Part 2 viewtopic.php?f=26&t=34448
CONTENT WARNING: Language, depictions of violence
Rhy'Din: The Bernardino Estates, Six days ago.
Well, this is a new kind of weird for me, Cameron thought to himself. He hovered over his own dead body, peering down at the bloodied limp form of himself, splayed across one of his father's favorite rugs, before kneeling down and placing a hand on his own chest. A chest on a new different body. It was odder than touching another version of himself when they were both alive.
It's so strange, he thought. Images of a doppelganger of the one woman stabbing him throughout his chest, stunning him long enough to slash his right eye out, a montage of the strikes. How did I let this happen?
"Ibliss," he called, standing up right, and extending a hand out to his right side.
In a fast flicker of flames, a large fast moving bout that moved from the floor up; the demon Cameron has long ago bonded with - the one who changed his looks so drastically from being a mere copy of his father - emerged. He stood approximately nine feet tall with his horns. His skin was a deep red, with black lips and nails, his wings spread from his back with dark feathers, all this a reflection of his turning fall from grace, from an age long since forgotten wherein he turned his back to the hubris of the holy. Though, to be fair, he was a mere echo of his true self, having a fragment of his essence contained within the weapon Cameron was found wholly worthy of wielding. He wore old metal armor,
Ibliss, having not taken corporeal form in some time, looked to his hand, tinged with lingering memories of life, and a realness that seemed all too foreign to him now.
His voice rang out for the first time in years, sounding like a smooth tone tinged by fire, rumbling deep in his chest, "Unwilling to examine your own dead flesh, Cameron?"
"I'm not saying it's not weird, but I just don't know why I couldn't heal the wounds," he admitted, turning his head to look at the demon. "You should have a better understanding of what the hell is going on." He then looked down at his body, eyes narrowing, as his mind, again, flooded with images.
"These things seem to have found a way to eat away at you," hooved feet stepped forward and Ibliss crouched, wings curling behind his back, a finger moved to a hole in Cameron's shirt and protruded within. "You were wise not to dissolve back into the dreaming, I fear it's corruption may be able to follow, if it can assail you in such a formattable way." He removed his finger, and added, "it seems to be gone, now."
"Yeah, I have enough going on in there, I really don't want to add more problems to it," Cameron said before letting out a sigh, and resting hands upon his hips. "They don't follow me to Rhy'Din, ever, which is a good thing."
Cameron lingered a moment, silent, as Ibliss continued to paw at the body, eyes searching it over. The two didn't seem to need to communicate more.
Finally after several silent moments Ibliss spoke, "perhaps you should do yourself a favor, and pay homage to what happens to you."
"It's not worth it," Cameron said.
"Too afraid to confront yourself," Ibliss asked, and a bout of flames came again, devouring the large form in a hot, bright flash. The demon returned to the dreaming.
"I don't know... am I?" Cameron wasn't sure what to make of the comment.
Escar Island, the same day.
Escar's island was fairly aptly named. A tiny world, in a tiny plane, in a tiny bit of limited space, slipping itself around a tiny star. The world was covered in water, save one land mass that was only a few hundred square miles. Most of the landmass was either lush jungle or thick forest, with one large peak of mountain offset from it's center, rising up with a snowy crown. A small area on the south east corner of the physical island, maybe only a square mile or so in size and immediately south of a small bay on the eastern side of the island, lay only a mile north from the southern beach, and was the only significant clearing of foliage and fauna. A dirt road led to a series of small docks -- or did, until a couple of weeks ago. Something had come from the water, tearing inland, leaving a large gash almost up to the compound, now flooded with seawater. If Ar's story was to be believed, it appears the attacking ship tore right into the land from the sea.
The site was large, and extensive, competently created, and large stone formations littered one side of it, acting as a natural border to the bay, and were set upon a large hill, giving the southern crest of the bay a long series of cliffs. The Compound itself consisted of several smaller building and one large, sprawling window laden structure with several floors, at the edge of several acres of 'yard' to its south side toward the beac.The edge of that yard was now upheaved and flooding with seawater as it soaked into the soil, grass and now-mud, now torn up throughout the yard in clear path that lead up to the main structure.
The Building was damaged, with a gaping hole from the assault in one of it's main walls, right where the path of the attack ended, as if something poured into the building. Throughout it's halls holes had been torn into the walls, as if searching throughout had been undertaken with little care given to the inhabitants.
Magus and Mikael stood just outside what appeared to be some kind of giant, complex, mechanical vault door that had been ripped from it's very hingest and lay resting half crashed through a less sound outer wall. They were hesitantly looking inside the room. Though dark, they both knew what lay within; several feet inside was a large device, exceptionally advanced and complex, that had at its end facing the entrance of the vault once contained a man -- or something that was once a man. Escar himself barely qualified as alive at the point that Mikael put one of his own highly advanced bullets through the man's skull.
The vault also contained what they called 'the Brain Trust'; a collection of six brains that were remotely connected to a body they called Giles, who ran the systems throughout the compound thoroughly. Behind them both was some kind of energy generation device, and part of it had been severely damaged in the attack that left a bit of what remained of Escar's body dangling from it's mounts by what was once one of his arms. It'd been decades since his death, and since Magus and his lot left Giles to care for the inhabitants of this odd experimental place.
Now the men were inspecting the damage, and relaying the bits of information they knew about the matters, and conversing about the matters at had.
"Didn't Escar's version of Cameron claim he was from the future, originally," Mikael asked.
"Yes," Magus replied, taking a few steps into the room. There was a very dark legacy in this chamber and it loomed over everyone, and neither of the men was eager to rush inside to get the better assessment they'd agreed to take on the situation.
"So, do you think this Stark is telling the truth? We've never had much success sussing out time in the other direction," Mikael said. He could sense Magus' apprehension, and while he mentally acknowledged his own, he took a deep breath and overcame it, walking into the room.
"Well, I think he probably believes it, I can come up with a few other explanations, given what we're used to dealing with," Magus said, mustering up the same courage.
As Mikael began to inspect the brain trust, Magus moved past him toward Escar's device, a complex machine that extended his life, and was hooked directly into the site's power source. Part of Escar's mounting had been ripped from it, likely breaking the integrity of the power source.
"We never did figure out how Escar developed this kind of thing, did we?" This was posed to Mikael as Magus leaned in close to try and get an understanding of what he was looking at.
"We don't even know with any meaningful accuracy how old he and Ar.... are," he said with a tongue trying not to get knotted. Each of the Brain trust brains stood about four feet off the ground on metal pedestals rife with nearly run wires down the shafts. The gray matter was visible through small domes, and while the site had lost its primary power source, axillary power should have kept them alive. One of the dome's was shattered, one's pedestal was wrenched that the wires had clearly been compromised, these being the two nearest the back of the room and Escar, three lining each wall.
"He could've engineered a brain to do any or all of this, for all we know," Mikael added. Each of the brain's had a status light flooding vats. Only one was lit white, four were red and one was yellow, which Mikael was inspecting. "We don't even know if he found this plane, or made it somehow. He was so old and mentally decayed, he probably didn't even remember."
"Probably true," Magus agreed. He finally moved around and looked at the corpse, crossing his arms, he then looked back at Mikael. "You didn't have to do this, you know. It should have been me."
"You have far too much blood on your hands just from trying to do the right thing," Mikael said. "I didn't lose my soul by taking one, horrible, tormented, dangerous life for us."
Magus wasn't sure he agreed with that. After Sin - Mikael's own brother - took his arm and his eye from him, Magus had noted a turn for the worse. Mikael only grew more despondent after killing Escar. The man had never been the same, most, if not all of the warmth robbed from the once charming man.
"We don't really talk about the toll this has taken on us," Magus said. "This long, unending life with so much conflict."
"Do we need to," Mikael asked, looking over at him. "We don't even know how old we are at this point, I'm fairly certain we're well over half a millenium. You’re probably older, you've been time dialated a couple of times. You might be older than Ar, technically."
"It's changed us, Mikael," Magus stated flatly.
"You haven't changed that much," Mikael argued. "Maybe less idealistic, but you've been going through the same cycles and managing pretty well."
"Maybe," Magus said. "But I was made, and I was made for this," he added. He circled around where Escar's body dangled, slowly. "But you've changed and this life has been torture to Cam, Mik. He's nothing like he was and scantly resembles the boy we raised, at this point."
"I wouldn't say that," Mikael contested. "He's... very much that charming, but suffering boy he always has been. That was his fate before we got him and figured out what he was."
"I think we might disagree on that," Magus replied.
The Bernardino Estates
Cameron put the shovel down. He didn't need the shovel, but it seemed... right? Fitting, at least. If he was going to take the time to pay respects to himself, he should put some effort in. His body, boiled down to its base components, was functionally human, after all. Exceptionally better than mundane, but still human. He looked over at the mass of flesh now wrapped in whatever gray sheet he was able to scavenge from his father's cupboards. Fae would be proud of the ruining, he mused. He moved over, bent down, lifted up his own body and slung it over his shoulder. A step over to the hole... the grave he'd dug, and laid it within carefully, unwrapping the face.
"What now? Do I... say something? Do I eulogize myself? Is eulogize a word?" He knew who he was asking, but Ibliss seemed content to let him figure it out for himself; the now-long-term-denizen of the dreaming just had no interest in being that involved.
"Here lies Cameron. He's been an idiot for decades. He can die, but he doesn't stay dead because he's ''a small infinite of dreamscape that interacts with the world as a person" and he's kind of..." Cameron trailed off. "This is stupid," he said. He moved to the mound of dirt he'd compiled, and placed a hand on it and it all started rolling into the hole, leaving a new brown gap in the green on the far side of the estate lawn.
He looked at the large house in the distance, and the stone path leading back toward it. His eyes traced the path, toward the forest, and memories of a clearing and ring flashed into his mind, as well as an intense amount of emotional and physical love. "I guess it’s not all bad." He took a few steps, walking toward a series of bushes that line the division between the lawn and the outskirts and forest surrounding them. There was a large rock there, and bent down and lifted it as if it were made of paper, turning only to pause and look out across the lake. The large hill on the other side still had the odd formation. Two shapes, once craters now filled with foliage, were still present. One from his father's first battle with Ar, the other from the time he'd managed to ground his own mother in her Dragon form when she decided evil was the flavor of the month, and was drunk on her own power. "Why is is my life so fucking weird?"
He walked over the fresh grave, and dropped the stone with a large thud into the dirt. He dropped down and sat on the churned soul, stroon with upheaved grass blades and tapped on the rock. Then more, then harder, trying to work out how to do it right. He kept going as bits of stone popped out and finally the rudimentary headstone was done. Here lies Cameron, it said in crooked, sloppy, and barely legible letters. And all he could think was how his father could have done it better.
Escar Island
"Okay, we've got enough power with the small thorium unit, that the water pumps, and one of the synthesizer lines is back up," Mikael said, walking into a room with some cloth he'd found, using it to clean grease from the hand that had skin on it. "They won't have full bellies for a while, but won't starve, between that and the green house."
"Good, I don't really want these people suffering," Magus said.
"Well, given the only synth line I could get up was a poor substitute for chicken, I'm not so sure of that," Mikael made his best attempt at a joke.
Magus smiles lightly. It was something. They were in the vault again, and Magus was standing over one of the red vats. "Given he's using the same gene structure, if we can spare enough power for the med-lab I might be able to extract enough of the stem-cells that give me regeneration that I might be able to save some of these and we can get some of Giles back on line, even if his body is dead."
"Oh, I didn't tell you. It's not. When I first got here I found a way to get them going by basically making... What do those Earth-esque Rhy'Dinians call those fruit blend things," Mikael asked.
"Smoothies," Magus answered. "
"Yeah, those. And I managed to get a feeding tube going," Mikael added.
“That's great!" Magus was actually excited. "We might pull this off," finally, good news, and a good direction. "If I can get Giles up, do you think you guys can get it to full power without me?"
"Oh, absolutely," Mikael answered. "It turns out two of the A-class people have developed some of your and Cam's density tricks and can probably lift a couple of tons, and one of the younger B's has a rudimentary version of your kinetic manipulation. It'll take a couple of weeks to build a safe large reactor and I'll have to source some thorium, but yeah, I think we have a good chance. I need to teach them more about fabrication and construction, and get their little manufacturing center back up, but... Get me Giles and you can go find Cam."
"Perfect," Magus said, gesturing to the control console against the original reactor.
That's when Mikael noticed. Escar's body was gone. "You bury him?"
"Yes," said Magus. "He may not deserve dignity, but we should always strive to be better than our enemies."
"That's why I say you haven't changed," Mikael moved to the console and began to route power to the med-lab. "After what he did to Cam, I'm not sure if I could be so noble."
Magus moved to the torn vault door, and paused. "It wasn't noble, Mik. It was selfish. I need to be better, for me. Nothing is ever so black and white."
"Fair enough," Mikael responded as Magus stepped out of the room.
As Magus walked down the hall, a small set of eyes peeked around a corner, as if looking for permission to come forward. They were blue, though they lacked the reflective qualities Magus' eyes did, the hue was essentially the same.
"You can come out, I'm not here to hurt anyone," Magus said as he proceeded down the hallway. "What's your name?"
"Myla," she answered. She slipped out from behind the corner, and approached him. She couldn’t have been more than nine or ten by normal human standards. She wore a sweater since the chill could now get inside the building. This was their mild fall season. "Some of the adults.. said that you're really good with moving things, like I do."
"I am," Magus said, as he approached and she moved to walk alongside him.
"It's so hard, though," she said.
"It is," he said, looking down at her. "Come, talk with me, I have to do something important. I'm going to see if we can make Giles better," spoken on a smile as they walked. "Are you looking for pointers?"
"Uh.. yeah... I mean, I guess, I don't know. My parents are off with the forest people trying to hunt food, and have been gone for days, so I'm just bored."
"Lonely, you mean?" It'd been a while since Magus could really interact with a child, but he remembered, more or less, how most of them worked.
"No," she said indignantly.
"Sure, sure. You got a handle on this, right?" He was smiling. It'd been a while since he could really interact with people, at least earnestly. And even when he could be forthright, like with Arnor, it was always so melancholy.
"Of course," she said, as they approached the med lab. It had automated doors, and was more secure than say the dorm rooms and apartments throughout the complex.
"Can you open this door," he asked, raising a brow at her as he peered down.
"Easy," the word came out in such a cocky tone from the girl. Myla suddenly oozed confidence. She put her small hand on the door and it began to rattle and started to slide to one side with a loud scraping sound until it was just far enough ajar for them to side step through. "Boom."
"Not bad," Magus said, clearly humoring her, but just enough she might buy it. Until he placed a fingertip about an inch from the door and it slid open smoothly. "So, you have better luck when you're touching what you want to move, right?"
"Yeah," she said, feigning some amount of annoyance in her glance that he made it look so easy. "When I try to do it from far away everything goes crazy."
"That's because you can only do it by contacting the tiny parts of things," he said, stepping in. He began to remove his coat and pauldron. The room was lined with various human sized technological chambers, and beds, and rooms to either side. They proceeded down the hall, passing even the room where Giles' body waited, to a specific one.
"What do you mean," she asked.
"Well, say you want to move a rock. You would touch the rock and all the tiny parts of the rock stay together, so you can move kinetic energy into the rock and do things. Put enough energy in and you can even make the rock explode if all the energy isn't going the same direction." he began to explain.
"Yeah, that makes sense," she said.
They stopped at the door, and Magus looked it up and down. "So, all the solid things touch and it's easy to move energy through them, when they touch, until they separate." Having his coat off, he folded it into the pauldron, and tucked it under an arm. "Air is a lot of tiny, tiny things, so you have to use your power to make them stay together like a thread, to send your energy through it." He opened a palm at his side and the door opened itself gracefully. "With a lot of practice it gets easier and easier."
"Whoa, okay. I think I get it," she said.
He stepped into the room, which had a large chair looking much like it was an examination device with restraints, and many mount points for tubes and hoses. Magus began to get to work at setting things up, going through the cabinets and drawers, finding syringes and bags, tubes, needs, and so on, setting them on the available counter, speaking all the while. "When you get really good," he continued, "you can even suck the energy out of things, so gravity stops working," he held up a packaged syringe, let it go and it just hung in the air.
"Whoa... okay... that's cool. So, I could float in the air and keep myself from falling," she asked, slightly agape watching the syringe.
Magus grinned at her, and the object started arcing around the room, making loops and taking off, adding "when you're good enough you can soar through the sky, and even beyond."
She just nodded, "so, you're saying practice."
"Yes. A lot," he said, collecting the object and going about setting up the chair.
"How do you know so much about us," she asked.
"We're very much the same, Myla. And my son spent a few years here a long, long time ago," he said, seating himself in the chair. He took a need, attached to a tub, attached to a bag and started feeling around his arm. "If you don't like blood, you might want to look away."
"I'm not a child," she said. "Was this, like, before I was born?"
"Yes," he said. "That's a story for another time. Not all of it is good," he said. In fact, none of it was. They tortured Cameron here.
"I can handle it," she said.
"Well, it's pretty sad, and maybe I can't," he said in a nonchalant manner. He pressed the needle into his skin, but it didn't puncture, and continued with his lesson. "So, when you get really good with this ability you can use it on yourself. You can hold yourself together, make your skin strong. It'll become an extension of you. You could crush rocks in your bare hands, stop people from punching you. You think you're tough, now? Practice and see how strong you can really get." He pressed the needle into his skin and it simply wouldn't penetrate.
"Definitely!" Myla was excited, watching and it was all too obvious. "I could stop them the next time someone attacks," she said with some cheer.
Magus didn't let his discomfort so, but knowing he was one of the attackers, and Ar before that, it made his thoughts uneasy. "Yes, you could definitely help save people," he alluded, instead, pivoting his thoughts away.
He reached out and a jar full of cotton balls slid from the corner of the counter across the room, to its edge. "Here, practice. Try about an inch away and see if you can hold a thread of air together and move the jar."
"Sure," she said, and hurried over the counter.
"So, you didn't get hurt when the people attacked," he asked.
She was busy eyeballing the jar and trying to get her finger aligned, right away, so there was a brief pause before she answered, "no." She grimaced a bit. "Young Stark was nice to me. To everyone, until we told him he couldn't see Escar."
Confused, Magus asked, "Young Stark?"
"Yeah, there was the kid Stark, well not a kid, he was getting like a little bit of hair on his face, you know? Then another Stark came, and he was taller and had a beard," she began to explain.
"So... tell me what happened exactly," he said.
She paused a moment, again, trying to focus, bit of air causing her hair to wave as she couldn't quite hold it together, huffing before she spoke, "so, Kid Stark shows up in the field one day, and everyone's worried and confused, but he's kind of young and really nice, so we take him and talk to him. He stays for a couple of days and he says he needs to talk to Escar, and since Escar only shows up to bring presents once a year-"
Magus' brow knitted. They mythologized him?
Myla just continued, none-the-wiser, "-he can't just see Escar. You gotta wait, you know? So he says he'll wait. Then a couple days later, he gets really upset with Ardrew, and they get into a big argument. Everyone's mad, but we go to bed, then in the middle of the night, there's really loud noise outside and then there's this big ship and all these things coming out of it," she pauses, trying to focus, a bit of a breeze passed through the room as she loses her grip.
"Go on," Magus encourages.
"So, big Stark comes out of the ship, with a bunch of people and things, some look kind of like us, and they just start breaking into everything. And I mean, it's Stark. Same voice, same everything. I guess it might have been his dad, but it's just... it's like older Stark, I don't know how else to explain it," more air roams the room as she squints.
"Then what happened," Magus asked.
"Well, some of the adults go out to try and stop them... and... well, I left, but I know what happened, but the big Stark kept yelling stuff like "come out, and take responsibility" and "you did this to them" and they just tore everything up. Then they just vanish. I don't know why." A good rush of wind comes, the jar moves. She knows it's just the air that moved it, she looks over at Magus to see what he thinks.
It's clear by the look on Magus face, he doesn't think she moved it, but he continues the conversation, "me either." Pausing for a moment, "but I'm going to do my best to find out."
The Seaside Beach
Cameron had been staring at the horizon for at least an hour, eyes dried out from the wind, and from crying he'd never admit to having done. He could feel her down the beach approaching. He knew she was there just from how their link pounded in his head, now more than ever. It was maddening. The link from the false Fae seemed every bit as real to him. It was confusing that it could be duplicated by someone else. The only place he could feel a false link was when he was in the dreaming, and none of it made any sense. As a chill wrapped around him, and sounds emanated from around. A wolf, a small girl, others began to collect nearby, the events flashed before him, rubbing like a jagged rock against his brain,
He could remember it, as he could remember anything that happened to any of his bodies. The faux Fae, attacking, him defending himself, then as he lifted a hand to deal a blow, she feigned regret, pleaded, and he hesitated. She stabbed him with her blades, digging them in deep. He couldn't escape the confusion, she did it again, he doubled over and she swung a slash across his eye, penetrating his defenses. Did she break his density, or did he release it? He didn't even know.
Ibliss had taken control of his hand, and cast a spell of transit and taken him home, to try and save him. It didn't work.
Now, in present time, he sat upon a rock, listening to clamouring of voices, haunted by one. Haunted by more than that. I should leave again, he thought. Is this why I leave? What am I afraid of?
The growling of a beast on the beach's edge grew near. He was already fighting back tears and is in no mood to fight again.
(Cue a live RP scene in the Seaside Beach)