Sequence III: Perdition - Chimera.

[channe]

For Agnieszka Kaczmarek, this is very real. All of it -- or is it a dream? At any rate, killing Curin is a dream --

"My the devils take you," hisses wounded Agnie Kaczmarek, in pain so deep she can hardly utter those words -- struggling to grab the knife that had been stunned out of her hand by Curin's blow, to take it and drive it deep into Curin's gut when the woman falls to her knees, whether she's dead or not. It is satisfying -- but only for a moment.

A third dead in that same way, then -- three, the holy number. If she were more educated, she might have laughed.

Agnieszka broke her arm once falling from a tree when she was a small child; luckily, Mrs. Baker knew about these things and set her arm correctly, and allowed it to heal before putting the girl back to her tasks. But even then that did not even compare to the amount of pain she is in now -- and the blood, which is everywhere, and her hand can't staunch it -- nothing can -- and neither can she staunch the rising panic, as she looks around, and sees nothing but trees and the dead, and cannot move her leg, and the pain and the blood all overwhelming --

Bryce is dead --

-- her chest heaves with sobs and utter, utter fear as she drags her leg behind her, moving forward like an insect on the ground with her arms, leaving a trail of blood behind her. She moves a foot, two feet -- it will not be enough, she realizes.

I am going to die, like the cow that bled out when the scythe fell on it, she thinks, and the thought twists up her chest and pummels her with darkness. I am going to die like my papa.

"Help," she cries. "Somebody help me! Doctor --"

For the Doctor's back there, somewhere, if he has not escaped to leave the criminal's daughter, a criminal now herself, to her own recognizance; everyone who could hear is dead, and the resultant silence is deafening.

[Una]

The blade Agnie thrust in her guts certainly stopped the laughter, though only for a moment. Her face had turned ashen, her tunic almost completely bloody. Her grip hadn't failed her, though, and when the girl drove her knife in Curin grabbed her wrist and leaned closer to her, flecks from her labored breathing hitting Agnie in the face. She gurgled something that might have been intended to be words, or perhaps another laugh, but then she colapsed, bastard sword still clasped in her other hand. The woman's auras disappeared into the forest, still maintaining their silent, mocking laughter.

Even as the woman's eyes dimmed and the flow of blood slowed she kept her focus locked on Agnieszka where she struggled to move. Really, Curin wanted to remove the girl's leg, but ths was just as good. Even if she was saved from bleeding out she'd be crippled with that mutilated limb. Maybe that was the thought that produced so much malicious laughter from Curin.

* * *

Curin jerked awake from where she'd passed out, a harsh laugh catching in her throat as she realized she still felt the pain from the dream she'd been in till jsut moments ago. Hand was tight around the scabard in her hand though the bottle of whiskey was safely out of reach... for the time being. And despite the pain she laughed again, a malicious sound emiting from deep in her throat.

[Rattrap]

But Doctor David D'rael is gone - vanished, like the bodies of the recently slain. While his mother's teachings and the years of practice following have given the Doc great control and communication over his mind, they did not extend to any outward psychic powers - in other words, David knew he was asleep. He did not know if the others here were real others, sharing the dreamscape, or simply images offered up by it. He had no reason to think so, either.

More importantly,the Doc didn't know how much of the violence would transcend sleep. No normal dream would, but David knew this not to be anything 'normal'...and the violence was only escalating.

So he woke up.

The early hours of the morning were filled with David's record keeping of the things and people he had seen. Perhaps he'd speak with Bryce about it when the young man came in.

[Carnath-Emory]

She is running... now, as then.

Headlong between the trees, she is running, where twigs and low branches slap wetly against the cheeks of the wooden mask, and puddles explode into livid colour beneath her bare feet. Through winding caves she runs, as if all an atheist's devils pursued her; through the dank earth of the Dagger's basements she stumbles, sightless in its stifling, stinking darkness.

But most of all, between these trees; most of all, towards the sound of Agnieszka's desperation and Curin's mad laughter. Even driven as she is, the woman knows the strange timbre that real injury will lend a voice. She'd fully expected to hear it in Agnieszka's some day, and that slows her sprint not in the slightest. What does is that she now and then twists, to see what might pursue her through this forest, what might cling to the dark reaches of this cave. What she absolutely does is fling great handfuls of living silver at the ground, at the trees, at the crumbling walls of a dying city. Blood sometimes comes with it. Some of it is actually her own.


And this is what staggers through the treeline, to stare with shattered, furious eyes limping Agnieszka. At Agnieszka who drags that leg like it were a burden she can't quite bear to part with; like it were something more than ruined and useless flesh. Agnieszka, whose blood is soaking into that hungry heartless ground, shining blackly there with every strobe of lightning from far overhead. Who is unmistakably dying, and who bears no resemblance whatsoever to Quincy, except that -- now, as then -- there's so much blood, and that leg is so very hurt, and from a certain angle, in a certain light --

"We leave," states this woman with fractured iron for eyes; this woman who wears that ghastly mask as if it were nailed to her face. Her bare feet are filthy with tavern dirt; she is bloodied from ankle to knee, all of it her own; her arm should not bend at quite that angle; her pores should not leak living silver. She is a creature possessed, and she is flinging aside a corpse's sword, to take Agnieszka's collar into her fist instead.

"We leave, if I have to carry you, we leave," for the world is outraged and grieving, and she is shaking -- from head to filthy toe, she is shaking. And there is some point of light behind the trees, some speck of incandescense that promises safety.

Or what passes for that, in this place.

[Vanidor]

And so she had presented her back to him? Was that truly what he had seen? In that split instant, whilst the dark-hued woman seemed to fumble with something, the insane Captain struck once again. This time it was without the blunt edge of scabbard, but with the razor-sharp edge of Soria. A sweep that would aim to cut from crown of head to apex of crotch. Tower of Morning, some had called it. Then, when the sabre was halfway through this brutal sort of cut, the scabbard would come into play as well. Another overhand chop with the mashing weapon, this one aimed to bring to score with a shoulder or something of that manner. Pain and death. Death and pain. Dreams were made of such things.

The dreamscape swirl'd round his vision, the harsh edges of light that played to and fro making actions seem more punctuated and sinister. Kerrak cackled his insane laugh, no longer caring about the consequence...

[channe]

"I killed her," says Agnieszka, quietly and desperately, her voice full of sobs; this, this is her greeting for soiled, blood-soaked Ariane Carnath-Emory, and her eyes so grateful -- "I killed them, and I can't find the road."

It is only natural, then, that little, fierce Agnie is in shock, that she is gulping down air and tears; that, as her former teacher drags her up by the collar she stares at her, blank and grateful all at once, and finally gains enough sense to hook her arm around Ariane's shoulder, to try to use her as a support; maybe this won't happen. The leg is far too mangled; it is utterly useless, and were Agnie a dumb animal, a monster as Guili had intimated, Ariane would do well to end it. As it were, she might end up carrying the girl, as she'd said --

They will struggle on for a while in this fashion until she begins to talk of going back to get her father's body; to wonder where the road is; to ask Ariane why she is drenched in filth and silver, why her teacher's eyes are so wild; to express her gratefulness at being picked up, carried, taken away ; to speak of Curin and her hate -- all of this, of course, to batten down the hatches against the pain and the inevitable with a torrent of words, as is her tradition, as if continuing to speak will keep the very End itself from knocking at her door.

"Stop bleeding, Miz Emory," she'll end up saying, dizzy in her head and in her words -- "...it's getting lighter."

[Jirai]

Somewhere, Agnieszka slew her allies to kill an enemy, recieving her death-wound in turn. Somewhere, Ariane ran to her ex-student's rescue. Jirai knew nothing of this, though.

The shouts that had earlier marked this melee had faded into silence. In silence, Tebrin - led by his blade - lunged towards her belly. In silence, Kerrak al'Nerun sliced brutally towards her exposed back, to cleave the small woman in two. In silence, the female reacted.

Tebrin - poor Tebrin - was out of his depth, here. It was fortunate that for him this still seemed a dream. For Jirai, gore-covered Jirai, it was all too real. And, despite her madness (in truth, she was just as mad as Kerrak himself), her fighting did not seem to be inhibited at all. Using her arm, hand fisted around something small, she knocked his awkward thrust aside, another line of blood tracing along the abused limb. Her other, the uninjured one, the one with the dagger, thrust forwards in return, to slide the blade between his ribs. The spiders swarmed excitedly down her arm, to follow the thin blade's thrust, and she abandoned the dagger to spin around and face her other adversary, arm raised to throw whatever it was she held - just in time for Soria to slam into her shoulder, cleaving downwards, deep into her body.

The silence was broken by a choked gasp from the small female.

The throw continued reflexively, too far gone to stop - though her aim was doubtless affected. It was a small gem she threw, one that would explode on contact. Then the scabbard slammed into her other shoulder, knocking Jirai back to the ground.

Now most of the blood covering the woman was her own, life bleeding out from the brutal wound Kerrak had dealt her. Covered in blood - Suede's, Biske's, Kerrak's, Tebrin's, and her own, Jirai died.

But she died with a smile on her face.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Then she awoke. And that was the cruelest thing of all.

A convulsion of pain flung her from the chair she had been curled in, to land hard on the floor not far away from where Suede was. She writhed in silence, blood beginning to leak from gashes along her arm, a deeper one across shoulder and chest - though her clothing was whole. Eyes shut, she still had not noticed the pale writing traced across her dark skin.

Reagan Biske.

Tebrin.

Kerrak al'Nerun.

[Tebrin]

What kind of wicked dream was this, that planted Tebrin, so vastly underprepared, against opponents so superiorly-equipped and vicious? His decision to help, to approach the Drowess from behind - despite that his blow had wound up in self-defense, had indeed been a stupid one. The blur of motion that constituted Jirai's parry and killing blow seemed to him to last an eternity. He watched, paralyzed, as his blade was knocked aside, eyes widening as the wickedly sharp blade of Jirai's own weapon - not clumsy and makeshift as his own, but her own favored blade, advanced upon the waiting, exposed flesh covering his ribcage.

He never thought he'd die so easily, so... naked. So incredibly pathetically. This nightmare, this fleeting, twisted version of reality was unkind to poor Tebrin, whose eyes flare, pupils constricting, as the weapon's unwelcome intrusion plunges between his ribs, piercing his lung and heart.

Why haven't I awoken?!

This dream should have ended. It always did before - he would fall, but awake just before hitting the ground. Or just before getting devoured. Or murdered. ...Or laid, for that matter.

A soft 'thud' heralded the return of his blade to the ground, settling there against the grass of the clearing, no more useful there upon the terrain than it was in his own trembling hand. He froze, emerald eyes meeting the Drowess' own orbs, and staring at her in disbelief, as hideous crawling bodies advanced, sent to charge by their cruel mistress.

As Jirai received her own mortal blow, dimming vision perceived her collapse, her destruction... his own murderer slain by another. At the very least, he took comfort in that. He was not insane as they - he had not been sucked in as they. Not yet. He could still feel a small sense of satisfaction that she had paid the ultimate price to take his life.

Blood sputtered between his lips, filling his mouth, a gurgling breath taken. He sank to his knees, quivering left hand gripping the blade that so rudely intruded upon his person. As Jirai collapsed beside him, he lifted his gaze to Kerrak, lips curling slightly to form an awkward, bloodied, ironic smile. Within his features, gratitude could be seen - perhaps for giving Jirai what she had deserved. He did not know the depths of Kerrak's madness - perhaps the look of utter horror and helpless gratitude would be lost upon the man in his wakefulness.

Head slumped. He no longer had the energy to hold it erect. His vision grew dark, and he knew he was nearing his end. Motion drew his final glance, as small skittering bodies advanced onto his limb and chest. Blood, sticky and warm, oozed from his wounds, coating his masculine frame in the crimson vitae, but the arachnids advanced unhindered, towards his neck, his face... down towards his legs.

He spat, but more blood than saliva came out, as he attempted to clear his throat.

"I... f*cking hate...."

His body went limp, and he fell to his side. Nude, amongst the grass, he lay next to Jirai's similarly dying form. Glazed, sightless eyes turn to Kerrak, as the final ounces of life, his last vestige of being, slip from him.

"Spiders..."

---

Tebrin awoke as his head hit the floor. He was covered in sweat - warm, clammy, damp, sticky, and thick. His entire body shook, as he stared at the floor which had deigned to awaken him. Struggling for breath, gasping, he rolled over and sat upright, one hand moving to his forehead.

"I should lay off the scotch before bed," he muttered breathlessly to himself, before frowning. Wait a second. Sweat? Warm, sticky, and thick? Withdrawing his hand from his face, he stared in abject horror at the crimson-covered extremity. He was covered in blood. His bed, upon inspection, was covered in blood. The floor? Blood. His chest, his legs... all covered with the warm, partially-dried vitae. He quickly placed his hand against his chest, terrified that he might realize that he were, in fact, dead. Perhaps it hadn't been a dream. Hell was the Broken Dagger - how ironic.

No, his heart fluttered within his chest, though it pounded rapidly against the confines of his ribcage. And breath, though quick, came willingly to his body. He was whole. But there beneath the blood upon his chest, something was different. Stumbling to his feet, the confused, dazed, and horrified treasure hunter stumbles to the water basin. Frantic scrubbing clears away the vital liquid from his breast, revealing a name tattooed across the mortal wound that had, in his dream, pierced his heart. Jirai's name lay there, scrawled across his heart like she were his lover. Color drained from his face, but he made no sound. He simply continued scrubbing, desperately trying to get rid of the blood and the name - the latter, of course, remained.

Exhausted, naked, confused, and trembling, Tebrin sank to the floor of his room, curling his knees to his chest, and simply stared at the bloody bed. What the HELL had he done last night? Either that dream was terrifyingly real.... or he'd been violated as part of some incredibly odd Drow mating ritual.

He sort of hoped it were the former.

[Carnath-Emory]

[INDENT]That falling scythe.
That corpse's sword.[/INDENT]
Ariane Emory clearly has little respect for cadavers. She'd fled to Myrken Wood wearing clothes torn from one; she'd run for Agnieszka's side bearing a sword taken from one's cooling grasp. That weapon had been dropped, the better to lift Agnieszka against her hip, but she'd dragged the knife from Curin's gut to replace it -- oh, it receives no more respect than she'd grant a slab of beef. The scythe falls. The knife stabs. In the end, there's really no difference at all -- and, knowing this, is it any surprise at all that she views the likelihood of her student's death with such horror?

That scythe is falling, and she's placing herself in its path no less surely than she once had for Bromn's sake. Two bolts to the back, she'd taken that night; there's no guessing what awaits this time -- but it was as much fatalism as habit which saw her slipping that knife into her belt.

Agnieszka struggles at her side, which is understandable, for that leg is a ruin, and Ariane has only one arm with which to keep her upright. Even that is not particularly reliable; with any luck, the girl will never realise that the chill across her spine is the creep of Ariane's armour. It clings there as if stung by the swordswoman's revulsion; clotted silver, sticky and moist and -- no. Far better that Agnieszka keep her eyes on what awaits: the incandescence which awaits within that tangle of trees, gentle and warm and, by the simple fact of its existence, inviting. They grow terribly near to it now, after all, terribly near, so that it finally has a place in Agnieszka's meandering speech. 'It's getting lighter,' she says, to a woman who's been able to find no words of her own in all this time; Agnieszka has filled the world with her own instead, just as Quincy once had, and those are furious clouds in the skies; that is the tang of ozone in the air, bitter and hateful and wounded beyond reparation --

"Almost," Ariane manages to reply at last. 'Almost there', she means to say, perhaps -- of their journey. 'Almost over,' she might mean -- of their lives. Or maybe she means simply to explain that they've almost reached that welcoming beacon, except that this is soon unnecessary, for it moves from between the trees to meet these bloodied pilgrims.

It. She. For living, golden warmth radiates from the very flesh of Bea Kanaya's outstretched hand; she is alight with it, and no less gentle for all its fierce beauty. The outstretched fingers are a silent welcome, and this time there is no tremble to them; her eyes promise comfort, without the need for clumsy words.

"Oh, child," she whispers. Now, as then, to the swordswoman who has closed the distance between them without bothering to walk it; who in one moment has the knife diving for those gentle eyes, and in the next is withdrawn to her student's side; whose skin crawls with silver and ozone and blood. Like forgiveness, she whispers this -- to the woman whose arm shakes with such violence that she's fallen to her knees with... some sound; some small, strangled sound, stillborn in the back of her throat. Whose entire body describes Neizbezhnost Raskayanie: the nearness of inevitability; the imminence of murder.

Like forgiveness, for Ariane Emory with the streaming eyes, who instead has just forced that knife back against her own throat.

[channe]

Were Agnieszka Kaczmarek less consumed with her blackening hate, perhaps she would have become a paladin; for she abhors the death of innocents.

And here, in this copse of jagged trees, are two -- fuzzy-edged, sobbing Jozef, who has followed them somehow, whether it be by blood-trails or something more sinister, and warm, motherly Bea Kanaya, as bright as the sun, as golden as the ginger biscuits she'd once made for a clan of small Kaczmareks, back when the family was whole and unbroken.

Karol had never stolen from her, because there were people, he said, that were very saints, and committing crimes against them would damn your soul to hell --

And here, with trees like skeletons against the strange sky, Agnieszka can only watch and sob wordlessly as Ariane's knife goes for Bea Kanaya's pretty, dead eyes, until they are down on the ground as they were months ago, in Bea's little Myrkentown bakery, on the last day of her life, until Ariane turns that knife on herself --

It is in this copse, with trees like jagged black lightning-stains, where the silver-stained Miz Emory gives Agnieszka's her last lesson -- it begins as Ariane falls to her knees, that continues as her former student drags herself closer to the swordswoman, and moves to wrench the knife out of Ariane's hand.

Neizbezhnost Raskayanie'. Some things are terrible -- terrible, and necessary --

"No," she says, her voice breaking, swaying with the pain of it all -- she takes the knife, by its blade, if necessary, and clutches the hilt; holds it up between them as if this were show-and-tell at school, and with her other arm reaches up to snag the chin of Ariane's mask; and, lest Ariane scramble to stop her, she tears it off almost immediately and flings it against a tree a short distance away.

And then there is little Jozef beside the bloodied farmgirl, standing, his face blank and interested -- and although it is Agnie's tear-stained eyes that stare at her former teacher, it is Jozef who speaks.

"I'll make things right," Jozef says, his little eyes alight with pain. "We'll make things right; we will face God with our eyes open, yer not t' kill yerself --" A pause, as that knife hovers in her shaking hand. "I will keep you from this sin --"

And then, with the snap of her wrist, the boy's near-dead sister creates a fourth were there once were three; and this one is special, you see, for Ariane Carnath-Emory created this thin, bloody monster-girl before her, with her eyes like coals and her mind of the belief that, perhaps, one of these might be saved -- a twisted sort of paladin, she is, to commit sin at the same time she would save it --

Ariane turned the knife on her own throat, and Agnieszka will finish the job -- quickly, brutally, pushing the knife forward into Ariane's neck -- she will hold it there for a moment, twisting it there with one thin, fair, failing wrist, her eyes completely gone, and then let go, collapsing, chest heaving, the only thing moving being those dark, young, completely mad eyes.

They have lost the road, both of them; they will not rise again.

[channe]

In the end, there is her labored breathing, the dizzy leer of the darkening sky above her, her brother’s small hand brushing back her hair, and the giddy, terrible pain; and Ariane, still and unmoving, beside her, and then the black, and the overwhelming fear, which eventually begins to trade places with the gradual lessening of her senses, of sight and sound and the tang of cold air on her tongue.

-- oh – oh – I am going to hell – this darkness --

The last thing she feels is surging, blackening regret.

-----------------------------------

So this is death –

-- it looks a lot like my room, and my leg still hurts like a bitch –

She gasps for air, and her hand reaches out and becomes tangled in bedsheets; outside, torches burn in the barracks-yard, alighting on the roofbeams and casting cross-shaped shadows on her bloodstained covers.

At that sight, Agnie is seized with panic. It grips her chest and she scrambles to sit upright, eventually moving to stand, and finds that her leg cannot support her weight. She falls like so much dead weight to the ground, and cracks her head on the flagstones. Everything stuffed down her stomach comes flooding back, and ejects the contents of her dinner onto the floor.

There is vomit in her mouth, and because of it she knows that despite her death, she is alive. Or else this breath would not sear her lungs, her head would not whirl in pain, her fingers would not feel cold stone underneath them – she would not drag herself to the door, pull herself up, open it, and call for help; and passing brother Grant would stop to swear at the blood-trail she is leaving, catch her arm, and help to haul her to the infirmary, shell-shocked and panicking and panting with terror.

This is not the Agnieszka he knows.

The medics can’t figure out what could possibly have made such deep bruising and laceration when all the girl has done all night is sleep; they scratch their heads. And, too, they have other wonderment in their mouths -- especially over the words that are written on her hands and over the inexplicable bruised, deep wound that will keep her from walking correctly for a while.

The words that Agnie cannot read.

[Vanidor]

A road lost. A path trod upon and then left behind. Kerrak al`Nerun was well in tune with this thought. With this consideration. With how one could loose sight of the truth of a thing as a whole, and center oneself upon the truth of just one aspect.

Fire was the road to justice. Fire a road to perfection. The Power was a tool to do both. To cleanse and renew. The lure of the flames was what had called to him, just as the lament and mewling sounds of death drew him now. Now that silence had come to his corner of the forest. That death had come to his corner, and now his brilliant blade lowered to rest besides his hip. Traces of vermillion drizzled down that long and curving blade as Kerrak turned, the weapon held loosely in a stone-tight grip. The once pristine grass underfoot squelched with his weight.

His boots chewing up the ground as he moved through the wood, his eyes blinking to take away the sting of the glowing world that surrounded him. The way that lights shimmered and drew long and glorious lines of light along tree branches. So like a dream. So like reality. It was both, to Kerrak al`Nerun, both as he stalked along that short distance. He had seen Ariane from the corner of madness-ravaged eye. Had seen an odd slaughter as his voice had rent asunder the silence of the landscape. Now he was silent, his lifes-blood slowly seeping from the injuries he had sustained. He had said that he would fight it. He would fight death and madness until... until there was no choice. Sometimes you had to Sheathe the Sword.

Foliage parted. A hand rose to push aside bleached-out leaves. His feet brought into him into a nearly empty clearing. Kerrak paused in his foreward motion, Soria slowly dipping and the point coming to kiss the blades of grass at his foot. The sight before him almost... tearing his heart out through his chest. At the same time, it made him angry. Angry that these two would resort to... this. He saw the last moments as Ariane attempted to slaughter herself like a cow. Saw the blade be taken by Agnieszka and used to finish the job. He was wordless behind them.

Wordless.

[Carnath-Emory]

Bea Kanaya's eyes, spilled upon the grass; gentle, dead, ruined. And she hadn't meant to do it, this fallen swordswoman, but the dreaming world holds ten thousand lessons for Agnieszka Kaczmarek tonight, and this is one of them: that the definition of death is finality. There are no take-backs, here: Bea would not rise again, if that knife had found her heart instead of her face; Ariane will not rise again once Agnieszka puts an end to her.

And that happens very swiftly indeed.

The mask is torn from her face as if the act were a vengeance, and that is the last glimpse of Bea Kanaya that Ariane will ever know -- for the serene echo of that woman had already begun to fade, but when the mask splinters against a tree trunk, it dissipates utterly. In a sane world, this might have given little Jozef pause -- and perhaps his sister, as well -- but there is nothing but madness here, and the boy talks of sin, the boy proposes to make things right. 'Start with my sister's death,' Ariane might have demanded, 'and go on from there,' -- but she is beyond words, and this... this is a child. Even a blind man would know that, for 'You're not to kill yourself,' he says, with all a child's naivety, never once understand that killing is what these knives are for. This one will sheathe itself in Bea's heart because it must, or in Ariane's throat if her will is good, or in Jozef's if he insists on placing himself between them --

So here is a second lesson for Agnieszka, who's saved them all from that atrocity, as well: that sometimes the one with the sword will decide who lives, who dies.

It had already begun, by the time that Agnieszka snatched that knife from her shaking hand. The girl will find her target outlined in thin, wavering lines, bloody but superficial; Ariane had dragged that keen edge fully halfway across her throat, but her strength had been spent on the fight, not the suicide, and the wounds are trivial.

What Agnieszka does next is not.

Did she imagine how it would look? Was there time to imagine? This girl was born to a farmer's life, after all, and the practical brutalities of its springtime slaughters might have prepared her for this: the way that shock tears the woman's mouth open; the way that steel in the throat keeps it from producing even the most strangled of sounds; the way those grey eyes stare. They are very intent, those eyes; amazed and intent, as if she imagined there might be some way to survive this; as if the fact of her own death was somehow surprising. A hand gropes stiff-fingered towards the knife; the eyes fix on some point directly before her -- something that is not Agnieszka; frowning and wide, they fix, jaw twitching as if she were actually capable of shaping words, of producing any sound at all.

And if there were any doubt to that, the twist of that blade puts a swift, savage end to it. Third lesson for Agnieszka Kaczmarek: make your decision, follow it through -- swiftly; absolutely; with finality.

Make no mistake: there'd been a great deal of blood, before now. It had spilled warm and bountiful from that wound, a gentle cascade that smothered the blade and soaked Ariane's shirt, each ounce of it killing her a little more surely -- but the twist of that knife has it gouting forth, has it bubbling in the back of her savaged throat. She stiffens as if clubbed; she topples directly after, as the numb chill which had begun in her extremities of a sudden rushes to claim the whole of her body. And there is time enough for this --

[INDENT]a last glimpse of sunset skies, crimson and violet and endless;
the scent of snow and lightning and pine;
the rustle of thin paper, as delicately folded cranes flock distantly for the ruddy skies;
the taste of your blood upon her lips, now as then;
[/INDENT]
-- before it makes a corpse of her. Like all the world around her, she becomes quiet, then; like all the world, very still.

***

What wakes, of course, is another matter entirely. There is a tumbling from bloodied bedding; there is a groping of hands at her throat, where fingers expect to discover ruin. There is a great deal of pain, not all of it physical.

And there is a woman who must think long and hard, before letting that mask continue its residence at her hip. Who must do quick, ugly work with her own torn sheets, before taking up her sword and limping for the door. There is visiting to do, you see, because that dream had seemed extraordinarily real to her -- and the names inked into her flesh had confirmed that. From palm to elbow, they'd confirmed that, so that she has rediscovered the purpose that Trilby'd once accused her of losing. Hard out that door and onto the streets, because tonight...

Tonight is for reckonings.

[Vanidor]

Slow steps carried him towards the charnel scene that lay before him. A pace that carried him to the pair of bodies just as the dreamscape altered reality once again. Cessation of motion as the bodies disappated before his very eyes, leaving him alone in the centre of the clearing. The sword rose and fell, slamming home into metal-wrapped scabbard with a resounding clang. Kerrak gazed over the grass, matted down with blood and the weight of those who had lain upon them. His toe nudge the space. His mind reeling.

"I did not expect to find weakness here..." His voice boomed in the silence, the words wisping around him in small echoes. Eyes once again swept over the ground before him, fingers curling into fists at his side. "You should have died at the hands of enemies, not to your own shoddy knife." al`Nerun sniffed. SNIFFED. And then turned aside. There was nothing here for him. It was just a dream. And he had duty to attend too.

And duty, as they say, is heavier than any mountain.

----------------------------------

Here the Captain-Councilor opened his eyes, a slow blink to take in his surroundings. Men snored in another part of the complex, a few laughed as they took an early meal. Firelight danced in the corner, painting the room with ruddy light and a low pall of smoke. Kerrak rose from his bed, looking down over his torso. A pause to see a blemish there, right where injury had taken him in the dream. Another pause to realised that his arms and shoulders smarted like he had been at practice for some time. Soria was warm to the touch, not chill as the leather-wrapped metallic throat should have been.

Another glance. A sweep over those hands and arms of his, the script that had been emblazoned into his flesh. Kerrak smiled tightly, then closed his palm. It hurt, much like his hand had been set afire in order for the words to be tattooed into his flesh. The pain would help him focus. It would not disable his ability to weild his weaponry. The man rose, then with a bark of order, woke the twenty or so men that had come to this dark place with him.

The men around him stood solemly, awaiting his order. "Prepare yourselves. Gird yourselves for war and chaos and destruction. Tonight will be red. Red and crimson and black, for we march to our destiny... For tonight... we slaughter." There was another noise. A cheer this time that echoed within the cavernous interior. Loud enough to shake the very walls of heaven.

And in the midst of it all, Kerrak calmly smiled... "Death is failure! Death is the end of the dream! Death marks the end of Myrken! Let us fight! Death take the Drow!" And again, there was a thunderous exclaimation, loud enough to perhaps be heared in the barracks that stood above this forgotten portion of the ages old Gaol...

[Kylerryth]

Everyone is dead.

(Everyone is awake, alive. Or are they? If they don't know for sure ... who does?)

The dream is dead.

(The dream -- called Chimera by its creator -- is gone. After the last death and the sole survivor's subsequent exit, it shattered like a mirror into countless fragments, each and every one reflecting a moment or an instant from the dream. Here is Agnieszka staring in disbelief at the gaping wound in her leg, staring as the blood pours endlessly like the river Eridanus from the watering pot of Aquarius, staring as shock settles over her and the grim specter of death draws near; and here Jirai's eyes are burning with madness and murder, and her black lips are twisted into a feral grin that only enhances the apparent severity of her state, and the long blade of a knife glints in her hand; and here Biske the werewolf-turned-man-turned-beast is burying to the hilt the knife he'd found at his feet upon waking inside Chimera, inside the belly of Suede Roschen -- or whom we believed to be Roschen; and more, always more, some of the scenes repeating themselves from different angles. Now, however, the fragments are gradually disintegrating, their sparkling motes merging with the drowsy swirls of ethereal mist between sleep and the waking world, between this world and the next. They fade; they vanish; they are gone, long gone, forever gone. Or so our dreamers might hope.)

It's over.

But was it a dream?

Or was it real?

* * * * *

OOC Note: Chimera is now closed. No more posts, please.