Pathways and Anchors

Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Rance » Tue Sep 01, 2015 12:20 pm

I do this fer ye - fer true friendship means 'elpin' anooth'r. Despoite discomfor', despoite fear. I loove ye loike a sist'r and I am o' 'appy 'o aid ye in this.

Touch of a brigand's callused, work-hardened hand upon hers. Tension spills out of the girl's muscles and knuckles. Everyone — everyone — second-guessed Gloria's intentions, ideas, or strategies, never thought of them as much more than destructive or impulsive. But never Ailova. Ailova, even if she'd doubted, had never given life to the sentiment: she'd always believed, perpetually trusted. Gloria's face, Sun-blackened and thick, breaks wide with a smile. The trust warms her like a fire in the pit of her stomach.

"I'd be nobody without you."

The wine is poured. Korressa sprinkles a dash of the curious mixture into its surface. The drink grows thick and spotty.

And with the brigand's and seamstress' eyes upon her, the Northerner drinks.

This would be done. Tonight, this would be done, and she'd leave nothing to the unreliability of fortune. As soon as Korressa returns the sliver of wood, Gloria turns it back to the woman in her thick hand and forcefully presses it against the Northerner's wrist, grinding the moldering bit of bark against the skin, her stare snarling take it, take it, and her breath coming out in short, staccato blasts through her gritted teeth. "We surrender nothing to chance," the seamstress retorts, her accent flooded with impatience. "You hold this wood. I did not bring it for — for mere decoration. Do you understand me?

"It lets us keep ourselves. Our thoughts, our minds, our — our awareness. Your mixture's sole purpose is that we dream simultaneously. The wood—" by whatever uncanny imbuing or power in its age-befouled grain, "—keeps us whole. Ourselves. When you wake in the other world, you wait for us, Korressa. You wait."

Vile nausea twists in the middle of her stomach. Fear. Discomfort. Unknowing. Would this succeed?

She steps back away from the Northerner, retrieves her tankard of wine, and raises it to Ailova.

"When we know she sleeps, we drink together. In for a penny," she says, stealing a phrase she's heard tossed about the avenues.

So they wait.
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Korressa » Tue Sep 01, 2015 12:38 pm

For a moment, the priestess considers protesting this shard of wood that is ground against her palm—she has her own anchor around her neck, with which she would gladly drown if it suited the Goddess' purposes—but she takes it in the end. On top of a binding tie to the others, she now has a splinter to suck from her palm later thanks to the stern girl's efforts.

"You shall wish to sit, first," Korressa instructs them, and there is a slyness to her smile as she does just what she prescribes. This is not her first time calling a dream, though it is her first time doing so in Myrken. Here, she tries to avoid it to the best of her ability. At least, until now.

On the edge of the narrow bed once more, with a chunk of kindling in her palm, Korressa swirls the mug's contents and drinks it down. Like the candle, there is lavender there, and other flowers. Underneath it all, a sharp, spicy flavour, like chillies in summer, or cinnamon in fall, but difficult to place precisely. Still partially upright, for she has great, long legs, the woman props her shoulders against the wall and places the leather cup in her lap. She closes her eyes and lips move in a silent request, the words not those of the standard tongue, and then all is still.

Within moments of finishing the brew, her breathing smooths into that of slumber. And should they wait long enough, they would see the dull shadow of eyeballs flicking behind the paper-thin lids.
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby highawaywoman » Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:04 pm

The smile that Gloria gave was genuine. It broke the worry and anxious concern that strained her young face during the time she'd spent separated from her babe. One more squeeze was given as Ailova widened her encouraging smile to the young Jernoan girl. No protests came from the once-seamstress over Ailova's statement. Just acceptance. Finally.

"I'd be nobody without you."

"And I'd be an apathetic shell o' an auld wooman."

Koressa was forced to accept the shard of wood, blinking down at after a pause and swallowing down her wine with as much speed as Ailova threw back drams of fine whiskey.

"You shall wish to sit, first,"

The tall woman sat, looking betwixt bandit and young woman as she smiled before slipping into sleep.

"Well. Tha' dinnae 'ake verra loong." Tapered fingers poured the powder into her glass of wine, casting a sour look into the confines. True enough; wine was better than water! A fingertip stirred the mixture as best she could, casting her eyes upward to Gloria as the brew melded together.

"Ye dinnae think she be dead do ye?"

The blonde brigand pushed the brim of her hat upwards, leaning over the prone form of Koressa. So close that she could smell the wine on the woman's lips and feel the soft breath coming from the northerner. Eyes shifted beneath closed lids.

Ailova straightened, her free hand smoothing the skirts of her frockcoat. Well. The time for second-guessing and casting wary looks about the room had come and gone.

"Boottoms up, m'dear." The tankard was tipped and highwaywoman drained the contents and made to sit next to the prone form of Koressa. She too held her own piece of serrated stump.
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Rance » Tue Sep 01, 2015 3:15 pm

Korressa settles. She reminds Gloria of an oversized doll, a child's thing set to lean against the wall and gather the dust of months and years. The seamstress watches, measures her own breaths, even times the onset of the powder's effects by them: it takes but a few long, nervous draws before she realizes that the woman's drifted off somewhere else, lost amid the waves of an artificial sleep. Ailova examines Korressa closely, leaning in like the Northerner is some relic or fossil meant to be studied.

Ye dinnae think she be dead do ye?

Her black eyebrows lift, piercing almost through the rim of her bonnet at it chokes her brow.

Ailova's examination, thankfully, turns up evidence of life.

Powder, then. Sprinkled into wine. Mixed by a few shaking throttles of her hand.

"Bottoms up," she tells the brigand, her friend, her near-sister, and—

* * * *

They drip like wax off the ledge of one world and spill down into another. They haven't body or mind, yet; no, instead, they breach the black membrane of half-waking and half-sleeping that separates two vastly different realities. The abyss behind their eyelids — drawn closed by the increasing weight and menace of the mixture — flakes away, and a sluggish, unreal universe begins to fabricate itself around them. The red, throbbing channels within their eyes darken and calcify, and the resulting patterns transform into a vision of interlocked branches sprawling above them. The afterimage of the candles in Korressa's room collide, bleed together, until the form a too-fat, too-big image of a too-silver moon hanging in the black canopy above. The summer night swelters like a clay oven. A dulled din of merriment — stringsong, voice, laughter — echoes in the air...

...the air, pregnant with the blood-like smell of rich gold and polished copper. Rot and mildew stickies every breath, an odor of wet wood and Sun-warmed mud. The Northerner finds herself seated in the weedy grass, poised in a counterfeit of the same position in which she'd...

...fallen asleep. Leaning against a stump chewed apart by a thousand, ten-thousand axe-strokes.

Ailova's there, too, just a shoulder away from the pale woman. The dry, oaky taste of the Derry Red still clings to the brigand's lips, but never is the aftertaste of the wine too strong to cover the bitterness of the whiskey that carries itself on her every breath.

Both women don the same threads in which they'd...

...fallen asleep.

Around them, like they sit upon the very pole of a tiny, self-contained world, the grasses, the woods beyond, even the bloated structure of the Broken Dagger bend away from them, shrinking against convex slopes that dip down into a black oblivion.

They each still possess their lump of wood.

In the distance, the jagged scape of the Golden City glows, an image of firelight, opulence, and perfection.

They are alone.
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby highawaywoman » Wed Sep 02, 2015 1:03 am

I be in my own togs. I'm not a facsimile of what could have been.

With relief, the bandit looked down and found herself dressed in her male riding attire; boots, breeks, fitted frockcoat and neckcloth wound loosely about her throat. Even better? She wasn't younger, or older. She was the same.

The taste of wine still soured her mouth, but a quick swallow from the flask in her pocket washed away reminders of the strange draught she'd taken. The Golden City shimmered in the distance, but Ailova remained seated and and leaning against that stump. It was with trepidation that she looked about them, Havers! It work'd! A booted foot nudged the sleeping form of Koressa, hoping to rouse her into the dreamscape.

It was beautiful. This place of gold and shimmering promise. The horsewoman glanced to the stables, but instead of being kept in pens or stalls? These beasts roamed free and grazed contentedly about the women. Her first inclination was to ride Bruiser, who gleamed in well-groomed elegance beneath the glowing sky.

Nae. No riding in this dream. Stay focused on the task at hand.
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Korressa » Wed Sep 02, 2015 3:13 am

Little by little, her body awakens to sensation again—grass under bare feet and fingers, the hard press of wood at her back and in her hand, the prodding tip of a boot against her ankle.

She opens her eyes to Myrken-not-Myrken, wondering if for once, the Goddess has denied her. If for once, the mixture has failed. But. She is not in her room, where she should be if she has only awoken from slumber. They are outside, by the stump where first she had met Gloria, where clever-tongued Cat had implied that the priestess might be werewolf.

Yet.

The smell is wrong. The feel is wrong. Is her body wrong?

Eight toes. Ten fingers. She raises her hands to touch what she cannot see—sharp nose, heavy-lidded eyes, both ears unadorned, cloth at her throat. Everything is where it ought to be. Even that.

Korressa trades the sliver of stump to her other hand, and discovers the black jab of the splinter still in her palm. That happens? You can be transcribed so directly into this world? The very idea jars the priestess deeply, even as she raises her palm to her lips, to gnaw and suck the splinter free. The tiny foreign thing transfixes her until it's gone, spat into the grass with a glob of saliva. Only then does she remember.

"I was told to wait," she looks to Ailova. "You are here. But where is Gloria?"
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Rance » Fri Sep 04, 2015 4:39 pm

Something bends this world in two.

Something folds it like a bit of parchment between great and unseen hands. The ink from one page bleeds over onto the other. The blots smear, mix, stain.
Reality lays bare on one leaflet; dreams occupy another. The two ought to never meet. But something tugs at all the wrong strings, tangles them into discordant knots. What wakes should wake and what sleeps should sleep — that law, in the Golden City, is absolute. Isn't it? The collision of two wholly separate realities is neither a loud nor catastrophic affair. Rather, its whisper-silence is scarcely a breeze, hardly a blink, and yet—

The two women seated, holding their lumps of wood, receive their response.

"Hello."

A stone's throw away from the moldering stump stands a girl. No—

A stone's throw away from the moldering stump stands a woman. Her bare heels dig like permanent fixtures into the spongy soil, but behind her, a flickering road cobbled out of gilded stones spans into the distance, intersecting with the treeline, leading to nothing. She regards Ailova and Korressa with a cool, serene smile, one filled with teeth carved out of cloudy glass. Her skin, brown as newly-turned soil, is almost purple in the starlight. A radiant, sulfurous heat accompanies her, the kind that pries itself into the nostrils and the mouth and steals the breath right from vulnerable lungs.

Her dress is simple. A stark, vibrant white. On her head, tilted backward, is a conical cap that stands several meters erect, nearly as tall as she is. The cap's lip tugs at her brow with its weight, spreading open her steel-colored eyes as if against their will, granting an awareness that is both exhausted but necessary. And at her breast, clutched in two arms — one hand's flesh is not flesh, but rather a liquid, mirror-like silver — lay a tiny, suckling child, its doughy body depressed against her own. It occasionally issues noises against her skin. Clucks. Gasps. The woman's silvered fingertips brush through the bounty of platinum hair spilling from the child's scalp.

"Hello," she says again. "I'm right here. Don't you know? Dear Korressa, and Ailova, my near-sister," trills the girl, her voice lilting with remembered affection. "The both of you look so different."

Gloria's Wynsee's face contorts with confusion. Wrinkles spring to life at the corners of her mouth. She frowns.

"Why are you here, friends?"
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby highawaywoman » Fri Sep 11, 2015 1:19 pm

At times the sky glittered so brightly, that it hurt her eyes. The brim of her hat barely helped in shielding her gaze from the golden-lit sky. Korressa blinked away sleep as she stirred into the dreamscape. She awoke, removing her splinter and came to focus on the highwaywoman.

"You are here. But where is Gloria?"

"I 'avnae clue. Bu', in essence - 'er plan 'as work'd. Crafty lil minx she be."

And there, standing a scarce few yards away, was the crafty minx in question. It took a moment for Ailova to register that the mewling bundle in her arms was the babe. Soodsie! Words left the usually sharp-tongued brigand. No words were capable as she gazed upon the round head that peeked out of the folded arms of her friend.

"The both of you look so different."

"Ye look diff'rn'. 'appy. Whoole." Gloria did seem older, satisfied, blissfully reunited with the babe she'd dreamed and longed for, but been separated from due to devilish circumstance.

"We be 'ere, 'cause ya ask'd us 'o be soo." In the dream, Ailova's had didn't tremble as she raised the piece of stump she'd snagged in the waking world. In this world, the drink didn't even enter her mind. It was unnecessary.

"Yer babe," Ailova gestured to the sweet bundle of cooing that Gloria held capably in her arms, "Is precious."
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Korressa » Sun Sep 20, 2015 5:36 am

"It would seem it has," she replies to Ailova, even as a figure forms before them. This is like no dream she has had before—even prophetic dreams have some nature of blurring to them. Some strange, edge-misting effect to keep it separate from the world of the waking. But this? This.

Se feels as if she has opened her eyes from a long sleep, rather than tumbled down under the influences of the dream potion.

Ailova and Korressa have been so perfectly transplanted into this dream world, this Golden City, that the priestess does not at first recognise the woman-Gloria who appears before them. The joy in her face, the glassy teeth and perfect arm—this is not the Gloria that Korressa has come to know.

When the babe—the babe—stirs in her restless, infant way, the northerner shoots to her feet and nearly trips over the stump. Before now, the mission had not been made clear. This had only been meant to be a test.

Were they here to take the child? Now?

Not being prone to aimless conversation in the first place, Korressa bites her tongue and bides her time, working her fingers over the rough wood in her hand thoughtfully. It is an anchor. It is a reminder. She digs her toes into the soil as if to grow roots, as if at any moment that precious babe may explode and blow the entire dreamscape back into reality.
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Rance » Wed Sep 23, 2015 9:33 am

"Happier," the Jerno tells Ailova, "than I've ever been. But you know that. Don't you?"

Don't you? A question tossed into the air as if its answer is but an incontrovertible fact — the product of some artificial, Golden memory retained by this white-clad Gloria, but not by the brigand standing before her. Brown toes rustle through the grasses as she strides forward, bending an elbow enough to prop the child like a trophy in the cradle of her thick arms. Hard arms. Muscular, proud arms, for Gloria Wynsee had never been a small woman. But in this place? Her size seems more prominent and absolute. The conical cap adds a meter to her brow, granting her the majesty of a statue, a figurehead—

We be 'ere, 'cause ya ask'd us 'o be soo.

She shakes her head. Glass teeth tighten in a careful grimace. The infant flexes its pudgy hand upon the breast of her gown, squeezes the fabric, and speaks an infantile tirade into the raiment.

"I asked you no such thing," she says. "I ask for nothing in this land because I — we — want for nothing." Her black eyebrows lift. "Did you fall back into the old habits, Ailova," Gloria inquires, her lips pursing with concern as she examines the woman's mannish garments. "The bottle you'd given up? The need to steal and pilfer your way to success? I thought you'd abandoned that life. For me. For my daughter. For you. Though I suppose a promise is only as good as the tongue that carries it." The baby's palm strikes Gloria's cheek, grips the skin, tugs; a burble of laughter bubbles up from the wrapping. "That fellow you're set to wed, does he know you've—" her smile apologizes, "—regressed?"

(And can they feel it? Like blunted claws scraping at the peat of their unconscious minds? The realization that this world, this dream, persists and grows and thrives? That the occupants peopling it are agents of their own agendas and desires? They seek happiness, they endure hardship, they suffer aches of the heart or flaws of the soul—)

* * * *

Consciousness drives itself into her brain like a hammer. And all at once, she exists.

She awakens in the same way she'd fallen asleep, sprawled like a skirted reprobate in the spongy mud. A trembling knuckle strokes across the wetness of her brow as she lifts her cheek from the earth. She catches sight of the stump, a blurry anchor for her focus and conscience. Elbows and knees thrust against the ground. Tendrils of back hair hang like loose vines from under her bonnet, clinging to the mud and grass. Up, up, she looks, only to find the scene already set before her: Ailova Smith stands meters away from a vision of bright gowns and bronze flesh like she was striking up a simple conversation with a local.

A baby clucks, giggles, and the sound is a treacherous music to her ears—

She watches as Korressa stumbles — but never falls over — the protrusion of the stump. The Northerner stands aghast, away from the two other women, and the newcomer clambers to her feet and reaches out to brush her fingers across the small of Korressa's back like some urchin shrinking unseen behind the protective presence of someone greater, stronger, more formidable.

A stink of sweat. Of woodsmoke.

And then Gloria — Gloria, as Korressa knows her, the broken-toothed lump of a woman — whispers behind the Northerner: "Is that—"

The final syllable barely makes noise. Fear catches in her throat.

"—me?"
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby highawaywoman » Wed Sep 23, 2015 12:10 pm

This is not Gloria. This was a girl who existed only in dreams. It was her measured response, the way she seemed to gaze through the horsewoman that sent her heart to leap in her throat. The words. Feck the words. Gloria was always truthful - painfully so, at times.

I thought you'd abandoned that life. For me. For my daughter. For you. Though I suppose a promise is only as good as the tongue that carries it."

"Nae, Gloria," It was a sudden thing - the stinging memories of past dreams shared in the Golden. "I be 'ere fer ye and the wee Soodsy. Only ye two matt'r noow." The girl she could have been was a figment of her imagination. The ever present taint of the waking world that clung to her more staunchly than the scent of horse and stables.

Those words. The accusations? They didn't stop. The bandit flinched. Hot salty tears stung the back of her eyes, but she wouldn't blink. To do so - would send them to flow down her cheeks.

"That fellow you're set to wed, does he know you've - regressed?"

Elias. Another time, another world - this world. She'd been so blindly in love. Enamored with the idea of being his and his alone. He'd promised to ask for her hand from her father - the father that hadn't beaten her senseless for being insufferably Ailova.

That proposal did not exist in the waking world. True, she and the mysterious dockworker - who was not just a dockworker - had come together. But. There were no declarations of love. Even if she felt it pulling her heart, making it weak and womanly.

Then, the most troubling realization hit her out of all of them. What was the real world? This golden and majestic place? Or the one she had awoken to? How she wished to be that unbroken and hopeful girl - but she was not. She was bruised and a shambles in comparison to that girl. Shite. Stop this. Stop it now! You have a purpose here! Pale green eyes glanced over her shoulder, hopefully locating the staid form of the northern woman. Koressa.

Behind Koressa stood the young woman that Ailova knew and loved. Gloria! Not this version of her - this glowing perfection that only made her regret what could not be!

"Koressa! Hold her! Embrace her!" Show her love. That was the thing of utmost import in this place of glimmer and gold.

"Nae, Gloria. Tis nae ye, tis wot could 'ave been. Jus' as we all could 'ave been somethin' differin' froom wot we are."

An accusatory finger pointed to the babe and the woman who held her close, "I will 'ake tha' babe and bring 'er back. Fer ye. Nae the dream Gloria - bu' the real oone."
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Korressa » Wed Sep 23, 2015 3:25 pm

Like a cat whose fur has been stroked the wrong way, the pale foreigner bristles under Gloria's seeking fingers. Her attention had been on the wood, on the two women before her, and the sudden sensation of probing digits sends chills up her spine that she had so far resisted. But there is no lash of claws or nip of fangs in the wake of the tremor, only the sudden clamp of her long, hard fingers around the girl's thick wrist. As Ailova addresses the breathing symbol before them—wot could 'ave been—Korressa holds tight to Gloria with a hand that may as well be wrought from steel bands. They are hard and calloused, those hands, from handling reins and a long-handled blade, and the slender fingers have more strength than they give away at a glance. Without her layers and voluminous robes, she cannot hope to conceal the husky Jernoan lass, but still the pale woman braces herself before the dark girl like a sentinel.

"I do not know," she responds under her breath, straining her own ears to hear every nuanced syllable the shimmering doppleganger speaks. Her speech, the things she knows and the hard truths that fall from her lips, even the way she handles the child with such maternal affection eases initial misgivings, but the priestess is unsettled and uncertain. How can there be two? Are there two? Or is the Golden City only a fun house mirror, against which they press their faces to giggle at the distorted reflections? "I do not think you should approach ... her."

The word twists her mouth like an unfamiliar flavour. She wants to say it. She can't help but think it.

"Let Ailova speak. Wait with me." Even if it does have the child in her arms that they have sought out. Even if it is Gloria remade.

No, not even if—because. Especially because she is Gloria remade—this isn't like a dream at all.
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Rance » Sat Oct 10, 2015 8:48 am

I will 'ake tha' babe and bring 'er back. Fer ye. Nae the dream Gloria - bu' the real oone.

The white-clad Gloria standing before Ailova flinched as if struck by an unseen hand. Her mouth fell open, an incredulous pit. Instinctively, she stepped back, her bleached skirts sweeping along the grass underneath them. Her arms wrapped like a citadel around the mewling child, whose fat, disproportionate arms were yet incapable of anything more than clumsy articulation. "It's clear to me," she said, glass teeth clicking, "that you've let the drink soil your brain. I tried, Ailova. I did." That last word came out of her with a burst of desperation, and the spike of her voice set the infant to a blathering cry. "But I can smell it on you, all over you, on your skin and your breath. It makes you babble, puts stories in your head.

"This is the real me. This has always been the real me." Spoken, this, with all the force of someone putting every heartbeat into their conviction. Her chin snaps to the left. "And you—" she snaps at Korressa, whose companion she doesn't even seem to see, "—did you enable this? Did you put fantasies in her head, or lead her down this path?

"You know what happened to my mother. You know I don't approve of this."

Then, with her conical hat sagging forward, Gloria leans forward and spits upon the earth. The saliva strikes the soil like a droplet of hot tar.

Black oil.

Where the lone dollop strikes, a gap forms in the soil between the mother and the brigand. Unceremoniously, a pair of hands — then two pair — grab at the side of the hole, scraping, grasping for purchase as grass and dirt funnels between their fingers. Two figures begin to emerge from the divot, each unfurling upward like a banner until their limbs are fully visible and their spines strand straight as rods. Each of them wears a stiff hauberk formed out of layered glass rings, and at their hips hang weathered bucklers that bear a Trae Kelsan seal. The small shields are perfect copies of one another: on each, marks and scars are chewed into the exact same spots of the wood. Too-loose helmets — those often worn by Crown soldiers — shake on the unidentifiable heads, as if their wearers seek to cast away sleepiness. They drip with viscous blackness; their boots squelch and creak through liquid as they saunter forward.

One reaches for a stout hammer hanging at its thigh. The other draws a stumpy gladius from its belt.

The first strides for Ailova Smith—

—and the second for the Northerner.

And though she was present but seconds ago, Gloria — the one at Korressa's side — is gone.
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby highawaywoman » Tue Oct 13, 2015 2:26 pm

There were times when Ailova Smith preferred the version of herself in those dreams and even the nightmares. In the Golden City she was unscarred, both physically and emotionally. No hand had struck her in vicious correction. But that wasn't her. Despite the scars, she was made into what she was from that past - a fact that'd she come to embrace. This Gloria, was not the true Gloria. She can't be! Rapidly, the dreaming Ailova tried to piece together the fragments of information she had at hand. This Gloria was not the one who stood behind Koressa. Which meant. Two of the same could exist within the Golden City - but, for how long and to what purpose?

"Gloria. Ye need 'o le' 'er goo. She dinnae beloong 'ere, she isna-" The words were cut short as the girl holding her precious cargo spat blackness to the earth - splitting and causing an upheaval of momentous proportions.

Feck! Bleedin' feckin' hoorsons! Soldiers came upchucking out of the ground, as if birthed by a demon before her eyes. Elias! For a brief fleeting moment she sorely missed her dear companion. His cool head and handiness at dispatching supernaturals were desperately needed in this situation.

However, there was no Elias. It was just she, the Northerner, and Glo-- but the young Jerno that was cognizant within this Golden City was gone. Vanished. Which left the highwaywoman face-to-bleedin'-face with the surly soldier who came lumbering up with hammer drawn.

Rapier was at her side, but against a hammer? Was a weapon like hers worthy of striking down something as heavy as that? Doubtful. Instead, both her hands dove to the inside pockets of her frockcoat, steadily finding and slinging two neatly sharpened throwing blades. There was barely time to aim, but the throw was one skilled with years of banditry. But, shite, even bandits threw ill-aimed throws!
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Re: Pathways and Anchors

Postby Korressa » Wed Oct 14, 2015 6:50 am

"I do not know you," she responds to the symbol's accusations blandly, and her gaze is steady despite her inner uncertainty. "You are a phantom, a trick of moonlight."

Or perhaps we are the ghosts in this place, she thinks but dares not say. Ailova and Gloria cannot know that there are seeds of doubt in their companion, lest those seeds germinate in their own breasts as well. But this dream is no white cocoon, and she does not wear a sinuous body of white feathers and fur, she does not rake the skies with ivory talons. This dream is all too real, and her body far too much like her own. Which means her blades are not at hand, but tucked into a heavy travel chest, and bound in leather in her room. And yet—and yet—belief is a powerful weapon.

As the soldiers rise from the soil, Korressa's stance widens. "Gloria, stay ba—" But there is no one to warn. No one to protect. There's no time to consider whether the girl has awoken or merely slipped away, nor to do more than glance briefly over one shoulder to confirm her disappearance.

Because rules in dreams are tenuous things formed of cobwebs and stray thoughts—they exist only for so long as you allow them to impede you—everything can change in a heartbeat. A glob of saliva can be formed into soldiers of earth and glass. A firm figure can dissolve like morning fog into thin air. A person can become a beast. And a piece of wood can become a weapon harder than carbonised steel—if you believe it. Does the priestess believe it?

The hand that had clutched around Gloria's meaty arm closes now into a fist and raises to meet the other where it wraps tight around the fragment of stump. With a whispered plea, she stretches and reaches, and the wood follows the spread of her arms with a shiver. To bend reality is a true feat of magic, but this is a dream, and this task is no spellcasting. The soft wood warps to the image the priestess desires, forming into a ebony replica of the long-handled blade in her room, down to the etched runes on the blade.

There's no disguising the surprise on her face, even as she brandishes the newly formed weapon. Rear hand high, forward hand low, blade poised to parry, thrust, or slide as needed.

"I believe we are no longer welcome, Serra Ailova," she remarks to the blonde bandit, even as blades are loosed. Now, how to wake up? Once, she had willed it so and awoken in her own bed—in knowing she dreamed, she could break it. But now, she can will a blade into being, but finds herself still wakeful in the wrong realm. Does summoning the dream tie you to it more firmly? Or had her waking previously only been coincidence?
Korressa
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