OPEN: Kirkwail

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Ghosts
WHEN: Wintermarch 20
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC post. More content warnings than you can shake a stick at, probably, including allusions to slavery and violence in the body of the log post. Please use appropriate warnings in the subject lines for your own threads.

The storm sweeps in like an assassin: unexpected, in the dark, and throwing sharp pricks of sleet at exposed eyes and noses with expert aim and enough force to almost draw blood if the angle is right. Half an hour after the clouds crest the cliffs is all it takes for the city to retract indoors and huddle around fireplaces, settling in for a long night that will, unforeseen, turn into a long two days.

The Gallows, too, is pelted with ice; the walls of the cliffs and the fortress protect much of it from the worst of the wind, but when it can find a path over or through the walls, it slams through windows or doors to scatter papers and snuff out fires.

In the dark, in the rain, hurrying between towers or already accustomed to jumping firelight casting strange shadows and the wind howling like a wounded animal, people might be forgiven if they don't notice at first. But there's a hanging in the courtyard, a dozen translucent wisps of bodies dangling from the idea of nooses, and there's a girl's voice in the basement of the templar tower screaming for her mother, and there's a ghostly man in the library holding the blade of a knife to his palm and whispering this is it, this is it—or maybe there isn't, actually, when you lift your head to pay closer attention.

But as the night wears on they multiply, and they brighten, and even if you haven't noticed them, they begin to notice you.

Comments

[ipseite]

This isn't real.

Of course it isn't—she's not a fool—if anyone is to haunt anyone else, of the two of them only Petrana has yet died. Marius breathes foreign air, far from here, and she is not to be taken in by some transparent mimicry of him, and yet—

it's Davidias, kneeling, it's Marius's smile holding the point of his sword to his throat, and she'll never know what happened afterwards. If he had managed to escape the palace or if this is precisely, precisely what followed; they had not spoken to her of consequence, during her incarceration. Detained at his majesty's pleasure, and nothing more, and he was ever-unforgiving. A miracle, that she had lived so long at his pleasure.

She is knelt before the shadow of a man who very well might have died for her, and the opening door doesn't immediately catch her attention; only it takes Marius's, and Davidias fades, forgotten, kicked aside as the sword comes down to rest its point against the stone floor, Marius leaning to one side in a ludicrous parody of welcoming relaxation.

“The challenger approaches,” ironically.

[overharrowed]

"Petrana?" he asks, temporarily nonplussed by the scene. Davidias fading makes it clearer that this isn't an unrelated crisis badly timed, but Julius also knows he's treading on unfamilar ground. Why this particular form.

(He imagines some spirit will eventually choose his father's face, at this rate. Something to look forward to.)

"There's something going on all through the Gallows, it's not just here." Though he's addressing her, Julius mainly keeps his eyes on the thing appearing as a man, for now. Just because he's not what he appears doesn't mean he mightn't be dangerous.

[ipseite]

The tap-tap-tap of Marius's sword against stone is going to slowly drive Petrana insane. It's not a new thought, just one that she hasn't had in so long she'd almost forgotten how she can feel it all the way down her spine—

“You will address my wife by her correct—”

She stands in a flurry of skirts.

“I'd like it to stop.”

[overharrowed]

His expression doesn't shift at the word wife, but his tone does, slightly. "I don't know how yet, but it seems to come and go. We can walk. It isn't real."

"It," not "he."

It's easier to appear confident for someone else, as has been true so often for Julius throughout his life. The man standing before them appears tot be real enough, but he can't be. So he -- it -- isn't. And Julius won't play along.

[ipseite]

“I can't be haunted by a man who lives,” she says, her fingertips at her collarbone. She follows him, and stiffens at the words from behind them—

“Is this the shape of your fears, my heart?”

He isn't real. It isn't real.

Persuasive, low— “You would choose a weak imitation who will never threaten you with the reach of his grasp.”

[overharrowed]

While this is clearly a bolt aimed at Petrana, Julius is struck despite himself, given away by a small shift in posture. Subtle, a reaction easily hidden from someone who knew him a bit less, but there all the same.

"Let's keep going. We can't stop it from following us, but perhaps it will get distracted." His tone is low, even.

[ipseite]

Petrana's hand comes up to Julius's elbow, and her grip is—tighter than it needs to be. Close, the scent of her hair and the heavy press of her skirts. Real, whole, present. “How—how widespread. Do you think it only the Gallows?”

The corridor is not the corridor—it is, and yet, oppressively overlaid, the interior of a tent, sparse and made for war, blurring into what looks like it must become a throne-room as they get further.

Marius, still:

“Perhaps you haunt me.”

[overharrowed]

"I haven't heard of anything beyond the Gallows yet," Julius says, setting a pace that lets her continue to hold his arm without difficult. "I've seen a few things clearly trying to get a rise out of me, others I couldn't make sense of. But I've not found anything like an epicenter."

Marius and the war tent are more vivid than most of what he's run across so far. He's unsure if observing as much will help or not, so he doesn't just yet.