PLAYER PLOT: Enfenim

[mythalenaste]

WHO: Pel, Sina, Cyril, Beleth, Sorrel, Myr, Saoirse, side of Anders and Alistair
WHAT: A demon has trapped Pel in the Fade.
WHEN: Forward-Dated to 25 Firstfall
WHERE: The Gallows, the Fade
NOTES: Trigger warning bonanza for insects, body horror, corpses, dismemberment/maiming, death, illness, drowning, blood + will update if any more happen.

What am I to do with all of these dolls?
They've covered the floors, they've covered the walls.
They're stacked up chin-high all over the floor,
But my greedy child is screaming for more...

Comments

Sorrel | TW: dismemberment

[mythalenaste]

Clan Ashara's camp appears on an ordinary day, albeit with dark clouds overhead. There is no rain, and everyone goes about their daily chores. They talk to each other, they wash, mend, dry, whet, darn, knit, cure, tan, dye, butcher, and cook like on any other day. No one pays Sorrel any mind.

From thin air comes the whistle of a swinging sword. Pain explodes across hand and wrist as both are severed, the attacker and weapon nowhere to be seen. Nobody in the camp notices. The louder Sorrel screams, the less they hear him. The sound of the blade slashes again, this time severing the same arm just below the elbow.

No one hears. No one sees. No one bothers.

[writteninblood]

He is bleeding.

Somehow, that seems the most important detail. Not the pain, which is terrible, but the blood, the strange coldness of it-- oughtn't it to be warm, where he's clutching there, the broken stump? Knees in new mud, agony crawling over him like a stormcloud, and the intense peace of the clan encampment around him like a slap in the face. They don't need him. They don't care if he lives or dies, utterly unconcerned so long as the role he played was worth the cost of living with his existence. He stares, caught for the moment in the terror of realizing a truth half-known and deliberately unacknowledged. No, it's better this way; what does he have to offer, to begin with? Look at me, he wants to scream, and also, don't look at me!

And yet, the blood is what he focuses on, coloring him like a second skin, red paint, too cold and too slow and utterly surreal. Unreal.

I'm dreaming, he remembers, watching as Beleth-- a vision of Beleth that is no more real than the wetness between his fingers, laughs at something, glances idly in his direction, but without interest, and then away. It's wrong, so wrong that it twists, almost physically painful, and then more: it's insulting.

Give in, he knows, panic, accept the fear and the safety from that fear; that is the offer. Give over, and lose everything, but also be freed from this nightmare.

"Fuck. You." Sorrel enunciates slowly, anger curdling in the twist of lips and bared teeth, the savagery of a wounded animal, "Bel' would never."

He isn't quite so sure of that, though, is he? She had left. She had gone off to have her own life. There's no hiding that secret horror here, not from a demon already this far into mind and memory. All he can do is kneel in the mud, bleeding through his pain, and refute the demon with what they both know-- what Sorrel fears is a lie.

[arlathvhen]

Beleth isn't sure what she'll find when she begins to travel. She knows that she's looking for Pel, but how is she supposed to find her, exactly? It's not like there's a compass for these things. Her heart leaps when a forest begins to materialize around her--and before her, trappings that she would recognize in life or in dreams. Her clan. Surely she's on the right track.

Then she seems him, and her heart goes from leaping to plummeting fast enough that she feels like she's going to be sick. Or maybe that's just from the blood, from the stumps Sorrel--her brother, her twin, her second half--clutches.

"SORREL!" It's a shriek as much as it is a word, and she nearly falls over herself racing to him. Uncaring of the blood spilling over him, Beleth hurls herself at her brother, latching onto him with a fierceness that only panic can induce.

"Creators, Sorrel, what--who--" But that doesn't matter, does it? "Are you--no--" Words fail her, they simply aren't enough for the horror bubbling inside her, and damp with blood and tears, she can only press her face into Sorrel's hair. "It's okay. It's okay."

[writteninblood]

Sorrel doesn't move at first, only lets her move him, lets her pull his head against her shoulder, lets her move his hands, touch his arm-- where his arm had been, rather. Lets her fierceness shake him, physically shake him, for all that this is a dream and none of it is physical.

"Bel," he gasps, finally, as if the name had been sitting on his tongue and refusing to leave until it was pushed out, "Bel. You're here."

He'd wince at the sound of it, if the pathetic, teary gratitude in his voice were less honest.

"I-- I'm okay," He lets go of the bloody mass, reaches for her instead, to wrap his arm around and hold close, grounding himself in her reality. The surrounding clan starts to seem just that smallest bit less true, "It's. No one would come. But I- I knew. You'd never. I knew you'd never just walk away, you never let go."

[mythalenaste]

Nothing in the world is deadlier to speculative fear than irrefutable certainty. The demon finds it difficult to sustain the imagery in the face of it. Sorrel's hands reappear and the figures around them grow shadowy.

It's not fair, wails a voice. Taking it away is my job!

[arlathvhen]

"Of course I'm here." Beleth breathes into his hair, not paying attention to anything else but the man in her arms. "I love you, Sorrel. And I will kill everyone who hurts you." That last part is said with a deadly intensity, a promise that she's done her best to keep, up until now. From raiders to Corypheus himself, she'll stop them all, no matter what it takes.

And then the scene begins to fade, and Beleth knows that they've dealt the demon a decisive blow. She looks up, still holding onto Sorrel. Her face is hard, harder than she's felt in a long time. Still, her hand moves to stroke Sorrel's hair softly, even as a slow-building rage pounds in her ears.

"Do you hear that, demon? Mythal herself witness it, I'm going to kill you."

[mythalenaste]

It wasn't Mythal, the voice shrieks back. It's never been Mythal! STOP SAYING IT'S MYTHAL!

The anger in the goddess' name seems to rally the demon. The ground opens up beneath them both, and they plummet down, down, and down.

[eolasemah]

And then, just as suddenly, they stop. They're both on the back of a halla, galloping full-tilt across the rocky plains of the Fade. Though small, it carries the two effortlessly, its gait free and almost joyous despite the urgency.
"This way," whispers a female voice in the twins' ears.

[writteninblood]

Sorrel's head comes up, strength returning, and with it clarity. Breathing eases, or the seeming of breath, and one moment he's frowning skyward at the disembodied shouting, and the next...

...The next, everything has changed and he's gripping Beletharound the waist and a Halla's back with both knees.

Who is that, the voice in the silence?

Sorrel has a feeling he knows.