[ CLOSED ] hands like skeleton bones

[gynvael]

Who: Geralt + the Queen, Yennefer, Various
When: After Nov. 12
Where: Castle Thorne, Nott, Cadens
What: Geralt goes on an Adventure and has a great time
Warnings: Blood, violence, trauma



(( placing starters in the comments below. find me at discontinued or at Noa#1979 to plot stuff! ))

THORNE: the queen + yennefer | kylo | mal | jolene
NOTT: julie | nadine | lloyd
CADENS: jaskier + sam | sam | ciri | jaskier

Comments

[abraxasnpcs]

I appreciate your eagerness, but we're nearly done here.

[It seems there's no need to put on any greater show. Ellya is getting what she wants from this, and perhaps even a bonus. It depends what Grigory manages to pull out but this venture has been very satisfying so far. There are so many other things they could do to the prisoner but there's something disparaging to be said about excess.]

I'm sure you'll be able to show off your full scale of talents eventually.

[The queen brings her hand down once more and releases the spell.]

Pull whatever you can, Grigory, then have the prisoner returned to his cell. I have other obligations for today. We can always try again.

[abraxasnpcs]

[ There it is- that snap, that break he has been waiting for. Geralt's defenses are strong but not impenetrable, the sign of someone familiar enough with magics and stubborn enough to fight against them, but not indefinitely. Everyone eventually breaks with enough pain.

He registers Yennefer's movements and words, but he only acts on the bidding of his Queen. The floodgates have opened and Grigory must grasp at what flows through them in shattered bits and pieces. ]

Yes, Your Majesty.

[ The finer details of these visions he catches flying by will be shared in private, but he still narrates as he should, a short list of what he was able to gather for all those present. ]

...I see those who fled to the Free Cities when all had been frozen. Their arrival in Cadens.

[ Faces, bits of names that they can likely compare to their records in order to categorize most of the time. ]

And...

[ A pause. This one seems out of place, strangely out of place. The form of a child shrouded in darkness as though Geralt's broken psyche still tries to keep the image close. But through those wisps Grigory catches a glimpse. ]

...A shadowed form. It's difficult to tell...

yen and geralt switch back for this round!

[vixening]

[ we’re nearly done here does more to set yennefer off than anything else, a kind of finality to the queen’s voice that does not sit well with her. her eyes turn to geralt, a flash of a look - not even a moment’s worth, but something - before yennefer nods, once. it turns into a kind of bow, as she takes a step backward, hiding any movement that might have been seen (there isn’t anything, of course - she doesn’t need movements, doesn’t need words, for her magic to move). ]

Of course, your majesty.

[ she is open to what flows from geralt then, too - names, faces, people she herself had seen escape through those portals, and some she doesn’t recognize at all. she wonders if they’re new, or if they’re just faces she hadn’t seen during her own time in the dungeons.

and then there is the face of the girl - green eyes, the fierce protectiveness. yennefer doesn’t even have time to stand, fully, before her magic is reaching out - panicked, quick, a whip-snap of chaos reaching for the first thing she can find. there is nothing to be seen about it, no visual to be caught at all, nothing grigory or the queen should be able to notice (should - she hasn’t ever had anyone notice this before, doesn’t expect it to be noticed now). it lasts all of that brief not-even-a-moment, a whip lashing out for the closest memory, the closest memory that couch possible hold enough to drown out the information grigory is gathering. the pull is half-hazard, without any of the finesse that grigory had been working with, but it should be enough.

enough to cover whatever image of the girl grigory had started to see, enough to flood the connection.

she hopes it is enough. her eyes land on geralt, one last time, before they shift to grigory - swallowing back whatever coppery taste she has on the back of her tongue. it’s a risk - that they won’t notice what she’s done, that what she’d wrenched free will be enough to distract, that they will move on. no matter what it is she’s done, though, her attention is on the mage. the effort he’s putting forth. ]

A figure of what?

[gynvael]

[ His ears ring louder. Desperately, he tries to hold onto what he can, for all the fucking good it'll do. He clutches his head, every breath sharp and shallow. If he remembers where he is, or with whom, it's distant at best. Flashes of images tumble together, new and old and forgotten. A shadowed form someone says. His eyes flick upwards towards Grigory before he can stop himself.

He's only dimly aware of Yennefer's presence for an instant. Subtle. He remembers the first time she slipped into his head, when he'd barely caught on. Not that it would take much effort to get in, split wide open as he is. The memory she finds is already at the surface, never buried as deep as he wants it to be, even after all these decades. Especially now, magic suffocating the air and blood slick beneath him—it's there, waiting. But where the others come and go as Grigory rifles through, this one snaps loose altogether.

Afterwards, he will understand what she did. Here, in this moment, he has no time to react before he drowns under the sudden torrent. What's happening now or then or someplace else, he can't tell the difference. Every thought washes away. There's just blood, the heavy taste and smell of it, the sickly sweet stench of herbs, filling his senses until he's choking on it, until his eyes water. A fire sweeps through his veins, burns his lungs. He can't see, he can't fucking breathe. He doesn't know what they're doing to him (except he does, of course he knows what it is to be unmade and remade. They—mages, all of them, does it matter who?) He hears screaming, echoing, discordant, a dozen voices layered—or maybe it's just him.

His fingers dig into the marble (stone), clawing, red streaks left behind. The sound that comes is not pained; it runs deeper, an animal noise that tears from his throat. ]