abraxaslogs | [ OPEN ] pre-event (until...)

"I can do anything," Ronan says, "if I've got enough juice."

And considering how many fucking swords he summoned last night, he's not sure he's left enough power to dream anything without stealing from every other mage here. Which he doubts will endear him further to his hosts.

"It's not just about control, it's about energy. If there's nothing for me to work with, I can't manifest anything. And I can't tell how much I've got to work with until I'm sleeping again."

"Juice," Kylo echoes dubiously.

It's certainly not the way he's used to operating. Still, there does seem to be one very simple way to find out, to his mind at least:

"Why not try it and find out?"

"Now?"

That seems pointless to Ronan. He's just going to find the battery drained the second he's in the dream, and he can already hear Bryde in his head, berating him for stealing from the others. There hasn't been enough time for the magic to recover. What if he steals from the healers and someone dies because of him? It's a miracle no one died in here.

"I can't."

"Not sleepy?"

Kylo certainly can't detect any significant drain on the amount of magical energy available to any of them after all, though he supposes it's possible. Surely in the worst case, all that happens is nothing.

"Yeah."

Ronan can make himself sleep anywhere, if he has to. That's not a problem. What he's really worried about is fucking up and getting thrown in the dungeon for stealing magic from every mage in this place. But Kylo doesn't have to know that.

Kylo watches Ronan's face thoughtfully for a moment, as if considering pressing the matter— but ultimately he appears to decide against it. His eyes sweep instead to the pile of reclaimed swords at Ronan's feet, then beyond. Ronan's bed. Nadine's, Lloyd's.

"Tell me about it. The dream."

If Ronan can't or won't dream the solution, then they'll have to deal with the problem one blade at a time. He turns back and grasps the hilt of another.

"I rarely remember mine."

"Lucky you."

Ronan turns away, wrapping his hands around another sword hilt, leaning against it rather than trying to pry it away. He might not be sleepy, but he's fucking exhausted. There's no rest for him in sleep. He's either hyperactive with the power of creation or terror-struck, battling the darkest parts of himself and praying he wakes up on the other side. He'd thought it might be easier here to focus on the best parts of dreaming, but it's just more of the same bullshit. He sucks and he'll keep sucking and then he'll die.

Even though he doesn't want anything less than to talk about this, he mutters, "I was looking for someone."

He doesn't say the name, because it'll be meaningless to Kylo. Bryde. It was stupid of him to even try. What the hell could Bryde do for him now? Tell him that he's a self-centered dick? Remind him that he's got no one? That he failed?

"Then I got lost. I thought I was in a forest I knew, but I wasn't. I kept getting turned around. The trees usually help me, but they didn't speak my language."

We don't know any Greywaren.

Ronan drops his gaze to the sword, digging at a scuff in the pommel with his thumbnail. This is where it gets a little embarrassing, but fuck it. "So I started looking for you instead," he mutters bitterly. "Because at least you're in this world, and you said you'd help me, so... Whatever. You weren't there, either. All I found was your sword. So I kept going. And I found your sword again. Again and again and again. I followed them like fucking breadcrumbs, until there weren't trees anymore. There was just this shit. Everywhere."

Is that what he'd felt? In the quiet of the night on the mountain, there had been something. A distant stirring, just enough to catch at his senses without leaving him anything more concrete than a lingering disquiet.

"Perhaps it was trying to warn you about me. Your dream."

He wrenches the sword free after a short struggle, just a little more violently than strictly necessary. It clatters onto the pile. Kylo doesn't say so, but something about the new set of his jaw suggests he's far more accustomed to being seen as a threat than protection from them. He's hardly surprised to be represented like this— a blind explosion of blades spearing through everything in reach— if anything, it feels very familiar.

Inevitable, even.

"I'm definitely more sword than shield."

Ronan's gaze slides back to Kylo, considering the tension in his stance. He doesn't know whether that frustration is directed at him or not. Either way, it's not surprising.

"I don't need a dream to tell me that."

He'd introduced himself to Kylo with a challenge because he'd known exactly what kind of man he was looking at, and that had been exciting. His mistake was believing he could hold that man's attention when there were greater adventures calling.

"I shouldn't have asked you to babysit me. You've obviously got better shit to do."

"You didn't," Kylo says— and then, a moment later when he remembers Ronan might need the rest of the thought— "Ask me. I told you I would take care of your nightmares, if they followed you out."

And that's what he's doing, isn't it? He's just a little... late. Another sword clatters to the pile. Kylo rolls his wrists. It's more work than he'd like to let on.

"And I would have insisted you join me, if I had realised your abilities would be returning so... suddenly."

Dramatically, he doesn't say.

Okay, no. He didn't ask. He just assumed, like the idiot he is, that Kylo would do what he'd said he'd do. When will he learn to stop relying on people? He knew from the start that he shouldn't stay in this room, that he shouldn't close his eyes when there was a risk anyone else might be around. It was sheer dumb luck that he didn't kill either of his roommates.

None of this is Kylo's fault. It's Ronan's. It always is.

"Sure you would have," he says, not particularly enthused about being the weight dragging Kylo down wherever he goes. "But I think I'd better go back to Plan A. There's got to be somewhere those wizards can put me that isn't a room full of innocent bystanders."

"I'm sure there is. If you want to inform them you're an ongoing threat."

Kylo turns to face Ronan, abandoning the task for now. He can feel the thick, sluggish blanket of shame Ronan wants to drape around his shoulders as clearly as if it were his own.

"No. We will handle it. Together. Here. It isn't the dungeon that keeps the prisoners separated from their power, Ronan."

Which is part of why Kylo had volunteered as a supervisor— to gain insight into the method Thorne was employing to keep its prisoners powerless. If Ronan makes too much of an issue of the difficulties he's facing...

Well. Kylo can't see many reasons for them to allow Ronan continued access to his magic, if it's so easy for them to cut any individual off no matter where they are. And that's unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

We?

Ronan stares at Kylo, refusing to walk blindly into that offer. Not this time. He's not going to put himself in someone else's hands just so they can drop him again.

"So what?" he asks. "Why do you care if they put me in the dungeon? If they lock me in a tower? Whatever magic they do to make me useless. All it means is that you don't wake up to more of this shit."

It means certain death for Ronan, but he can't see what loss that would be for Kylo. He turned his back on Ronan so easily before.

Kylo doesn't respond. Not to that. Instead, he watches Ronan's face for a long, curious moment, eyes deadly steady on his face.

"You're angry with me," he murmurs.

Ronan lets go of the sword he's been leaning on, squaring his shoulders as he faces Kylo.

"Maybe I am."

And he doesn't have a right. He's aware. But Ronan has never required anyone's permission to be angry. He's always there for them and they're always leaving him. All of them. It isn't fair.

"I needed you and you left me."

Kylo doesn't flinch from Ronan's anger or respond with a heated barrage of his own, though it's clear something is happening behind the dark of his eyes as he swallows up the weight of that accusation.

I needed you, and you left me.

As if anyone has ever needed him to do anything but leave.

"They'll muzzle you, if you ask them to," he says eventually. "But that's not what you want. Is it."

No. No, it's not. That's what happened to him in the world he left behind, when Hennessy took everything from him. In a way, it's been his entire life: hidden away on a farm, tucked into the mountains, buried. He's so tired of being smothered.

He wants to burn.

Silence is never a wrong answer. He holds Kylo's gaze for another moment before looking away. He dreamt a thousand swords while searching for help, and now Kylo's here, and Ronan doesn't know what to ask him to do except stay.

Ronan doesn't need to say it— and not simply because of Kylo's newly returned ability to read minds. He recognises the roiling mix of anger, hurt and frustration all too easily.

The hunger, too. That perhaps most of all.

"Does it have to be here. For the dream to work. For you to undo this."

"It depends..."

It's not as simple as dreaming a whole new room. He can't just replace what's here already. If he tried, he might end up with an even bigger mess. Who knows? Maybe the whole tower would collapse under the weight of an additional room manifested over the existing one. Rewriting reality is complicated work.

No, he can't just throw new shit on top of old shit. He needs to think more specifically. Some kind of undo button? Ctrl+Z for the material world? God, but if he fucks that up, he could wipe out the entire castle. Ronan sighs, pressing his fist to his forehead. Think...

"Actually, it'd be better if it isn't. In case I get it wrong."

Kylo casts an eye over the skewered devastation of their dormitory, considering the predicament. It isn't simply a matter of wanting to avoid time-consuming labour— a number of these swords have their hilts embedded in the floor, and short of leaning into the aesthetic and hammering them flat there isn't much to be done.

Unless Ronan can rectify the situation with the same power that had them summoned into being in the first place. His lips quirk.

"Perhaps we can buy you peace and quiet for a few hours with some of these," he suggests, yanking one last sword free and testing the balance of its weighting appreciatively. "If a little distance would be useful. There should be lodgings available for the right price, now we have the freedom of the city."

Because the swords had been nothing but a problem for Ronan all day, he hadn't considered the possibility of their value. Even damaged, they're real steel. Someone's bound to have a use for them, for the metal alone. How much is one of them worth? A night at an inn? A week? A month?

"I've got no fucking idea how money works in this place," he confesses. "But I guess we could try."

[ OPEN ] pre-event (until...)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject