A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Glenn » Sun Feb 16, 2014 8:54 pm

Losing everything he had ever possessed and ever might possess was not quite worth it to hear Sylvius Duquesne say the word 'thar' but it was still quite the event. The grin though, that was something even more. Elliot caught it, an image before his eyes no matter where he was. This was a dream and as a dream, the key points of the story were utterly apparent. The good things were not missed. Nothing slipped through the cracks.

Do the hard work, Elliot had told his older counterpart, but he hadn't needed to rush to the topmast. He could have run to the wheel. It was telling he hadn't, for himself, for Sylvius. There was something natural and utterly unnatural about the man at the wheel in the face of this torrential sea.

There is understanding here, the understanding of an instant. Neither of them understood the actual necessities of their jobs, not really, but the thiefling knew a thing or two about desperate gambits, and the meaning of this one he was able to recognize despite all logic and reason. If there was any more logic and reason involved, maybe wouldn't have, after all.

There is a collision, a ramming, the smaller vessel becoming one with the larger in the most violent and uninvited manner. Sylvius is thrown down; Elliot, though, is soaring down, rope in hand. By all means, he should wait, but then there was his own gratification to think about. One hand holds the rope tightly, legs locked around it. The other has a dagger, one of the gemmed gifts of so long ago. The other of those is in between his teeth, not exactly the wisest place given the chance of a jarring landing. He was, of course, not the wisest pirate.

Thankfully, the landing itself is skipped. One moment he is in the air, perhaps starting a wholly unnecessary flip to a landing, the next, he is into the fray. The ship itself is the enemy, what it represents, yes, but also what it is. The crew bears this out. They may have been flesh and blood once but that was before years of dehumanizing profiting off the weak and helpless, of breaking the strong with cruelty and worse. They were now of the ship, more wood and iron nail and jagged chain than man. Elliot spoke true; it would take a human to fight beings such as this, a grinning, exhilarant human.

Thankfully, though probably hardly necessarily, Duquesne would have an example in the rogue. Three daggers flashed in a whirl (the third one, in and of itself a blur, not held by his hands or teeth and existing as if it was not there at al), the young man beginning to engage and beguile his opponents with a madness of wasted motion. It was more like art than science.

Distracted as he was, Elliot did not yet notice the cages upon the ship's deck, did not notice the prey of the slavers held within. Upon one side a dozen such cages, full of cramped, soiled, shivering simulations of himself, all at different ages, all in different states of suffering. Upon the other, another dozen and three more, these full of chained and sickly Sylvii Duquesne instead.
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Duquesne » Mon Feb 17, 2014 8:09 am

Truth be told, the man had a special and very well-disciplined fear of deep waters. Theirs were the depths unknown, plied with strange life forms and even stranger forces -- it was down in those depths, but not too far down, that folk found themselves compressed and crushed until the life flowed out, the shuddering bubbles of last breaths, upward-rising. As this phantom deck groans and quakes beneath him, he is aware in a moment -- aware that the gloomy reflections on the rain-slick wood, the dripping of the sails, the pitching of the sea beneath a pitching ship, these were all details imagined. His mind embellished them, made them so real.

But they were not all embellishments. He sensed the water below -- he feared the ship and its horrendous miles of rigging, its suffocating sails, its dangerous hold so much like a tomb -- and he had every right to fear, for this part of the dream is a snatch of reality, down to the last detail. Rather than hearing or seeing the chaos of that day -- the shouts and screams, the terrible wrenching of the ship, its broken body yawning in angry seas with a noise he cannot forget in life -- he feels it and its presence drives him up off the deck. Men caught in the wreckage went down with it and he saw them go, would not count himself ever among their unfortunate lot.

Elliot is a daring bird flown down from high above, a rain-black fury dropping onto the slaver's deck, soon gone from sight beyond the rails of that much larger, much taller vessel. The man is running across splintering deck-boards, their nails popping like tiny missiles -- she is now no longer the ally that delivered them their quarry, but an angry thing exploding around him. She was assimilated by the subconscious and the subconscious, sensing a threat, rises to protect the well-made prisons inside the mind -- inside the mind of him, inside the mind of Elliot. Their black-sailed ship warps and transforms into a frightening wreckage, chewed by the slaver's mighty hull.

He leaps up onto the gangway and hurls himself into a mighty, desperate launch off the ship -- it buckles where he had been, timber-jaws snapping at empty air. The man, suspended in flight above wreckage and churning seas, has a split second to make a choice... for he had no where to land, no where to complete this desperate leap -- there was only sea beneath and smooth hull ahead. Had the slaver grown? he could not see where Elliot had gone. This is not real; it can be changed with a thought. Timbers morph and stretch to accommodate a sudden portal in the hull, a mouth opened to swallow him along with gallons of seawater. It snaps closed behind as if it had never been.

Silence -- silence in the wake of all that monumental noise. He has tumbled, rolled into a crouch with a hand down on the wet floor. Water sloshes to and fro with the rolling of the ship, floods in around his boots and wrist like a tide, then ebbs away with a rush. He looks around in the darkness, but there is nothing here. Above him, he can hear the sounds of a fight and commits himself to motion -- there were stairs there and he races up them. Elliot. He had to find that kid; he had to keep him in sight.
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Glenn » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:04 pm

Blood and chaos and reckless abandon. It could have been so different. With Ariane, even when she was herself, it had been so different. There was no promise of this with Sylvius. He was so controlled and confined and their talks previous had been civil and pleasant. This was months of pent up frustration and a lifetime of impetuous daring mixed with the huge weight that was being Sylvius Duquesne. It meant that the foes they faced were far more dangerous by far.

But then, so were they.

Still, the numbers were against them. What were two people, even these two, even here, even as pirates, against the sum of all fear and doubt and hopelessness? It was a thousand emotions that they fought against. But then again, they weren't alone. There in the cages were all of the aspects of themselves that they needed to turn the tide. They just needed them open.

It was lucky, perhaps, that Elliot Brown was extremely good at opening things.

This was a crow out of his nest and Sylvius was spotted. There were bandages upon Elliot's arms, and blood dripping down but he fought on, those three daggers, two bejeweled and the third, black and deadly and so, so very powerful here, fading in and out, floating around him. "Took your time, old man!" Elliot shouted, bravado covering all rational emotion. That third dagger was thrown with a whip of the thiefling's arm. It had not been held by him, and for a moment, if Duquesne would but look out of the corner of his eye, he would see that there was a hand upon the arm, a hand and a body both, that of an urchin, spinning through the air, alarmed, shouting. "Wha' th' bloody 'ell be goin' on!!!"

It was a momentary ripple in the dreamscape, and as soon as it had come, it was gone again, the urchin was; the dagger remained, and within it pooled the eldritch power of Galacia Tarin, now within the once outstretched hand of Sylvius Duquesne. A dread weapon in a dread place wielded by a dread man.

"Cover me," Brown seemed to be unable to do anything but shout. He was trusting, however, trusting that Syl could step into the breach long enough for him to start freeing their caged doppelgangers.
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Duquesne » Tue Feb 18, 2014 7:35 pm

There is a moment's impossible light as the stairway's hatch is thrown. Light that should not be; light, dazzling and terrible. Drawn like fluid to a sponge, it retreats into the seams of gravid clouds lurking overhead and leaves his view painted again with the colors of rain. All is touched; all things gleam with wet, else they are dark with it. The man is no exception to the rule.

Nor is the bloodied crow in his fight against the ship's once-human crew. There is speed in that one which seems unreal; he recognizes that proficiency, sees a talent of action he knew to expect. It draws him to an appreciative stillness despite.

And for him, all things slow down --

-- so that the simple, composing breath he takes seems long; so that the skid of his boot-sole on the deck is an impossible shudder rolling out in circumference. Rain comes down, a million droplets stretched in their fall, their courses set. His eyes move on the captives in their cages. Versions of Selves imprisoned outside their Times, their cries and groans of desperation and fear and some daring sliver of hope are grotesque, sounds morphed out from their yawning mouths and into his hearing. Elliot's blades resonate with some perfect pitch as he, the conductor, orchestrates their song upon that inhuman tide which rushes him. Bone is become the cursed nail and timber of the ship; blood, the salty sea; flesh, the rope and sail -- as they fight and are destroyed, their cries are a hideous hybrid of wooden groaning and human anguish. And he watches as their matter, their flesh and bones and blood, are absorbed again into the wood of the deck where they fall. Afterward, the ship births them anew and commands them again to Elliot's battlefield.

This is what Perception can do in the man. In the midst of a dream-state, it is not limited by temporal underpinnings -- Time, as it has before in his experience, is bent and slowed. And it is a strange, strange happening --

-- but not unfamiliar. He moves forward and when he does, his Time begins to move again as well. Took your time, old man! He can only smile for the irony of Elliot's welcoming shout, but the smile is gone when he watches the fabric of the dream tremble, there with a ripple that produces a child and then takes it away a moment later, leaving the urchin's words rolling like thunder through this man's hearing. That voice is eclipsed by the presence in his hand and he glances down to discover the dagger, a dreadful thing. All in brief seconds, these observations-- all in the seconds it takes him to stride forward.

Watch now, the ship's crew have realized him and cease their attack when he arrives to take Elliot's place. "We need to get out of here, and soon," he says, looking up at all those faces of misshapen wood, twisted nails, rusty pulleys and hooks and rails. "These things aren't the worst this ship can muster." Bodies are strung with frayed ropes; some are bound with the sails of dead ships, their tattered edges flapping in the stormy winds. And eyes, dozens of eyes like sullen ship lamps, glow inside deep sockets. As he loosens the black scarf from his neck and winds it around his right hand, binding the dagger to his palm, he waits for their collective Mind to make itself -- and when it happens, he sees it, not in their lamp-like eyes but in the grit and grease of their rusty shoulders and pitch-stuffed knees. With purposeful care, now, his left hand drops to grip the hilt at his side and that blade is drawn. As he eases a boot a single pace backward and faces his horde with a shoulder, he tips the sword up to his brow in salute. "Gentleman."

The gesture infuriates the crew. With splintering growls the first wave rushes him, great clubs of timber and iron swinging to crush him. He leans away; to the side; back two steps. A parry rings the steel in his hand like a bell and the dagger in his fist is thrust up into a belly of soft ropes and sail. A terrible cry overlaps another's furious roar; he cuts them, fools them, angers them. They rush to flatten him with brutish attacks, but rush into dagger and sword instead. Some fall to the deck, are absorbed and reborn; others still, when falling upon Galacia's talon, are consumed in a flash of heat, blue and white. The ash of them builds on the wet deck, soon becoming a slurry underfoot. And the man who fights does so with calculated movement; he fights with patience and a mind for conservation. And not once does he give an inch of ground -- if he loses it by way of their massive blows, which he does sometimes suffer, he takes that ground back again without fail. But the ship spawns something bigger, stronger. This hulking thing emerges from the deck and devours more meager crewmen when it presses brutally through their ranks, its heavy strides raising shockwaves through the wood beneath. When Syl sees it, he breathes to catch his lungs again and straightens, weary resolve crossing his features. He faces this new enemy and throws down the sword -- it would only hinder him now. But the ship-spawn does something unexpected -- it drops into a four-legged bound, morphs its widening maw into a hellish chasm of storm and shadows --

-- and swallows the man whole, belching its triumph afterward.
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Glenn » Wed Feb 19, 2014 6:42 am

There is a power in belief.

Elliot believed Sylvius Duquesne to be a certain entity. The people of Darkenhold very much did as well. The people of Myrken, perhaps less so. The man himself? Wasn't that quite the question? Hadn't it been answered in part on this strange, wonderful, dread night?

For his sake, Elliot believed the man to be dangerous and competent, to be everything advertised through rumor and reputation and even more so. The dagger, the talon, was part of him now, if only because there was so little left to him. He had given it up willingly, if temporarily, because of belief in a man he barely knew. This was the power of youth, of earnestness, of a belief that was unabashedly innocent, yet entirely knowing. Elliot Brown knew how the world worked. He knew its rules, yet he would die before they constrained him. He was Myrkenborn and he knew what his lot was meant to be: birth, toil, suffering, death. He defied it because he dared to try, because he refused to accept. Belief in one's self was the power of youth and it was a power that he transferred along to Duquesne with his jagged, unholy gift.

"Not until we free them." In the waking world, he had run out of time. In this dreamscape, he was quickly losing whatever he had left. Sylvius would buy him what he needed though, what they both needed. He knew this and that was enough.

The lock was monolithic, shifting in complexity. At first there was one on each cage, but as Elliot tampered with it, using the tools he made for himself, fine and very specific work that no legitimate smith would ever take on, the locks began to merge, chains expanding outwards like throbbing veins, connecting all of the cages together. This was a lock made of hesitation and doubt, of impatience and impossibility. It was a lock made of self-recrimination and shame, of fear and failure and a thousand rationalizations, of endless compromises. To all of these things, Elliot himself was the key, stubborn and single-minded, focused and maybe too foolish to know better, to admit defeat in the face of the definition of it. With every turn, the hypocrisy of the world screamed more loudly, the ship itself reeling and creaking in agony. Finally, even as Sylvius was devoured whole, even as the forces started to turn back upon the rogueling, one last, distant click was drawn out of the lock and it fell open, chains turning to bone and ash as a dozen dozen cages inched open.

The boy, empowered by his brazen knowledge that he had nothing left to lose but his entirety, rose up and held out his hand. The dagger flew back into it, cutting a path right through the insides of the twisted homunculus that had taken the older man within him. Figures began to mass behind him as he stood tall, black talon glistening darkly in bloodied, battered hands. "We go on our terms," his voice an exhausted but triumphant rasp, "or we don't go at all."
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Duquesne » Fri Feb 21, 2014 10:43 am

What had he expected? Surely some instinctual parts of the brain braced for what must surely follow -- the hot, moist, foul confines of a maw and the powerful force of the throat swallowing him down, one contraction after another. Some part of him expected contact with the sloshing acids of the stomach. It was all in how much a man might imagine. But what he encountered was none of these.

In the absence of any sensation at all, he raises his head to determine his location. The ship's fearsome beast had swallowed him into a space which contained nothing but a firm, featureless floor and perpetual darkness for walls and ceiling. There is light, however, one wedge-shaped beam whose source is indistinguishable -- it exists without origin and he recognizes it as an impossibility. He moves forward slowly and reaches his empty hand into the light, discovering that it shines onto his skin from all directions, illuminating every possible nuance so that no single shadow can be made. The sight of it is peculiar -- he withdraws his hand.

"Look at you, boy," a familiar voice states from the impenetrable darkness and the sound of it lures a sinking into his very being. An older gentleman materializes from the gloom and pauses at the edge of the light. His is a highly distinguished look, with well-bred features both handsome and composed, and he has a tall and stately kind of stature, clothed in perfectly tailored attire. Everything about him describes wealth and authority; everything about him also describes coldness. "Still fighting battles not your own, I see."

Syl's hand tightens around the talon in his hand. "And you are still showing your face, though you are unwanted."

"The ease with which you wield disrespect -- you and your brothers alike. I failed to discipline you properly."

"Yes," Syl murmurs, gazing coolly through the light at the man across from him. "Clearly we required tactics more cunning, more severe, to root out our contrary natures. Perhaps you might have used the whip you reserved for your horses."

The man smiles and it is a fine, charismatic thing wholly lacking amusement at all. "Do not be dramatic, boy. Such a tool was too fine for likes of you."

Cruel memory, it has spawned this and he knows it to be a sort of fiction, a distraction from real matters of importance. Still the sight of the man fills him with turmoil and a rare hatred. He turns to face him now and steps forward in approach. "No matter, father -- I have something savage here you might approve -- " but as he raises the dagger with homicidal intent, it flies loose from his hand and leaves those fingers fisted in its absence. Syl rasps out a terrible growl of displeasure and takes a step further to finish the work with his bare hands, but he hesitates as he finds that the figure of his father morphs into the image of another man.

This man has crafted a familiar grin for his protégé. "Don't waste your energy, Syl," Farazh says, stepping backward into the black. "We both know you will never kill me."

Weaponless, the architect rushes into the shadows, reaching to snatch that dreadful figure out from the depths... but his hands grasp only the cold darkness of Nothingness. He finds himself alone here in a place without doors, without any feature at all save that impossible light and the conical beam it lends this place. He finds himself alone -- with a desperate, cold fury mounting inside. All of this is wrong, all of it terrible. Feelings render themselves quickly uncontrollable now. Powerless and angry, he stalks into the Nothingness intent on loosing himself from it by force of will... but remarkably finds himself walking back into the light beam as if it were the only possible destination. Again he tries to enter Nothingness and again it forces him into the light.

Paralysis infects his body -- for seconds, minutes perhaps. And as panic rises, it transforms into something far worse: with inhuman capacity, he roars his frustrated rage into the unforgiving darkness. The sound of it is overwhelming and satisfying, yet there is not simply furious noise here but new light. It is different from the sourceless light in the darkness; it is blue-hued whiteness, blinding and raw. This is the energy that breaks loose from the joints of the ship-beast -- from its eyes and gaping mouth and the hole that Elliot's dagger made when ripping free; an energy that courses out in terrible beams as it rips the beast apart with a shockwave. And it takes some crewman with it, those who stood near, their own ship-bodies dissolving into vapor. As the this blinding force subsides, it retracts into the body of the man -- he remains poised for a sort of vengeance seen only by the dead, and his humanity is slow to show itself again.

He surveys the deck and sees that a seemingly unbreakable lock has been broken, that chains have given way and cage doors opened to relieve those many Selves from captivity. Elliot had done this; he had done well indeed. But their work is not done -- they still needed to conquer this place and leave it, with every last Elliot and every last Syl. Green eyes shift with an animal-like pearlescence; they seem to subtly glow their color. He looks at Elliot at the head of that freed column of Selves, gazes so closely at him... and then lowers his attention to the deck, for the sword he cast loose is here at his feet and he bends to pick it up. "Let's break this place for good."
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Glenn » Sat Feb 22, 2014 6:23 am

The young man is in all black. His clothes are finely cut but sloppily worn. There are perhaps a few ostentatious and unncessary buttons or buckles. Misdirection, perhaps, to distract from any number of hidden compartments and pockets. He is battered, sweating, bloody, but his smile, ghastly but not grim, is satisfied and cocksure. The Dagger is in his hand now when before it hovered on his own. It meant that amongst the mass of Syls and Elliots, there was perhaps a smaller figure, lost and disoriented, swearing as a defense mechanism in a tiny tongue.

Elliot doesn't notice that, though. He had a small army at his disposal, emotional avatars of both men, hopes and dreams and pride. All that was good and strong and worthwhile, though there was something subjective about that. There was no saying that Elliot's values and that of Duquesne were the same. It was quickly apparent that there were certain overlaps however.

The youth had started the process by calling back the Dagger. Sylvius had finished the job. The massed forces of darkness and despair were reeling in the face of their massed attack rebuffed, in the face of the freed legions that they had repressed so successfully.

Then, his smile turning into an outright grin at Syl's words, Elliot raised the dagger, pulsing and glowing darkly, into a brazen salute. He pointed it outwards at whatever remained of the darkness between he and his forces and Sylvius on the other side of the deck and let out a shout as the small army rushed forth towards victory.
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Duquesne » Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:03 am

The ship is angry -- yet what is anger but fear. It is with a whisper of panic that her horde is unleashed, reborn from her rain-slick deck with a kind of eternal diligence. But this lot of once-captives, freed from their prisons of turmoil, fight with such a fury and -- see how the ship cannot remake her crewman fast enough? see how they shatter to pieces beneath blows and their numbers dwindle? More and more the deck is littered with their remains, like a true battlefield now as the lines of victory are being drawn.

But a conquered thing, seeing its end, can be all the more dangerous. A rumble pulls through the ship and sounds of stress are increasingly everywhere. The timbers of the deck begin to pop with strain, breaking as she herself seems to be breaking. High above, enormous masts and their yards full with sail begin to sway. Everywhere huge lengths of rope begin to fall and when they do, they crash into the deck, tearing holes which show only blackness, the Nothingness below. Around these brave fighters, the ship begins to wreck herself; above them, lightning and thunder tear through the skies; from them, the rain falls harder.

Syl wrenches his sword free of a crewman's thick barrel-skull and glances heavenward as light sunders that dull gray. Ensuing thunder shudders down overhead and he can feel the power of it in his chest. Here, a crewman looms. Salt water gushes from a dozen wounds, but on he fights and his lamp-glow eyes are furious as he roars through a maw of rusty-nail teeth, his breath an assault of rotting wood and mold. His weapon is a bulky chain and as it whiplashes outward, it coils fast around Syl's sword, upraised in defense. The crewman jerks that blade free of his hand, then angrily swats him aside. The slippery deck carries him in a long slide to the gangway, against which he crushes hard -- even in a dream, such a blow will stun -- and he is slow to rise. But as he gains the ship's rail, he feels the ship list to starboard with a tremendous groan of timbers and he can hear the sea rushing into the gouged hull far below -- she is taking on water and fast.

Another terrible roar from this huge crewman pulls his attention and he rolls away from that crashing chain which wrecks the gangway and tears the rail away. Again, the chain comes crashing down in an explosion of splinters and mere inches from his rolling self -- but the next blow does not arrive. The crewman's fury has been distracted by an assault and Syl scrambles away, glancing up to find his Self slinging his own chains 'round the hulking creature's throat. This is a familiar Self; this is a half-naked animal shrouded in filth and blood and despair, screaming his own rage. Recognizing that man, that version, Syl takes up a huge splinter of planking broken from the deck and spears it mightily into the crewman's rough-made body, right up beneath his ribcage of rusty steel brackets and into his heart of cloth and salt. And he pitches forward with a croak from a dying throat and drops to deck with a great crash of parts.

And it is the man and his Self who face one another in that moment's wake, who lock eyes -- who share Knowing here -- before the ship lurches mightily and groans. She was going down and soon. "Elliot!" he screams over the roar of the storm and the ship's terrible sounds. "We need to go! She won't last!"
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Glenn » Thu Feb 27, 2014 5:11 am

There was a particular loneliness to being out at sea, to be so far from all that you had ever known and from the place of your birth. Most Myrkenites never left Myrken Wood. Most barely got a night's ride away. Elliot was a bit more daring than most, but he still hadn't traveled far. He had seen far more and learned about more places through Ariane's dreams that he had ever had in his own life, even after he had become a thief.

The loneliness he felt now echoed that of a sailor's and was only exacerbated by the impending destruction of the ship. In the end, it was a further push towards freedom. Yes, they could sail wherever they like, but at the same time, they were constrained to this small soaked haven of nails and wood. He could fly, could soar anywhere within Sylvius' dreamscape (and before that Ariane's) but it was both neverending and so very, very tiny.

Most of all, the destruction showed him that this dream was about to end.

Still, there was a basic thrust to this story and he well knew it. Were he to change sides, to become the jailer instead of the liberator, he would become the villain of the piece. He would go against his every belief. Yes, solitude was rushing towards him, faster than any wave, but he would not deny who he was in order to force an alternative. His identity was all he had left.

The ship broke apart, so did the rest of reality. Water faded. Wood and nail and blood and bone. All of it, until there was nothingness. Elliot hovered in the air, for he had gone, for she had not lasted. Sylvius was hovering in front of him as well, though perhaps hover was not the right word. Perhaps that gave too much credit to a nothingness that had no up or down.

They simply existed in a space that did not, their doubles all with them, though faded like ghosts. "What happens now," Elliot said, suddenly, quite despite himself, petulant, throbbing black dagger in hand still. "is that you wake up soon."
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Duquesne » Thu Feb 27, 2014 6:34 am

A particular loneliness, indeed... for great waters were no place for air-breathers, least of all when their tiny islands of wood and steel, glass and rope and cloth break down. In reality, in life, to experience the heaving dangerous wreckage, the noise and screams, the uncertainty of the next breath, the uncertainty of the next moment, is a particular loneliness and also a particular terror. And as the prospect of this unreal ship fades away into the strange safety of nothing, the feeling of the dream lingers on in a whisper and Elliot must know with certainty that the sort of wreckage they endured moments ago was drawn from experience -- the man knew what it was to have a ship break apart beneath him and to be lost in the great emptiness of the sea.

But here, with his ghosts at his elbows, the man has eyes on this young thief -- this stalwart and cunning mind, this brave spirit -- and he nods in affirmation, somehow sensing the end of sleep. "I wake up and hunt for answers," he says. "There is a way out of this -- I will find it, I promise you that." A pause; a consideration. "If you have words for those you know, out there, I will carry your message... " and the nothingness around them clings, begins to obscure him. "I know they still hope for you."
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Glenn » Fri Feb 28, 2014 12:51 am

Seconds. Elliot knew loneliness and he also knew what this felt like, the tug, of only having seconds remaining. There was so much left to say. He was a fool, but at least he knew it. They could have spent time talking over solutions, working through things, crafting messages for the waking world. That's not how dreams worked, though, and it's certainly not how he worked. Sylvius had needed this, and why? Because Elliot Brown had decided so. The need had made it worthwhile. That was enough.

"Niall," he began, starkly solid and defined in the face of the nothingness and the ghosts and the architect about to join them, "does not hope. She will not believe you either. You're Lord Duck Noose, right? Smartest man that smart men know. Convince her. Do that for me and we're even. A letter to Solena. Niall in person. Those two things." Then, despite himself, bravado given way to his age, to the sum of wounds, emotional and otherwise, that Myrken had inflicted upon him time and again, Elliot Brown could not continue to look. "And come back. Soon, okay?"
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Re: A Thoughtful Mind Is A Heavy Dreamer

Postby Duquesne » Fri Feb 28, 2014 6:33 am

Precious seconds; no, not seconds but the passage of one flash of consciousness into the next. The appearance of Elliot is fading now, just as Syl fades, their figures become a matter of filaments spun small, thin -- "I will," he says and his voice is no longer a voice, but an idea, a concept of assurance. And then all these self-ghosts slip away, gone again into memory.
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