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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 24, 2017 9:46:35 GMT
“Oh don't say that, you ain't even seen nuthin' yet! 'Sides, ain't you tyin'a form an alliance with Shadows?” Her mouth twitched a little as she said that, some part of her unable to separate that species and the idea of prey. “If ya wanna know 'em real good ain't it better ta know their world too? And when're ya ever gonna get a better chance than this? You're with me.” She grinned wide and pointed her thumb at her chest as if that explained everything Gabriel could possibly want to know.
The kiosk lit up again and Hadjara jumped at the sudden whir of machinery behind them, but when she looked it was only Nalla. The spider-rose was hopping around from claw to claw as she argued with the newly reformed ticket man while Shauri just drifted past them both, wandering idly into the park herself. “Oh, if you was wonderin' they ain't pets. They used to be people too. Probably. Least that's how security sees 'em an' they tend ta see what was for the most part.” Hadjara shrugged.
Her cheerfulness did, however, quickly morph into sheepishness as Gabriel called her out flatly on her ill attempt at deceit. “Ohhh, wellllll . . . he was just bein' dramatic don't ya worry about it too much. I spent like . . .” Hadjara screwed up her face as she thought. “Well, I don't know how long it was. I guess I wasn't even here for a year but if I'm bein' honest it felt like I spent a year and a half just livin' here alone. But! I only ran into trouble a couple times. So we should be good!”
Hadjara led him by the arm along the park, ignoring how lights sometimes sputtered on as they passed and rides played broken music at them as if begging for attention, only for the music to start up again when Nalla came scampering over the equipment. They only passed by one ride that was active – faded over-sized teacups turned slowly over a large platform that resembled a fancy platter with a huge teapot in the center that all the cups rotated around. Hadjara paused as the single rider came into view – a huge wraith had stuffed itself into a dull yellow cup and was humming dully to the tune of the ride's music. Two glowing red eyes looked up from under its hood, making brief eye contact before its ride spun slowly around.
“Oh she looks nice,” Hadjara said before she raised her hand and waved enthusiastically. “HEY! HEY! HOWDY!”
The wraith ignored them.
”Have you seen any security or we good?”
The wraith said nothing but a long, thin arm raised, hand curled in a fist. It held it up for a moment before it slowly lifted it's thumb and held the gesture.
“Great! She says we're good,” Hadjara said cheerfully as she turned to look at Gabriel. “And see? She's having fun on the rides!” Behind her, the wraith shrugged. “But c'mon! Let's go ta the funhouse!” Hadjara pointed at a large three-story house a few rides down on the street. It was still painted an assortment of reds, blues, and yellows, and it had large white letters over the door that presumably spelled out fun house in the shadow language. Without waiting, Hadjara turned to smoke and shot by, only reforming in front of the door as she sprinted in.
. . . Only to be followed by a loud thud seconds later. There was a pause before Hadjara stuck her head out of the door, now looking frazzled with blood streaming from her nose. “Uh. So I forgot but the glass maze actually starts just inside the door. So don't do what I just did.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 24, 2017 11:20:22 GMT
She had a point. Gabriel had considered allying with the Shadows, though his only contact had been long since lost. He understood so little of their lives, their kind, that thus far actually pursuing an alliance had proven impossible. Perhaps learning a little more of their world would help. At the least, it would be nice to rule out continuing with the effort if it was never going to work. He hadn't seen any Shadows here yet but they had to be around somewhere. Maybe they were all smart enough to avoid the park.
"Fair enough," he conceded.
"Maybe it will be worthwhile. I don't see how this creepy carnival helps, but you have a point."
Gabriel followed her through the park, feeling keyed up and on edge. He never jumped or startled - he had better control than that. But his wary gaze alighted on the rides as they passed, suspicious when they whirred to life seemingly of their own accord. He was not afraid, but he disliked the tension of not knowing what was harmless and what might be dangerous. Where Hadjara skipped and chattered, lively and laughing, he prowled on light feet, listening intently.
"Nice?" Gabriel felt like he'd fallen into some backwards dream when he was with Hadjara sometimes. He stopped when she did, to speak to the wraith, and watched the hulking creature spin slowly in an oversized cup. Surreal. He didn't understand their conversation but the thumbs up gesture, once again, transcended dimensions.
"Yes, she looks like she's having the time of her life." He tried not to sound too sarcastic, but the park atmosphere was getting to him.
And yet Hadjara actually was having the time of her life. She was happy, excited, almost childish in her joy. Gabriel couldn't understand feeling at home here. Was it not screaming at her that it was all wrong for a living thing to be here? Did she not feel like she was trespassing in the private realm of dead things? He was lost in thought as she ran for the funhouse, following more reluctantly, but when she popped back out after just a moment with blood trickling from her nose he stopped and stared. She'd...run into the wall? A long second of silence, then Gabriel burst out laughing, the sound echoing over the eerie park.
"Thanks for the advice!" Still chuckling, he strode past her into the building and found the pane with her blood that told the whole story. A maze of glass confronted him, just as she'd said, and he took a moment for his vision to calibrate and his brain to understand what he was seeing.
"Lead the way, then." He was smiling still.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 25, 2017 11:36:39 GMT
“Well I could take ya to a library filled with books ya couldn't read. If ya really wanted we could scavenge around an' old shopping district or somethin' but I don't know where to find one here an' on foot it would take days or even weeks just ta find somethin'. Or we could look for some Shadows for you ta talk too. Except I register as their predator here and no Shadow's gonna let us anywhere near them unless they're goin' out of their way to try ta hunt me. 'Sides, the park radiates its existence – I doubt too many creatures will try to get in just to eat'cha since that'd be about as safe as a muskrat swimmin' into a crocodile's mouth.” Hadjara gestured with both wings and her free hand as she talked, coming close to smacking Gabriel offside the head more than once when she flung her wings wide.
“So, yeah. I think the carnival is the best option.”
She cheerfully ignored Gabriel's (in her opinion) theatrical reaction to the wraith. “Well she's having more fun than she's thinkin' 'bout attacking. Or she ate recently an' just isn't hungry. The point is, she ain't fightin' us and she ain't seen no security around neither.” Hadjara hugged her arms around his and pressed her cheek against his bicep because that was as high as she could reach. “So we're safe! Ya don't gotta be so on edge now. We can just look around a little and leave if things look bad, okay?”
Hadjara was excited, but she wasn't an idiot. And as disappointing as she found it to be she was willing to leave if Gabriel really wanted to.
Although, she might need to reconsider whether or not she was an idiot after she walked straight into a wall. In her defense, the fun house liked to keep itself well polished. Already the smear of her blood on the glass pane was fading away and Hadjara rubbed the back of her sleeve across her lips to get rid of the blood on her face.
Hadjara licked her lips and swung her tail around to hook it around his thigh. “C'mon!” She said as she pressed on. She held her hand out before her as she walked – if she went slow she might be able to see where the glass was or was not but she would much rather walk blindly and change direction after she walked into something rather than go slow.
They only managed to get about halfway through before she saw long scratch marks on the floor, like someone had been dragged through the maze and been fighting it. “Damnit,” Hadjara grumbled, “this just got a lot easier.” The scratch marks were long and deep, at one point the person's fingernails had ripped off and their fingers left trails of thick blood behind. The trail led directly through the maze, not once going to a dead end right to the stairs leading up.
“Hm, well that was disappointing. Oh! But do ya wanna go to the second or third floor? Second is a lot of trick mirrors and optical illusion type stuff and on the third there's a bunch of games!” Hadjara was purring in her excitement and she shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Do ya wanna go first? I've already seen everywhere last time.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 26, 2017 7:11:31 GMT
Gabriel listened to her explanation of the park closely. Despite his sarcasm and grumbling, he most definitely acknowledged her as the expert over here, and what’s more was willing to take her advice. Although…
“So, in this analogy, we’re inside the crocodile’s mouth? Reassuring.” Still, he was sure about something - he was in what he considered a bad situation, and not one he could escape from until the required time had elapsed. She was entirely right that this was probably the best option of a bad lot, or at least if she said it was he was willing to trust her. Avoiding being eaten was his main priority, but he was trying hard to keep in mind that Hadjara actually liked it here and might not get to come back again for a long time. Given his other option was apparently to sit around in the middle of a wasteland and just wait for the time to pass, all the while acting like a radiating beacon of life and energy that would attract predatory attention, he supposed the carnival was the better choice.
“Okay, I’m trusting you. If you say we’re unlikely to be attacked here, I’ll try to relax.” Key word try. It was hard for anyone to ignore the impending sense of doom this place would give most living things, Hadjara notwithstanding. It was harder for your average Daemon, who relied on highly attuned senses and instinct more than any of the other Litharian species. Gabriel’s instincts were very, very unhappy. But he consciously relaxed the muscles along his back and shoulders, where most of his tension was carried, and followed her into the fun house.
The maze was safe enough, it seemed. Hadjara’s habitual closeness was reassuring - she might be part of this world but she was still alive too, unlike just about everything else. He stepped lightly over the claw marks on the floor, the blood, and tried to follow her lead in being unconcerned about them. He had to actually bite his tongue to avoid asking what had dragged the victim away exactly - not the fun house itself, he hoped? And doing so was never wise for a Bardic Daemon, with his significantly reduced ability to feel pain. Gabriel sighed as he tasted blood in his mouth.
She was right that it wasn’t difficult to complete the maze, though, and when monsters failed to materialise in the glass Gabriel actually did relax a little. He was still restless, and preferred to be on the move rather than staying still, but a modicum of jocularity returned to his demeanour as they progressed through the room. It was disorienting, the reflections of themselves bounced through an endless room, but not so unsettling as he might have guessed.
“Let’s try the optical illusions? Those sound interesting.” Gabriel loved illusions, mostly because he could create them himself and it was one of his absolute favourite bardic magics. He was curious as to what kind of illusions a place like the Shadow world would conjure.
"What do you know of this place, then?" Conversation would help the relaxation, he thought. Distract him from the feeling of being watched.
"How long has the Shadow world been like this? What was it like before? What made it this way, killed everything?"
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 26, 2017 9:28:45 GMT
“Oh no, of course not!” Hadjara laughed and shook her head. “In this analogy I'm the crocodile. And I'm harmless, gorgeous,” she purred. Despite her own warning she went on tip-toes and kissed the corner of his square jaw, radiating affection as she led him along further into the carnival.
When he said he trusted her she beamed like the sun itself. There had only been one time before that she knew more about what they were doing than he did, and that had been at the bottom of a lake. It did mean a lot to her that he was willing to put his faith in her and when she walked it was with more spring in her step. “Besides if something did try to getcha, I could shred them first.” She wasn't the most powerful thing in the World, far from it actually. But she was good at staying alive and she was an ambush predator by nature. If something attacked them then she would have the advantage.
She was hungry, too. It was almost a disappointment that nothing attacked them.
“Second floor it is!” Hadjara said before she sprinted up the stairs. “There's no glass walls up here ta run into too!” Hadjara shouted down at him.
The first room was round, and painted in such a way that standing in the center it looked like all the doors along the perimeter where barely large enough for a child it fit through. Hadjara scooted close enough to peek in one of them to see a sort of playground with slides and a ballpit that had been made to look like the slides were going sideways and the ballpit was at an impossible angle.
Hadjara looked back at Gabriel as he got to the landing and, from the edge of the room, it looked as if he was twice his actual size.
She hadn't expected his question and she stared at him for a moment before she shrugged and looked away. “I don't think nobody really knows what happened, or really even when it happened. There's a lot of theories, of course. It's not like the people here don't wonder why things are like they are – especially since some people get stuck between worlds and see things the way they should be.”
“No one even knows how much of this dimension is like this. If this planet is just one fleck of decay in a livin' universe or if this reaches out ta all the stars that used to be in the sky. Malak . . . he thinks this is inevitable for all things. That life and death it just entropy an' as time passes every world will eventually be suspended like this one. A couple of the people I ate thought that this world existed without no gods – and when other worlds were formed those gods tore the life out of this one and turned it into the life to fuel their own worlds. And there was a thought that it was the fault of the people who lived here then – that they did something so terrible that it burned everything it touched and left nothing behind. But who knows?” She laughed nervously, “Like I said it happened a long time. Probably millions of years ago, but time don't go right here. Maybe no time's passed at all an' maybe there ain't numbers big enough to count how long ago it was.”
There was something else she had been thinking about for a while, too. Something she had never really been sure if she wanted to tell Gabriel and was never even sure how to. She still didn't know how but she figured she may as well try. “I, uh, did I ever tell ya how eatin' here works?” She knew that she hadn't. “It ain't like eatin' in Litharia. You . . . you rip someone apart and those pieces become a part of ya. The culmination of that being is a part of you all of the sudden. You get their thoughts, chunks of their memories, their strengths add to your own but their weaknesses become a part of ya too. I, uh. I know when I left Malak said that what would come back wouldn't be me no more. So I guess this is my way of sayin' surprise! H-he was right about that. Guess that shoulda been obvious, though. It's so hard for me to remember why I hated killin' so much before an' I can't believe how much I trusted people. I never even thought people would try to deceive me! That ain't nuthin' like who I am now. Ya act like ya don't get why I don't mind it here but . . . ain't it obvious I ain't really me no more?” She didn't know what he would say but she had been looking down the whole time she spoke just in case she didn't want to see his reaction.
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 27, 2017 10:09:07 GMT
Gabriel snorted. Hadjara was a lot of things, but harmless was not one of them. Still, he returned her gesture of affection, kissing her forehead lightly - an easier feat for him, given how short she was.
"I don't doubt it." Hadjara's shredding abilities were well documented, as far as he was concerned. What Gabriel was really reacting to, if he admitted it to himself, was a loss of control. He was used to feeling so certain of his own ability to survive that putting his faith into someone else - even Hadjara - was uncomfortable. He also didn't like that using his magic could make things worse because it was so instinctive to him that he didn't trust his ability to keep it in check. It was destabilising, to have your whole way of being in the world rendered dangerous to your own wellbeing in the blink of an eye.
She was almost childish in her excitement within the fun house, and that was something of a distraction. Gabriel was smiling when he caught her up, finding the first illusion in a room designed to trick your sight. Deeply curious, he ventured to the middle of it, head tilted as he figured out how it worked. These were effects he could, if he wanted to, replicate in his own illusions. He guessed it would be an effective way to disorient someone. The nice thing about his illusion magic was how varied it was - its limitations lay in not causing real physical injury, but other than that the possibilities for its use were limited only by his own creativity and knowledge, and the influence it could have on someone's mind ranged from delightful to devastating.
He stopped assessing the illusion as she spoke, though. The information about the Shadow world was interesting in an academic sense, but it was abstract and had little direct connection to him or the things he cared about. He was mildly intrigued by this dead world but ultimately felt no emotional connection to it - completely unlike Litharia and the Dream Land, both of which he loved. The information Hadjara offered about herself, though, was a completely different story. She he cared about a lot, and despite her obvious discomfort his intense gaze settled on her unblinkingly as she spoke, assessing her body language and subtle facial expressions alongside the words. After she finished he was silent for a long moment, that carefully controlled, perfectly impassive expression from before back in place.
"Everyone changes. I am a different person now than the person I was before I left the Dream Land, or before I became Daemon Lord, or before I killed my father. You changed differently to most...more dramatically, maybe. More significantly. But you're still you to me." He paused again, looking for the words.
"You changed when you became a Daemon too. But, even now, I can still see a little of the girl I met in the swamp that first day." He didn't know if she would agree. Maybe it was him not understanding again, in the way that he could never really understand this place and how it worked. But it felt true to him, and that seemed important. Something else was important too, though, maybe more important.
"Jara, will you promise me something? If you ever decide to do what Malak wants you to do...to die, come here forever. Will you tell me first?"
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 28, 2017 8:01:37 GMT
Hadjara's tail wave as Gabriel spoke, small swishing motions that gave away her distress even as she refused to look at him. “I was the same person for years, though,” she protested weakly, “I didn't change at all for years. I liked bein' me back then but I broke so easy. As – as soon as I left home the person I liked bein' just broke apart.” She didn't know what she ought to do with her hands and she just ended up knitting her fingers together.
“It-it ain't like I hate bein' me. It's just . . . I know I ain't a good person. I don't think I could be even if I tried and ta be honest I don't even wanna try no more.”
She tapped the ends of her thumb nails together and turned her head a little, looking even further from Gabriel. “I never asked ya before but . . . do ya like yourself? Who you are, I mean. Are you the person that ya wanted to be?”
At Gabriel's question Hadjara froze. She was silent for a while before her tail swished and she made a sound like strangled laughter. There were tears on her eyelashes when she looked up but she was smiling.
“Yeah, I think I can do that.”
She opened her mouth to speak but there came gabled cackling from the room behind her and a rapid skittering before Nalla came rocketing out of the playground on three legs. Her other four legs were curled in close to her flower, and each one held a bright yellow ball she had taken from the pit.
”MINE! Look, I found this!! Mine!!!” the spider-rose skittered around the round room, hooting in delight. After a pause, Shauri came drifting listlessly out of the room as well, holding a single blue ball. She ignored all of them as she drifted across the room and through the door across the way.
Hadjara sniffled and rubbed her eyes with her sleeve before she pointed after her. “That's the mirror room. S'got trick mirrors. Most of them are pretty neat, though some will show ya stuff ya shouldn't see. The funhouse covers most of those, though, so just don't pull off any sheets.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 28, 2017 8:26:13 GMT
Gabriel only smiled enigmatically at her protests, realising quickly that there was no way they bridge this gap in understanding, at least not right now. Close though he was to Hadjara in many ways they were very different. She said she had been the same for years before the Shadow world, but to Gabriel her years were so brief, the mere blink of an eye. He had spent more than a century repeating the exact same ritual over and over again every single day, only to kill Damian in a sudden, violent moment that lasted less than an hour and changed everything about him in an instant. He and Hadjara lacked a shared understanding of time, of species, of worlds, of life...though they did a good job of sharing their perspective with each other, he thought. Where he had no desire to understand Malak, he tried very hard to see where Hadjara was coming from.
And so, when she asked if he liked himself, he thought very hard before answering, wanting to be as honest as he could be. For someone so egotistical, it was a surprisingly hard question.
"I...like who I am, but I hate some of the things that happened and the things I did to become who I am now. I hate my father, I hate that Sebastian died, I hate that I took Damian away from my mother, I hate that I was trapped for so long. And yet I would not be me if these things were not part of my history. Daemons love stories because we believe we are the sum of our history, our memories, the things we have lived, much more than we believe we are anything innate and fixed. I don't know what it means to be a good person, or a bad person. Do you think I'm a bad person too?" She seemed to think she wasn't a good person, but to Gabriel these definitions were indistinct, meaningless. You were your story and that was far too nuanced and complex a thing to boil down to things like good and bad. Still, he was genuinely curious, not accusatory, when he asked that question.
Some tension in him released when Hadjara agreed to his request. It was about the only way he could think to feel less desperate about what he'd learned of Malak. While he believed the adumbrate would try to take into account Hadjara's wishes, he could not shake the dark feeling of foreboding that had sprung from Malak's willingness to decide for Hadjara if she was incapacitated for too long. He could also feel the beginnings of an uneasy rumination on Malak's ability to change Hadjara's mind - to steer her in the direction he preferred. Hadjara he trusted though, and he hoped she would be strong enough to keep Malak's twisted beliefs in check. At least for a good few hundred years. Hadjara only got a limited time in Litharia while time was infinite after death - as far as Gabriel was concerned, the adumbrate could bloody well wait his turn.
"Trick mirrors? What sort of things do they show?"
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 28, 2017 10:49:36 GMT
Hadjara actually laughed when Gabriel asked if he was a good person. “Oh no, Gabe, you're without a doubt a bad person. Le'see, ya tease me all the time. Long distance too an' that's so frustratin'! Unless ya want a spectral crocodile ta flirt back with ya. Oh an' trick people all the time and kill people when they don't do what'cha want which I'm pretty sure ain't a thing good people do.” Getting her hot and bothered and unsatisfied and murder in that order made him bad person. Well, she cared more about how things related to her. “Guess ya got a point, tho. I like ya more 'n most people I've met in my life.”
She walked across the room, catching his hand as she went and leading him along after Shauri into the mirror room.
“Ain't ya never seen no trick mirrors? They're like mirrors but made curved so it makes ya reflection look all warped. Well, the ones that work right do that. See, look!” The first few mirrors had sheets over them and signs in the shadow language that said they were out of order but the first uncovered one was made to make people look short with big heads, although Hadjara was already so short that it just made her reflection look the same height as Gabriel's. “Ain't nuthin' too complicated but it's fun to do stuff like-” Hadjara raised her arms and her whole reflection wavered and got all tall and stick thin. Hadjara grinned from ear to ear; the last time she had been here she didn't have a body and it hadn't been much fun playing with her reflection so she wanted to enjoy this.
“The covered ones can show ya like . . . things that aren't real or things that used to happen. A couple of them have people trapped inside. Y'know, usual mirror things.” Hadjara had seen maybe two mirrors in all her time in Litharia. “My vectors look like people in them sometimes too, so if ya see people runnin' around in their reflections that's normal too. But ain't this cool? I ain't never seen no illusions 'cept what you make but people made these with no magic!”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 29, 2017 7:41:19 GMT
Gabriel laughed at Hadjara’s reasoning for being a bad person.
“See? Being a bad person and not liking who you are don’t have to go together. There’s a lot of subjective judgement in what you’re telling me. If I kill people in the course of my role as the Daemon Lord, am I still a bad person?” Of course, they were now getting to abstract concepts and academics, because while Gabriel did kill as the Daemon Lord - it was required, in fact - he also killed for other reasons and hadn’t ever pretended otherwise. This, though, was why the label was so meaningless to him, and why the complexity of stories appealed far more. How could a whole person, everything unique and complex and contradictory and unexpected and strange about them, be boiled down to one simple judgement?
“And what of the good that I do? When, if ever, does that change who I am as a person? Am I bad forever now?” Actually, being told he was bad was preferable to the alternative. Good sounded comparatively boring. Good sounded safe.
“I don’t think you’re a bad person, if that counts for anything,” he added.
“But then I don’t think anyone is bad, or good. Everyone is the sum of their stories, their history. Every action sits within a larger context. Killing my father for what he did to me and would have continued to do, for what he did to the Daemons in Dream Land as a whole, was good. Breaking my mother’s heart and, possibly forever, her mind, was bad. These were one and the same action, though.” Gabriel had rarely talked about his family so much before, even to Hadjara, but Damian’s death had been such a defining moment in his life that it made for a clear example. And she knew of it already, even if she didn’t know all the details. This was very like him too - to share more snippets of himself, excruciatingly slowly and never directly but wrapped up in some tangential conversation about something else. Direct questions got people nowhere with Gabriel, though if you could tap into his intellectualism, his love of stories and histories, or some other aspect of his personality, he might share more.
“I’m sure you can make Malak drown me out if I’m so annoying!” He grinned, playful now. Surprisingly he actually was relaxing, more than he thought he would. Being inside, away from that bleak sky and endless wasteland, he could almost pretend he was in some dark and twisted part of Litharia or the Dream Land. If only that nagging feeling of wrongness would fade he could actually almost enjoy himself.
“No, I’ve not seen mirrors like this before.” Gabriel prowled between several, watching the effects on his reflection with a faint smile of amusement. Most of his enjoyment came from seeing Hadjara have such a good time, but his curiosity was drawn almost compulsively to the covered mirrors. Give someone like Gabriel - naturally inquisitive and given to risk-taking - a rule not to look at something, and of course he desperately wanted to do exactly what he wasn’t supposed to.
“Is it dangerous to look in the covered ones, or just potentially distressing?” Gabriel didn’t like the thought of people trapped in some of the mirrors, mainly because he was concerned about the possibility of getting trapped in one himself. He didn’t know if this was possible, but he wouldn’t put it past a place like the fun house.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 29, 2017 9:26:35 GMT
The more philosophical Gabriel got, the more Hadjara's eyes became glazed and distracted. She didn't get it. She didn't think of people as stories – stories were just make believe to her, or events that happened so long ago that they had no real baring on her life. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and folded her arms behind her back as she rocked back on her heels, trying to put what he had said into terms she could understand.
“I think part of the problem was that things used to be simple,” she said at last. “I never did nuthin' to hurt no one, an' I always ran away from the people and things that were gonna try to hurt me. But . . . when I got here I couldn't run no more. These things were so much faster 'n' me but I was stronger than they thought I'd be. I was stronger than I thought I'd be too. So I killed the first thing that tried to kill me and then they became a part of me. Then . . . I did it again. A lot of things wanted me dead, Gabriel, and there ain't no hiding forever. But somewhere either their desire ta kill became mine or it was already a part of me and I just always ignored it but now it's so easy. I don't think about who they were no more, and I don't . . . I don't feel for no one no more. It don't matter to me unless I want to make it matter. I don't care about hurtin' people if I get what I want and I know that ain't right.” Her voice was flat now, without the waver that indicated she was about to break down in tears
She scuffed her heel on the ground. “I think I was an idiot. Back then, before all this. I think I just didn't get how things were. I mean, I know what ya think my life was like before I met'cha but there was still violence. When, uh. When I was a little kid my dad – or maybe an uncle or a brother – took me ta that lake that surrounded my house an' he let a lamprey drag me under the water. I almost drowned before he pulled me out and then he cut off the skin on my leg ta get it off. When Zahrah . . . when my Mama found out she killed him with a carving knife. Then when I was older I had an Auntie Dala, Mama crushed her chest with a rock, stuck her knife in her belly, then hacked her up with a cleaver before she threw her head in the lake and I ain't never found out why she did it but when I asked Rais he said it was ta keep the rest of the family safe.”
“I hated my mama, but not 'cause of any of that. She was just heartless, y'know? Cold and she hated me for runnin' off to the mainland as soon as I could swim. But she died tryina look for me after I left.” She squirmed, knowing she was dodging around what she was getting at. “Look do . . . do ya think this was inevitable? I think Zahrah saw things the way I do now and I'm pretty sure Rais did too. So do ya think this was just who I was always gonna be?”
The mirrors were easier to talk about and after she investigated her reflection in all of them she turned to smoke and reformed sitting atop one of the covered ones next to Gabriel. She toyed with the sheet with her fingers so it rippled teasingly, almost but not quite showing the reflective glass underneath. “Oh no, it can be both. Ya never know what ya gonna see until ya look and ya ain't never gonna know unless ya do.” She grinned and raised her legs so they were tucked under her. “What would ya rather find? Somethin' dangerous or somethin' disturbing?”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 30, 2017 6:39:54 GMT
"I definitely can’t argue with that. Your life is far from simple now.” Personally he thought the biggest complication was Malak, but he knew they disagreed on the adumbrate so he kept that opinion to himself. It was old ground, covered too many times already and it only ever ended with both of them frustrated and upset.
“You weren’t an idiot, though. You were just young. Still are. There's plenty of changing to do yet."
Gabriel knew a little of Hadjara’s life before they met, though like him she rarely talked about her family in depth. He listened to the stories quietly, intensely curious about her story in the way Daemons tended to be about personal histories. While she might not see people as stories, these were the things that made someone real and interesting to him. Maybe the difference was being born in the Dream Land, the true home of Daemons, and therefore growing up immersed in a world obsessed with epic tales. Or maybe it was just personality.
“I don’t know if you will ever be able to know the answer to that question for sure,” he mused, after a long moment mulling it over.
“So much happened to you between you leaving that swamp and now. Who knows how much of an effect this place, Malak, and your family have all had on you?” Gabriel was a lot like Damian in many ways and had wondered a similar thing himself at times - how much of him was from his father, and how much was his experiences? This he didn’t say out loud though; it was a little too personal, even for this conversation.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the important thing is you are who you are. You survived. You’ll keep surviving, and changing. Whatever you are you have earned it through that survival, even if some of you came from your family.” This was not a topic Gabriel felt he could discuss with as much clarity - his own connections with family, their role in shaping him, were something he still wrestled with in the deepest, most private recesses of his mind. He couldn’t answer questions like this for her when they remained mysterious and unsettling for him, too. He was still coping by keeping it buried as deep as possible - hardly a model solution.
“What a question! Something dangerous that we can kill, then something disturbing, followed by something dangerous that can kill us, in that order. What’s the likelihood of it being the dangerous thing that kills us?"
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 30, 2017 9:05:27 GMT
“I wanna be a strong person. Someone who don't change when things get tough.” Hadjara sighed and rubbed the back of her neck as she shrugged with her wings. “I don't want ta just survive, Gabriel, an' I don't think that enduring means you're strong.”
Funny. She had already taken the title of strongest daemon but she still felt very fragile.
She rolled her eyes when he continued to dodge around whether or not he wanted to look at the mirrors. Hadjara hoped down, landing easily on her feet with her arms folded behind her back. “Well if you don't wanna look we could just leeeaaaave,” she said. Hadjara paced around him, letting her tail slide around his legs languidly as she hummed, “I told ya already, there ain't nuthin in this world you can kill.”
Hadjara was behind him and she slid her arms around his waist as she leaned around so she could see around him. Slowly, she reached out a hand and curled her fingers around the dusty sheet but before she tugged it off she perked up a little, her expression suddenly serious. “Hey, if it's somethin' that ya don't want me ta see let me know, okay? I won't look if ya don't want me to.” Then she tugged and the sheet fell away all at once.
Eyes. Hundreds of eyes.
Each one was about the side of a volleyball, and all of them were a vibrant shade of orange. They looked like they had all been crammed in so tightly that the mirror might break open and they all rolled and moved independently before one of them landed on the daemon pair. Then, as if they all shared a mind, every eyeball turned and focused on them. The glass surface of the mirror rippled and a hand struggled to press through the crush of brilliant eyes, as if someone was trying to claw their way past them to get at the surface of the mirror. A hand with bloody stumps where the fingernails had been.
“Well, that's boring,” Hadjara said.
She swept up the sheet and threw it back over the mirror before she grabbed him and spun him around to look at the covered mirror behind them. “Okay, so this one gotta be good,” she said as she pulled the sheet off it. Much to her dismay, there wasn't anything of interest in that one too. She looked human again, although . . . her hair was too long. And her dress was split from the hem to the armpit on either side, and done up with laces that showed pale skin of her sides. Hadjara moved a little and the trick mirror warped the reflection so Hadjara saw how she died. One leg had been torn off completely and the strands of tattered muscle and flesh that hung limp from the stump had teeth marks. Her dress was ripped open by the same needling fangs and her her pale stomach had been chewed at so it was a reddish pulp of raw meat.
Hadjara put her hands to her face and her mother's mangled corpse did the same, imitating the motion. “Huh,” Hadjara said. Her mother's reflection moved independently and pressed a hand to the other side of the glass as she mouthed 'you let me die'. “Sorry, looks like this one's boring too.”
Hadjara looked up at Gabriel's reflection and scrunched up her face a little. “Hey, how come you look the same?” She asked. Well, that wasn't exactly true. His hair didn't have and red, his eyes were too dark, there was a gaping hole up through his torso where a hand had been driven. Hadjara gathered up the sheet again but didn't throw it over the mirror as she said, “hey you wanna pick the next one? All mine are duds.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jul 1, 2017 22:54:07 GMT
The first mirror was vaguely intriguing, mainly because it was the first and he didn't know what to expect. When nothing leapt out of it to try and eat them he wandered closer, head tilted slightly, and waved one clawed hand. The eyes followed the movement before refocusing on his face. This was closer to what he'd expected from Shadow world trick mirrors when Hadjara first mentioned them - things of horror, though like Hadjara he was unmoved by this particular type. He laughed at the disappointment in her tone and suddenly wondered what she would find scary in one of these mirrors. She seemed completely unworried about them for the most part, throwing the sheet back over the first and immediately turning to a different mirror. Gabriel turned with her, a little warier, but more relaxed than he had been outside.
For a split second Gabriel thought the second mirror showed how you might die, or would die, or perhaps the way you feared dying. He glanced at Hadjara's reflection first and thought he was seeing her, eaten by some creature. Gabriel did not find this kind of thing frightening either. Daemons like him railed against mortality, the slow decay into age, but most - him included - did not fear a violent death. The average Daemon's life was dangerous and hard; death in some gory way was considered almost an inevitability, and a fitting, proud end.
But when he glanced at his own reflection he took a reflexive step back and, quite suddenly, his complexion turned grey. That he hadn't expected.
Damian stared back at him for the first time in centuries, looking exactly as Gabriel remembered. The wounds from their fight were fresh and bleeding, the hole beneath his ribs spewing blood and torn tissue down his bare stomach. Like Hadjara's reflection Damian mirrored him at first, stepping back when Gabriel did, but his expression quickly turned into a cold sneer. There was a lock of bright red hair, pulled out at the roots and bloodied from the torn scalp that had come with it, twisted around Damian's clawed fist. Gabriel only stared at Damian's illusion magic filled the mirror, rifling quickly through the bodies of the rest of his family, Katerina included. Unlike his siblings - Sebastian's body now hung suspended in spider silk behind Damian's grinning head - his mother had been alive when he left the Dream Land. He wondered if the mirror showed the truth, but thought probably it showed him how Damian would use his magic if being dead didn't stop him. He wondered if he cared.
"That's not me. It's Damian. Is your reflection your mother?" Gabriel's voice was quiet and steady, but his eyes remained fixed on his father. This mirror went for a more personal kind of psychological warfare, it seemed.
"I don't want to see any more of what he's showing me. Can you cover it, please?"
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jul 2, 2017 7:11:42 GMT
“Yeah, that's my ma,” Hadjara said. She shrugged, more interested in Gabriel's reflection now as it managed to use some imitation of magic. “Oh, this one's creative for a change,” she noted. It had already lost interest in her – the lack of reaction made it very clear that she wasn't going to provide nutrients – but it was very interested in Gabriel.
It took a moment before it actually registered that Gabriel was upset and Hadjara turned her head up to study him. “Gabe . . . that ain't ya papa,” she said, “it ain't even his ghost.” She looked ahead, at the mirror and her eyes turned to smoke in her sockets as she reached out and touched the ends of her claws to the glass. “Look, I'll show you.”
There was a dull groan and the glass cracked before it rippled and Hadjara reached into it down to her elbow. It took her a second before she pulled her arm back out, although it was clear that even with her tremendous strength it was a struggle, she almost fell backwards as she pulled a creature made of shimmering golden light out of the mirror. It looked like a locket, a large heart pendant on a chain but it still strained to get back into the mirror.
“It ain't nuthin' supernatural. Someone kept some important memory in here so now it tries ta steal more.” Her fingers turned to smoke and bit at the light, and the necklace realized that it was going to be eaten.
As Hadjara squeezed the writhing creature of light her vectors came skittering close.
“PREY! Hungry, hungry, hungry! Eat it! Hurry!” Nalla rasped as it danced from foot to foot, waving the yellow balls it had stolen from the playground while Shauri just floated intently behind Hadjara's shoulder, eager and hungry in its own silent way.
They didn't look the way they ought to in their reflections, though.
One was a young child, their gender looked entirely undefined with armfuls of yellow balls. Their head was shaved and they didn't even have eyebrows or eyelashes. A plastic tube wrapped around Nalla's head, attaching to a piece that went into their nose but the whole contraption was attached to nothing and a limp tube hung around their neck and off their shoulder. All they wore was a mint green robe of sorts, open in the back.
The other was not much older, and wore a hot pink bikini with yellow spots, although their body was little more than a stick. Their dark pink hair was tied into pigtails with yellow beads and a semi-transparent flotation tube was around their waist, holding Shauri in the air like they were floating in non-existent water.
They were mangled. They were children who died by fire and rot. There were dark patches of burns that ripped across their soft flesh, opening gashes that showed their brittle bones, marked with holes and pockets of decay.
Then Hadjara gave the writhing beast a final squeeze and it shattered to gold dust. It hung in the air for a moment before the mirror's reflection returned to normal and the gold fused into her smoke-fingers. The vectors sprang forward to feast on the little flits of gold before they fell to the ground and Hadjara looked at Gabriel with a huge grin.
“See? An' now I've eaten it an' it won't show ya no more of that traumatic shit. Though that-” she pointed at the cracked mirror “-counts as destruction of park property so we gotta get outta here.”
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