right? What good are you next to an agent? Next to someone like Schörl, or Cinnabar?"
He retired his glance from her at once. Needling her and belittling her promised no end to confinement - especially if she was right about its source. Still, their predicament proved magical, and looking for a physical means of exit sounded incongruous by comparison. Of the pair, he knew only his own magic - the heavy knells pulled from the Scholomance and the fogs ushered in by the snap of a whip. He knew its potency, its viability. They may not know exit by normal means, but if there remained some form of magical escape route…
"I'm going to try something. It won't hurt you, but it might find a way out." Apprehension welled at the impending pain, but he swallowed it against his survivalism. They needed to leave, and soon, if the corrupted senshi decided that starseeds were clearly the answer to their predicament.
He coiled his whip, then loosed it in a quick strike against the ground. A familiar toll filled the room, ambiguous in origin, and the room unwound itself in short order. Mist coiled about, too thick for the room, too potent for them to see much of an exit in this place. And Scholomance himself was frozen at his Wonder's behest, doomed to look on helplessly if this eternal senshi found a promising outlet.
daekie
Knight: Magnum Mortum Duration: 30 second maximum magic pool Distance: Victims can be tagged up to 20 feet from Scholomance himself Number affected: Up to 6 'tagged' based on line of sight Extra: Magic 'tethers' at 30 feet from Scholomance barring sight interruption Description: Scholomance summons a death knell that will immediately affect 'tagged' characters (anyone focused on by Scholomance within line of sight). Any targeted character will have their corporeal form turned into a ghastly spirit-form, and will find that any attack or attempt made toward corporeal bodies will only pass through their form. In trade, corporeal characters will be unable to strike or harm those who are rendered as spirits. Spirits will see the world around them as an inverted, crumbling version of their current location. Corporeal characters will look to them as blots of energy rather than people. Spirits can still attack each other, and both corporeal and incorporeal characters can attack Scholomance, as he is the link between the illusory otherworld and the real world. Breaking his concentration will end the attack prematurely.
During channeling, Scholomance's magic actively damages him as tradeoff. Effects start at full body ache and exhaustion and can lead up to immediate collapse or beyond, depending on circumstances. He is also completely immobile while casting and cannot attack any targets.
idk what could happen with the magic, so maybe have the floor fall out in your next post?
Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 8:54 pm
"I've learned from both of them." And that actually seemed to strike a nerve, for right as Scholomance averted his gaze, Chrysocolla turned to glare at him like he'd tread on her sister's grave. "I'd hope they know what's best for me, considering they're my commanding officers? I guess you wouldn't understand, since you really don't have that sort of thing." (It was half-mocking. Order, huh? They had no sense of order, no organization. It wouldn't be funny if she pointed it out, but in her own head she could laugh all she wanted.) "Schörl's better than you could ever hope to be. Maybe one day I'll be half of what she is."
Chrysocolla's tone had gone soft, for a second, when she thought about Schörl. It was easy to read for what it was: admiration with a crush mixed in, the sort of way you talked about the person you were in love with when you knew they'd never love you back so you didn't have to worry. Just with a little bit of fanaticism added, of course. Just a girl with a crush on her teacher.
And she felt herself untether from her own skin, half-connected, a phantasm; the world lapsed into curling smoke, so thick she felt like she could wrap it around her skin like cloth, and the walls half-glinted in a way that spoke of mirrors just out of her sight. Despite the grandeur of it all, however, things looked just as solid as they had prior. "Everything looks just as inescapable as it did before - "
Chrysocolla's breath caught in her throat as the floor in the corner began to splinter and crack with a noise like glass, a foot away from Scholomance's heels, and the noise caught in her head and echoed too loudly.
Her voice came to him as through water - thick, clouded, warped. His mind demanded precious seconds in decoding her aural emissions while his magic coursed thoruhg his body. Pain settled in, comfortable with its host. The room relaxed into its unbound strips.
But, as the senshi halted abruptly, as did his magic - his foot slipped, caught, disrupted his concentration. The spell broke. The world came together once more. Yet the floor looked all wrong; his magic finished, hadn't it? No longer did a bullet wound punctuate a cyanotype sky. So why, then —
Scholomance's foot punctured wholesale through the floor. His leg followed in short order, until his standing leg folded beneath him to stop the descent. "s**t!" The impact bruised his shin, jarred his muscles. His whip scattered over the floor uselessly. A gloved hand searching for purchase found nothing more than crumbling matter. "Looks like we found our way out. Let's hope the landing kills us outright." Was there reason to expect more than a grim fate from this predicament? As Scholomance wagered not, the floor continued with its dissolution.
Larger chunks fell, and Scholomance with them; down he descended, into the whorling smoke below. Little more than a hiss marked his departure.
