faderift | OPEN: Kirkwail

OPEN: Kirkwail

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.

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Are there nights that don't, to you?

Lakshmi keeps her gaze down as bits into her plain bit of scone and cream smothered on it. Chewing slowly, long, pressing her tongue to the back of her teeth as she decides what to say that statement. "Clothes worn by those we love can never be replaced." She ventures at long last, gently placing her scone back down, dusting her fingers lightly as she reaches for her cup of tea.

If only they could spice it a little. Her eyes flick up over the rim. "Something hangs heavy. There is no denying that, I think. But Madam Wysteria is right, we have at least each other's company to be glad of."

Wysteria being shocked into silence is something of a natural phenomena, as rare and strange as a moon's eclipse. Yet here she is on the far side of the table, spoon suspended halfway between little container of jam and Anna's plate.

Thank the spirits for Madame Bai. What on earth would she have said to that had she been the only person present to hear it? Something awful, likely. She can still feel half a dozen questions bubbling at the back of her throat over it and-- no, stop. With a soft cough, Wysteria doles out the jam onto the edge of Anna's plate.

Finally: "Well then I suppose I'm ashamed to say I slept quite soundly."

"Sleeping soundly is a gift," Anna means it as a kind of compliment. That those with healthy enough consciences deserved the rest. She could hardly say her own met the criteria. She thinks maybe to say something else, about how maybe Wysteria might be immune to the whole stench of it today, but as she stares idly into the center of the table and the young woman's spoon full of dripping jam, she observes the wood beginning to bubble.

Orchid and black, a roiling mist that she can see is coming through the wood and not of the wood itself. Like a new course to their table, a little pedestal rises out of it bearing a tiny warped body. It has somewhat of resemblance to a human, but its ribs stick outwards of its tiny dessicated torso like teeth, and the space of its mouth in its wizened head is sideways and gaping.

She recognizes it. They used the mummified fetuses in rituals. Her mouth gapes for just a moment before she's set the tea down with a clatter and thrown her napkin over it. Like she can somehow protect the breakfast from the intrusion. It's futile. Even hidden, the thing smells of the earth.

There is a knife in Lakshmi's hand before she thinks she's thought it through. It might be just a bread and butter knife, but it's certainly better than nothing when that thing comes oozing through the cracks in the table.

"What in the - ?"

What a unique kind of horror this is. The moment in which the three of them stare at the macabre display there on the table between them is a mute, bewildered, mortified quiet. And then of course here comes Anna's napkin tossed over the whole thing and--

Wysteria blinks at the misshapen lump between them. After a moment's hesitation, she leans back to look beneath the table. When nothing there immediately reveals its secrets, she very carefully lifts the corner of the napkin with her knife and cranes her head to get a better look.

"Oh." That's a bit vile, isn't it? "Well hello. Where do you come from?"

Anna wishes she would not, though her discomfort has little to do with the thing itself. She's handled ritual materials before, it's not what it is but where it is. This isn't Yharnam, this isn't even Loran where the bastards originate from. Nightmare things are following her in the waking world, hadn't she said?

"Yharnam is haunting me, even in the daylight."

And she had been really so glad to be free of that place. For a moment she had been elsewhere, in the midst of a great war drinking with wounded knights, and then drinking tea with strange ladies. Until this corpse had crawled up out of the nothingness to show her its deformed face and demand she not be too sure of herself.

"We use the corpses in rituals, to open passages in the labyrinth." Was that why it was here, calling her to perform one of those fetid rituals to break some seal and send herself back to the Hunt? The absolute oppression of that thought shows on her face, rolling across like a cloud.

If there is one benefit to what she has done since she has been here - it's this. That unshakeable knowledge that this is not the truth. It is the spirits of this place. As they did in the Fade. Showing things that were and should not be, as now. As real.

"I have seen this before, - " which she does not say where or how or what, but just the most important parts, as ever. " - it is not your home. It is the games of the Fade plays on us."

Which is much as she can say, looking up to Anna, then across to Wysteria. "There is no labyrinth, here, only the twists of your minds."

"Fascinating." Against all odds, Wysteria seems quite unbothered by the presence in the center of their breakfasting table. To Lakshmi-- "You sound of if you've experience, Madame Bai. Have you much experience with the Fade?"

This said with her knife still propping up the napkin so she might get a good look at what lies underneath. Poor creature, she thinks. And with a gasp, exclaims, "The Veil must be growing thin here for some purpose. I've read about cases like this. Perhaps we're being sabotaged somehow by an outside force. A Venatori agent, perhaps. Someone who joined us at Ghislain."

The reassurance that this is not real does little to soothe her. But if the women are at least not terrified of the small mummy, then she feels she can at least return to gripping the teacup with white hands, rather than shielding them. A wonder she doesn't shatter the cup. She breathes in the warm steam and tries to be a calmer person as she listens to the two of them talk about the Fade.

"Nightmares are merely adjacent worlds," she finally offers to the conversation, her voice is not adversarial, she is telling of something she has witnessed. "They can break through... especially for those who have seen too much of their secrets."

To that, she shakes her head.

"No, not here they're not. I have experienced more than enough of their Fade." She slides her eyes over Anna, briefly, then back across to Wysteria and there is a pinched quality to the corners of her mouth. That sharp roll on her feet. "Here, they reflect you. It is not another world, it is you, drawn up into daylight."

She breathes out slowly. "Perhaps, perhaps a mage. Or someone who has been putting their fingers where they should not."

Like I did. But that didn't need to be said, in present company.

"Would it not be possible for this to be both things, perhaps? For it to be both dear Anna's nightmare and the Fade leaking through?" Poke, goes the tip of her knife. It makes a soft impact against the little creature, the physicality of which is enough to finally unsettle her enough that she lets the napkin back down over the little mummy and sets the knife far to the side so she might not forget and and reuse it for spreading more jam.

"I mean in the sense that there are some Rifters who still use their abilities and experience the world somewhat like they did in-- well, wherever they came from. Like certain people" --(not naming names)-- "Do magic nothing like the mages here do magic. And so on."

She takes a contemplative bite of her toast, thoughtfully regarding the shrouded shape between them. "Though, I suppose it all depends on what we believe we are. If we passed through the Fade to this place or if we're products of it in some way. Have you heard that theory? I read it in a paper."

All of which does nothing at all the answer the question of Why is any of this happening here and now?

"Not my nightmare," she corrects faintly. "Not my dream. Just lived inside one, traveled to others connected to Yharnam. The great ones create them, for themselves, and sometimes for us; if we make the right sacrifice."

The Hunter's Dream was Gehrman's sacrifice. The Nightmare of Mensis, built on the souls of so many dead scholars. The Hunter's Nightmare was the curse of Kos. The Nightmare Frontier, the prize of one cruel Amygdala who wanted to rule in its tower. Then there was Rom's pretty dream beyond the lake, bathing in the moonlight and growing cold blood flowers.

"It wouldn't shock me, were this their Maker's dream."

But as for Lakshmi's other point, Anna wholeheartedly agrees with it: "It's assuredly some mage, some ugly ritual."

There was - to a certain point - only one way to find out what this thing was made of. It's better her than them if this thing did turn out to be harmful. Lakshmi's hand lifts, raising up, and gently she reaches out, towards the figure.

Ghosts were nothing easy to deal with. But if they were incorporeal as they were made out to be, they had nothing to fear. She steps closer, moving near. Her hand directing for the mangled infant creature ( or whatever it truly was ).

"Something such. Or someone has just been a fool. A damnably stupid one."

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OPEN: Kirkwail

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