#stone zeus | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lemissingmask · 1 year ago

Text

[ID: Sketch of Jacob Stone enclosed in a glowy blue column and sitting on a stool, holding one arm with a bandaged right hand, looking at Cassandra beside him, who is calculating something in her head, and with Jenkins in the foreground watching them. End ID]

Day 6: Mind control

Ficlet explaining this below the cut

Stone hadn’t been acting right.

First, he kept spacing out. Getting lost in thought in a way he usually only did if studying artworks, portfolios or works of literature. Except, when he sat down to actually do that after they’d finished an artifact retrieval, Eve didn’t see him write a single note.

He had dismissed her concerns with, as she expected, a kind but guarded smile, and a simple, “I’m good.”

That didn’t do anything to make her less concerned, but she did conclude that maybe it was something personal. He had a lot of pain in his past, and Eve barely knew the smallest part of it. Add that to his habit of thinking a lot…maybe he just had periods like this, triggered by something none of them could guess.

Except, then he showed signs of pain. Or, not pain. Discomfort. Pressing the heel of his palm over an eye, wincing from apparently nothing. And, when she picked him up on this, his, “Nothing’s wrong,” was sharp and unfamiliar. Nothing like the soft smile Stone had offered a couple of weeks before.

She backed off but kept close watch. Close enough that she saw when he recklessly - almost deliberately - threw himself at their claw-endowed foe in the middle of a fight. Ezekiel saved him from a very probably fatal injury, managing to use the distraction to pull the evil ruby from the back of the crab-looking, scaled created, just in time for it to crumbled into fragments before that massive claw could cut Stone in two.

Ezekiel had grinned as he held up the gem, said something expectedly cocky, and the day was saved.

Stone looked angry. Ferocious.

Eve only placed the expression hours after they were back, after Cassandra and Ezekiel had gone to grab victory drinks. Well aware of the sadness discord among the group caused Cassandra, Eve waited until then, grabbing Stone’s arm to hold him back from joining them.

She didn’t waste time with skirting around the question. What was wrong with him? Why had he been so reckless? He needed to get it together or someone was going to get hurt.

In short, an earful. The sort of lecture she rarely needed to give the librarians anymore.

He had responded with confusion, a hurt and lost expression, and then suddenly that ferocity again. No word accompanied the changing demeanour, and he walked away without saying a single word in his defence or apology.

“Did I miss something?” Jenkins asked, watching the empty space Stone had just vacated. The question was really just a prompt for the explanation he had to know was coming.

“Stone’s acting wrong.”

Jenkins hummed the ‘I believe you are right’ hum, “I too have noticed the change.”

She shook her head, “Today, in a fight, he almost got himself killed. And it didn’t look like an accident. He just threw himself into the danger without a plan or a decent strategy. Which, maybe two years ago, could be normal, but now…” “And it takes no pleasure in art,” Jenkins added, “Is distant.”

“And angry. He looked angry when Ezekiel defeated that crab…thing. Like he wanted to be the one to do it.”

Jenkins hummed the ‘you are wrong’ hum.

Eve sighed, “Do you have any theories?”

“I may…but it would…”

“Baird! Jenkins!” Cassandra sprinted in, catching herself on the doorframe to keep from literally sliding beyond it in her haste, “We need your help. Stone’s…”

She broke off, choking on a sort of sob, and shook it off, “Just come!”

Eve caught Jenkins’ worried glance for a split second before they were both on their feet, running after Cassandra until they saw what she had called them for, and Eve sprinted ahead.

Stone was lying on the floor in the corridor, outside one of the innumerable rooms, a pool of blood beneath him and his left shoulder soaked in it. From years of habit, she assessed that along with several other wounds - his hand was scored in a row of three deep gashes, the left side of his head was reddened and grazed, and he wasn’t moving. Ezekiel leaned over him, his own shirt balled up and pressed onto Stone’s shoulder.

“He tried to fight that big ass scorpion thing!”

“The Aqrabuamelu?” “Whatever!” Ezekiel moved back to let Eve and Jenkins take over, “We were going to ask him to join us and he just ignored us. We followed and then he just walks in. Stands there and the scorpion guy went for him. We dragged him out, but…”

But he had once again almost got himself killed in an act far too stupid for someone so intelligent.

The reasons could wait. Right now they needed to deal with the very severe, deep wound that cut deep into his shoulder. Deep enough she could see bone beneath the confusion of blood and flesh.

“Do we have anything in the library that can help with this? It’s not a magical wound, right?”

Jenkins pursed his lips, “Let us hope not…first we need to put pressure on the injury and bind it, hold the sides of the gash closed…”

Eve fell back into an old habit. She listened to the resident medic, did as they instructed to stabilise the injury, transport the victim, assist in the treatment, clean the victim up. It helped. Helped her not to think about the two pairs of terrified eyes watching everything, of what might be going on with their art historian to cause him to be so reckless.

In the past when this happened, with an injury like this, it often culminated in the soldier being sent to a proper hospital as soon as possible and from there home, or the soldier dying.

This time, Jenkins had a useful elixir that helped stem the bleeding and knit the wound partially closed, leaving only a moderately deep cut that they could dress and bind.

That part was better than any previous incident like this.

Worse, however, was that when Stone woke up a few hours later, he was back to that ferocious anger again. Silent, but with hatred in his gaze. Specifically, hatred for Ezekiel and Cassandra - the ones who had pulled him to safety.

Jenkins watched this thoughtfully, then, speaking over the indignant words of Ezekiel directed at their ungrateful rescuee, “Colonel, please bring Mr Stone into the annex with as much force as is required. Miss Cilian, if you could assist me, please.”

He walked off, Cassandra running after, with a final, worried, look back towards Stone.

Eve hesitated, briefly became the object of that angry gaze, and grabbed Stone by the back of his shirt collar and his uninjured arm to manhandle him after the former knight.

In the annex, Jenkins stepped in to take Stone from Eve and push him unceremoniously onto one of the stools.

Immediately, a blue light erupted from beneath him in a tall column of light.

“That should keep him from doing himself further mischief for now,” Jenkins said with evident satisfaction, “And give us time to resolve this matter.”

“The matter of Stone trying to kill himself,” Ezekiel clarified.

“No,” Jenkins held up a finger, “Trying to get himself killed. There is a distinction.”

“Not in the outcome.”

“The outcome is not the important factor here,” Jenkins continued, “Colonel, when did you say you first noticed this strange behaviour? About a month ago now?”

“Yeah.”

“Shortly after you retrieved the lead-covered tome from Malta.”

“I think so…”

“Just so,” Jenkins nodded, “He was distracted, lost interest in his passions, grew agitated, and finally began to put himself into fatal situations with apparent deliberate intent.”

“Yeah.”

“There is a creature…” he left the sentence hanging as he went to retrieve a book, returning and continuing as he leafed through it, “Called a remora-”

“The-”

“Ah, yes, no,” he cut off Cassandra’s exclamation, “A different remora. The fish was a…well, one should not undertake the classification and naming of creatures after two quarts of neat spirits.”

He stopped at a page and stepped back so they could peer collectively at the etched print of a slug-like creature with three rows of sharp teeth.

“This remora is a magical creature. Was, in fact, human once. Before Zeus took a disliking to him and, well, did what Zeus does.”

“One of the things Zeus does…” Eve muttered. Stone had been telling her some of the stories of Greek mythology while he was studying some recently uncovered pottery sent to be examined by one of his aliases.

Looking back to Stone where he sat now, she saw nothing of her friend there. Just cold anger. Hostility.

“The unfortunate human had been a particularly handsome sailor, reputed to be unrivalled in his ability to get the greatest speed from any ship, beloved and admired by all those who saw his abilities. On transforming, the creature was compelled to latch onto ships moving through the water, seeking what was familiar to him, and yet his doing so could stop the ship entirely. He became hated and feared by sailors.”

“That’s so sad,” Cassandra whispered.

“As is the fate of most who angered Zeus during the height of his power.”

“Okay, but this doesn’t explain Stone trying to kill himself.”

“Get himself killed,” Jenkins corrected, “The remora has been known to enter into humans, latching onto them as it will with any surface, and burrowing inside. Its home, where it wants to be, is the water. The open oceans, and on finding itself inside a host, it seeks escape. This it does by attempting to control the host. Just as it can control ships, to an extent, it can control living beings. Not entirely, but enough to eventually find its way out of the host. Pliny the elder, for example. Sailed directly towards an active volcano, impelled by the remora, and met his unfortunate demise.”

“And you think Stone picked this remora up in Malta?”

“It may have been attached to the book you recovered, or perhaps free in the water at the time Mr Stone went in. In any case, it found its way into him, and since then has been gradually gaining control over his mind.”

Eve looked again at Stone. The remora had his expression fixed in something cold and angry, but apparently indifferent to their presence and their discussion. It was watching, but not really seeing.

“So,” Ezekiel prompted when the silence had extended for too long, “How do we get this remora guy out of Stone?”

“Death of the host is the only means ever documented.”

“Well we aren’t killing Stone, so let’s find a new way.”

“An exorcism?” Ezekiel suggested, “Or, like, some kinda variation on one?”

“Exorcisms are very specific rituals, Mr Jones. Variations on them to the extent of eliminating formerly-human creatures with a physical presence in this plane do not exist.”

Ezekiel huffed and they fell silent.

Stone shifted in his seat, pressed a hand against the barrier containing him, glowering yet more coldly when it didn’t yield.

“Why did that thing get in him anyway if it just wants to get out again?” Eve asked.

“There would have been no intent behind the action. An accident. Latching onto a surface not as resistant as the hull of a ship.”

“So, maybe it just doesn’t know another way out,” Cassandra said with that spark of excitement that foretold some genius, “If we can guide it out the way it came…”

“How do we do that?” Ezekiel waved a hand in front of Stone’s face, and received that same empty coldness - aware but not really observing.

“We use something it wants. The ocean or a ship…do we have an ocean or a ship?”

“We have several rooms with some sort of oceanic portion to them, but they have existing uses. I would prefer not to introduce the remora into any of our occupied rooms.”

“And we can’t let it loose to do this to more people.”

“What about shipwrecks?” Cassandra said a stream of confusing statements about velocity and currents that apparently led her to the conclusion, “If we pass something that resembles the hull of a ship past Stone at a precise velocity in a body of water with salinity matching the ocean where we found the remora, it should move out of him and to that. The cut in his shoulder would provide an easy path so it should be able to reach the external medium before the falsity becomes obvious.”

“Okay…” Eve nodded, understanding enough and trusting in Cassandra’s judgement, “Then that’s what we do.”

Holding one of her best friends down, half underwater while simultaneously trying to stop him from drowning himself, at the same time as two other friends orchestrated a carefully timed motion of some copper-covered wooden planks over the immersed part of the first friend…Eve reflected once again that her life had become incredibly bizarre.

Stone’s relentless efforts to immerse his head in the water prevented her from any deep reflection, since she had to prevent that while also keeping him from knocking the fake ship’s hull and ruining the illusion. There was also the small matter of his very much open injury seeping blood into the water around him.

Somewhere beyond her head, Cassandra was using a pulley to move the object through the water, while Ezekiel and Jenkins used yet more string-linked objects to create the correct motion of water to suggest a ship to the remora. Cassandra had drawn out a diagram of the fluid dynamics required and how to create it, and now Eve was poised over the water - hanging from a harness Ezekiel assured her was secure - trying to move as little as possible as the obscure procession of wood began.

As soon as the wood moved close, she released Stone, trusting the calculations and theory that this would work and she hadn’t just let Stone go and drown himself.

The fake ship passed slowly over, Stone remained motionless beneath the surface of the water.

Ten seconds passed. Fifteen. Twenty, and the ‘ship’ suddenly stopped.

Beneath it, Stone moved, tried to sit up, hitting his head against the fake ship.

He scrambled out from beneath the immobile copper-coated wood, blood blossoming behind him, and emerged from the water coughing violently.

Eve unfastened herself from the harness, dropping the couple of feet to the water.

“Stone?!”

He was trembling, breathless and not just from the water, and suddenly very pale.

Gripping her arm, he nodded, and turned to look back at the wood, still unmoving in the water.

Beneath it, a small, dark shape lurked.

“Thing has…so much hate,” Stone murmured, voice weak and unsteady, “All this…built up anger. A-An’ it doesn’t even know why. It’s got no…no memories left.”

Those fractured, almost inaudible, words, were all he said of the remora aloud.

They treated his shoulder, made a room for the remora, and carried on. Bizarre and dangerous events were part of their daily life, and this soon became just another of those.

But not for Stone.

Eve knew that he spent a lot of time visiting it, sometimes with his laptop, sometimes with a book.

Several months later, when the entire incident felt like nothing more than a distant memory, Eve saw Jenkins reading an academic paper on little known Ancient Greek folklore, authored by one of Stone’s aliases. She skimmed over it herself, and found a detailed, sympathetic, extensively researched background to The Remora.

Stone’s way of helping the creature that was beyond help. Telling its forgotten story, and recounting the few times that a ship had been saved by its sudden, abrupt and inexplicable deceleration in the water.

#ailesswhumptober2023 #Day 6: Mind control #the librarians #cassandra cillian #jenkins #jacob stone #cw suicide mention #cw self harm #zeus is a dick

36 notes · View notes