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

[notched]

"I thought..." and now her eyes fill with tears, her head tilting back as if that will stop them rolling down her face. "I thought I was saving her. Sending her here to the chapel."

He had asked what she remembered. It was more than just the baby, that hideous little celestial half-breed had been merely a confirmation of what had been creeping into her thoughts along her journey to that point.

"But he was here, waiting for the veil to thin. Oedon."

Oedon. That's the name that has been repeating itself all around them in the darkness, it becomes clear now that Anna has said it aloud. The resonation of it is thunderously black but takes on an approving note. Yes. Yes. Oedon.

[libratus]

The name syncs into place, and the hairs on the back of Ilias's neck prickle to life in answer. Steady, rhythmic chants have their place in certain corners of his life, with his brothers and sisters in the Necropolis, in the comforting repetition of ritual, but this feels twisted. Wrong.

Blasphemous.

"A demon?" he guesses. Or some kind of elder god, if he has this many worshippers to whisper his name. Ilias steps closer to her, half for for compassion's sake and half in case this Oedon decides to come when called. "Even the best of us are not immune to deception," he offers, soft.

[notched]

"Oh..." it sighs out of her. "I am a journeyman of my own deception. This path I have been walking has been paved with lies and illusions."

If only she had taken the blood she had come for and returned to the mountains. If only she had shown that shred of loyalty to her sister, instead of letting the promises of Yharnam carry her away. She had thought she had found such profound purpose as a Hunter.

"That is hardly the first innocent I've murdered, for its inhumanity," she mutters. "This is what the Church wanted for all of us, the ascension of mankind. They didn't tell us how ugly it was, how terrifying. They didn't tell us how many of us would not be worthy."