Dreamwaking: Chimera - Sacrifice.

[Jirai]

The dark elf was standing there, looking around.

In her mind, this made perfect sense. There was enough insanity in the woman that to go from being asleep to being -here- (an admittedly disgusting change), did not cause her any confusion at all.

This was Jirai. But not the normal Jirai. This was a Jirai that would be intimately familiar to some, nigh unrecognizable to others - for the scars are back. They twist, criss-crossing her face, making a ruin of delicate features. It is sheer luck that her eyes are intact, in fact.

And this makes sense, too.

She reads the note and frowns.

She picks up the knife and smiles.

And she turns to her companion. Quick steps close the distance between the two, spiders welling up out of each footstep she leaves behind, crawling after the woman in a creepy entourage.

"We have things to do."

[Vanidor]

The first thing he had noticed was the knife. Noticed and then plucked from the fleshy soil that was beneath his feet. The thing had a familiar weight to it that at first made him smile. He liked having a weapon in his hand, it made him feel... safer. The warmth of the handle, a thing long used to the grip of his hand. The cool touch of the blade as it pressed against his forearm in a reverse grip. Then a grunt as his eyes swept along the length of it. Examining it. This wasn't -his- knife, that was for certain. He would never carry a blade quite like this. Especially as he thought about it. Use Me. Familiar phrasing. His other hand slapped against his bare stomach. It was then that he felt the piece of paper against naked flesh.

If they die, you die.
If you die, they die.
Keep moving

It was crumpled then, tossed aside and forgotten upon the bloody landscape. It was here, then, that his eyes made an attempt to see who they were. Who could it be, to be joined with him in this rugged Hél. It didn't take long for him to discover who it was. The silver tinted hair was the most direct give away, for truth. The manner in which the other man moved. Aeryn shifted his step as well, moving slowly towards the other man.

"What sort of madness do this be, Calomel. What has your fucking Artificer wrou-" Then a pause in his statement. He knew little of the mageling that had come to be so leaned upon by the government here. He couldn't even say what colour her -hair- was. But he was sure, from some corner of his mind, that this wasn't her handiwork. It seemed familiar, the feel of this place. Right down to the suckling sound of the putrid sphincters. His eyes focused upon the strange eye-tree. Upon the others. He would, promptly, vomit upon the turf before him.

"Fuck. No. This no be your work, I would not think that you would subject yourself to... Phaugh!" He spat again, thick and phlegmatic, upon the writhing surface beneath his bare feel. "Gods of Light." His toes curled upon the skin-surfaced ground. "Go to bed in a nice an' safe place. Wake up in this shit-stained abyss..." It was real, wasn't it? This all had to be real. It felt like it.

[channe]

"Whatever. I'm still around, aren't I?"

Her voice is clipped, one fist balled, the other holding the knife. "Okay, so. We're in hell. Kaschei is telling us to keep moving. We've both got jewelry in our throats that weren't there before. What were ya doin' last night? I -- I trained wi' Rhaena, an' then went drinkin' wi' Dom -- but I sobered up right before bed, combed 'Nela's hair --" A pause. She stops for a moment, and then keeps on walking. Backwards. She looks at Glenn, and her gaze is angry and serious and a strange, vacillating reddish-blue. Apparently, Glenn, you've successfully switched her back to business by not putting up a fight.

"Like I said before. Don't use the knife unless you have to. Especially on me."

[Glenn]

That was a strangely tempting thought, wasn't it? At least, it was tempting right up to the point where he remembered Rhaena and just what her reaction would be. That was the trick to surviving this, to not bludgeoning Agnie at first change and stabbing her a second later, Rhaena. She was the common link between the two. Still, there wasn't exactly a lot of trust there. Agnieszka seemed more willing to crash into a grotesque helltree from behind than keep her eyes off of him.

Such a notion didn't place a smile on Glenn Burnie's face, not at all. "What did I do last night? Same thing I did most nights. I was in the Dagger trying real hard not to either die horribly or get too drunk to think." And then his voice softened just a little. "You can put up with assholes thinking that you're a ... but when people you... oh forget it." He wasn't telling her shit, not anymore. She had plenty of chances and he wasn't going to waste time on that. "I didn't get killed if that's what you're wondering, Agony. I would have remembered that. Esraeux isn't the easiest place to get into in the middle of the night."

A moment later, something of a smug look came upon his face. "We both remember enough of last night to know that we weren't... you know, so get THAT twisted thought out of your warped dirt-farmer head." The mapmaker bit back his next comment. Something particularly lewd about a bodyguard, it seemed. What he had just said had brought Rhaena back to the forefront of his mind and with thoughts of the veiled girl came at least the effort of restraint.

Rhaena. It was then that he looked to Agnie with something resembling mild jealousy. "Hey, look. Maybe it's not just us here but everyone, right? I want you to think Rhaena's name really hard. I know it sounds dumb, but the two of you are close, so maybe she's looking for you?" It had to be Agnie, because Glenn was forever walled off from the veiled girl's mind.

[Carnath-Emory]

[INDENT]"How does a man tell whether or not he dreams?"
"When the finest things are fragile as well, then it is no dream. When I dream, beauty is always terrible."
[/INDENT]


Oh, she's certainly seen where they are; she's certainly had a good, long look at this vile landscape. That she has flinched from it very little is due solely to the interests and habits of one Michael Renne, himself a 'dreamwaker' of sorts. This is an environment that would have caught his fancy.

There is a gaze for the Olwak girl, whose bronzed features are not at all unfamiliar to the swordswoman's eyes; it's not the first time that the veil's been absent. It is very much an assessment, quiet and speculating, and in the midst of it she's given the collarless neckline of her tunic a casual tug.

It falls concealingly into place across the gemstone embedded into her flesh.

"I think we begin walking now, mn? This place is vile." Perhaps it becomes better elsewhere, these words imply; an instant's unwarranted hope. "There will be others somewhere, I think. In fact, I'm quite sure of it."

It is a remarkable quantity of faith which this godless creature demonstrates. Perhaps she's simply taken the Dreamwaker's more superficial lessons to heart. That there are knives at their feet does not surprise her, nor that Calomel is not within sight -- but she must regret that. She must, because there'd been a pact made between them, and its goal was to prevent the very circumstances in which Ariane and Rhaena now find themselves.

Rhaena, incidentally, has just walked right over her knife.

This might be why Ariane's just bent to seize her own.

[Jirai]

Rhaena's own gemstone has gone unnoticed - it has been hidden by the collar of her nightgown and she remains unaware of it. Arms fold across her chest, curling tightly about her own body. Ariane might have two knives if she wishes it - the girl makes no move to retrieve her own. It doesn't even occur to her that it might be a good thing to have. Instead she is looking around, perhaps hopefully. Perhaps it will be better elsewhere. Perhaps there will be others. Perhaps...

"Which way?" She asks, seeming quite content to follow the older woman. Ariane is little less than terrifying - but this place is even worse. The girl is eager to be gone, in the hopes of finding a place less vile, finding friendlier faces.

[ShadowRose]

The previous night he had fallen asleep in a chair in his room after a long and strenuous day fully clothed.. and fully armed. It had been a stroke of genius luck. For when he finally awoke to the distant sounds of screaming and the hissing wind that snaked against his flesh, the depths of his cold gray eyes fell upon the scene and slightly widened. Disgusting, but moreso the smells that assaulted his nose and senses, and the squish of something terribly vile against his finely-kept boots. His lips curled upward and froze in a mask of true irritance, his arrogance keeping his nerves chilled and calm, before he finally dared to move his muscles--and felt two foreign objects in his hands.

First, the dagger, with the length of its blade plain and pommel square -- "Use Me". Meticulous was his regard for the dagger, the thing turned over several times in effortlessly dextrous fingers before being ultimately thrown aside and into a deep puddle of liquid excrement.

The second, a note crumbled in dark fingers quick to open, and eyes brief to read. "If they die, you die. If you die, they die. Keep moving."

His attention flicked quickly to gauge the rest of the situation, then, as his fist clenched to squash the delicate parchment, and to then throw it aside to follow the same fate as the weapon; his blades and armor were still present and intact, and he hadn't received any grievous wounds... Thin fingers trailed against his collar and he felt the form of a new thing--cold, quiet, and unknown.. . smooth.

But what -- or who -- he saw next gave him considerable pause, and the sudden flicker of anger inspired a deep-set frown to settle over his handsome face.

The sleeping form of a hated pale elf... Rei.

Selenthis angled his head to the side and spat, and a string of whispered curses flooded past his lips, as he moved toward his enemy and launched his version of a rude awakening--the secure and precise placement of a foot against the other's shoulder and a push that would no doubt launch him into the pile of refuse just behind him if successful.

"Wake up. We are in a hell far more cruel than any other... one that makes us work together." And if nothing, or if the pale elf failed to react quickly enough, another sharp kick would be angled toward him with a command that couldn't be ignored; "Wake up!"

[ShadowRose]

The drowess opened her light blue eyes suddenly and stood with immediance, regarding the horrid scene with a quiet ruse of a whimper--not out of fear, no, but out of disgust, out of the very real revelation that she would be no doubt dirtied by the time -this-, whatever it was, was over. The length of her frame was clothed in.. barely anything as her diaphanous neglige would suggest. And it proved to be fairly inappropriate for an outing in hell.

The delicacy of her fingers felt the blade, the letter of words she hurriedly read before her gaze anchored on Viveka, paused at the gem in the other's collar. Her soft and delicate touch fled to her own, disregarding it quickly before her hand let go of the blade she saw as useless--and slipped to the wicked daggers strapped in sheaths against the supple expanse of her thighs.

The relationship between the drowess and rogue woman had been brief, enough to engage in a spar and to share names--"Viveka! Wake up! We need to keep moving!"

.. If they die, you die. If you die, they die..

[channe]

And the sad part, the sorry part --

-- they could be great friends, Glenn and Agnie, if they'd just let their pride go a little, if they'd just stop throwing barbs at each other.

Like that's ever going to happen.

Wordlessly, she nods to him; and there, she takes a single, coughing breath of the foul air, holds it, stares over Glenn's shoulder -- and seems to hover there for a few moments. Glenn might able to hear voices, whispers. Children. Women. Young men. One older, and far more gruff. And when focuses, she looks back at Glenn.

"Okay, maybe she can hear that," she says, and then, after a moment, with a giggle, "I wasn't thinking that. But now that you seem t' be, let me jus' tell you: you couldn't handle me. 'Sides. You got your two already: the one y' wanna marry, an' the one you jus' wanna --" She stops, bringing one finger to her lips. "Sssh. I'll keep yer secret. I won' tell 'er."

[Glenn]

It had been a damn good plan. He'd have her shut her eyes, have her focus on contracting Rhaena. He'd have her nice and distracted and distant and then he'd suckerpunch her right in the jaw. Was it honorable? No. Would it make him feel better? Hell, yes. Then he'd drag her by her foot for the next hour, over every large rock or jutting rib or whatever he could find, and when she woke up, he'd just pin the whole thing on Jirai or Sarayn. If that's not a damn good plan, what is?

Thing was? She was staring RIGHT over his shoulder, distracted as all hell, and he didn't do it. It wasn't lack of nerve or any sense of honor. Maybe it was a sign of trust.

Maybe after what she just said, he regretted not doing it. It was too late now. Even with a week or so of training in fisticuffs from Ariane he wasn't much of a fistfighter and likely never would be. She was too damn quick and she was ready for it and... damn it. Too far. She had gone too far.

Glenn burst forward with a speed she had likely never seen in him. Really, why should have she? She hadn't watched him train. Yes, she had seen his body get more athletic over the months, but had never seen it in motion, as it had been almost every single morning for the last four months. There wasn't much distance to cover between them and he managed it within the matter of a second or two, following that rush with a fist aimed straight at her nose. She had to live for him to live? Whatever. The note hadn't said a damn thing about not improving her inbred looks.

[Carnath-Emory]

If the swordswoman had wanted two knives, she'd have had them regardless of whether Rhaena Olwak picked up her own. There is reason for some confidence in her about such concerns, and all of it wound up in the fact of Olwak's distraction and her own prodigious speed.

Theft would be an instant's work.
Murder ...

A little longer.

But these are simple things which occupy the two women for now, such simple things as schooling their attention away from the environment's foullest aspects; such things as negotiating a forward direction.

"We follow one of those streams," she answers young Olwak after a time, adding with a wry quirk of the lips: "But not too closely, I think." And so they shall, and some long minute or two will pass, long because any period of time spent in this reeking morgue of a place is by definition too long, and at the end of this she will pause them. Will turn then to regard the girl a moment, and direct her:

"Find them. There'll be others here. Agnieszka. Others. Find them as you found the Ashfiend."

[Jirai]

"Not too closely," the girl agrees faintly, eying the indicated stream of foulness with distaste. She trails behind the swordswoman, picking her way with care. So focused is she on where her feet are being placed that Ariane's pause catches the Trader by surprise - she nearly walks right into her companion before coming to an uncertain stop.

"Oh! I... yes, that's a good idea." After these words there comes a pause, a distant, unfocused look in the girl's eyes. It lasts for several long moments, lips slowly curling into a frown. And then she is looking at Ariane with confusion.

"It won't work! I can't... There's nothing. I can't get out of my own head." This brings Rhaena near to panicking, finding this ability, this Skill gone as though it had never existed in the first place.

[Carnath-Emory]

Several long moments, and these are precisely long enough to be certain that the Olwak girl means to employ that particular Skill. It's in the eyes that she reads the confession of it, and thank Coran D'zir for teaching her the habit of looking for such things there; one marks a channeler's threat by the coldness of his irises, and a Trader's Skill by the focus of them.

These several moments, as it happens, are also long enough for the swordswoman to close the distance between she and Rhaena, and in the instant that she is certain, Ariane does precisely that.

The hand snaps out like a lash, fingertips encroaching upon scaled flesh where they grasp the girl's chin. It is a firm grip, and it exerts no pain upon the Trader whatsoever, but then it hardly needs to. That is a subtle frost which is extending from their touch, climbing the girl's cheeks with its thread-thin ice.

"No."

They tighten very slightly then, these fingers; they exert a subtle pressure. Between them, breath fogs the air: Ariane's; Rhaena's, as well.

"Do you know this word?" A small, demanding lift of her brows. "Are you aquainted with this word? It is what you say when a person you do not trust bids you work that poeben' upon another. It is what you say when someone you do trust bids you to work it upon me.

"No!"

It is a single syllable, shouted at very near range; her features are but inches from Rhaena's. Shouted, and between them the air crystallises in harmony with the word, becomes frosty and dense and shatters --

A twist of her wrist releases what fingers had held, and she's turning then. Is moving away.

[Jirai]

Rhaena is a trader. She is not a fighter (though Agnieszka is working to fix that). Ariane's movements catch her completely by surprise, those bronze eyes going wide as a hand grasps her chin. There is fear in those eyes. There is also a flicker anger.

She holds herself still until that last word (and is that some burning sensation from her chest, or is it her imagination?). But as Ariane shouts that word, the girl flinches, tries to pull away - but then Ariane releases her grasp and turns. Rhaena rubs at her face, the flesh unusually chilled, and a step or two are taken towards the departing swordswoman.

"And so I say 'no' when another presents a useful idea I have not thought of? I hold no monopoly on good ideas, Ariane. I'll not be a fool and turn one aside because it came not from me. You did not say 'no' to that knife you are carrying." And while the two are not identical situations, of course, the similarities exist - at least, to her way of thinking.

[Lent]

"Hnn." Kurt Lentham sat up sharply. From the look of the thirty-something year old man, he was well prepared for anything it, though his clothes, the uniform of a Detective Constable, looked as if they had been slept in more than a few times lately. On his body, however, were weapons, supplies, the tools of his trade, that being law enforcement, that being hunting a certain criminal. While roughing it, best to sleep like this. Really. That does not mean that he didn't take the knife, nonetheless.

Throbbing neck. One hand went to it, felt something that wasn't there before, that shouldn't be there at all. "Hnnn." In that hand was a note, a note that he read. "Strange. Well, that's that then. I've gone mad." Landscape around him said as much.

The race of his companion did not surprise him as much as he might once have. An elf. No reason to love elves these days. World would likely be a little better off without them. This one however? He hung around bars, generally civic-minded, wasn't he? That would do fine.

He had gone mad, fine. That didn't change things. Karolinger was still out there. That would not do. "Hoi, Elf. You're being deputized, son. We've got a murderer to catch." Twisted landscape or no, sheer madness or no, single-mindedness was key.