applesaucedream | deeper and deeper we go, where there is no light [open to multiple]

Current Music: October 3rd - October 4th, 2013

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deeper and deeper we go, where there is no light [open to multiple]

[Takes place after the events here.]

They drift without purchase and run without purpose.

Something is missing.

They are not whole. But they are and they must be; they can see themselves, they can hear the warped susurrus of their thoughts as they run without running, spun and torn from the body that is not theirs, except for the times where it is.

But where is it. Where are they.

It is too dark and they run, sluicing through forest and trees, searching for the splash of red on brown and black that is their friend, or even the slash of black and the pale glow of white that would denote the thing that follows them, the thing that they hate. But there is nothing. Simply black, endless, a formless landscape stitched over the murmur of a ragged-torn mind. Trees loom, jagged. Always those burned-black sheathes of wood and leaves, stretching ever upward, obscuring all light, branches to sky.

They run in a blur of gray and white and black, their form ashen, their face bright and smooth, dark eyes staring.

There is something ahead.

There is something ahead, and they slam into it, feral and frantic and afraid.

L̙͖̦̫ͩͬͦ̏̀o̸͕͇̒ͨͦ̉o̰̺̠̳̮̤͗͑ͯ́k͖̯̑̏̔̇͂ͬ̉ ̷͈̉͆́̋̇̓̊b̋̃͒ͬ̅ͯ͆ë̗̩̖̺̹̎͐͒̓̿̈h̘͂ͦ̄̍̄̐͆i͙̳̤͛̌ͥͧ̈́̃n̖̠d̯̺̥̗ͪ́̆ ̯̺͈̟ͫ͆̈̃ͫ̏̇ỹ̹̣͙̂ͪ̅͟o̗̯̟̗u̬͉̼̼͓͇͑͢ͅ

[ooc: Tim's other self has currently been detached from his body and is now roaming about the dreamspace - mostly in the interest of avoiding the cats, who are curious as to what they're about. They'll come into your dreams. They'll come into anyone's dreams. Or you might end up in theirs. It's up to you, really. They're not likely to be pleased about it either way.]

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Don't worry, it's only Johnny.

He takes the blow strangely well, even though it knocks him forward; he stumbles, nearly falls, regains his balance and turns on his weight to face the intruder.

The masked creature has staggered into his territory, a geometrically unsound number of walls growing up around them, twisting into h allways, stairs that go nowhere. Johnny regards the familiar painted features with a look of contempt.

"You're not welcome here," he hisses, and with a flick of his wrist he rends the floor beneath them.

They land in a disorderly sprawl, collapsed on top of something that wriggles and thrashes and flips them off it as it scrabbles to its feet. They curl into a crouch and gather themselves to spring.

This - this thing. They know it.

It is wrong.

The launch themselves forward in a calculated leap as the floor is riven beneath their feet, hands locking around the beast's ankles in fervent desperation.

Johnny lets out a vicious growl as it seizes his legs, bringing him down, spilling both of them into the gash he's made. Just as well. This is his territory, too.

They fall for a long time, the thing still clinging to him, Johnny twisting and kicking, until they land on the soft, ashen floor, the impact hard but nothing broken. The house doesn't want them broken. Not yet.

Johnny lashes out, wrenching one of his legs free and aiming a sharp kick to the creature's face. It lands with a hard crack, and though this should dislodge or break the mask, the mask remains intact.

Monster, creature, pressing against them with legs too strong for its skinny frame. They land in a stunted tumble at the foot of this structure, this thing that is as broken and as wrong as the thing to which they have latched themselves.

It drives its foot into their face with a sickening thud but they scuttle upward, undeterred, scrambling for a grip over the thing's clothes, skittering for its neck. If they may hold it still, it will cease struggling.

It will cease everything. The neck is where their hands go.

It climbs over him like an insect, fingers snagging at him, and as their hands fit tightly around his throat Johnny bites his lip as he strains away. He tastes iron, and he looks up at the mask, and his lips split into a wild, predatory smile, teeth lined with red.

He raises the floor up around them, curling it back to strike the creature hard enough to dislodge it.

Johnny gets up, but he doesn't run. He faces the thing.

"Try harder," he snarls, still grinning.

But it is strong.

It was never this strong when they faced it. It was weak and skittish, a twisting sticklike thing that broke easily beneath their fingers up until the point that it broke them. Here they feel the surface beneath them roil and buckle like an animal attempting to shed a rider from its back, and it sends them along a path of its own creation. They land, heavy, hard.

There is a phantom heartbeat in their ears and in their throat.

They wonder if this place is alive.

They rise slowly, fingers splayed against ashen wood as they lever themselves upright. They circle it, creeping and predatory.

Try harder.

They barrel for it with unerring accuracy, one hand snatching for its wrist, the other for its leg with the intent to unbalance it with a fierce jerk, send it keeling.

Johnny lets it bring him down, laughs as his knees hit the floor, grabbing back, wrapping his free hand into its jacket and holding on as tight as he can.

"This is not for you," he taunts, a howl and a whisper, something uncoiling from the seething dark behind him, filling his mouth with the taste of rust. He licks blood from his lips, releases its jacket, and aims a punch to its throat. It's strong, it's not human, but it still has borrowed human parts, soft and vulnerable, and Johnny knows which parts of those hurt easiest.

They jerk in alarm when it folds easily beneath him, without struggle or resistance, hand fisted into the material of their skin. Their flesh caves beneath the blow at the delicate little parts of this skin they wear, the pain inconsequential and their body recoiling regardless. They feel jaws unhinge from behind the smooth stillness of their face, their staunch silence erupting into a shapeless, gagging cry.

But they cling to its wrist, tighten their grip, as it becomes their fulcrum and they lever as much weight as possible over it, enacting the twist of duress and pressure upon the fragility of bone.

An agonized grunt escapes him, hissing out between his teeth, and he twists along with the pressure to keep the bone from breaking, shooting a wild glare up at his enemy, his free hand slamming down onto the floor. It separates and reshapes around the creature's leg, holding him down, allowing Johnny to flip onto his back, brace his feet against its chest and kick back, wrenching himself free.

The thing only bends without breaking with the satisfying give of cracking bone, the floor flowing up and around their legs to entrap them.

They realize their mistake too late.

There is no escape.

~~no eyes~~

Feet slam into their chest until they hit the ground with a low, dull sound. The floor beneath them sounds hollow. They think they can hear its silence. Its silence has a sound, it has a texture, it has a shape and it is so great and looming and faceless that they can do nothing but lie there, their body stunned and feeble as it attempts to struggle to its feet around the shards of wood stretched to encase their leg.

They are trapped.

Johnny steps back, observing his prey, enjoying the novelty of being the predator for a change.

"Didn't see that coming, did you?" he sneers, stepping just outside arm's reach. He crouches down to get on eye level. "You come into my house."

He's hilarious.

He could crush the invader right now, but it's too easy, especially after all the trouble they've given him. He straightens up and lets him go with a wave of his hand.

"Come on, asshole," he says, grinning, manic and monstrous. "Come play."

They watch it prowl about them, taunting, gloating. Like Alex, ever defiant. The face for the thing without a face, the sharpened and bloodied tool, the blunt force instrument equivalent to the role they served on their friend's behalf.

Their friend is not here.

No one is here.

Their face is empty. Their eyes are dark.

Something coils within them, cold and hot and monstrous, something they do not like, something they do not know. No. No, they do know it, they know it only in reference to the thing that lurks with its blank canvas of a face. Not obedience. Not anger.

Fear.

They are not meant to be afraid. Not in the face of this ragged little scrap of thing, vindictive beast with its grin like glass and its bones so brittle.

So they rise and they leap for it, arms outstretched for its neck, mindless frustration bubbling low and heavy in their chest with the force of an enraged snarl.

Johnny's grin doesn't hit his eyes, which get wider and hungrier as the thing launches itself at him.

He recoils, letting it connect, riding the momentum back into a wall that wasn't there before. Actually, make that a door. He smirks, raw and dangerous, as the door opens on impact and they fall, not through, but down, for maximum disorientation. Down, deeper, into the dark and the cold.

They lunge, hands fisting into the front of its shirt with the intent to slam it into the nearest surface, the wall or the floor or anything, and then they hit wall and then they hit nothingness, their whole world off and horribly askew as everything begins to tilt.

Or has it tilted long before now?

They are being pulled or they are falling, they cannot tell. They just know the dark grain of the wood has fallen away, everything has disintegrated from sight, leaving them with nothing but the icy black stretch of void as they spill into it.

They use the thing's clothing as handholds. They cling to it, hands scuttling up its front until they reach the delicate surface of its neck.

They squeeze.

"That's it," he hisses as they plummet, not bothering to resist as the creature wraps its hands around his throat. Instead he grabs their arms and drags himself even closer. "This is where we belong," he whispers in its ear. "This is where we're meant to be."

Everything is unfolding so simply here, like it was always meant to. Like he'd been told. This is where he was always destined to end up.

Still, the body will fight, and as they sink deeper, slow toward some unknown landing, Johnny struggles, switching from eager to vicious in no time. He lashes a hand across the creature's face, dealing no damage, but a tendril of twisted wood and brick and steel whips out to follow the motion, tearing them apart again. Johnny lands unsteadily, picks himself up, staring into the void, searching for that little spot of white.

It's making no sense. They ignore it, their near-silent grunts of effort subsiding into a low, agonized hiss when something solid and crumbling insinuates itself between the two thrashing bodies, splitting them into two once more. They glimpse the barest impression of brick, mortar, wood, rebar, all contorting in formless unison, like the limbs without hands that grasped them, lifted them, breathed life into a head already occupied.

They tumble end over end into nothingness, their hands clawing for purchase, for a grip, but there is only the frictionless rush of cold, desolate air as it goes streaking through helplessly snatching fingers, whistling over the contours of their face.

The dark stretches in front of them, endless.

They land heavily. They lie still.

Their bones ache. Everything aches. Their head pounds a dull, arrhythmic tattoo that sends a low, throbbing agony stabbing into their teeth, behind their eyes, shooting down their spine.

They roll over, palms pressed to ground, but they cannot see what lies beneath them. They are standing on nothing, but it is a solid nothing, and so they use it to rise unsteadily and cast their gaze for the thing that lurks with the walls.

They'll have to rely on sound more than sight here, lightless void that it is. Johnny feels vibrations in his chest with every step, a deep, animal rumbling, a growl building higher and harder as his fingers flex restlessly. His teeth ache. He's hungry for blood.

"Come and get me," he snarls into the darkness. He can't tell, doesn't care, whether it's a taunt meant to trap his enemy, or a legitimate request. Either way he's impatient. "Come on."

They move in a halting, jerking cadence, head tipping at one angle, then another, peering into the depthless black, triangulating the low sounds of that damaged, snarling thing as it goads them, taunts them, eager to re-engage.

They crouch low, one palm to the smooth nothingness at their feet as they gather themselves like a great raptorial cat balancing all its weight on its haunches. They rock, a slight, subtle shift of weight on their feet from one leg and to the other, until they surge forward, source of the noise pinpointed.

This time, they duck out of the way from it before their bodies meet in a clash of wild and reckless weight, roll smoothly, cutting a wide arc around it to hit it from the side in a tackling pin.

Johnny falls for the feint, lunging forward, unbalanced when there's nothing to meet him, and thrown entirely off his feet when it tackles him from its new angle. He laughs even as it wrestles him down. "Clever beast," he sneers, sounding like an entirely different person now, little leftovers of Raymond crawling out of him. He twists and writhes, he could call the house up again but why spoil it so soon? Let the thing have its little victory.

They ram into it with unbridled percussive force, driving it downward unrelentingly, hands seeking its wrists and they begin to slam them down with repeated ferocity, as if applying enough force and velocity would dislodge its grip over this bizarre, horrifying, twisted, wrong structure and bring an end to this -

thing.

They lever the full weight of their knee into its center of mass, practically fully on top of it, knee driving into its chest in a vicious spike of pressure.

He lets out an involuntary gasping grunt when it drives its knee into his chest, forcing the air out of him. His hands are scraped up and bruised from the treatment but it doesn't matter, he doesn't need his little flourishes and gestures to bid the house to act.

He shifts as it presses him hard into the floor and wills that the floor should rise up around him, beat the creature back, crush it for good.

The floor ripples beneath them but it does no such thing. Johnny's eyes blink wide as he realizes the structure is entwining him, both of them, holding them in place. The creature is not being forced back but is now fastened atop him, perfectly poised to wring his neck.

"No!" he rages, twisting one hand free and trying to shove the creature off his chest. Creaking strands of wood wind around his waist, holding him down. He lets out a strangled scream at the betrayal, even though it had to come, he should have known.

The house belongs to no one, Johnny Truant.

Least of all you.

They loom over it, their face smooth and expressionless, as the walls ripple into being and sheathe twin bodies in groaning, whispering wood, creaking them closer together by increments.

Their hands are tight around its neck, that delicate instrument.

It is not a great effort to compress fingers in a slow, inevitable, crushing grip as the walls curl around them and enfold them in the very same. Even if they succeed, if they crush it, grind it, extinguish into little more than a dead smear in the formless wood and icy dark, they know they would soon suffer the same. This body cannot hold itself together beneath that unrelenting pressure shackled around them, however harsh and powerful it may be.

But perhaps it does not matter.

It was a mistake to leave Korvosa. At times she thinks it was a mistake to leave even Kintargo. Ahead lies freedom, but ahead and around her are also dangers of which she'd only ever heard sailors' stories. She'd thought life at the inn was intolerable, but here, now, alone on the Bloodsworn Vale, a life of servitude strikes her as preferable to a violent death. It was folly to come up here at all, let alone by herself, but there was no one she could trust. Better to brave the wild animals than to hire a guide who might well turn out to be a slave trader.

She gives a violent start at an imagined noise, peering into the darkness of the mountain pass. She can see, of course, but so can the other things that prowl the night. It's nothing, there's nothing there, she's going to be alright, she only has to last this night and a day and she'll reach the plains. She's going to get through this, and she's going to find a village and she's going to -- do something with herself, live free, and all she has to do is make it through the night --

She hears the thing too late, turns to face it too late, sees it too late. She shrieks, half expecting teeth, but it's the blunt impact of a whole body that sends her sprawling to the ground, scrambling for purchase to stand back up, get out from under it, get away. "No!" she shouts, not knowing what she's denying but knowing its intentions must be evil.

That phrase is one they recognize, the one Jay cried again and again as they pinned him, hauled him through dense-tangled trees with the snap of twigs and the rustle of clothing dragging over dead leaves.

They hit the body before them with an angry thump and they land heavily atop it, hands scrabbling for a grip over the thrashing shape beneath them - hands, neck, hair. Anything that they may grab and cling to.

There is nothing left for them but the rawness of instinct.

Their hands wrap around something hard, something curved and pointed and rooted into what must be the thing's skull.

What is this. What is it.

"Get off me!" Asmodia's mind sparks with unanswered, half-formed questions that fizzle out into panic that doesn't allow her to complete non-vital thoughts like who is this and what do they want. That it's not an animal, that she doesn't feel claws and teeth tearing into her, is little comfort. She convulses, tail striking his legs like a whip as her hands come up to dig into the fingers wrapped around one of her horns, trying to pry them off.

This is not right. This is not normal. The thing is beastly, tail slapping against their legs as it writhes beneath them with the frantic desperation of a trapped thing. They cannot hold it like this forever, not as it rages with the express purpose of unseating them.

They seize the curled horn with both hands, their grip made a point of strategy as they use the handhold to lift the thing's head from the ground and slam it back down, hard and repetitive. Still it. Still it.

The first blow stuns her momentarily, bright light lancing across her vision at the impact of head against stony ground. It doesn't seem satisfied with her momentarily failure to struggle, though, but lifts up her head to bash it again. She flings a hand up to scrabble at its face, fingernails encountering something hard and ungiving, and then her head hits the ground again and she thinks she can feel something wet on her scalp. This can't be how it ends, she will not end like this!

Her component pouch remains strapped to her belt and her hands find it as she writhes, trying to twist from its grip. She bites her tongue at the next blow, but there, her fingers find the nutshells and drag them out as she practically jabs a hand into his gut with the magic gesture and shouts, "Confound you!"

Again. Again. They will ram it downward until it stills, and then they will observe its nature. They will see what it is, and what they must do with it.

It makes some sort of straining movement beneath the weight of their body thrown over its own, but it is not until an out-thrust hand stabs into their abdomen that they deem it worth their attention.

By then, it is -

They are -

What is it -

They lurch back, hands coming sharply before their eyes to deflect an invisible blow and crack across their face with its hard, smooth surface, the momentum of which brings them heavily to the ground in a startled, twitching sprawl, back to ground, face to sky.

They -

They cannot move. They cannot rise. Their thoughts have fallen into a disordered, muted, vertiginous swirl, their limbs askew.

It has -

It -

It has done something to them.

Her patron must be watching over her; Asmodia can't quite believe that she fired off the spell successfully, nor that she was lucky enough for it to have the desired effect. She doesn't stick around to see if he'll get up and try again, but scrambles to her feet. Get away, get away, get away! Sparing only a wild-eyed glance over her shoulder, she bolts down the mountain trail...or tries to. It's as though her limbs lack any strength; hard as she pushes herself she might as well be running through mud as through air.

They struggle to roll to their feet, but their limbs respond sluggishly, fingers scrabbling through gravel and loose earth.

This is not the woodland through which they arrived.

Their quarry, at least, is moving equally slowly, slow enough that they may scuttle forward on elbows and knees to hook fingers around its ankle to tether it in place.

They'll soon find it's no longer woodland at all. The cry Asmodia lets out as fingers wrap around her ankle echoes against unseen walls in the darkness, and as she falls forward she bangs into something hard and smooth, hands flying out to grab hold of it. She anchors herself on the desk, papers going flying, and tries alternately to yank and kick her leg out of her attacker's grasp. "Let go, let go!" she yells. This thing, what is it, why doesn't she recognize what it is, and where are the others?! "Help, I'm in here, help!" she cries, but none of the others come, it is only her and this assailant in the darkened office off the false Hall of Breaching, surrounded by puddles of viscous black liquid and neatly stacked piles of human bones amidst the general debris. The place reeks of death, and she wonders if this thing is one of the devils that inhabit it...or one of their earlier victims.

They have shifted, inexorably, again. They flinch sharply as the thing struggles against their grip, their gaze jerking up and dipping down again in agitated turmoil. They know this, they know this. That was how it operated, shuffling their surroundings in the space of a scuffle, elongating falls, wrenching space and time around in a looping, terrifying, burning, impossible construct.

Their foot slides through one of the pools of thick, gelatinous liquid on the floor, leaving a dark streak on the dark ground. They know the shape and length of bone, its forbidding glow against the icy void that comprises their general awareness of their surroundings.

They scrabble upward for a better handhold upon the thing, frantic. Perhaps if they destroy it, stamp it out, the thing they know is always with them we are always with you will stop, will stop, will stop -

"Get off!" it's an animal's snarl that escapes her as she claws at the desk, refusing to go down. Trapped, trapped here with this thing in the dark and the stench of a place that isn't a place. She remembers the walls closing in on them, and so they are now -- she remembers the creeping noises, and the screams of the others trapped here echoing from the other rooms, and the feeling of being watched, always being watched --

She doesn't know how to help herself, but she does. She makes a convulsive movement, losing her grip on the desk as a twisted, ugly word in a language spoken by the damned wrenches its way up her throat. Something shapeless and dark appears over the two of them, but it's her attacker on whom it focuses.

The effect is abrupt and immediate and terrifying.

They scramble backwards, away, their movements frantic and desperate as they scuttle over the cold of the smooth, slick floor, a hot knot of terror drawn tight in their chest. They shrink away, hands reaching to cover their smooth, pale shape of a face, as if hiding the fearsome thing from their sight would be a sufficient means of evading its eyeless sight.

fou
nd
you

forever
Their back arches in a shivering, paroxysmal movement that seems to be their non-verbal equivalent of an horrified, inhuman scream.

It tilts its head smoothly to one side as it watches them, its blank visage somehow managing to communicate dismissive indifference. They cannot look at it, but nor can they look away.

Gently, almost lovingly, its arms extend, unspooling toward them, stretching forth with limitless reach, to wrap them in its icy, inescapable grip.

you will be
fixed,
it assures them.
just as
you were meant to be

comecloser
They do not have time to work their stolen body's jaws and throat to make an appropriate sound of overpowering, paralyzed despair.

They do not have time to do anything.

The inky dark of its body expands and enfolds them with pulsing alacrity, and they shudder into silence.

Asmodia's face contorts into an expression of disgust and -- yes, pity as she watches the creature recoil from whatever its own mind has conjured to kill it. She takes the moment to put more distance and the desk between them, knowing that there's still a chance it will not die from this, knowing now that she can hit it again with her magic if need be, and again, and again, she remembers now, she is not helpless --

It is an ugly death, for how clean it is. That's always how it is with this spell. There's no scream this time, only the twitching of a dying body. She's glad, as she always is, that she can't see what her ~~victim~~ attacker sees. Asmodia lets herself breathe a sigh of relief when the body stops moving; she remains trapped on this hellish demiplane but she can allow herself the luxury of a moment of relief, can't she?

Except....

Cold dread twists in her gut and she doesn't even know why at first, only that something is wrong as it can be. It's not until she looks up from the dead body that she sees -- something looking back at her. The wispy shape that formed at her command a moment ago is forming again now and she knows full well what it is but still can't look away, can't convince herself that it's hers to dismiss when it forms into something she doesn't even recognize. This isn't right, that isn't her fear before her. It's not Asmodeus that reaches for her but something primally wrong with arms that outstretch --

"No --!!" The cry is choked off, unfinished as the dream spirals away to nothing in the absence of its dreamer.

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deeper and deeper we go, where there is no light [open to multiple]

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strangulation and blood (also a general cw for this thread, it's gonna be violent and unsettling)

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johnny is scary

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tw: attempted strangulation

I'll see that tw and raise you some serious suicide ideation

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tw: strangulation, claustrophobia

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tw: severe mental distress, minor body horror

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