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Post by Gabriel on Jun 17, 2017 7:47:29 GMT
There was no point talking to Malak when he was like this. Actually, there was rarely a point to talking to Malak ever, but when he devolved into pathetic insults - striking in predictable ways, sullen and childish in his delivery - it always led to a fight. With Hadjara not here to mediate Gabriel knew enough about handling himself around the adumbrate to avoid murderous intent with Hadjara's body caught in the middle. Deliberately, resolutely, he closed his eyes, leaned back against the spire, and ignored Malak's ugly ranting.
Until he couldn't resist, because Malak was spouting such rubbish.
"Shadows are sucked between the dimensions without their control or intent. You can only come here through a host, and once you arrive you're trapped. In a cage. And at best, those creepy plants have access to two dimensions, tops. It's entirely different and you're being deliberately obtuse. I've only seen you using Hadjara's magic because Hadjara is the only way you can even exist here. Whatever you claim about your own abilities is irrelevant, you can't use it from within your prison." He shut his eyes again, tired of this conversation before it had even begun. The problem was, they both thought they were right, and neither had any real perspective of the other to judge otherwise. He had no doubt he and Malak could argue back and forth all night, and that would be very counterproductive to his goal of recharging his other magic and not dying when he did zap them all over to the Shadow world.
"Having sex with you is utterly irrelevant to my access to the Goddesses' magic! If anything, it will make it much slower, because I'll be too busy puking over the edge of this spire for all of time. If you want to get to the Shadow world, leave me alone. Find something to do. Go annoy someone else. Anyone else." His magic - not the teleporting magic, his own - was already recovering, and irritably he threw up a telekinetic barrier and shoved Malak backwards several feet, setting up an invisible wall around him. He couldn't maintain it for long, or at any great distance, but maybe Malak would finally get the message.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 18, 2017 6:42:57 GMT
Malak growled as he was slid back across the cave floor, turning to smoke as soon as the barrier had expanded fully.
It was infuriating. It wasn't like he would even have the satisfaction of forgetting Gabriel thousands of years after he had died. Malak was comprised entirely of his thoughts and memories – he was incapable of forgetting things over the course of time. Although this was the first time he actively wished that he could. He curled his consciousness more protectively around Hadjara's as his outline in smoke change to the rough form of some huge mix between crocodile and feline.
Six rough approximations of legs moved erratically yet smoothly as he paced around the boarder, still unconvinced that Gabriel was actually unable to teleport again. Rows of bright green eyes opened on the flank facing him, roughly formed from the smoke before a huge, fanged mouth split open from waist to neck under the row of eyes.
Malak paced in a circle around Gabriel, his eyes rolling before he loped to the unconscious familiars and reformed himself out of smoke lying half sprawled out on top of the crocodile's back. “I'll wait twelve hours. Any longer and I'll consider this a loss and just kill this body.” The statement was flat, hollow, and cold. It wasn't a threat, not to Malak. The way he saw it, the destruction of the body was a perfectly valid way to fix the soul.
He folded his hands behind his head and tossed one leg over the knee of the other as he stared blankly up at the roof of the cave. It only took a couple hours, though, before he got bored enough to raise one arm and sling his hand backwards, far enough that the elbow rolled out of the joint with a sick 'pop'. Before he gripped at the bone and rolled it back in with a 'crack'.
He hummed mildly before he did it again. Then again. And again.
Every couple of seconds he did it again, rhythmically rolling out the joint then cracking it back into place as he counted down minute by minute to his deadline.
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 18, 2017 8:24:12 GMT
Gabriel's dreams were strange and disjointed, punctuated by an unsettling cracking and clicking that made him stir restlessly as it found its way into his unconscious and steered the course of the story playing inside his mind. When he came to, hours later, it was slowly and with reluctance. The spire room within the Tunnels had grown cold and he felt stiff. He kept his eyes shut as recollection of the situation trickled back like molasses, his mind fighting against it. Couldn't be helped, though. Hadjara unconscious, apparently badly affected by Faery, and his arguments with Malak. He remembered the threat, not that he considered it a real one. Though the adumbrate had been serious Gabriel's only frame of reference for him was as inexplicably protective of Hadjara, and the Daemon Lord genuinely thought Malak wouldn't ever deliberately harm her. Had he known the truth, it would have unravelled him, but as it was he had slept and the time had passed as it always did.
One eye flickered open in irritation as he realised the sound that had disturbed him all night was not confined to his dreams but was being produced by said absurdly maddening adumbrate. He watched for a moment as Malak messed with Hadjara's joints in a way that he could only assume would hurt when she finally got control of her body back. The cracking set his teeth on edge and he opened the other eye, glaring now.
"That's disgusting. Could you really find nothing better to do?"
Slowly, Gabriel felt through his magic. Sometime during the night his lower level abilities had switched themselves back on, so ingrained now they were as much as part of him as his physical body. He wasn't back at full power, he didn't think, but nothing felt out of reach. He wasn't sure exactly how the teleporting magic worked - whether a certain amount of time had to pass, or whether a certain time of day counted as the time ticking over, but the kernel of magic that was familiar and yet not his own - nestled somewhere alongside the telekinesis also gifted to him - was there, quietly waiting. There was a touch of reluctance when he prodded it mentally and he wondered whether teleporting so often was a good idea, but he wanted Hadjara back too much to care. He assumed he was within Malak's twelve hours since the adumbrate hadn't woken him, but it wasn't the adumbrate's happiness he cared about. The very idea that he would withhold the teleporting deliberately was ridiculous, given it meant spending more time with Malak than necessary.
No longer, though. He was ready. He loathed the idea of returning, but he was ready.
"We can go now. You fix her as soon as we get there, alright?" He held out a hand.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 18, 2017 10:04:15 GMT
Malak ignored Gabriel, and just continued counting minute by minute until twelve hours were up right up until Gabriel said they could go. “Fucking finally!” Malak hissed as he got to his feet. Because he had touched them every other time they teleported, Malak reached out and grabbed Gabriel's wrist a little tighter than strictly necessary. “Obviously I will,” Malak said with more than a little disdain.
“Alright – hard black rock ground that's cracked and broken. Giant metal buildings on either side. Probably metal 'carriages' on the street too. And for fuck's sake try not to drop us in front of something that wants to eat you.”
-
They were in one body in Litharia. They were different species in Litharia, too. But here, in the Shadow World they couldn't inhabit the same space at the same time. Being here without a body had changed her enough that like him, her consciousness was solid.
There wasn't a noise as they separated. There wasn't a flash of light or a pulse of energy. It was just there were suddenly two hands hovering over the spot on Gabriel's hand where one had been moments before before they stumbled back in opposite directions.
One was Hadjara. She looked mostly like herself, although her eyes were jet black once more and she was covered in black scrawl, although the writing on her skin was clearly patterned differently than when Malak controlled her. She staggered and put her head in her hands. “Uggh . . . What happened?” She groaned. But she didn't even have time to lift her head before the other was upon her.
Malak wrapped his arms around Hadjara's middle and lifted her into the air before he spun her around, laughing. He had obviously modeled his body after Hadjara's. It was the same height and build with matching black wings and tail, but the rest of his color palette had changed. His skin was a dark shade of brown and his hair had become a ruddy red a few shades darker than his eyes. His clothes had changed from what she wore too to match the style of Shadow World clothes – short black and white jogging shorts, a huge hoodie that had probably once been pink, and tattered running shoes. “Fuck yeah!” He cheered, although his voice no longer matched his body. White noise, a young man, and an older women all overlayed, “I knew this would fix you!”
“Wh-what? What's goin' on?” she asked, “what happened?”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 18, 2017 10:25:46 GMT
The first thing that Gabriel did when they arrived was stumble back, away from Malak and Hadjara, before quickly regaining his balance to look around warily. Malak's instructions had been enough for the magic to work, and thank the Gods for that - he needed a place to aim for else the magic would pick for him, and he didn't know if it was sentient or benevolent enough not to drop him somewhere very dangerous. Mind you, it still felt dangerous here, and Gabriel remembered the feeling. This whole dimension hated him. He was alive and brimming with living chaos magic, in a place that was dead. He might as well have brought a flashing neon sign with him to announce his presence to every dead, broken thing, like Malak, that lived here.
He sighed, resigned, and with effort switched off his lower abilities again. Best to use as little magic as possible, he remembered that too. Only once he'd finished assessing their surroundings, bleak and uninteresting and grey, did he turn his attention to Hadjara and Malak.
On the one hand, that Hadjara was conscious and talking was a very good thing. His relief was palpable; the Shadow world had reset whatever mess was in her head. On the other hand, she now had the world's creepiest doppleganger dancing around with her. Gabriel had only ever observed Malak as a creature of smoke and shadow; to see him take on a form similar to Hadjara but all wrong in important ways was deeply unsettling. And here he'd been thinking the adumbrate couldn't get any more horrible. He kept his mouth shut, though, more interested in checking Hadjara was actually, really back.
"Let's see. A brief jaunt into Faery. A walk, a short dance, then you went batshit insane. Scared me half to death, trying to claw your own damn eyes out. Then you tried to shield yourself with ice so no-one could get near you and I think I steamed half a forest to death burning through it to get you out." Okay, so maybe a day of worry, disturbed sleep and being forced to come back here, of all places, almost entirely against his will had him a little angry. Gabriel had stalked over to Hadjara, arms folded over his chest.
"Kept insisting you would be fine, too, right up until you punched me in the face."
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 18, 2017 11:11:29 GMT
It was weird, only having her own fragmented memories of what had happened while they were in the Mound. Malak had dissected and processed them as soon as she was herself again and found them useless and irrelevant. Aside from the memory of decking Gabriel. Oh he savored that one.
Hadjara shut her eyes and put her hands on Malak's shoulders as a wave of nausea threatened to overtake her and he set her down as soon as the sensation overcame him as well. He stayed close still to her, his arms around her and so close their foreheads were touching and she left her hands on his shoulders. There was nothing particularly sexual about his closeness but it was still deeply intimate but it didn't feel uncomfortable or unnatural to either of them. Hadjara blinked her eyes open as she sorted through his memories and found one in particular.
“You were gonna kill me?”
“Obviously. You think I trust that idiot with anything?” His eyes shifted briefly to Gabriel, “it doesn't really matter, you'd still be with me”
“I like bein'alive.”
“You'd get used to it.” He shifted his head so their foreheads rubbed together. Hadjara frowned but she still curled her fingers together with his. She almost forgot about Gabriel entirely until he spoke, and then she almost jumped out of her skin. Hadjara turned to look at him and Malak flickered slightly so he was behind her, his chin on her shoulder and his arms draped around her.
“Uuuuuhhhhhh,” Hadjara said. Her eyes darted around, looking everywhere but him before she met his gaze and smiled nervously. “I – uh. I didn't know that was gonna happen. I'm . . . I'm sorry.”
Malak raised his head a little and spoke into her ear, “don't be. That masochist probably liked getting hit.”
But Hadjara was used to Malak talking to her as she spoke to him, and she didn't even react as he spoke out loud. It didn't really feel any different than usual to either of them. “I don't actually remember that happenin'. But since ya here, ya wanna look around?”
“Let's ditch him,” Malak suggested, “I'm hungry, I know you are too.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 19, 2017 9:17:58 GMT
Yes, he was mad. Mostly because he was uncomfortable and worried, though, and when Hadjara spoke to him with her words in a normal order, with no reference to Levent or Yed's thoughts and no apparent proclivity to scratch her eyes out, he was relieved. He didn't even bother looking at Malak, let alone acknowledging him - he wasn't interested in the adumbrate now. He searched Hadjara's face as she spoke and found nothing but truth; she hadn't known that Faery would do that, and it had come on so fast. Never again, if he could help it.
"Lesson learned." He offered a slight smile, lip quirking at one corner, still pretending Malak wasn't there.
Until their conversation piqued his curiosity, and not in a good way.
"Kill her? Why would you kill her? You wouldn't be able to exist in Litharia without her." He was confused; Malak had always been so protective of Hadjara. He'd gone, in fact, to superhuman lengths to save her from so many threats in the past that Gabriel had just about lost count.
"Why have you always saved her in the past if you don't even care? You went to so much effort. You could have let her die any time." The Daemon Lord was frowning now; there was an edge of anger to his tone, but mostly he was puzzled. And here he was, thinking Malak had that one single redeeming feature.
"In fact, you could kill her any second of any day, and be free of me in an instant to boot. What changed?"
Gabriel was still turning this information over, trying to sort through everything he'd known of Malak to fit this piece of the puzzle in, when Hadjara suggested they look around. It was too disparate to make enough sense of to get properly angry, so he shrugged. He wasn't sure the adumbrate would bother explaining; he looked ready to take off into the hellscape and undertake whatever passed for eating here.
"I have to wait a day until I can teleport out of here again. Whatever you want to do is fine with me as long as it ends with both of us still being alive." There was a new edge of suspicion to his gaze when it flickered briefly to Malak, draped over Hadjara's shoulder like a creepy shawl. He wasn't even going to rise to the bait when Malak suggested they ditch him. He was too busy deciding whether the adumbrate was even worse than he'd first thought.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 19, 2017 10:13:26 GMT
Malak raised his chin and looked at Gabriel, studying him coldly as he spoke. And then a corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. His eyes flashed as his whole face curled until he laughed. Softly at first, under his breath with little breaks between each sound but it quickly built into peels of discordant laughter, all three of his voices sliding out of alignment.
The unholy sound of his voice ripped through the empty streets and echoed back, twisting into something even worse before he stopped suddenly and his expression was again one of mid agitation and open dislike. “What use do I have for Litharia? Why should I want to stay there?” He asked. One of his hands snaked around Hadjara's neck and his twisted his tail around her own. “What's so great about being alive? And what does being alive have to do with caring? I told you I was going to. Before you fell asleep I told you I was going to destroy the body if you took too long, did you already forget?”
“He . . . he don't mean it the way ya think,” Hadjara said softly. She put her own hand over his and looked down and away from Gabriel. “I don't think ya wanna know.” He never wanted to know what Malak thought. Gabriel and Malak didn't see eye to eye on anything, they were so different to their very cores that she didn't think they ever would.
Anything else she was going to say was cut off by a sudden raspy shriek as something skittered on seven uneven legs between Gabriel's legs and sprang into Hadjara's arms. With a curl of his lip Malak let go of his host and stepped back, digging his hands into the pockets of his hoodie as he backed off. The vector had grown larger, its rose bloom was a richer shade of pink and its limbs were so long they hung past her waist. “Nalla! How'd you get here so fast?”
”Felt you! Missed you! Hungry, but back now! Feed me, feed me, feed me!”
From the same direction Nalla had come drifted another, pale white and smaller but shockingly beautiful was a lily who's roots turned to tentacles that flowed under her like a jellyfish. ”Yes . . . we were scared when you left,” it said so, so softly, ”you called us but then didn't keep us.” Shauri said. A tentacle brushed Hadjara's cheek but she didn't let go of Nalla to return the gesture.
“Oh come on, ya'll didn't think I'd leave ya forever, huh?”
“No!”
“Yeah. . .”
Hadjara looked up at Gabriel and grinned. “I know ya saw 'em before but I want ya ta meet these guys! They're Shauri and Nalla – and you two this is Gabriel.”
“ he-l-lo Ga-br-ri-ell,” Shauri said in her best attempt at common.
“Can we eat him?” Hadjara was glad Nalla didn't bother to try common for that.
“They'll follow us wherever we go, but they usually won't get too close unless we eat somethin' or somethin' dangerous comes and spooks 'em.” Hadjara ruffled Nalla's flower affectionately before she set her down. The spider stumbled and grumbled but was mostly ignored as Hadjara rushed past them and away from both them and Malak. Without sparing any of them a second glance Hadjara grabbed Gabriel's hand and made to lead him away. “Come on! These cities are pretty cool, an' if I stayed alive here for half a year then we can stay alive for a day.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 20, 2017 6:51:48 GMT
Gabriel stared at Malak, unblinking, considering. His expression was a carefully schooled canvas, blank of emotion; a Daemon’s innate ability to demonstrate perfect control of the mask they presented to the world when they so chose employed with mastery. It was a shield, of sorts, to be unreadable by others, though not one he bothered with very frequently. Against Malak it could be valuable though, given how the adumbrate liked to dig into emotional reactions as a source of weakness.
And the things the hateful creature were saying were, at least to some extent, designed to wound. They were targeted to exploit his connection to Hadjara, the fact he cared deeply for her, to make him think Malak might choose to steal her for himself any time he chose. But, the adumbrate never answered his question, Gabriel noted, about why, if Litharia and being alive were so unimportant, he had gone to great lengths to preserve both of those things for Hadjara. Gabriel did not know what would happen to Hadjara if she died - would she come here? Malak was implying that she would, but he had no way of telling whether Malak was faking his certainty of this fact. There was no certainty within Litharia around what happened after death for different people, that much was sure, and Gabriel would never have enough trust in Malak to take him at his word.
His lack of reaction to Malak’s provocation may have seemed out of character, but it was calculated. When Hadjara said he didn’t mean it the way he thought Gabriel finally broke eye contact with Malak, sharp teal gaze flickering to her instead.
“I think he meant it exactly that way.” There was an unusual coldness to his tone when he spoke but he didn’t look at Malak again. Given the context he had Gabriel had come to the understanding that Malak might not have cared about Hadjara being alive, but he cared enough about her desire to be alive that he acquiesced to her wishes, however reluctantly. This was not the same thing as caring about Hadjara in Gabriel’s opinion and he found it deeply disturbing that Hadjara was so willing to share herself with Malak after learning how little he cared for her life. Down this path of inquiry only disaster lay, however. He didn’t pretend to understand her connection with the adumbrate. He lived with it because she wanted him to, and he would continue to do so because she asked. It was enough of an understanding, this fragile truce, because it had to be.
The appearance of the vectors was well-timed, a much needed distraction from the tension brewing in their conversation. Gabriel watched them with detached interest, grateful for the interruption more than anything else. He remembered them from their first meeting and was very used to Hadjara’s preference for sentient or semi-sentient pets. So he inclined his head gracefully in greeting, surprised and slightly gratified that one of them made an attempt at using the common language. Still, he smiled ruefully at Hadjara as she spoke to him, because sometimes body language could cross barriers - languages, species, even dimensions.
“They want to eat me, don’t they? I can just tell.” Not that he felt threatened, he was quite sure Levent would happily have eaten him plenty of times and Hadjara had always kept the crocodile under control. Plus, if they - as Hadjara said - would react to dangerous things, they could be a useful early warning system. He still felt uncomfortable here. Though Gabriel was a competent physical fighter he relied heavily on his magic and in the Shadow world, that could make things worse instead of better.
He did want to explore though. Sitting around doing nothing for hours and hours was even less appealing than getting eaten, and he figured being on the move would make his magical signatures harder to track. He was still restless, still brimming with energy and power, even if he was trying to keep all that vibrancy under wraps. He followed Hadjara’s lead, still ignoring Malak completely though privately hoping the adumbrate had better things to do than come with them.
“Show me some of the places you lived while you were here,” he agreed, suddenly curious. He couldn’t think of much worse than enduring this wasteland for months and months, but Hadjara had and she must have found ways to occupy her time. Plus, the Shadows lived here, either while they slept in Litharia or if they had no current connection to Litharia’s dimension. Maybe they would find some to alleviate the monotony of the grey, withered world.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 20, 2017 7:51:14 GMT
“When . . . when we was in the Dream World and you was immortal again . . . you talked about it like it felt great. Like that how ya wanted to be all the time.” Hadjara licked her lips, “I didn't really feel that the way you did there but that's how I feel here. And ya gotta die before ya can be deathless. That's . . . I told ya before, an' Mal did too. Everything here was alive once before the world ended.”
“You things just end after you die,” Malak hissed, “everything you are, everything you thought or felt and everything you could have thought and felt is gone forever. But not here.”
“We . . . well. Bein' alive has it's advantages. Deathless things don't really change. Once ya die that's who ya gonna be forever. If ya die angry and bitter that's the way you always gonna be.” She looked at Malak as she said that, “But livin' things can change and I like changin' who I am. With you it seems like you're already who ya gonna be. You're who you are. I don't feel like I'm who I'm gonna be yet.” She raised her hand and rested it along her other one, against Malak's around her throat. “I was always ready ta die. Even when I was a lil' huntin' in the swamps I knew I could die and I made peace with that. I'm not afraid, I just don't wanna die just yet.” She didn't know why she was trying to explain herself but it seemed important that Gabriel understand that she didn't hate Malak for wanting her dead.
“Only things that cease existing after they die care about death and Hadjara belongs here now too,” Malak leveled a glare at Gabriel, “so I'll ask again, what's so great about being alive?”
And bless her little scavengers as they came scuttling.
“Well, Nalla wants ta eat ya. But they're scavengers. They don't really got no way ta attack ya. If ya wanna know, they're more of a status symbol than anything else. The stronger ya are the more are drawn ta ya.” Hadjara grinned, “They really only interested in things like me, though, so don't worry about any tryin'a follow you back to Litharia.” She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Malak turn back to smoke and rise, drifting into the sky where he could get a better vantage point in his search for prey. “Hmmm. . . I know I did stay here but . . . oh! The carnival! That's where I stayed, c'mon!” Hadjara suddenly turned down a different street and dragged Gabriel down a new path. “It ain't like the carnival in the Dream World but it's pretty fuckin' cool.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 21, 2017 9:39:37 GMT
He listened impassively to Hadjara's explanation, expressionless once more, and he didn't like what he was hearing all that much. It was hard to understand and accept that she was as much a part of this world as Litharia now, and far more a part of this world that the Dream Land. She had been changed, not born, and not in the home dimension of the Daemons. It was still hers too, to a small degree - he presumed she felt the pull towards the portal that they all did, a feeling that was unpleasantly absent over here - but he would never comprehend any connection to this place when to him it felt desperately wrong. He was vibrantly, unmistakably alive, and everything here was dead.
"You have no idea what I think of death," he snapped at Malak, affronted that the adumbrate presumed to understand something so personal. Something he had never shared with Hadjara, even. At least for now she wanted to be alive, so whatever concern he had about this line of thinking wasn't imminently pressing. He presumed Malak wouldn't go against her direct wishes - one day he might coax Hadjara here forever, but not before she was ready. Hopefully. One interesting thought did occur to him - if he wasn't killed in Litharia but decided to return to the Dream Land permanently one day, and Hadjara decided to let Malak destroy her physical body to exist here as some dead entity, they would both be functionally immortal and with his teleportation magic, he could visit. A strange thought, to be living and dead in different dimensions, but still able to interact. Strange indeed. He dismissed it for now; it was too abstract to really consider.
"And I'll ask you again, if being alive is so worthless, why did you fight so hard for Hadjara's life all this time?" He mimicked the adumbrate's tone but did not expect an answer, especially since he refused to give Malak his own response. He would have liked to add more - that just like in the Dream Land, immortality came with conditions and it was still possible to be destroyed for good in the Shadow world - but endless arguments that way lay. And this was a one day only deal, so hopefully Malak had better things to do with the only visit he was ever likely to pry out of Gabriel than bicker like they always did.
Carnival. That sounded okay, which Gabriel already knew meant it was probably not okay at all. Nothing in the Shadow world was as fun as it sounded. Even as he followed Hadjara's lead he was aware that this "carnival" would likely to be home to its own share of horrors. Possibly horrors that would try to eat him, and while he could probably destroy most things that tried that, doing so would draw attention to himself. The usual no win situation. But, Hadjara was excited about being here and since she wasn't likely to come back any time soon, he didn't want to take all the fun out of it for her. He forced a smile around the ill feeling of unease that plagued him constantly in this dimension.
"Okay, show me your carnival. Are there performers?" Gabriel's bardic magic did not tend as strongly to performance as some others, but he still loved stories, shows and theatres.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 22, 2017 4:24:02 GMT
“I know you haven't died,” Malak said coldly, “You know nothing of death.”
“I don't know what it's like ta die neither,” Hadjara said softly and Malak grinned.
He straightened out his arms so he was hugging her shoulders and he turned his head again so he was speaking directly to her once more, “and you're weak too. For now, at least. But I can fix that.” He pressed his cheek against hers and nuzzled her, once again brimming with pure affection. He raised his head a little and smiled benignly at Gabriel. “I'll give her everything she wants, even if she wants something I don't. Because I love her – and that's what you do for the people you love.” He still didn't mean it romantically, but he was being honest. He did care for her, in his mind there was a reason why his soul had been tethered to her's and he was certain that was because they were meant to be soul mates.
For the first time in her life, Hadjara's face was completely unreadable.
Hadjara led Gabriel down the main city road, pausing on occasion to look at street signs. “Y'know, I think I got enough power ta get a car ta work but I don't got no idea how to actually drive. It's too bad, this place is huge an' I was a lot faster the last time I was here.”
Despite that she was familiar enough with the city and fairly soon they came around a corner where there were no longer any buildings. Instead, before them was a huge and towering park filled with dark, twisting spires of rusting metal big enough to see easily over the high wooden fence surrounding the property. “No performers, if we're lucky we ain't gonna see nobody else.”
The gate was a high arch that had once been pure white but time had made the paint flake and fade. There was a sign pinned to the gate, declaring the park condemned over the usual sing explaining park safety. The sign overhead declared the place 'F U N L N D' an Hadjara almost tripped over the large yellow plastic letter that had fallen from the top of the gate. “I didn't have no legs last time I was here, but I'm pretty sure the ground was broken up pretty bad so watch ya step,” Hadjara explained like she hadn't been the one to almost fall on her face.
As they walked inside the ticket kiosk at the gate lit up, flashing a bright and warm gold light and from inside it the dark outline of a humanoid figure flickered into existence. “Oh, guess he's awake this time,” Hadjara grumbled before she leaned in close to the window and held up two fingers. “Two please!”
There was a dull whirring before a voice came from the speaker at the top of the booth – recorded eons ago and skipping but still distinct. ”Please enj-j-j-joy you sta-a-a-a-a-a-y at run! Don't you know what's going to happen to you? Fun Land. No refu-u-u-u-nds.” The figure inside the booth raised a hand and clicked a button that made two faded tickets print out before it held them through the window and Hadjara swiped them.
”Thanks!” She said brightly.
”For the love of god run while you can,” the man in the booth begged in an equally cheerful voice. It extended a hand and put it to the window and there was something desperate in the gesture. It was still for a moment before it tried to claw at the window only for it's dark outline to melt. It left a trail of it's own liquefying flesh across the glass and it managed to sputter out, ”please enjoy your stay a-a-a-a-a-a-nd follow park rul-” before it's form ruptured and seemed to turn into jelly. He wavered, barely able to hold his form before the kiosk light flickered off and he was gone.
“Okay well anyway, there's a map over here that's got a bunch of rides an' stuff on it.” Hadjara said as she jammed the two tickets into her pocket. She pointed out a large map just inside that had somehow retained all of its coloring and showed the layout as it had been. “By the way ya don't know no Shadow Language right?”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 23, 2017 7:06:15 GMT
And that was the crux of the matter, the reassurance Gabriel had been looking for. Malak had sneered it at him, still intending to enrage, but Gabriel had wanted to hear that Malak would let Hadjara decide, and wouldn’t overrule her decision. Malak destroying Hadjara’s physical body because he wanted her trapped in the Shadow world was a very different thing to Hadjara deciding she wanted to die. He held very little trust in the adumbrate and he was still angry that Malak had apparently been open to a unilateral decision if Gabriel couldn’t meet some arbitrary deadline to teleport them to the Shadow world, but he made the decision to take what he could get. He didn’t spare Malak another glance as the adumbrate spiralled into the sky.
“I’m okay with walking,” Gabriel’s tone was lighter when he spoke to Hadjara, especially given this was the most physical distance he’d had from Malak when with her since the parasitic creature had latched on to her.
“I don’t think I could drive it either.” Gabriel had not taken a very close look at the hunks of metal apparently called cars, but he remembered them from last time. An absurd way to travel as far as he could tell.
“No performers? That’s not like Daemon carnivals at all.” And as they drew closer Gabriel realised he couldn’t have been more right about that.
Daemon carnivals, especially in the Dream Land, were colourful, chaotic places. They were a riot of noise and presses of people and heady, exotic smells. They were all about the overstimulation of the senses that adrenaline-seeking Daemons so craved. This place was a ruin, a wasteland, a graveyard. Gabriel followed her, trailing behind and taking care not to trip. And he could only stand by and watch as Hadjara interacted with the ticket seller, something vaguely humanoid that Gabriel did not trust even a tiny bit to be actually humanoid. The words they spoke might have been gibberish but the way the creature dragged its hand over the glass…Gabriel could have sworn it was trying to get out. Not to get to them, but to get away. He blinked once when it popped and dissolved into jelly instead.
The Daemon Lord shook his head slightly when Hadjara spoke again, tearing suspicious eyes away from the booth.
“No, no I don’t speak any of the Shadow language. But if you think I’m getting onto or inside of anything in this park, you’re insane.”
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 23, 2017 9:02:05 GMT
“I told ya this wasn't nuthin like the Dream World,” Hadjara laughed, “don't worry, it's still got it's own appeal.” She thumped his back cheerfully. “But c'mon, don't it look cool? Have ya ever seen anything that looks like this before?” Her tail wagged and she bounced on her tails as she pointed forward at the park. “Look! See those big metal towers? Well ya get on carts an' they take you up to the top and then it flings ya into the air! It's super fun!”
She was used to seeing oddities in the shadow world and it wasn't until she looked at Gabriel that she realized that might be a little unsettling. “Oh . . . uh . . . don't worry about him. He's just a little messed up 'cause he's fused ta that kiosk. Buuuuut we shouldn't get in no trouble if we follow the rules. And I don't mean 'follow the rules' the way we usually do. I mean like, actually following the rules. The security here can be . . . intense.” She smiled, a little nervous now. He hoped he actually paid attention because she wouldn't actually be able to fend off the security if they came.
“Guess ya need to know the rules, huh?” Hadjara leaned back to look at the rules posted by the door. “Okay. First, no outside food or drink allowed on park grounds. Minors – that's children – gotta be accompanied by an adult. No pets. No smokin' or other drugs. An' no 'adult activities' – so that's most of the things ya like but most of those things don't exist here anymore anyway. Oh, and it says ta note that the park is monitored at all times. Oh, we could probably check out the surveillance room! Only once you can teleport us out though.”
Relief washed over her face as soon as Gabriel said he didn't know the language. “Oh good,” she said. “Uuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh just 'cause, uh, most of the time I'm the only one who don't know how to talk to nobody else and it's . . . nice . . . for it to be the other way around?” She tried to give him her best winning smile. “Anyway, if ya don't wanna go on rides there's other stuff. Let's go ta the fun house!” She looked at the map for a second before she grabbed Gabriel's hand and took off, fading in and out of being solid and smoke in her excitement. “There's trick mirrors and a glass maze, it's fun! I promise!”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 24, 2017 8:27:21 GMT
Hadjara was right about one thing - Gabriel had never seen anything like this. The Shadow world was a dimension shifted in time as well as place, and the technology that existed in this now dead place was very different from what existed in either Litharia or the Dream Land. While the differences between his home dimension and Litharia were vast, they existed in a similar time frame that made the transition tenable. Coming here was stepping outside of the frame of reference which made any sense, and because the place was long since broken and dead, the wondrous elements that could have caught a Daemon's imagination were gone. To Hadjara this place felt like a kind of home, as far as he could tell. To him it felt like a limbo, a graveyard, a tomb of a shattered civilisation.
"You have a strange idea of fun," he grumbled, following her deeper into the park.
He listened in silence as Hadjara reeled off the rules. Something in him rebelled instinctively - Daemons, as a general rule, weren't good at being told what to do. And Gabriel in particular hated it. But as it turned out there would be no problem following the rules this time. They had no food or drink with them, nor any pets, children, or drugs. More's the pity in the case of the latter, Gabriel thought. And he definitely wasn't in the mood for 'adult activities' right now, especially since her talk of surveillance made the feeling of being watched intensify to an extremely uncomfortable level.
"Right," Gabriel snorted and, quite suddenly, smiled.
"Nice try. You're relieved I don't understand the language because that desperate creature said something that would probably suggest I'd be better leaving this place immediately and never coming back. Am I on the right track?" He might not speak the Shadow language but body language was fairly universal and the thing trapped in the kiosk knew something he didn't.
"I still don't trust your assessment of 'fun'," he muttered, glancing at her suspiciously.
"But a fun house sounds better than the thing that throws people into the air. Go on then, take me."
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