To Golben, to Golben.

To Golben, to Golben.

Postby channe » Fri Aug 02, 2013 3:00 pm

The road out to Golben is just long enough that Agnieszka feels the need to pack saddlebags for an overnight visit -- just in case. Riding clothes and camping equipment are all strapped to her beautifully ordinary brown courser, and she's riding north as quickly as possible as early as possible. The sun has just broken over the horizon as she arrives closer to Golben Pit.
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby Dulcie » Sat Aug 03, 2013 2:58 am

The pit would seem abandoned. The work camps had long been dispersed and there were only scuff marks in the ground where once they had been. There were no ladders or ropes down into the pit, and from above there were no signs of life, only the foliage and the shape of the hedge maze down below visible from the top. Upon close inspection one might catch glints of metallic sculptures or the reflection of the sun off a mirror, but even these were rare occurances.
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby channe » Sat Aug 03, 2013 4:05 am

A hedge maze. A freaking hedge maze. Dominik would flip.

She dismounts, ties the horse nearby -- ah, she should name the thing, even though it's not technically hers -- and begins to walk around the lip of the pit. Fifteen minutes' searching finds her nothing but sweat in the summer-morning sun, and she narrows her eyes after rounding yet another curve after noticing a flash or two, something that stole her attention --

-- and then, for the hell of it, she yells: "Why the hell is there a hedge maze in the middle of freaking nowhere!?"
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby catch » Sat Aug 03, 2013 5:48 am

There is no other noise, save for Agnie's echoed question bouncing through cliffs and hedges and mirrors. Perhaps it could reach ears inside, but the wind whipped the words along, and what was not taken away by the small roar of ruffling leaves merely echoed , nowhere, -owhere, -where -where , a mocking question thrown back.

In the silence that follows, there is a noise.

A scuffling, as if it came from a small beast. A sound of fingers, scrabbling for purchase. This climb was not a new one for him; he has been down many pits. Still, it an an exertion, and exhaustion, and not far from where Agnie now paces, he slides up the lip of the thing, coated in loam and dust that tainted and smacked of old, rotten magic. He is not Glenn, this apparition. As he lays there for a moment, eyes closed against the sun, she could see the man that climbed from Golben was some barbarian, clad in barbarian finery of leathers and fur, a golden collar clasped about his neck. Naggingly familiar, until he stands, a hulk of a man with wild, near-white curls, a bestial face with the lewd, well-bred suggestion of a muzzle.

He gains his feet, now, and he turns to the Chairwoman, and his mismatched eyes glitter under a whole, unblemished brow, and under them, his lips pull in a smile.

"Hello, Wormwoman," Catch says, but in a cheerful way that mad-Catch had never spun it.
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby channe » Sat Aug 03, 2013 6:50 am

And she's poking her way along the side, searching for -- well. Anything that will allow her to see into the Golben gloom, and she's about to turn back to her horse when she sees --

-- the knife is already in her hand, Catch, and you can't blame her. She thought she was the only one out here. She didn't want anyone to share her secret, in case it harm one of her co-conspirators --

A narrowing of the eyes, a moving-forward, quiet shoes against the barest beginnings of rustling grass. "... You didn't need to come, Catch," she says, and then her eyes drift over his clothes, his forehead, his composure. "You're not him," she says, and one hand goes to the hilt of the crystal sword her husband had given her. "Who are you?"
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby catch » Sat Aug 03, 2013 11:20 am

He does not begrudge her the knife, nor the way her hand hovered, the way she greeted him, first with familiarity, and then with trailing, dawning awareness. His tail - a tail - is a curved thing behind him, a twining against his leg. It reveals nothing to his mood. He does not attempt to come closer, regarding her only with that shy smile, those wide, mismatched eyes that no longer looked so empty.

"I have a little time," he tells her, his pale skin beaded with sweat, his chest still heaving from exertion. His large hand - devoid of scars - gestures to the Pit. "I thought it would be easier, but it was loathe to let me leave. It craves, you see. And I deserve a fair bit of justice for the things I've done."

His tongue does not flicker or stutter. There is a cool confidence, an iron note of big, brass bells in his tenor throat. Catch gazes down into Golben, and he finds something terribly amusing, and his laugh is a quiet one, eased from madness.

"You're here for Glenn." It was not a question. Catch gestures, again. He remembers events with the vague haze of a toddler's, but that is only because it had been so long ago. This, however, was fresher, and he spoke quickly. "He is alive. Or he was, this time yesterday. He has seen better days, but then again, he has seen worse. I left him with food, water, a pack."

"But, Agnie -" His voice was gentle, concerned. He knew how she would take what next he says, but he knows he must say it anyway. "You - He must find his own way out. And this isn't some -" And his lips quirk, remembering, taking on her speech-patterns, only this time consciously so. "Some bullshit about finding himself, or searching for true meaning, or some trial by fire to purify before he faces Myrken. He regrets, but only in words. A drow came, and with him, something... else."

"Golben desires Justice, and Glenn has much to answer for before it will let him go."
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby channe » Sat Aug 03, 2013 3:17 pm

"We all have shit to answer to, Catch. You should know that more than anybody else. So get off your high horse and let's get Glenn home. I don't care what happened. I care what happens next, and we need Glenn for that. Only he knows what Rhaena's done to the town. We had a pact, didn't we? Now, I'm going back to the horse to get rope, and you're gonna find a stump somewhere to tie it to."

Not that she has enough rope to get her down into the pit. But that's all right. She's a farm girl. She's made rope before.

We all have shit to answer to.

Jan Baker's face flickers behind her eyes, as it always does at times like this.

Well. If what she's seeing isn't a total ridiculous vision from the drow-dark, Catch has answered two of her most pressing questions: the location of Glenn Burnie, and the condition of Glenn Burnie. What she didn't know was that Golben was not just a pretty hedge maze for afternoon diversion, but some kind of prison, some kind of self-actuating prison, and that scares her most of all. Because she is the chairwoman of defense, and she had no idea it was happening. No idea at all.

But that's the story, isn't it?

This is not the first time Glenn has held something from Agnieszka.

Not the first time, and not the second, and not the third.

And she thinks, then, of a midnight bell-tower, and a talk about loyalty --

-- and she suddenly feels a horrid, empty twisting in her belly, her stomach flies into her mouth, her heart to her belly -- and it all makes sense, it does, why she was put in this position, why she was even here. This has been going on for a long time, hasn't it? And they've all been putting their pawns in place for years. For years upon years. She'd thought the incident with Rhaena in the street was a fluke, and instead --

-- it was just the beginning --

It makes sense, and it hurts, and it is awful, and she can see it in her eyes.

A drow came.


"Shit," she breathes.

And:

"... did you know they were keeping this from me?"

And, after a moment with her eyes cast into the glinting darkness --

"I understand that I can't go down there by myself if I can't get out. But if I leave Glenn here, I cannot go away without leaving him food and water and help."
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby catch » Sat Aug 03, 2013 4:10 pm

Catch is impassive against her words. As he had watched Glenn, in his fevered explanations, his fevered excuses, he watches her now as she demands, as she plans -

But she does something that Glenn Burnie had not done. And that hard, animal face melts into something far kinder, and not as patronizing as pity. Simply understanding.

"I didn't know. Not then," he says, as if this were a past-thing. For him, it was. It was long-ago history, an ancient past. "I would have told you, if the complexities about it weren't far beyond my grasp. It is easier to see, isn't it, from an outside eye? An eye untainted."

"I left him those things, Agnie," he says, after a brief period of silence, where he actually cannot look at her, and drops his bearded chin to his chest, his hands clasped behind him. "Food. Supplies. Advice, if he will follow it. I left him memories, and a means to... coax a friend."

As he spoke, there are subtle changes to him. A trick of the light. He glows, as if infused with foxfire, the sun touching him here, and there, and just so - and as he bulges, twists, and grows, his voice becomes a gentle, all-encompassing thing, a blanket that brought closeness, but not comfort.

"Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself - a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred. I have had to learn this, Wormwoman Agnie. I give it to you, and Glenn, as a gift."

What stands before her now is Catch. He is a glittering of all-colors and no-colors. In the sun, he is an atrocity, for should he not be seen only under the dappling of a moon, filtered through silver-black leaves? A mingling of beasts, taking all of their perfection and none of their faults, the strength and power of a horse, the grace of a deer, the quick, glittering mockery of a goat. Tendrils rippled, pulled by Golben's wind, but also darting against it, a fringe of non-hair, ambiguous smoke, that gathered at his ankles, his arched crest, rimmed the cheek and muzzle in scintillating polyps of air. He bears it, the horn, a glorious, golden thing, the three colors become one to match the earthly collar about his neck.

To Agnie this horn dips; to Agnie, this beast of legend bends his head in quiet salute.
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby channe » Sun Aug 04, 2013 2:22 am

"Yeah, you might have, but it's been thirty days, you can't pack thirty days o' bread an' jerky in a freakin' pack," she says, moving to walk back to the horse. But then there is light, and she turns, and --

-- understands.

"... what did they do to you?" If this was actually Catch, or some manifestation thereof, and not something she can't understand pushed into Golben's frightening innards --

And she's just standing there, her mouth slightly open, holding her knife with light fingers dangling at her side.
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby catch » Sun Aug 04, 2013 5:50 am

"I have fed him for five days. I left him enough for a month, were he to eat but bare minimum."

When he spoke, it was a rolling thunder. It was a song of bells. His lips twitched under his fringe of hair-like smoke, and he straightened, shaking his head free from the bow. He stretched his neck, stretched and stretched, all-encompassing, further than he should have been able to stretch - and his flexing nostrils twitched at her elbow, not-quite daring to touch, though the questing tendrils, like naughty children, tugged curiously at cloth.

"Leave him more, if you desire. Perhaps Golben will allow him to find it. These words cannot be wasted on mundane things. Wormwoman, I must go."

He has been here too long. He feels the pull, the desire, to step over that horizon - to step back into his Future - to ease himself from the heartache and sickness of Myrken, a Myrken that called to him, stretched our her fingers, cried at him to renew, renew! and he must ignore it. With a last, gentle tug of those tendrils, the creature straightens, and his very shoulders seem to fill and fit the egg-curve of a atmosphere sky.

What did they do? Catch hesitates, tarries a moment longer.

"No more than I deserved," is his last, gentle reply. His stride begins; once, and twice. He is a flicker of moonlight, a flash of sun's gold. In just three steps, he has grown, and faded, and stepped out of the world, and Golben's wind trails behind him.
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby Cinnabar » Sun Aug 04, 2013 10:00 am

It is hard to convey the scope of the Pit to one who has not seen it with their own eyes. Two miles across, six hundred feet at its deepest, Golben is a vast bowl which torments perspective. On his first visit it had been a desolation of broken stone, the bedrock in some places subjected to unimaginable violence - shattered, jagged fragments ranging from the size of a fist to the size of a house; in others it had softened under unthinkable heat, wrenched and warped into unsettling spires as it cooled. Nothing would grow there, no animal would abide it, the stones themselves infused with whatever horrors were unleashed in the pit's creation. A landscape of nightmares.

Now, it is... something else. Something shaped, planned, imposed. From at the brink he has a view across the entire crater, from the bare stone of the rim to the oddity that fills it far below. Some of the stone spires still leer from the bottom of the crater, but they do so from amid a sea of greenery. Trees. Hedges, league upon league of hedges coiled and tangled back and forth upon themselves. All groomed, cultivated, with little open spaces here and there that give it the impression of nothing so much as a park. With time it will likely become rampant and overgrown, the neatly-trimmed hedgerows ragged and blurred, the neat little lawns more like wild meadows. For now it is a singularly tidy thing for all that its design is a rambling madness, bereft of reason or order.

He has made an exploration of the circumference over the past few days; has picked through the remnants of a vast work camp, home to the veritable army of labourers who had toiled so far below. He has spoken with those who inhabit the farmsteads and villages nearby, who can tell him little beyond the fact that yes, a great many wagons came and went to the pit, and a great many people worked on it for a great many months. Foreigners, most of them; there were a few locals who went to work there, but they came back odd - forgetful, couldn't give a clear account of what had been going on down in the pit. They'd come back to their families glassy-eyed and addled, clothes filthy and hands bearing the marks of hard toil - those that came back at all, mind you. The wages were good, but not good enough for that, so not many of them stuck it out for long. Few weeks, month or two at a time, maybe.

He speaks with a few of those who'd worked in the pit, but they can't tell him much. Building. Digging. Nothing more specific than that. Something in the camp's water, maybe, or perhaps the beer or the food, dulls your mind and makes you forget where you've been. They've had a little time to discuss it amongst themselves, these hollow-eyed men, and they struggle with the sense of having brushed their fingers against something vast and terrible. Some stayed on for the coin, but they're not in much state to enjoy it now - that one, him over there, he's not been sober since he got back. And him, the fellow on his own there, his son stuck it out for longer than most; big strapping lad, stubborn as a mule, figured those as left the pit were just soft. Called them fools for turning down good coin. The boy's not been the same since he got back - whatever happened in the pit's made him simple, can't keep a damn thought in his head from one moment to the next. His ma's heartbroken, poor woman, and her husband's had a dark look about him since.

Nothing of use to someone who might venture into the pit itself, of course. Which leaves him with only the observations he might make himself.

A voice speaks like bells and thunder, a distant murmur across so great a distance; it rolls around the lip of the crater, echoes returning long heartbeats later from the sheer rock of the far side. A great presence departs in a blaze of un-light, and in the absence that follows the pit seems wider, emptier than ever it was before.

From across the pit drifts the sound of a horn, thin and frail in the dawn air after the majesty of that voice; should eyes seek it, they might be caught by a distant flash of light a third of the way around the rim, the low rays of the rising sun sparking from some polished surface.
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Re: To Golben, to Golben.

Postby channe » Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:30 pm

Perhaps Golben will let him find it.

The light from the Catch-thing fading, Agnieszka finds that she has little other choice than to turn back to Golben and try to process everything that has occurred. She still isn't exactly sure what happened right then, only that the visit of the unicorn had seemed incredibly real; she shakes, turns, and stares out across the prickly vastness with fearful eyes.

"Glenn!" she calls. "Glenn fucking Burnie!"

When there's no answer -- and was she really expecting one? -- she makes her way back to the courser, who stomps and snorts with some unknown nervousness. She drags the saddlebags off and sits down to count the insides -- at least two days' meals, with watery fruit, some jerky. Other equipment, things to make a fire with, a bedroll. And there -- there, a piece of parchment she'd brought to draw diagrams of the place. She'll scrawl out a note, get up, tie everything together, and walk to the lip of the Pit.

Glenn,

We will come for you as soon as it is possible to do so. We have not forgotten. But you made this place pretty good and it is hard to find a way down. Please stay alive.

Your Agnie


And, with a screech, she turns twice and then lets the pack fly. It hovers there in the air for a few moments and then comes crashing down into the bushes below.

And she's left alone with her thoughts.

Fact, she thinks, tracing her way around the bowl, still looking for a ladder -- Fact. Glenn Burnie keeps some things from me. I'd expect that; everyone has secrets. But you don't keep this kind of thing from me. You don't trust that peacock Stefan Berdini more than you would trust a woman who would die for you.

Or maybe you do.


Fact. Glenn must have been complicit in Rhaena's betrayals, at least slightly; or, Rhaena is so strong and Glenn so weak that she could keep it from him.

Fact. I really wish Aleksei were here.


And then, she calls again: "Glenn!"

As if she's going to get a response.
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