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that-one-girl-behind-you · 5 years ago

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Illicio 4/?

Part 3

Trigger warning for some very lightly mentioned domestic abuse and sexual assault (molesting of a minor). During the first POV.

“Come on now, don’t go picking fights with any more entities.” Gerry gives his shoulder a little push as the bus rolls to a stop. Jon complies, but he turns to face Gerry as soon as he hops on the street with him.

“Excuse me? I don’t pick fights with-” Jon’s massive lie fades off into indignant blustering when Gerry wraps a hand around his right wrist and brings his hand up to eye level, giving it a little shake with a raised eyebrow. “W- well that’s different, have you met Jude Perry?”

Nighttime at Jon’s flat is a strange ritual.

The first variable is whether or not Gerry will be staying, which has been happening more often lately. On those nights, Jon usually grabs the first thing that catches his attention from his bookshelf and sits on the coffee table or the carpeted floor -all of Gerry’s teasing about his ‘old lady sofa’ doesn’t stop him from hogging it for himself- to read aloud.

“I thought you didn’t sleep anymore,” he says whenever he looks up from the pages and finds Gerry stretching out mid-yawn.

“I don’t need it.” Gerry’s voice gets hoarser and more relaxed after these naps. “But the experience is still nice.” Which must also apply to the many times Jon’s seen him picking at a bag of crisps or sipping a cup of coffee.

Jon doesn’t mind. He enjoys his reading, and it’s nice to see Gerry at ease; Jon doubts he had many chances to just sit back and take a nap before, and it’s… it’s nice to feel like he’s a safe space for someone.

“If you’re going to doze off anyways, we could move to-” Jon stops himself a moment before finishing the thought, after catching the arched eyebrow and the amused glint in Gerry’s eyes. “Nevermind.”

“No no, by all means ask me to your bed, Jonathan.”

Jon sighs, “I don’t know why I even bother, Gerard.” Gerry scrunches his nose at the name and Jon rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. It never feels like Gerry’s making fun of him, and it makes him miss Tim -the Tim from before, when Jon hadn’t ruined everything yet- a little less.

On the days Gerry’s not around, though, Jon has to find other ways to keep himself distracted from the hunger.

It took him a while to notice, probably because the statements were all he needed for a while. The warehouse worker had been an anomaly, something Jon tried not to think about. He’d been out purchasing some groceries, compelled another random shopper on accident, and it had been just his rotten luck that the man had a story to tell.

Then, the day after Melanie’s… impromptu surgery. Jon had read statement after statement trying to relieve the ache of the wound on his shoulders, but each had brought only the feeling of a cool breeze on a burn; enough to lighten the pain but not doing anything to heal him.

He’d thought the stroll would clear his head and it had almost done so, until he’d seen her. Long brown hair falling over her shoulders in loose ringlets, a wrinkle of worry on her brow and a birthday card signed by all her co-workers wishing her a great day tomorrow.

The scalpel wound had been covered in new skin by the time he’d gone back to the institute, and Jon knew he’d be seeing Zaida Mossen in his dreams.

Sometimes he watches TV, picks a documentary and tries not to Know the next piece of information before the narrator says it on screen. One time he tried looking at old photos on Facebook, but he ended up Knowing his primary school best friend is now trapped with three kids and a woman that beats him every other night, and that his secondary school teacher got away on a technicality after he was found molesting a student. He closed the app before he could come across a picture with Georgie or Tim in it.

Overall, he avoids sleep.

The nightmares were just that, before the Unknowing. He could focus on the fact that he didn’t want the visions and he’d wake up soon enough, to try and drown out Naomi Hernes’ screams. To ignore the resigned, sad gaze of Karolina Gorka when she lay down next to the old man crushed by the chair. He can’t do that anymore.

Tonight Jon is tired after days of Knowing little details unwillingly, and sustaining himself only on old, stale statements. He sits on the edge of his bed and looks through the window to wait for the sky to lighten outside, because he knows if he lays down he will sleep, and if he sleeps he will See.

Dr. Elliot’s fear tastes of desperation. He’d been respected, an expert on his field, he’d only taken the class as a favor. Now he holds out an apple spilling endless teeth around him, begging for someone to take it. He knows they all think he’s mad.

Helen Richardson -the real one, one of Jon’s biggest screwups- has an aftertaste of madness, which makes sense considering the entity that claimed her. She’d been so scared of losing her grip on her mind, because she’d always been so sharp, so… consistent. Sometimes she looks at him over her shoulder before she opens the yellow door.

Tessa Winters has a flavor Jon recognizes well. She regrets clicking the link and downloading the file, and she’s scared she started something without an end, something that will keep tormenting her forever. She has never watched the video again in real life, but every night she tries to turn off a screen in which Sergey Ushanka’s gums bleed around the chewed up glass.

They know he’s watching them. The new ones scream at him for help, the older ones have given up. Both reactions bring Jon a feeling of bliss before he looks up at his patron and the cycle starts again.

“Hey,” comes Gerry’s voice as Jon’s bedroom door creaks open. “Ready to- oh. Didn’t know you were sleeping, I- are you alright?”

Jon blinks up at the ceiling, confused. The pillow is soft below his head, he feels replenished, and he Knows of at least three other people between here and the Institute that he could hunt down and add to his archive.

The edge of the bed sinks beside him, and a curtain of Gerry’s hair shields Jon’s face from the rising sun as he leans over him.

“Jon?”

“I’m- it’s alright.” Jon’s voice is hoarse from sleep too, but where Gerry’s is pleasant and calming, his sounds like he’s been gargling on gravel. “Just nightmares, is all.”

The corner of Gerry’s lips twitches into a side smile, but his eyes are sympathetic.

“That’s our bread and butter, isn’t it?” he asks. The punishing sunlight hits against Jon’s eyes when he stands up, the bed bouncing back a little at the lack of pressure. “Let’s get you to the Institute, some statements will make you feel better.”

The bedroom door closes behind him, and a long, tired sigh blows past Jon’s lips.

————————————————————————————————————————

Gerry counts seven members of the Church of the Divine Host on their way to the Institute. Funnily enough they stand out like sore thumbs in daylight, even without him using his Sight. The closed eye pendant makes something in his stomach coil with irritation, but he ignores it. He knows perfectly well by now that this is the Beholding rearing up at the perceived slight. For larger than life beings of cosmic horror, the entities are pretty much just angry cats swatting at each other very ineffectively.

Jon gives off a little grunt; he’s much more ensnared in than Gerry, so he supposes it makes sense.

“Yeah, and she gets along fairly well with other avatars. Even Gertrude never went around looking like she stuck her hand in a deep fryer and Perry hated her guts.” The burn scars on Jon’s hands are silky smooth when Gerry runs his thumb along the skin. They feel like his own. “If she did this to you, I’m going to go out on a limb and say-”

“I did not compel her,” Jon interrupts him with the most pompous, offended voice. Gerry gives his wrist a little squeeze, grinning. Jon sniffs, and Gerry can see the corner of his lips twitching. “But I did try a whole lot.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you,” Gerry cackles, letting go of his hand. “But you’re right about the Dark. They’re growing bolder, I think we’re going to get a visit sooner rather than later.”

Jon gives him a side look with a curved eyebrow.

“We?”

“Well yes, who else is going to lull me to sleep with his dulcet tones and extremely specific facts about the Russian Revolution?” Gerry rolls his eyes. “If the Dark comes for you, they come for me.”

Jon doesn’t say anything to that, but he looks extremely pleased for the rest of the walk to the Institute. It’s very endearing, Gerry thinks with a smile as he watches him descend the stairs into the Archives.

“Oh my God.” Gerry turns at the sound of the voice, and finds Melanie shaking her head at him.

“What?” Gerry figures if anyone here is going to get offended at his lack of manners, it’s definitely not going to be the woman that was a death away from becoming a physical incarnation of violence.

Melanie rolls her eyes. “Nothing. You’re going out?”

“Yeah?”

“Okay. I’m going with you, you’re going to explain some things.” She doesn’t wait for an answer, moving towards the front doors instead. Gerry blinks a couple times, trying to process the turn of events, before he follows after Melanie.

They end up at a little park a good way away from the Institute, and Gerry can’t help but notice that with every step Melanie takes away from the building her posture relaxes, and so does the ever-present frown at her brow.

“So… What is it that you wanted me to explain?” Gerry asks after they’ve sat down against a tree trunk, away from any passersby. They must make a terribly stereotypical sight, a cute little couple out on a date instead of a woman on a mission and her hostage.

Melanie looks up at him, her dark eyes especially striking behind her brightly colored bangs.

“What am I?” She asks. Then, like the thought just occurred to her, “I’m not like him am I? I mean, I didn’t- I can’t heal from statements or make people tell me things or-”

Gerry shakes his head. “That’s an Archivist thing, and there’s only one of those.”

“So I’m what? The Assistant? Because that’s a pretty lame title and I don’t care for it.” Melanie gives him an unimpressed stare, and Gerry chuckles under his breath. Either she’s very likable, or he just has a soft spot for blunt people.

“Nah. If anything, you were going to become an avatar of the Slaughter,” he says, gesturing at the bandaged spot that he knows is under her trousers. “I call them wielders, but the Beholding is really the only one that has titles for its avatars. I think that’s why no one likes them, too presumptuous.”

“Them?” Melanie asks, “aren’t you one too?”

“Not really,” says Gerry, feeling a shudder run down his spine. No thanks. “But I’m marked by the Watcher, just like you.”

Melanie takes a deep breath, clearly trying to keep her patience. “Didn’t you just say I was an avatar of the Slaught-” she gives him a furious glare, when Gerry slaps a hand over her mouth.

He pulls it back before she can decide to bite a few fingers off. “Don’t go proclaiming that stuff. These things take that seriously and Jon didn’t almost get himself killed so you could invite the Slaughter in again.”

Melanie rolls her eyes. “Fine. What does ‘being marked’ mean then?”

“Well, just that really. It’s when an entity had a grip on you at some point, usually because you ran into an avatar or a monster,” Gerry shrugs, twirling one of his rings around his finger just to have something to do with his hands. He doesn’t like talking about these things too much; too many years playing database for the hunters has left him very wary of people who want his knowledge. “Some marked people get abilities, like me. Some grow into full avatars, some don’t. It really depends on the person, and whether or not the entity thinks they’re a good fit.”

“And the Eye doesn’t think you are?”

“I don’t really care about knowledge as much as I care about using what I know to help people. I’m also marked by the End, but again, not a match.” He gives her a disappointed pout, and her mouth twitches. “There’s really no limit to how many entities can mark you, other than your bad luck I guess. Jon has like ten marks on him.”

“Ten?” Melanie arches her eyebrows. “Why so many?”

“A week ago he only had nine,” Gerry gives her a pointed look. Sure, she wasn’t herself back then, but he still remembers the small, exhausted grunts of pain as he helped Jon peel the blood soaked shirt off.

Melanie looks forward and her lips purse in a way that could be either sheepishness, or an attempt at holding a smile back. Knowing Melanie, he doubts it’s the first one.

“Well, I couldn’t eat solids for two days after,” she says in the end, and Gerry rolls his eyes.

“You were going to kill him. For real.” He hadn’t even thought before throwing the punch, because the only thing in his mind had been getting her away from Jon.

“Okay, okay,” Melanie waves a hand as if trying to bat the topic away. “I’m sorry for stabbing your boyfriend.”

Gerry doesn’t bother correcting her, just like he didn’t that night at the break room. As long as they don’t figure out his relationship with Jon is truly parasitic, they can think whatever they want.

There is, however, a lie he will call out. On principle. “No you’re not.”

Now Melanie smiles for real, even letting out a little huff of amusement.

“No, but I know I should be sorry. That has to count for something, right?”

————————————————————————————————————————

Basira hates a lot of things about the Institute.

For example, how she can feel herself changing with every word she reads on the damned books she can’t put down to save her life. How she’s trapped inside the building, and the only time she really braves the outside is when she goes and outruns whatever monster of the week is waiting for her because she feels Elias has something to tell her. How the building seems to have been designed with the sole goal of making its inhabitants as unnerved as possible.

She hates every corner and every brick, every dark room where the light switch is placed just out of reach when you first walk in, and how it always feels like someone is watching-

“You were there,” says a rough accented voice, and Basira freezes on her spot. The light switch is three more steps to the right, she knows this room, she can-

A large hand wraps itself around her neck and pulls her away from the door. The door closes behind her, and Basira no longer knows how far it is to the light switch. She’s never been in this room- is this a room?

“You’re not doing that. We’re friends, you and I. We don’t need to see each other.” The voice evokes a sense of familiarity within Basira, but something inside her is screaming at her, a primal urge to fight or flee. “Don’t you remember me?”

“I do not know you,” Basira says dryly, and the voice laughs in delight. A man, she’s pretty sure it’s a man… unless it isn’t? Maybe it’s a woman. Or neither. She should- she knows this person.

But didn’t she just say the opposite?

There’s some steps behind the door, so there must be a door. If there is a door, and there are steps… Then there has to be other people. People she knows. People who are real. Is she not real? If she knows this person, and they’re not real, then maybe she isn’t either.

But… but no. She has to be real, because she opened the door. Doors are real. They go to real places -most of them at least- and that must mean this is a place, and it’s real. If it’s a place, then she can… Basira frowns, feeling like she’s at the edge of something, if she could just…“This is a plac-”

“Don’t say a word.” The hand tightens around her throat. It doesn’t feel like any human hand Basira has touched before, only Basira suddenly isn’t so convinced she has touched any human before. Or perhaps she has and they all feel like this. Does she not feel like this because she’s not human?

The door opens, and the tenuous light that makes its way into the room is enough to chase away the shadow of uncertainty in Basira’s mind.

This is the Institute, she’s Basira Hussain, and she’s in danger. That’s all she needs to get to work.

“Jon, don’t turn the light on,” she orders, her voice calm and steady. “Go and find Melanie, quick.”

It isn’t until she gives the order that she remembers Melanie no longer has the bullet, and Elias’s stupid voice comes to haunt her. You lost Melanie.

“It’s alright Basira. I know he’s here.” Jon’s voice is like she’s never heard it before. No warmth, no hesitation, no sign of the man that measures his every word to try to not hurt anyone, and ends up doing so anyways. She can barely see his silhouette where he’s profiled by the light behind him, but she can see his eyes emit the eerie green glow they had that night by Melanie’s bed.

“So what are you doing?” she asks.

Three steps. Click.

Jon looks at some point behind and above Basira’s shoulder.

“I imagine he’s here to deliver something.” Jon’s words are punctuated by a low thrumming static. “Let her go.” Basira can feel each word vibrate with power, and the hand around her throat starts trembling as the creature fights the compulsion

It’s enough for her to twist out of its grasp. She doesn’t go stand by Jon, but moves in his general direction until she’s closer to him than she is to the… thing.

It looks like a man. It has all the parts. Skin, face, hands. It is not a man.

“Is- the deliverymen,” she blurts out the realization as soon as it comes.

“Deliveryman,” Jon says by her side. Once again she’s taken aback by the coldness of his voice, and the way his eyes are fixed on the being. “Which one are you?” he asks, and the glow from his eyes pulsates once as the static rises.

“ ’m Breekon,” the thing says immediately, then takes a step backwards. Jon takes a step forward and vaguely in Basira’s direction, and she realizes he plans on stepping between them.

“And where’s Hope?” The static in his voice remains, and the thing squirms a little more, clearly uncomfortable.

“Hope’s gone,” says the monster.

'Tell me about it,’ thinks Basira, before she takes a deep breath.

“And what? Are you here for revenge?” Hope turns to face her as she speaks, and stays silent. Jon gives a tired sigh, and repeats the question. It takes a few more seconds, like the fact that Breekon isn’t holding eye contact -if it even has eyes- delays the compulsion. It’s not enough to stop it.

“Yes. Like when we- when I put the mutt in the pit,” it says, and gives something at his feet a little kick. It’s only then that Basira sees the rough wooden coffin with its rusted chain and the scratched warning on top. “It knew where it was going, I think. It was scared of it. Never seen a hunter scream like that.”

Breekon gives a dark chuckle, and Basira feels molten hot rage spilling from her stomach, prickling at her eyes. Of course Daisy was scared of the fucking thing, she saw it in her dreams every other night, Basira would know. Her hand itches for her gun, but Jon’s voice comes before she can even begin reaching for it.

“Easy, Basira.” It’s not compulsion per se, and his voice does get softer when he spares her the quickest glance, but Basira still bristles at the words. What right does he have to ask her to hold back and be reasonable, when he’s been trying to corral Martin into talking to him whenever he’ll stand still for long enough?

“Daisy’s in there?” She asks instead, just to confirm. She cannot go into the coffin, her mind’s clear enough to push the desperate thought away but… but she needs to know.

The monster turns to her again, and huffs in what she guesses is amusement.

“Answer her,” says Jon calmly, businesslike. Breekon shudders.

“Nikola should’ve killed you faster,” it says, and Basira gets the feeling he’s trying to stall for time. Probably just to get on their nerves, because what is there to hide when he’s already told them? “Sure. Whatever’s left of it at least. Go find it for all I care.”

“Why are you here?” Jon asks again, taking another step between Basira and the deliveryman.

“Hm. Dunno. ’S not much to do without Hope around,” the monster shrugs. Out the corner of her eye Basira sees Jon stiffen. She remembers Daisy doing the same at times, freezing like a hunting dog with prey in its sights. “We’ve always been together.”

“…Jon?” Basira reaches out to touch his shoulder, but he doesn’t react. The glow in his eyes is brighter now, and Basira’s pretty sure he’s stopped breathing. The static in the room gets louder, and she snaps her head towards Breekon, her hand now firmly on her gun. “Get out.”

“Make me.”

“Stop.” Jon’s voice reverberates all the way through Basiras’ bones, and she and Breekon freeze.

“Jon, what are you doing?” Basira doesn’t try to touch him again. His form appears too sharp somehow, like those pictures that are so high quality they seem unreal, and his eyes look glassy and green as Breekon squirms under his gaze.

“Wh- stop. Stop it.” Breekon moves strangely, like he’s trying to take a step back but he’s stuck to the floor. Basira has a flashback to the butterflies and moths pinned to cork boards at her secondary school, their wings spread wide and their bodies exposed for everyone to look. She shudders. “Stop looking at me!”

“No.” Jon’s voice echoes inside Basira’s head, and her vision goes white. She has the briefest sense of satisfaction as she hears Breekon scream and gasp, and she’s aware only part of it is bitterness over Daisy. The other is some sort of instinctive pleasure; she guided Jon here, the Archivist needed this information and she found Breekon for him to See, she- she scowls. That’s not her.

That’s not her at all.

The room reforms around her piece by piece as she shakes her head and her vision clears. She sees Breekon’s heel disappear behind the door, before Jon is stumbling towards the closest desk.

“Get me-” he starts to ask, but Basira’s already offering a pen with movements that aren’t entirely her own either. His eyes are back to normal, but Basira only stays for long enough to see him start scribbling on a notebook page, before it becomes too much.

She makes sure not to turn her back to him as she leaves.

————————————————————————————————————————

The thought is almost too weird for her, but Melanie finds herself enjoying the little excursion. She does wonder why no one -nothing- has targeted them yet, but she doesn’t get attacked when she’s out with Helen either, so maybe the monsters are just opportunistic bastards and don’t like to risk it when the odds aren’t in their favor.

Gerard is very easy to like, for someone so infuriatingly fond of Jon. Melanie finds herself thinking they could’ve been friends, if they’d met under different circumstances.

As things are now, she’s far too aware of the way his eyes keep drifting towards the Institute, even though they’ve walked far enough that the building is well out of sight and behind several twists and turns.

“Are you feeling him?” she asks when they finally climb to their feet after a few hours of fear talk. The question is somewhat awkward in her mouth; she doesn’t like Jon, but Gerard does, and she’s decided she likes him enough to not want to offend him. The desire to not hurt still feels foreign in her mind.

“Mm? Oh. Not really,” Gerard shrugs, looking down at her. “I don’t know? I just know where he is. Like the general direction.”

“Hm. That would’ve been useful last year, he got kidnapped like three times.” Melanie pats the back of her shorts to get rid of any dirt and grass that decided to come up with her.

“Did he now?” And yeah, the urge to maim someone is back with the fond little smile on Gerard’s face. “And he has the gall to say he doesn’t get into trouble.”

“Well, he does. What now?” she asks, opting to only bump his shoulder with hers instead of punching his arm. This guy can be as infatuated with a supernatural disaster as he wants, and she won’t feel any strong way about it. No violence here, no siree, Slaughter who?

“Well… we go back, I think? Unless you have more questions.” Gerard looks at her as he shoves his hands into his pockets. Melanie deflates a bit; it is a nice day, and she gets very few chances to leave the Institute.

They do end up going back, but Melanie makes a point of stopping for ice cream on the way back. Gerard gives in suspiciously quickly, and Melanie finds herself liking the guy more and more.

Her phone buzzing with an incoming text from Georgie as she’s handed her double caramel scoop only makes this an even better day.

“That’s a big smile,” Gerard comments as she taps away at the keys. She looks up at him disbelievingly, but there’s no indication he realizes how much of a hypocrite he’s being as he calmly sucks on his cherry ice lolly.

“The nerve.” Melanie rolls her eyes. “It’s my- a friend.”

Gerard bites off a chunk of the ice lolly, and it does more to convince Melanie that he’s not human than the fact that he walked back from the dead.

“Sounds complicated.”

“I’m trapped at Spook Central because of her ex boyfriend, it is complicated,” Melanie mumbles. Georgie’s one of the few good things left in her life, and she’s determined to keep her away from this horrible, horrible circus. “Besides, not all of us get wingmanned by an eldritch entity.”

“She’s Jon’s ex?” Gerard arches an eyebrow as he leans forward to try and peek at Melanie’s phone.

“Do you have selective hearing or something?! Get back!” She punches and shoves at his shoulder until he retreats with an amused smile. The act doesn’t leave a taste of metal in her tongue, she’s surprised to find. Or a craving for more, harsher action. It only feels… companionable. Almost playful.

Melanie had forgotten what it felt like to be friendly with someone.

She’d never say it aloud, but if she counts Georgie and this guy -and even Martin whenever he’s not being a bitch and a half because he’s on a Secret Mission- Jon doesn’t have terrible taste in people.

There’s a man coming out of the Institute, and Gerard’s arm shoots in front of her chest to stop her just as she realizes it’s not a man at all.

“Is that-”

Gerard nods. His frown melts away after he looks at the building again, head tilted as if hearing a sound Melanie can’t register.

“Fuck,” Melanie mutters under her breath. Of course this would happen now, after the bullet is gone and on the one day she decides to go out. “There’s another entrance at the back, let’s-”

“They’re alright.” Gerard sounds thoughtful as he watches the creature stumble its way into a side street. “Beholding marks don’t suit the Stranger well, it seems.”

She looks up, and the smile on his face looks dangerous, somehow.

“Jon?”

“Did a right number on it.” There’s a hint of dark pride to his voice, a polar opposite to the ridiculously soft demeanor he usually adopts when it comes to Jon, and Melanie finds it that she much prefers the absurd fondness to whatever this is. Basira’s words from a few weeks back play through her mind, and she remembers she still doesn’t know what Gerard is. Or why the Eye brought him to Jon. “Go check on them, I’ll finish it off.”

“I’ll come with you,” she decides in a split second. “I can still do it.”

Gerard turns to look down at her, and whatever it was that made her stomach knot in worry is gone so fast Melanie wonders if she imagined it in the first place. There’s a dubious frown on his brow, and his mouth, still dyed red by the stupid lolly, is pressed in a tight line.

“I don’t doubt you could,” he says after a moment. “But I don’t want you to. Don’t invite it back in, remember?”

She does, but she also doesn’t trust the shadow that passed over him not a minute ago.

“Then I won’t do it. But I- I need to watch,” she tries again. “Or I won’t be convinced it’s gone.”

Another long moment of Gerard measuring her up, before he finally nods.

“If you need it,” he says, leading the way into the side street the monster took. Melanie follows with careful steps.

She likes Gerard, but she’s not naive enough to forget she’s been wrong before.

————————————————————————————————————————

When Basira walks into the windowless room, Elias is reading a celebrity gossip magazine, and she wants to rip his eyes out

“Good evening, Det-”

“Drop it,” Basira interrupts, and Elias’ thin lips curl into a smile. Her hands curl into fists, to keep from wrapping around his neck. “Breekon came to see us yesterday. He brought-”

“The coffin, yes.” Elias nods. “I must admit it was quite pleasing to see you work with Jon so seamlessly, Basira. But I suspect you’re not here for my praise, are you?”

Basira advances on him until she’s looming over his sitting form, and she bristles at the calm look he aims at her.

“I hope you’re not so surprised to know Miss Tonner is alive?” He arches a carefully shaped eyebrow. Of course this bastard uses jail to catch up with his beauty routine. “Surely you know by now that the Eye rewards those who are loyal.”

So that confirms that.

“That’s what Keay is then? A reward for Jon?”

“Oh, he didn’t tell you?” Elias tsks in disappointment, shaking his head. “One would’ve thought he’d learned to be honest to his team by now.” His poison green eyes focus on Basira’s face again. “Well, I guess it can’t be fixed… Despite my best efforts, you never did bond.”

“Shut up!” Basira snaps finally. Bond. Like they’re a cute little group of misfits in a TV show instead of an armload of hostages. Her right hand digs into Elias’ hair, grabbing a fistful and tightening as she pulls back until his neck is twisted at a very awkward angle. “How do I bring her back?” Elias smirks again. She tightens her grip until she feels a few hair strands snap. “I am not in the mood for your games.”

“Always so direct,” he says in the end. “But as I said, the Eye rewards its own. Let me give you some leads, Detective.”

#jongerrymartin #j/g/m #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #gerry keay #vit writes #illicio

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edmund-valks · 5 years ago

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What Lies Beneath... the Barn

“Wait, if you can think of that, why do you need me?”

Ilandreline brushed dark hair back from her sweat-slicked brow, carefully pouring molten metal into gear molds. “Because I can only do the calculations, not the actual magic. Also I would prefer to be able to validate it before I get my friends sucked into terrifying cosmic voids.”

She was really glad for this setup, even more glad that nobody seemed to notice she’d built a basement into the barn using a disintegrating arcanodrill while they’d been off engaging in weird things like “commerce”, whatever that meant. Not that she didn’t know what the word meant, but. Is my internal dialogue supposed to be this bad? No, it’s not. Maybe you’re not as smart as you hoped. Fair.

“Anyway,” she said aloud, setting the fresh gears to quench, “you’re the only one I know who even cares about my planar work, much less understands how to use it in this fashion. You already made it better, remember? That second letter of yours?” She spared a glance for the other elf, trying to gauge her reaction.

Perched on a corner of her workbench, the diminutive ren’dorei was… blushing? Either that or suffocating; her cheeks were flushed a soft violet rather than her whole face, so presumably it wasn’t asphyxiation. “Well, I mean, anyone could have if they-”

“If you finish that sentence I’m going to hit you with a wrench.”

She stopped so fast her teeth clacked.

The Fence Macabre’s resident -- whether they knew it or liked it -- engineer continued. “If anyone could do it, then I’m a fool for not having done it myself, and I’m pretty sure you didn’t just call me a fool. And second of all, no, they couldn’t have, so stop trying to downplay your work. You’re smart about this stuff and you’ve got a unique perspective. You’re a valuable colleague and I’d love for you to be a co-author when I publish this theory.”

More colour rushed to her cheeks, making Sentua look something like a blueberry. Poor thing! Whatever the ren’dorei had done to themselves, it had really screwed them out of any fashion choices they may have liked beforehand. Red and gold just… didn’t… with that complexion.

“I… would like to be published with you, thank you. Are you sure- Wait, of course you are, otherwise you wouldn’t have said it, right?” She took several deep breaths. “Sorry.”

Ila shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. You about studied up, ready to try out the first one?”

“Um. Let me take one more look at the diagram and re-check the math. Then I’ll go over the runes again.”

“Sure thing, take your time. I got a bunch of these brass bastards to make anyway.” Anyone from the Fence who wasn’t her was unlikely to have any idea why she was making multiple copies of something that was already built. That was probably for the best. Nobody else really seemed to appreciate the old grandfather clock the way she did.

While she worked, her visitor did exactly as she’d said she would, tracing the structure they’d slowly developed using extraplanar theoretics combined with several known nexus points. If they’d had access to a superior medium (who wasn’t also wholeheartedly opposed to their purpose), maybe they would have been able to determine if it was going to work without having to craft a prototype. But what would be the fun in that?

Well, it would certainly involve less child endangerment.

Hey! That’s not fair, she’s an adult!

...In human years, yes. How old is she? Twenty?

Twenty-three? Give or take a year.

This is wildly irresponsible parenting!

I’m not her parent!

Good point. It’s really irresponsible of them to let her hang out with someone like us.

No kidding! What are they thinking!

“Okay, I’m getting started now. Try to keep quiet and stay over there. I’m… not sure what this is going to look like when I get it going.”

That made two of them. Ilandreline very casually moved behind a thickly armoured panel she used in case one of her iron molds exploded. “Righto, let ‘er rip, Senny!”

Despite her youth, she sure looked like she knew what she was doing. Having grown up around an assortment of arcane manipulators (as well as normal manipulators), Ila could usually follow spellwork as it happened. She was utter rubbish at it herself, but that was why she’d done theoretical work. That way she never had to prove anything except on paper.

The interweaving runic designs began flaring to life, unexpectedly nightblue with pinpricks of starlight within them. A brief peek without her goggles in place confirmed that wasn’t a trick of the lenses, it was the Real Deal. Since she had no idea what it meant, if anything, the sin’dorei kept waiting and watching.

A subaural thrum filled the air, slowly building intensity. Sentua seemed unbothered, continuing to do… whatever a wizard did during a lengthy ritual. Concentrate or something. The vibration became more sensible until it started to feel like her teeth were going to rattle from her skull. Then it stopped and things got weird.

When your family was exiled due to a misunderstanding involving the regular sacrifice over centuries of sentient beings to dark powers, you grew up with a different baseline for weirdness from others. As a result, this wasn’t the weirdest thing Ila had ever seen, but it was certainly up there. She pulled her goggles off to see with the tainted vision that same “misunderstanding” had gifted her.

Portals were opening and clothing, like mouths made of eyes, evaporating as soon as they formed. A loop made of itself (what?) turned outside-in until they disappeared inside it. Eyes of darkness flared against the backdrop of interminable void within one of the gaping portal-maws and she felt uncomfortably seen. Maybe I messed up the math after all.

A crackle of power flared through the starlight rune-circles, drawing constellations like the antipodal counterpart of what she’d seen in drawings from Ulduar. This was a place she recognized, but not in a way she’d experienced it before. There was the old, familiar whisperings, comforting as ever, slipping over and through her being with their gentle rubberiness. The sensation of being watched, as always, and knowing what was heard wasn’t her own thoughts; just another day looking at what the authorities of Silvermoon had called “the wrong side of things” when they’d been exiled a couple hundred years back.

The ache in her jaw was new, though. And… getting worse. Something was affecting the pressure in the room. Maybe I should open the door up to the barn, help equalize it? Ilandreline tried to move but her body wouldn’t respond right. She tried to talk but nothing came out. The air felt like molasses, though, and it started to… ooze… into her open mouth in one of the more unpleasant sensations she’d ever encountered.

This is definitely bad, this is going to keep increasing until we pop like overfed ticks. It wasn’t a comforting thought. She’d die like she’d lived, though: making bad decisions with dangerously undertested experiments. Her jaw was being forced wider and wider, until it felt like it was going to pop out of its socket. Then something did pop and there was a roar like an entire storm’s worth of thunder if it was packed into a giant’s sneeze.

Wetness -- blood? Probably! -- trickled from her ears, but she could close her mouth again. She did so, gingerly, rubbing at it. “Faoh,” she mumbled, unable to make real words quite yet. Her brain didn’t want to form them, her mouth couldn’t. She blinked far too often for several minutes before recovering enough to replace the tinted lenses through which she typically viewed the world.

Sentua was still standing, looking… mostly normal. Maybe slightly dazed; half catatonic? No more than that, maybe only a quarter. But she was also grinning like the cat who’d eaten a smaller, weaker cat to gain its feline prowess.

“Ah wubna!” she said in triumph.

“Fwah?” was Ila’s response as she stuck her little finger into an ear, trying to pry loose the inability to understand. It came back covered in what was definitely blood, possibly with a little extra something she didn’t want to think about too closely.

The ren’dorei worked her jaw a bit, then tried again. “I did it!” The words formed right that time, managing to get through the sticky haze in Ila’s ears. “I don’t know if it worked, but it went off just like we expected it to.”

“Hleva nuhs!” Frowning, she slapped herself once, then a second time, harder. Wiggling her jaw from side to side, she formed the words very deliberately. “Ve...ry… nice.” Moving over to where the first pocket watch -- more staggered, really, as if she was quite drunk -- Ilandreline examined it. It looked right.

She turned it just so, opened a back panel to look into the mirrored surface there, checking behind her. And sure enough, just as she’d hoped, there was the leering grin of a lurking specter, axe poised and with a hungry look in its eyes. “Hey, fella! Good to see you again. We made you portable.” She laughed, gave a wink that the cursed entity could never see. “Look out, world! The Fence Macabre has portable curse detectors now!”

Her new partner came to look over her shoulder and practically jumped out of her skin. Sentua glanced hurriedly back to the real world then into the gleaming silvered expanse. “This… this is what you were trying to do?”

“Absolutely!”

“But… why?”

Ilandreline just stared for a moment. She didn’t understand why people kept asking that. It was clearly a great idea. “Because why wouldn’t you want to be able to see what kind of horrific spirits are lurking in an area? This is a much more portable form of the curse, one that can be replicated multiple times using the demiplanar transpositionalities we derived, augmented through a series of linking and magnifying matrices. So long as I keep at least half of the original gears in the grandfather clock, I can use the rest to create portable horror viewers!”

Sentua stared at her for rather a long time. It got awkward. Eventually she shrugged, though, which was probably for the best. “Well, as long as you’re happy and it works, I guess that’s good enough for me! I think I’m gonna go home and sleep, though, if that’s okay.”

“Yeah, absolutely. Get your rest, that was probably pretty draining.” She grinned, squeezed the young elf in a one-armed hug. “And be proud! You did great.”

“Thanks! I… don’t know if replicating a curse into multiple other objects was what I thought I’d be doing, but at least it confirmed our theories.” She grinned weakly, then stumbled off to the designated teleportation corner, keying one of her completion-tokens to zap her back home.

Ilandreline kept turning the pocket watch over, chuckling. It didn’t tell time worth a damn, but she didn’t care about that. It had worked. And she was going to be published again for that work, damn it, preferably somewhere that would absolutely irritate her parents to no end.

Truly, she was living her best life, and it was all thanks to the Fence.

#Wow Rp #fence macabre #warcraft rp

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