RP:Requiem for a Dream

Part of the The God of Undeath Arc

Part of the Once Upon a Midnight Dreary Arc

Summary: Bonds once strained between a parent and child are strengthened in the dream realm

Quintessa was effectively bedridden after her assault, and if her physicians were to be trusted, she was lucky to make it out that well. Even with the use of magic potions the changeling’s body was left frail, her breathing wheezing for days as her lungs tried to repair the damage. There was one place Quintessa was still whole, however, and that was within the realm of her dreams. Leaving her cyclopian nightmare fortress behind her, the changeling wanders the Dream Wilds, a hand held aloft to cast a crimson light into the thick fog of the in between, a small aid in the otherwise difficult realm to traverse. But what was Quintessa looking for? Yet again she skirts along the dreamers of Cenril, this time unafraid of being waylaid by Gospel. Unafraid of the unspeakable nightmares of the deep. The black, crushing waves wash up to consume her, but she does not shirk away, she simply tugs on the silver thread leading back to her castle to remind herself she’s dreaming. The glow of Arh’Nuk cuts a path through the fog, leading her in the direction of the woman she still had the nerve to call ‘Mother’ but what would her dream palace look like? What would Quintessa find hidden within the realm of Khitti’s nightmares?

Khitti || The fog remained in the area, despite Arh’nuk’s guiding light. After some time of wandering, Quintessa would find herself within a forest, the ironwood trees dense and sturdy, unbending to the harsh breeze that filtered through the woods. The trees seemed to crawl on for days in the dim evening light of the Khitti’s dream, Kafzhash fighting to stay risen, while Vaalane and Arh’Nuk won the battle for dominance, just as they did every night. And yet, despite the unnerving air about the forest, there were still voices, laughter. There were two separate blurs of red, faint giggles from each, and then a shriek followed by more laughter as one found the other. “Khatja, how do you always manage to find me?” They weren’t speaking Common, yet Quintessa was still able to understand them. One ran away, yelling to her sister as she went. “Because I spend time out here while you fuss over dresses and ribbons and dancing and boys!” In truth, Khitti’d always had those clairvoyant feelings. It affected her perception, helping the human girl to be a decent hunter, even in her early years. But the etherealness of it all was never spoken of. Never mentioned unless it had been attributed to her father’s teachings. “Aw, come on! Let me win for once!” Khatja cackled as she climbed a tree and hid from Lydia, her voice projecting itself above the fog with her new height. “Never!”

Quintessa felt the power of her light dim until it was nothing, the trees of the forest growing up thick around her. She lowers her hand and moves forward towards the voices, skulking just out of sight like an evil witch in the woods. She slowly creeps around a tree, clinging to it as her mismatched eyes peer to spot Khatja, and though Quintessa didn’t know who this girl was, somehow in her heart she understood it. She could feel the powerful bond in what she assumes is a memory of a time long, long ago. This was all the confirmation Quintessa needed to know she was in the right place, but how was she going to interrupt this? The changeling was keen on blending into the dreams of others, knowing abrupt changes could rouse the dreamer. For now she continues to lurk, watching the dream play out from her shadowy place behind the trees.

Khitti looked down at the ground from where her hiding spot was, her attention settling on where Quintessa was hidden. She didn’t know what it was, but she felt like she was being watched, her stomach doing its usual flipflops when she got those bad feelings. There was a momentary shift, from early teen Khitti to the version that Tessa knew well, before reverting back to her younger form. It was so quick, the versions fading in and out of each other. “AHA. I found you!” The younger Khitti sighed as Lydia pointed up at her and danced about, the girl with the pigtails being her usual gloating self, as if Khitti hadn’t just beaten her at hide and seek five times in a row before this. The slightly older girl jumped down from the tree and rolled her eyes at her sister, “Yeah yeah. You won.” It was clear, now that the two were together side by side where the changeling could see, that they were twins. But there were clear differences between the two: Lydia leaned towards dresses and frilly things like her mother, while Khitti was a bit more tomboyish in her attire. “Time to go home before mother yells at us again.” Lydia stuck out her tongue then ran off, “You mean yells at -you-!”. Khitti sighed again and started off for home.

Quintessa blinks to test her eyes as the vision of Khitti shifts for a moment into her adult form. She holds completely still as she looks through the trees, scared that quickly ducking back and hiding behind the tree would give her away as she searches, but eventually Lydia provides a distraction, stealing Khitti’s attention long enough to slip further back into the shadows and back into the darkness of the forest. She skulks again in the shadows, circling around to follow them home, to creep up once they were inside and maybe peer into the windows, but just as Quintessa exits the edge of the forest into the clearing she steps on a twig, the snap causing her to freeze again as she stares at Khitti’s back. Perhaps she was too far away to notice…

Khitti || If Khitti had heard, she disregarded it, the impending wrath of her mother more terrifying than anything else that might be waiting in the forest--even if it was a lycan. Or worse, a bear. Once Khitti left Tessa’s field of vision, time sped up just a little bit around her. Not much, but enough now that the sun had disappeared entirely and moons shone with their respective lights overhead. Before Tessa could even take a step, however, dark riders upon dark horses stampede past her, carrying the scent of undeath with them. Their target was that of Khitti’s village and nothing would stop them from carrying out their orders. When Tessa finally arrived, the village was already in flames, screams of terror and the wails of the dying filled the area, lifting towards the heavens. A death knight, rotting away beneath its armor, lugged the twin redheads from their house, their father, Maximus, slain just inside the doorway, their mother, Magda, torn to pieces in the girl’s bedroom where she’d run to protect them. Khitti and Lydia were not the only children being carried off elsewhere to the death knights’ necromancer masters. The others had just recently had their fourteenth birthdays, the same as Khitti and Lydia, all of them chosen for unspoken horrors that lurked beneath the surface of Dhavislaav. But only one of them would make it out alive. The only one that did was standing in the middle of the town, watching the chaos around her. The older Khitti, the one that the changeling knew so well, just stood there. Occasionally, one of the villagers--her family and friends--would reach out and grab her leg, begging for help. Sometimes, the wind from the riders leaving the village blew at her hair, sending strands of red flying. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said.

Quintessa was frozen in her place for what felt like eons, the time warping around her turning day to night, the dark riders thundering past her before she could move. She follows behind, the scent of fire and death leading her as much as the hoofprints in the ground. She stumbles upon the scene of horror, slain people in the threshold, blood trickling into the streets. Finally she finds Khitti, standing in the center of chaos, a scene that Quintessa should have expected Khitti’s dream palace to be. When she speaks to the changeling she once again becomes petrified, her hands clenching at her sides. “I know,” she says timidly, scared of how Khitti might lash out the same way she had in Vailkrin not too long ago. “But this is the only way I can speak without it watching me…” Quintessa swallows the lump in her throat, the memories she had just witnessed already eroding her resolve. “Will you give me a chance to explain?”

Khitti turned her head to look at Quintessa over her shoulder, her olive-green eyes watery as tears streamed down her face. She stared at the girl for a long time, unsure of her own emotions as they coursed around in her mind. The twilight witch looked down at the ground, her lips twisted into a distraught frown, then offered the changeling a sole nod, before heading into the house that she had lived in for fourteen years of her life. But, on the inside, it was totally different. There was no carnage, everything was in its place and her mother and father were tending to their sewing and woodcarving by the fire, their usual nightly entertainment. But they weren’t -her- parents per se, they were Khitt’s. He and his brother were seated at the dinner table still, their current older selves, Lucius painting some of his model figures while Khitt was looking over the sports pages from the Richtersgans paper from the day before. “I don’t know why you go out there,” Khitti’s masculine half said to her. She just shrugged and sat down at the table, offering the seat next to her to Quintessa. “Oh, I see we have a guest,” he said, seemingly unperturbed by the changeling’s invasion of their dreamworld. “Don’t mind Lucius. He’s in his own world.”

Quintessa follows after Khitti, her own tears she was holding back trickling over the corners of her eyes as she headed into the bright reflection of the home. Somehow she feels extremely uncomfortable being greeted and offered a seat, but she takes it anyway, a glance given to Lucius before falling upon the table. She had asked for a chance to explain but now she didn’t know where to start. “I… I’m so sorry,” she begins, an apology was owed so it was a decent place to start. “I don’t want to work for it- it’s making me… “ The emotion in her voice begins to strain against it, her vision blurred as she forces out a final sentence. “I didn’t want to betray you again! I don’t want any of this!”

Khitti || Khitt closed his paper and folded it up, then folded his arms across the table and leaned forward a bit, his attention on Quintessa. “We know. I mean, we sort of had a feeling in the beginning, but after that day in Vailkrin, it was obvious.” Khitti just sat there, silent, occasionally wiping at her eyes. After a few moments, she reached down and took Tessa’s hand, squeezing it three times. She might not know what it meant, but Khitti did it anyway. It had been something her and Brand started a couple years ago, as a way to say ‘I love you’ without saying it outloud, when either one of them really needed it. The two were not the type for PDA like other couples were, so it was the most logical solution, for when they both needed reassurance. Khitti would still hold Tessa’s hand if she allowed it, but otherwise, the female redhead kept silent. “You do realize though that some sort of public repercussion is going to have to happen, right? I highly doubt it will come to something like an execution, because let’s be honest, Kasyr would’ve done that already. But, he knows better, because he knows you. He doesn’t show it, but I’m pretty sure he’s as hurt about this whole thing as your mother is,” Khitt said.

Quintessa couldn’t properly see through her tears, but she knew it was Khitti’s hand that had taken hers and squeezed it three times. Instinctively she squeezed back three times as well, even though she doesn’t fully understand the meaning. She uses her free hand to wipe away the tears, looking over to Khitt as he speaks. “I know… I know…” Despair was creeping in. Her grip tightens on Khitti’s hand. “I have to be punished… I don’t want it… But I messed up… I’m stuck…” She sinks into her seat, her form shifting to be smaller, more child-like. “Kasyr… He doesn’t care about me anymore. He wanted me to suffer. The Kasyr I knew is dead- died in my basement when we did that terrible ritual to transform him into the spawn of Khasad and Elazul. One of many mistakes… I’ll surely pay for them all…” She shifts her gaze over to Khitti now, her eyes pleading. “But you’ll make sure they don’t execute me, right? You’ll protect me? I don’t deserve to die for this…” There are tears flowing yet again. “I-I was trying to do the right thing. I fixed the Sage and was going to fix Xalious too, but it stopped me, gave me this thing that allowed it to watch me. I couldn’t even ask for help in time. I wanted to so badly. I promised I’d come to you for help but I couldn’t.”

Khitti || Khitt shook his head. “Kasyr was literally dying. He -had- to go back to being a vampire. There was no other option. That’s not on you anymore than that out there--” He pointed towards the door, and the chaos that Khitti and Tessa had left out there. “--was Khitti’s fault. Just like she had no choice in becoming a vampire. Doesn’t matter if she told that idiotic elder vampire that turned her to do it, she still didn’t have a choice. Kasyr is still in there somewhere. He’s just… like your mother. And you, honestly. You said it yourself. You were doing what you thought was necessary. And so is he. So are all of us.” He waved a hand and mugs of hot chocolate appeared, the exact way he and Khitti preferred it, with whipped cream and cinnamon on top. “You’re not going to die. Kasyr would’ve killed you already--and I mean that. He has had ample opportunity and you are still living and breathing now, albeit a little more painfully.” With another wave of his hand, the mugs spread out across the table, one to each of them, including his brother. “Do you really think that she could kill you now? After everything?” He gestured towards Khitti before taking a sip of his drink. “This Caluss stuff has stirred up a lot in her head. You saw outside and that’s not even the whole of it. And the two of us finding out we’re actually witches and that the war and magic ban here at home was because of our ancestors getting betrayed--it’s a lot to process. But even now, she’s telling you she loves you. She’s had papers waiting in our desk at the Spire to make your adoption official, if you wanted it. She can’t do the fancy bloodbonding that vampires and other beings can do, but she wanted to do that at least…” Khitti sipped her hot chocolate quietly, continuing to let Khitt do the talking for now. “No, you’re not going to die. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but not that.”

Quintessa furrows her brow. There was much about the Kasyr-Vampire situation that she simply did not know, but when Khitt speaks of Kasyr doing things he thought necessary she shoots him an angry glare. “He stuck his hand through my chest! Was that necessary?” Quintessa certainly doesn’t think so but she lets the reactionary anger go as she looks over at Khitti, the news of adoption papers and bloodbonding causing a new emotion to erase it. “What…? Really?” The guilt she was already holding onto hit her three fold. Caluss’ timing couldn’t be any worse. “Of course… Of course I want that. Even in my pact to Caluss I have a specific carveout for you. I can never be made to directly harm my family- That includes you, my mother. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than a mother…” She’s crying again, this time the tears bittersweet. “When this is all over can we still?” Quintessa takes a moment to steal herself, looking back over at Khitt. “We have to kill this putrid thing. I can’t do this any longer. I’m going insane.”

Khitti || Khitt outwardly cringed a little at the thought of getting a hole punched into his chest and Khitti awkwardly side-eyed the ground. “Wow, Kasyr’s more like you than I thought,” he said to his feminine counterpart offhandedly. Khitti couldn’t help but smirk at Khitt and shook her head, finally turning to Quintessa, “Yes, we can. You can still keep your last name and all that, as I see you’ve changed over from Dragana. And don’t worry about Kasyr for now. He’s got vampire-brain. Sometimes, when you’re angry, you go a little feral. It wasn’t the most optimal route, but it needed to happen. Caluss can still see you, but knows that you can’t do anything while you’re healing. So, sit tight, and have Karasu discreetly borrow some books from me. I dunno. My fairy tales or something. Something to try to keep your mind off of it for now. It’s going to be tough and being cooped up isn’t going to help anything but you have to try. We have a plan.” Her last words echoed Lanlan’s from Tessa’s shared dream with the drow recently.

Quintessa smiles when she hears she can still be adopted. It was tiny but it was there. “I’ll specify that House Blackwell is a cadet branch of your tree- I’d love that.” When Khitti explains Kasyr’s actions she nods to her solemnly. She trusted Khitti knew what was right even if she herself didn’t understand or agree. “Okay.” She says, noting that they had a plan, the echoing from Lanlan’s message to her not lost on her. “But I can’t sit around for long. Caluss expects action. It wants revenge for Xalious… for Cenril, for a hoard of other things. I have to fight everyone I couldn’t protect with my pact. Lanlan, Valrae… even Kai and Penny are being stalked right now by Glooms… I’m trying to stall as long as possible but we’re running out of time.” With that warning she gives Khitti’s hand another squeeze. “I’ll tell Karasu to borrow some books from you in the meantime. Kasyr at least gave me an excuse for a little while longer.”

Khitti nodded at Tessa, “I know.” She paused, side-eyeing Khitt with a smirk. “And be nice to Khitt. He’s saved my ass more times than I can count. He’s just… better at words and being direct than I am.” Khitt offered Tessa one of those half-assed salutes of his and a smirk. “Things will be okay, yeah?” She brought the girl close for a hug and kissed her on the forehead. As the embrace ended, Quintessa was left in the fog again. There was no sign of Dhavislaav or the chaos that had been wrought during the week of Khitti’s fourteenth birthday. No sign of the Von Schreier home either. When Khitti awoke, she crawled out of bed and made her way through the apartment, up the stairs to the second floor of her home, and out the door onto the balcony that stretched around the entirety of the outside of the building. With her lips twisted into a pensive frown, Khitti stared at the moons. Arh’Nuk had always been Tessa’s and now, after finding out her witch heritage and their connections with Valaane, the larger of the two felt like Khitti’s. ‘We’ll bring her home soon,’ Khitt said reassuringly.