faderift | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

OPEN: Kirkwail

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