RP:The Red Mask
Background
This is part of the arc: The Mystery of the Wandering Grimoire
Vailkrin Plaza
Jolie was sitting at one of those tables, just finished sipping some sort of mocha-and-foam concoction, and unaccompanied by either Maladroit (who was currently missing, up to Gods-knew-what) or the bone dragon who’d kept her company in the abomination’s absence. Her gaze was set upon the cliffs above, where once a black palace has stood, a thoughtful expression on her face.
Kirien had blood on his palms. It was this that he seemed focused on as he meandered up from the fountain, lengthy strides carrying him in a winding, random pattern through throngs of people while he stared thoughtfully down at the blood. Behind him was his company, a tiny whirl of ethereal many-feathered limbs and wide eyes, swimming through the air with ease. Kirien was in the midst of raising his hand to have a taste of the still-fresh liquid painting it when he paused, abruptly, close by the table Jolie sat quietly at; and he turned his head in the sineater's direction, tongue half out of his mouth and now dabbed with red at the tip. "Oh. Hi." That was polite, no?
Jolie’s attention was dragged from the cliff-face by that most polite greeting – more polite than a dagger to the face, at any rate – and offered Kirien a abrupt nod for greeting, seeing as she wasn’t all that familiar with the kit. The blood made her blink – as did the.. octopus? “Er…” she said. “Been out for lunch, then?” She was staring at the octopus, as she unsubtly fished for reason why Kirien was – to her, at least - suddenly a blood-eater.
Redhale was still absent from the city, on whatever damned errand was taking him so long. Of course though, his presence was never really null, and lest Jolie and Kirien forget that one of the black pages from his blasted spellbook flew in on a breeze, slapping against the outer wall of one of the nearby shops.
Kirien , pivoting on one foot, spun his body to face Jolie then hopped forward, as though he'd decided to play a game of hop-scotch with himself. Boots hit the cobblestones with sharp clacks until he came to a sudden pause, balancing on a single leg for a moment. The octopus propelled itself along after the empath until it ended up spinning lazily round his head like a living satellite, while Kirien leaned over slightly to squint at Jolie over the rim of his glasses. "Aight. Not lunch though, no - he was gone by the time I found this." He appeared a bit put-off by that, to be honest. "This is just a taste." To remind him. He was blind to that black page, though the crinkle of paper in the wind might have caused his ears to twitch.
Jolie said, “Who was gone..?” that ebon paper was the next thing that interrupted her line of thought, though, and she half-stood, frowning at it. “Not again…” It seemed solitary, though, and she simply glared toward the wall it stuck to.
Kirien 's head fell to a slight tilt. "Who was gone? A feisty one." He licked thoughtfully at a fingertip, tongue dabbed with red. "It's no matter. He es mine et I am his so we'll run into each other again in the end." Really, he was just glad Kuzial had finally made it out of the pit in northern Xalious - only to end up bleeding profusely all over the place, it seemed. The vampire huffed. Then, he glanced in the direction of the page fluttering in the corners of his hearing, and which had drawn Jolie's attention. "Paper? Or somethin'?" It was troublesome being blind, sometimes.
Jolie had risen fully, and was crossing Kirien's path to walk toward the black blot, when she caught a scent.... "Oh." Pale eyes turned upon the kit, and the necromancer wore for just a brief instant a rather grim little smile. "Oh. I see." What she saw was not explained, as by then then she'd continued on toward the wall. "Paper, yes. But not any paper." She glanced about for sign of that blasted book, and found it not. "Troubling paper. Black."
Kirien felt that smile more than anything else, of course. Once, he blinked, then licked another finger clean, a hint of curiosity showing in his expression. Blind gaze watched Jolie as though he thought he might see what she had if he scrutinised her for long enough, but after a moment he was turning to wander along in the necromancer's footsteps. "Black paper?" His fingers wiggled some, absently, and he hopped ahead of Jolie so as to peer in the general direction of the page. A familiar sensation rippled across him. "Ah. A staring page?"
Jolie narrowed a look on the vampire, “You know of them? Damned things have been fluttering all over the city for days. And I can’t find Redhale…” she ceased speaking, then, knowing Kirien to be one of a company she had come to mistrust. Where was Maghu when she needed him? Pale fingers smoothed over the page, and she changed topic, “You’re a long way from home.”
Kirien 's head fell to a slight tilt. "Who was gone? A feisty one." He licked thoughtfully at a fingertip, tongue dabbed with red. "It's no matter. He es mine et I am his so we'll run into each other again in the end." Really, he was just glad Kuzial had finally made it out of the pit in northern Xalious - only to end up bleeding profusely all over the place, it seemed. The vampire huffed. Then, he glanced in the direction of the page fluttering in the corners of his hearing, and which had drawn Jolie's attention. "Paper? Or somethin'?" It was troublesome being blind, sometimes.
Jolie had risen fully, and was crossing Kirien's path to walk toward the black blot, when she caught a scent.... "Oh." Pale eyes turned upon the kit, and the necromancer wore for just a brief instant a rather grim little smile. "Oh. I see." What she saw was not explained, as by then then she'd continued on toward the wall. "Paper, yes. But not any paper." She glanced about for sign of that blasted book, and found it not. "Troubling paper. Black."
Kirien felt that smile more than anything else, of course. Once, he blinked, then licked another finger clean, a hint of curiosity showing in his expression. Blind gaze watched Jolie as though he thought he might see what she had if he scrutinised her for long enough, but after a moment he was turning to wander along in the necromancer's footsteps. "Black paper?" His fingers wiggled some, absently, and he hopped ahead of Jolie so as to peer in the general direction of the page. A familiar sensation rippled across him. "Ah. A staring page?"
As if called by the conversation, another rectangle of paper floated down the street to be blown into the wall right next to its friend, tiling perfectly although on a diagonal so that the pair made a sloped line along the wall.
Jolie stared at the octopus, then, blinking gently, and as a consequence was almost slapped in the face by that second page, which she dodged narrowly. She eyed that, next.
A distant scream sounds from the bowels of Vailkrin's lower east side.
Jolie at least knew what Maghu was up to, now.
Kirien only recognised the paper due to his eidetic memory, and the recollection of a previous meeting with the book that stared but possessed no eyes - much like its owner, perhaps. "I've met it before," he said to Jolie slowly, distractedly, gazing sightlessly upon the lone black blot that was soon joined by another. It was the second he reached for, pinning it between a stony forefinger and thumb. The woman's remark, whether for him or the pages, was answered all the same. "I was called. Sort of. It's hard to ignore that taste." A pause. The octopus was still spinning round his head. "That, et I was planning to run into you at some point. I have stories."
Kirien turned his head and swivelled his ears in the direction of that scream on the wind, a black page still fluttering in his grasp.
Jolie's upper lip might've curled a little at mention of 'that taste', but the voice she used was sweet as honey. "Oh, were you now? And do you?" But she was gazing at the second black leaf of paper, "Do be careful with that," she noted, when Kirien touched it. "They don't much like being handled, I think."
Redhale 's second page tore itself out of Kirien's hand to stick firmly to the wall, and the next one to come soaring in batted over Kirien's head before sticking to the wall to tessellate against the other, of which there were somehow now five, despite the fact that none of them had moved. From near the wall they had chosen a faint, whistling breeze could be heard.
Jolie sighed, "Now you've done it."
A clatter of bones, loud and jangling on black stone, approached the Plaza from the south.
Kirien , perceptive as he was, levelled a knowing sort of look on Jolie when she spoke all saccharine to him. He remained entirely affable, stating nonchalantly and with a bit of a shrug, "I was an' I do. But ah…" He paused again, the rustle of paper growing louder in his ears as another page passed by over his head to cling to the wall, "I always pick the worst time for stories, it seems."
Jolie cast a hasty glance toward that skeletal sound, and grinned. "It seems you do, at that."
The black hole on the wall was growing bigger, its edges no longer even square like the pages that apparently made it up. From it the wind that could previously barely be heard blew forth, buffering those present with a cold breeze upon which a multitude of clashing sounds could be heard.
Kirien twitched an ear in the direction of south. His focus remained mostly on the growing opening in the wall. "I wonder what kind of story it'll show me this time," he murmured, looking for all the world as if he'd no problem with this current strange situation. In fact, he took a step toward that gaping entranceway of a sort.
Jolie's elbow was abruptly planted in the middle of Kirien's back as she appeared to stumble over nothing at all, a hearty shove being the immediate result. Clinging to the edge of the hole, she whispered, "Oops," and turned toward the colossal remnant of the black dragon ambling into sight, his skull poised atop a column of bare vertebrae and his newly re-leathered wings incongruous against the slats of naked bone that were his ribs.
Jolie called to Mahgu, "I’ll have need of you, in a while. Stay put, for now, though."
The windy opening suddenly reversed the direction of its breeze, sucking inwards with a great inhale. Kirien's proximity, and the fact that he had just been pushed, made him likely fodder for the hungry hole.
Jolie's hair was a black whip, fine strands drawn toward the abyss by its vacuum of wind.
Kirien tripped. Considering the direction he'd been moving in, he kind of fell head-first toward that opening when Jolie shoved into him though he managed to right himself with one foot in the blackness and one out. Lucky or unlucky as that may be, it did not appear to matter much anyway; he was in the process of turning his head to from in Jolie and Maghu's direction when the wind blasting out of the hole and into his face swirled and then inhaled without warning, pulling a startled Kirien into its shadowy depths with little effort.
Kirien said, "Oi!"
Kirien 's octopus went too.
The bone dragon sighed - inwardly, at least - and lowered himself to sit not far from the hole's edge. ~I have done as you asked.~
The mental statement came to Jolie's thoughts with a rather sour edge. "And you'll do it again," she replied, aloud, "All too soon." With that, and a faint peal of amusement rippling from her throat, she drew a knife, and stepped all too willingly into the darkness.
The breathing opening crumpled quickly behind Jolie, scrunched pieces of black paper falling to the ground to litter the streets. If Maghu was to follow he would have to move swiftly before the portal was gone altogether. Inside the dark realm, Jolie and Kirien would find themselves a fair way from each other, only seen as hazy outlines on a great plain which stretched uninterrupted as far as the eye could see in all directions.
Mahgu pondered scrambling after the necromancer. Pondered, and pondered.. until it was too late to follow, and the wall was just a wall again. ~Oops~ he thought, to himself, grinning - mainly because a skull can do nothing else.
One moment there was darkness and all sense of his perception had faded, leaving him totally blind in a whirl of shadow and fluttering book pages; but the next, Kirien was opening his eye, that he'd not realised he'd closed, to view a vast and endless plain. It stretched on without stopping and he could not properly map it out through his regular form of sight - a sign to the empath that this image was not entirely real in some way or another. Once, he scrunched up his nose, then turned to cast a cursory glance around in search of anything immediately dangerous. All he saw was Jolie, a fluxing humanoid shape some ways off. He raised an arm to wave in her direction, and Rorschach might have waved too.
Jolie still clutched that apparently dark-bladed dagger n her hand, and would catch the tail end of Kirien’s wave – and a little glimmer of motion in the near proximity of the vampire’s head.. what the hell –was- that thing, anyway? – but made no attempt at motion, not trusting the illusory ground a bit after last time she’d encountered it. The dagger was re-sheathed with a slightly wet slur of sound, and she glanced about the space, frowning. “The hell are we now..”
A rolling wave rose up in the distance, lifting the land in cracked portions, jumbling them about and then setting them down as it moved. Despite originating miles away from where either of the visitors stood the quake reached them quickly, first tossing Kirien and then Jolie about on the plain. Their positions had obviously changed but because each one's only reference point was the other it seemed to make little difference.
Kirien finished licking the remnants of Kuzial's blood from his hand before he was fishing about in his coat pockets, humming thoughtfully to himself. A faceted ruby, engraved here and there with sparking, golden runes, was drawn out from the depths of one and flipped up before it was caught again. "I wonder if Redhale's here." Perhaps it was bad timing on his part because Kirien noticed flickers of motion in the corner of his eye and, blinking gently, turned. He jolted in surprise but it was upon him before he could even react, the ground trembling violently underfoot, fissures creating spider-web cracks that grew and spread and widened - and Kirien, for the first time in a long time, was at the mercy of the 'earth', even if it was not exactly real. "[Fiddlesticks]*! I like the forest more!" he half-shouted, half-squeaked, struggling to maintain his balance.
Jolie had expected the ground to shift, but in those heels of hers was even less prepared for how roughly it did so, and was flung backward onto her backside like a ragdoll, cussing fit to make a sailor blush once she’d caught her breath again. It was instinct to summon her darknesses for aid, but the words were only partway formed in her mind before she remembered the uselessness of magics in this place, whose own Arcanum seemed to damp the tide of all others whilst she was in its abyssal grip. She’d caught that licking gesture before gravity went to hell in a handbasket – was the kit taunting her? impossible, surely, but it irked her all the same – and that cold grin spread her lips once more as she gained her feet. Her turn to call out: “Redhale!” It was hollered into the dark, two syllables snapped out in hope they might summon the Dark Man, or at least whatever semblance of him existed here.
Following the wave like some mad greyhound was another figure, their body leaning forwards at a ridiculous angle so that only the speed of their movement kept them from falling over. Their figure was led by a bright red face, upon which a scrunched face scowled menacingly, and behind them a giant plume of kicked-up dust rose into the sky. Even though the wave itself had appeared to surpass any natural speed limit by covering the distance between the horizon and the visitors in less than a few seconds this sprinting figure appeared to be gaining on it, and indeed, in one great leap, jumped atop the rolling land surge to stomp it into the ground. A shout of triumph drifted over from where he stood, holding some sort of pole up over his head.
Kirien 's hair whipped on an unknown wind tearing about the illusionary landscape, strands in his eyes and short auburn trails whirling behind him. Somehow he managed to remain upright, if looking slightly shaken - and it was likely due to a pinch of luck and his innate ability to move with the earth rather than against it that saved the vampire an unfortunate and painful meeting with the ground. He was attempting to pick his way across the plain to Jolie when someone rushed close by him, prompting Kirien to spin about on one foot to stare in unabashed surprise after the figure chasing the earth. He watched, with some sort of childlike awe, the way the stranger brought the quake and that wave of breaking stone and dust to an abrupt end; and then he clapped his hands together excitedly, grinning broad enough to prove his vampiric heritage. "A terramancer? Jolie, have you been here before?" The latter half of that was called over the plain as Kirien continued on his path to the necromancer, though his gaze was affixed intently upon the pole-wielding stranger.
Jolie said, "Yes, I have.." In a way, and she might have afforded Kirien a brief explanation were she not firstly still trying to find balance on needle-like heeltips and secondly gawping at the figure who'd come at them, and in particular that item he bore in hand. Once more, her dagger was grasped at the hilt, though remained undrawn from the slick liquid that coated its metallic home. "There you are…" she said to the masked one, hoping to have at last found the source of the grimoire's odd sentience. "What the buggery are you up to?"
The masked figure whirled around upon hearing Jolie call out to him, dropping into a low stance and jabbing his staff out in the direction of the sound. The mask he wore showed emotion for him, a deep red imp face standing out against the otherwise silvery-white landscape. From behind that frown a voice growled, "Moving. Gotta keep moving. You should too."
Kirien tilted his head. "I've been to Sage before, in here. Back when it was young," he responded somewhat absent-mindedly as he came to a pause beside Jolie at last, face still turned in the direction of the masked figure. His normally-blind gaze bored into the painted eyes of the imp's scowling visage and Kirien drank up the colour of it with some sort of visible excitement. A raise of brow followed when the other spoke, however. "Are we runnin' or just movin'? To where, even, or what from?" He'd a habit of curious questions.
Jolie fingered the knife’s hilt as she grunted an acknowledgement of the fact Kirien had visited the forest, too, and started moving away from the sound that rumbled her very blood, or so it felt. That staff… if it had faces upon it, she did not want to look at them. “Best we do as she says,” she muttered, doing her best to keep pace with the masked figure without losing too much ground between the kit and herself. “And.. what the hell is that.. thing hanging around your head?” Hardly the circumstance for casual conversation, but… she had to know, dammit.
Redhale 's masked avatar swung his polearm about to point in the direction he had come from and spoke a single word in answer to Kirien, "That," Before beginning to move again, each step he took bounding him forward at least ten metres. How he managed to move in strides longer than his legs was not clear, but then so few things in this world were. What was clear, however, was the towering wall that had been pointed to. Its featureless bulk stampeded over the plains, all of the land in its way simply disappearing into, or beneath its sheer face.
Kirien 's gaze flitted between Jolie and the man before he followed the direction of that raised staff to a point back over his shoulder - or a thing, maybe. "Probably a good idea," he murmured, noting the heavy, thunderous sounds of the rushing wall behind him as he fell into step a foot or so behind the masked avatar. His strides were not nearly as long but Kirien stalked with little trouble in his wake, occasionally looking back at that approaching construct. His attention shifted to Jolie. "This?" He caught the little octopus briefly by a feathery tentacle. "It, er, es part of those stories I have to tell you at some point. You know, when we are not at risk of being eaten by a wall." Releasing his many-limbed companion, he flipped the ruby into the air and caught it once more and added as an afterthought, "His name is Rorschach."
Jolie had quickened her pace, somewhat, soundless steps that would have usually rung clear as metal struck flooring or hard ground, but now held the same silence as though she crept on the balls of her feet and not the whole sole. “Right…” was her reply to the vampire, with a hasty glance back to the encroaching edifice, before the serrated and blood-smeared dagger was hooked swiftly and sneakily from its sheath, two long steps taken to bring her aside the kit, the jab she took toward him every bit as swift. The knife, coated with venomous liquid – well, it would be to a vampire, anyway – was not stabbed forward with so much impetus as to cause a vicious nor a deadly wound, but enough to at least slice or prick Kirien with that unexpected strike.
Redhale 's image pulled ahead of the two without seeming to so much as break a sweat. His figure leapt forward through space as if the path he took had stitched distant parts of the land together for him. Wherever, or whenever, he was from, he understood the nature of this illusory world, and had apparently succeeded in making it submit to him through whatever skills he had. The two visitors however would find following him harder, and the wall rushed forwards eagerly to meet them...
Kirien ran like the wind, but moved utterly and eerily silent. He was a wraith in this flat, silvery landscape, a whirl of grey-black accented with teal highlights and gold buttons, tracing the footsteps of an illusion in a fake world. Mostly because he was somewhat fond of the woman, and did not desire to leave her alone wherever they currently were in the story imbedded in the black pages that made up this place, he remained relatively close by Jolie's side as they fled the oncoming entity. He was not, however, quite foolish enough to allow a woman too close to him when she held a knife dripping with insidious poison and ducked sharply off to one side away from her when she approached; and then he was gone, if only for a moment, as though whisked away by the wind. Having skidded, boots crunching without a sound into the earth, he'd spun off round behind Jolie and ended up running to her left instead, a curious expression now painting his features as the vampire shifted his gaze back to her. Redhale's avatar sped off ahead. "What was that for?" He asked this as a thin trail of blood crept down his cheek, and the initial niggling pain flashed through the back of his mind.
Jolie shot a wild, wide glance at the wall that neither of them could outrun, and gasped even as she bolted from it anyway, “No hard feelings. But the drow is mine. Feed from him again, and…” the rest was stolen from her lungs as a ragged breath was sucked in to fuel the next few frantic strides. The blood on the dagger was not any old dragon blood, but that of a fat young golden dragon, a dragon of light and potent for the youth of the slain creature. Even in that small dose, it’d have to hint what lengths she’d go to in order to keep her greed satisfied, and her territories untouched. The wall was almost on them now, and the illusion so real that the necromancer let out a rather wolfish whine despite herself.
From far ahead a loud groan could be heard, and not a moment after it had reached their ears the masked boy had made his way back to Jolie and Kirien, that scowling scarlet face staring them down for a moment before each one was plucked from the earth, Jolie hefted over one shoulder while the right hand hooked that staff like pole into a loose fold of Kirien's clothing, picking him up like a jouster before tilting the pole to hold him high as the avatar ran them speedily towards the wall.
Kirien kept running. It stung, the scratch on his cheek, and that light burning sensation was very quickly escalating into a vicious, intense fire. He stumbled, once, but pushed himself immediately back up, not about to fall just yet. Jolie earned herself another look, this one just as curious as the first but tinted with something else, something deeper, that remained mostly unclear. "Really now." It was all he said, and the emotion behind it was indistinct. A hand had raised to scratch at that cut as though it might relieve some of the pain, and it was becoming hard to think - but he kept up, long legs allowing him to leap across the illusionary landscape with relative ease, if not quite as skilfully as the pole-wielding figure who'd briefly disappeared. "Oh. Hi~ are you--ah!" Whatever question he'd been about to ask was torn from the vampire's lips when he found himself hefted up onto the end of the boy's staff, swinging round in the air as their path changed course. "Why are we going -towards- it?!"
Jolie was no longer in the mood for discussion, mainly as she was hauled over a shoulder and what little breath she had had been squashed out of her lungs in the process. The knife fell from her grasp, the sheath of its sister at her other hip jabbing painfully into her body as she shoved her palms to the masked one’s robed frame and tred to lift her ribs clear enough for a modicum of relief. One breath.. two… and she gaped at the oncoming wall, which Jolie suspected she and the kit were about to meet face-first, she found oxygen enough for a cry of, “Oh, shiiii…”
Redhale 's avatar reassured them as best he could, although he seemed rather unable to relate to them as people, "Don't worry. Nothing is what is seems; everything is more… Everything has another side to it." He continued his sprint, that space warping leap churning bellies with each step, "If you don't like the meaning of a situation.." A firm planted foot went down and was used to spring from, sending all three present flying into the air, slowly spinning backwards (from the carrier's perspective) and arcing towards the charging wall, upon which they landed in a gut-churning twist of perspective, "Then change what it means yourself." Redhale put down each of his passengers on what was now the ground: A featureless flat surface with a cracked plain running down on one side of it like an earthen waterfall.
Kirien was quietly glad he'd not really eaten this morning because each impossibly long leap toward that sheer cliff face prompted a bit of an unpleasant twisting sensation in his gut. Coupled with the growing sense of nausea thanks to Jolie's threat to keep him away from his favourite meal, it was safe to say the empath was not feeling at his best right now. "This es all very easy for you to say--" His last syllable there stretched itself into a cry of surprise when all of a sudden they were sent skywards and twisting, and by the time Kirien realised the world had stopped spinning, he'd run out of breath he didn't even need. "…It's your world, after all." A pause, and what might have been a grin or perhaps just a grimace. "Sounds kinda like terramancy though," he commented.
Jolie was trembling, a bit, which she couldn’t help at all, which in turn was not improving her already badly frayed temper. Biting down on her tongue to stop it speaking things she both did and did not mean, she snapped her chill gaze upon the red-masked figment, or figure, whatever it was. “Redhale. You must stop this… bookish lollygagging, there’s things we must see to, urgently.” Perhaps her tone was a little cracked, as she said it, and the necromancer cleared her throat violently, willing her limbs to stop shaking, and peered around the apparent badland they’d been deposited upon. “There’s a story here,” she half said to herself, half to the others. “Have you noticed? The trees..” had she not just knifed Kirien, perhaps they might’ve had a little chat about it, but as things stood, she simply slid the kit a rather haughty look, “Terramancy needs dirt and rock. And moreso that which has not been failsafed against that… sort of thing.” That was said rather pointedly. “There is none here.”
Redhale moved over towards the descending plain, tucking his staff into a sling on his back and pulling off his mask so that it hung from a cord around his neck. The face that was revealed was striking both in its charm and its youth; while not nearly as young as the Redhale from the forest this man was certainly not grown up. His eyes, however, hinted at the knowledge of many a year. Curiously, the boy held out cupped hands, forcing them into the raging avalanche of land to pull them back and splash what appeared to be water over his unmasked face, "This is all I have to do. The land is pulling itself apart and no one else knows how to hold it together. Child is too young, Brother is too broken…" He moved away from the thundering downpour and sat cross-legged not far from the two, "If you are having trouble finding us, it is probably because we are falling apart here."
Kirien did not waste his time. Almost as soon as they'd been set down and Jolie's attentions were more focused on whatever incarnation of Redhale this happened to be, the vampire was spinning to throw an arm swiftly out for her in what was surely a very unceremonious and honestly sneaky move. Fitting, considering her own. It was the left arm that swung out for her chest, stony fingers clenched into a tight fist but not quite flung with enough force to break bones - hopefully. And, just in case she attempted to dodge even in her shaky state, he'd subtly lengthen his arm just slightly in the hopes its extension might catch her off-guard. "No hard feelings, oui?" said Kirien, a little bit huffy before he wobbled, coughed, and withdrew - whether or not he'd actually made contact with the woman. "As a note, that is why I said it was -like- terramancy. Just similar to it." Pausing, he cast a glance in Redhale's direction. "This es after the End, right? Your brother's." That he'd witnessed.
Jolie was knocked on her backside – again. A faint snarl throbbed in her throat. “I meant what I said, vampire. Mine.” That hissed, she planted a hand over what promised to be a lovely knot of bruising on the pale space between her collarbones, thankfully both unsnapped. The glare she shot Kirien promised they were even – for now – and warned, at the same time, that it was a balance she would not tolerate being tipped again. Ripping her ire away from the kit, she levelled it on the elven youth, and frowned, rage softening an iota. “I remember you, like this, Redhale. Once. Long ago, but older.” Before the Pool had claimed his eyes, and whatever other corruptions it’d caused him. Jolie herself had fallen apart many times, and offered her own knowledge on the subject, next. “As for being .. as you are. There is always a center self that holds everything together. A heart, if you will, to it all. Perhaps it would help to seek that?” Her own heart had died on the dust of Kelay road, though it had begun its death long before that on a ship in Chartsend, and the memory of that forced another dark look at Kirien. “One does what one must to keep oneself whole, or die trying.”
Redhale rolled forwards onto his feet and growled violently at Kirien, "My brother has not met his end! I carry him with me always. We are one…" Hoping he had made his point he turned to face Jolie while shaking his head, "I have no heart, I have eyes. I have hands and I have tools. If you're looking for a heart you should talk to Brother, hearts lead to sadness and that fool cries endlessly. As for this sickness, it is not the same as it was before the darkening. Everything still runs, it just runs… Wrong."
Kirien 's tail bristled and the response to that snarl was a growl of his own, low and rumbling like the earth but not quite sparking with a challenge just yet. It was hinted at round the edges; he was not willing to let go of this intensity so easily. "Afraid you're wrong there, lovely. We've already got a little pact. He's mine." In what sense exactly was questionable, and Kirien did not elaborate. Instead he focused on removing himself huffily from the immediate area of Jolie and her palpable ire, just in case she came at him with another knife. Near-tangible as it may be, he noted that the sensation of her anger was different. That was why he refused to give up what he'd stumbled across in that pit so easily. It seemed he moved right into a growling Redhale's path and it gave the vampire cause to pause, blinking once at the other. "…Right." He nodded, then slid a glance Jolie's way at talk of hearts. But the meaning behind it was shrouded. He kept quiet and did not contribute much to the current subject, as it made little sense to him, and scratched at his cheek again.
Jolie said to Kirien, “Then presently I will fight you for the claim, and it will be decided, one way or another.” This was no time or place for .. well, what amounted to a girlish sort of spat, and she rose off the ground he’d put her on, straightening her garments, her attention now wholly on the Dark Man’s avatar. “Brother…?” Kirien had mentioned this, and now it took new significance. “Who is this.. Brother? How will we know him, and why…” So many questions, they roiled in her mind, fusing together. Things were a lot more wrong than she’d guessed. “…I’m not leaving, ‘til I find him.” The same sort of stubbornness the vampire had just encountered shone greenly from her gaze, and her chin tilted at that angle Redhale’s regular self would have known all too well. And perhaps dreaded.
Redhale scoffed at Jolie's proclamation, waving a hand flippantly through the air as he turned away from her, "You'll know when you're near him, the bastard's howls can be heard all through the mountains. But there's no way you'll find him; crossing this plain is far beyond your abilities. You'd be dead before three waves, and none of your friend's back home will know what happened to you."
Huffing another breath in mild exasperation, Kirien stubbornly kept to himself the things Kuzial had told him in their moments, holding them within his chest. He might have puffed his cheeks slightly, showing further irritation at mention of fighting over the drow. "I see no reason to do that when it's already been decided," he answered Jolie with a nonchalant shrug, swinging his gaze back to Redhale. "Et, last I saw him was in Xalious. I think. Probably a while back in this because this guy," he said with a jab of thumb to the masked one, "was, er, a bit smaller. Whether or not they're even the same figment only on a different page es questionable. The staring book confuses me a bit." Lifting his jaw to Redhale, the vampire then asked, "What's his name, then?" and waited, curious.
Jolie muttered, “Coward,” which would be her last word on the subject of Kuzial. The kit’s question had her draw her attention to Redhale fully once more though slowly, the corner of her eye still on the vampire as she said, “What gain where there is no risk? But perhaps another set of pages will lead me to him.” She quieted then awaiting his reply to Kirien’s question. There was power in names, and perhaps here even moreso than in the world beyond.
Redhale shrugged in response to Kirien's question, "There are no real names here. There is Redhale and there is not-Redhale. But that doesn't mean we are all one, although I don't mean to say we are not either." He let out a sigh and sat himself back down, "Really it's all beyond me. I don't particularly like talking to people, so I talk to the world instead. It makes more sense." How this world made any kind of sense was a discussion that could last a long time, but if the past adventures into Redhale's world were anything to judge by time was not something they could afford to waste.
Kirien merely snorted at Jolie but did not go any further, his attentions now focused on Redhale and the more perplexing sort of subject they'd turned towards. He seemed to imitate the woman though, keeping her in the very corner of his current form of vision even as he spoke to the figment. "Different answer from last time. I suppose you're all connected somehow in the end," he said a bit thoughtfully and scratched his cheek once more. The cut had become a little more jagged round the edges, as though seared. Kirien squinted at his bloody fingernails, then glanced down at the ground, expression melting into something curious. He stamped at it with a boot heel, once; maybe he hoped to warp it like Redhale did, forcing it into another form. "…Ahh, time-tripping makes more sense than this does, to be honest. It es…not good that you seem to be breaking. We should try to find your Brother, maybe."
Jolie shifted a sideling look at that stamp of boot, thinking it about as effective on that sere ground as it would be on the enchanted blackstone of her home, though a slightly worried lift of brow followed – one could never guess what would happen here. “I agree. We ought to find him,” she said, and perhaps Kirien would sense lycanthropine rage being subsumed into some other emotion, cold as the wastes of Frostmaw.
Kirien's stomp didn't put so much as a dent in the ground, although it did seem to cause the featureless expanse upon which they stood to pulse with a deep red glow, a light not so different than the one which shone from Redhale's imp mask, which he hurriedly replaced, "That is a bad sign. You'd better find something to hold on to…" From far above the trio what appeared to be the end of the plain was dropping towards them, its tall expanse topped off by a field of blooming red crystals which rushed to meet the sideways wall.
Kirien would have been disappointed at the lack of cracking earth underfoot had his action not drawn a wave of reddish light across the ground instead; a pulse of vivid colour stretching across his vision that elicited the tiniest of smiles from the empath as he watched it. It was a short-lived expression and it was gone in an instant when the air began to almost physically chill nearby him, ripples of something unpleasant drifting from Jolie to whisk his smile away on a bitter wind. Kirien ignored it as best he could, and it was not difficult to do that when the sky seemed to be falling. Peppered with crystals and shimmering, it did manage to prompt an, "oh," of possible awe from the vampire before he was reaching to curl his fingers into the material of Redhale's sleeve - he had said to find something to hold on to.
Jolie muttered again, "Bloody hell.." She snatched out a hand to the nearest thing - which was Kirien, who was shot a very dark look, his being the cause of this latest bit of oddness. Still, no rage radiated from her, only a sense of vast and frozen reaches, the woman's retreat to her own inner landscape where the useless contempt she felt was left to its uselessness, and her face tilted toward the familiar, peculiar red prisms that she'd seen on her last 'visit'. The hand not groping for the vampire had its fingers crossed - a hope they might be spat out, as she and Maghu were, rather than crushed beneath the falling morass.
Redhale let out another frustrated groan as he yanked Kirien, and thus Jolie, away from the wall a few steps, twisting around to send them a good distance away from the oncoming crash. The action twisted the sleeve of the masked boy out of Kirien's hand and the distance put between them made it hard to re-establish a grip, at least in the short amount of time they had left before impact. Redhale shouted out something as he pulled his staff from its sling but the words were lost in the growing rumbling of the vanishing land. Whether it was some final instruction, scolding or insult couldn't be confirmed as the crash of the crystal bank into the ground caused the perfectly flat plain to buckle and rear, cracks splintering across the surface quickly as another momentous wave rose out of the earth with a groaning roar. Whether it was because it was so much closer to the point of impact or for some other reason the second wave crashed forth with much more energy, and as it reached the group it flung each of them far further than the first had. The image of Redhale seemed prepared for this an instead of being hurled flipping through the air he sprung forwards off the wave and shot into the distance like a crossbow bolt. The others weren't likely to be as lucky, and as they began to fall again would soon realize that the ground they had seen shattered was no longer beneath them, only a dark void.
Kirien hesitated a moment when she reached for him before he grabbed Jolie, too. In his eye, when he met her look with a brief stare, was another of those frustratingly unreadable looks he was so good at, possibly laced with a hint of sadness. She'd have no time to question the reason for its existence and he'd have no time to answer, for a second later he'd been ripped away from the ground and flung across the landscape once more by the masked boy. Hopefully managing to retain his grip of Jolie's arm even after Redhale had been torn from his grasp, he hit the ground at a half-run, then stumbled, clearly dizzy and somewhat disorientated although whether that was from the shock of it all or the dragon's blood was questionable. Finally he raised his head and stared back toward the spot they'd previously been standing on. "What do we--" It was cut off or perhaps drowned out by the roar of ground splintering and forcing itself up before them, rolling forward in another tremendous wave crested with ruby dust and debris. Kirien inhaled sharply and might have yelled, "Run!" but by that point the image of earth beneath his feet had cracked and shattered and all was black and he fell.
Jolie’s own gaze was as chill and blank and as the rest of her, in that brief second it met with the vampire’s, neither question in return nor anything else in it but vast distance and unfeeling. It was a scant moment, however, and those green eyes widened, then snapped shut at the mighty crashing of what had been their near-deaths. She opened them in time to see Redhale turn into a vanishing point, that free hand snatching out toward him as though to drag him back, make him come home.. Then the world of the Dark Man roared again, and heaved them into a darkness she knew – with no Maghu to slow her, no wings to keep her fall from being a swift one, and all she knew was plummeting, and the dawning fact that she could not care less what awaited her at the other end of it.
After falling for an amount of time impossible to discern, although definitely not long enough to trouble the mind, Jolie and Kirien would find themselves spat out of a scrunched up ball of paper, which opened like a dark flower on the paving of Vailkrin plaza to allow their passage. The swift change in gravity would take much of the momentum out of the pair before they climbed too high in this world, allowing them to fall back onto the scattered, scrunched pages without too much of a bump.
Kirien watched the world crumble away into blackness above him, shadow swallowing every colour he'd witnessed there until it all blinked out without so much as a whisper. Rorschach's feathery tentacles wrapped round and tugged at his hair, as though the tiny octopus thought it might be able to slow the fall or hold them up before they became nothing more than bloodspots on illusionary ground. There was little need for it in the end for suddenly Kirien's regular and noticeably colourless perception came back into view with a jolt and he hit Vailkrin's cold streets, back to cobblestones, tumbling out of the book's landscape. For a moment or two he just lay there and breathed before, very slowly, he let out all that air in his lungs in a relieved sigh. Only after that did he try to work out where Jolie was in relation to him, and if he still had a grip on her arm.
Kirien did, indeed, still have that hold - and though the necromancer had landed as hard as he, she was soon to snatch her arm back as though the kit was something she’d prefer not to touch, the only motion she afforded herself in those moments where reorientation struggled to gain a grasp upon her, and her on it, and she sucked for the air knocked out of her for the second time – or was it the third? – this day. Groaning, Jolie clambered to feet that threatened to bear her nothing but treachery, the nearby wall doing for support until the sense of falling fell entirely away from confused synapses.
Kirien allowed her to pull away, not quite nice enough of a person to have totally brushed aside her claims so easily. He followed this motion of drawing back his hand by rolling onto his side and then staying there, quite still, for a good minute or so. The octopus whirling round his head, the empath fought to even out the chaotic images and sensations still twisting in his mind, a tornado of mixed feelings and confusion stirring up an internal storm. He groaned, curled in on himself a bit, then managed to struggle into a sitting position. "…Well." Unlike Jolie, he wasn't about to trust his legs with the job of walking upright just yet.
Jolie had been foolish to do so, and gratefully leaned her back against that wall so she could make a graceless slide to the ground that she swore was still moving. That single word Kirien spoke earned a cracked glance, the anomalous cephalopod causing a fresh wave of dizziness. Closing her eyes, she lifted her hand in a weak gesture of dismissal the vampire would not see, though the same feeling permeated her voice, “Ugh. Keep him. No man I’d want would ever consent to be the thrall of some effete little vampire.” Which had been her thought, in the Dark Man’s world, the chill of it, the retreat into a state more trustworthy, less likely to prove such a vast… disappointment. That said, she lapsed into silence.
Kirien said, a little huffily, "A man who can move the world is not 'effete'." Shifting around, he eventually picked himself up from the street and brushed his overcoat down. The world swayed and there was still a slight sense of unbalance there somewhere but he was mostly coherent, and working to straighten out his perception. He paused before adding, with a hint of something mischievous in the beginnings of a grin, "Turning him into a thrall would be no fun anyway. I like the defiance. Makes things…interessant. As a note, I would still like to share a story or two with you one time. It's to do with Maladroit and the never-ending." With that he'd be turning to leave, quite aware of the fact that this was Jolie's land and that the copious amounts of undead everywhere would only lend her an advantage should she decide to End him. He'd promised that eventuality to someone else, after all.
Jolie had the strength in her to snort, derisively. He could not move –her- world and that was the only part of it she cared about. “I have nothing at all to –share- with the likes of you,” she said, tiredly, happy to watch him go.
Kirien waved a hand and left. He'd better things to do than deal with a sulking woman and one of those things was working out how to remove the rest of this dragons blood from his face.
- Definitely not censoring anything here.