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

( Continued from here. )

Kylo continues to be a source of intense relief. Ronan is practically dead on his feet, though he can't tell if there's something about this place that's sapping him of energy or whether it's a consequence of his last dream — the last dream.

"I can't possibly be the only one who wants to sleep next to you," he teases, with a quirk of his mouth and a quick sweep of his eyes over Kylo's substantial body. The Tower, indeed. "But I got here first, so I guess I call shotgun."

He kicks off his shoes like he's just been waiting for the excuse, then collapses into the bed beside Kylo's. Everything hurts in the best way as he sinks into the mattress, splayed like a tossed ragdoll. He'd probably be halfway to sleep already if Kylo wasn't holding so much of his attention by simply looming nearby. Ronan doesn't want to close his eyes yet.

So the problem of roommates didn't turn out to be such a problem at all. Now that Ronan's found a babysitter who's prepared to strike down any nightmares that might escape whenever his powers are restored, he can catch a reasonable amount of sleep every day.

No, the new problem is this: Ronan can sleep, but Ronan can't dream. Can't dream. He wants a new pair of boots. He wants an electric razor. He wants some fucking deodorant, because the stench of nineteen-year-old boy is getting a little too strong even for the nineteen-year-old boy in question.

And he's hungry.

He's so hungry.

He used to try to chase off this feeling by devouring every dish in sight, but there's nothing in the dining hall that can sate him and he knows it. It's a hunger that's both terrifying and extraordinarily irritating, and the only way he's figured out how to deal with it here is by not dealing with anything else. Even Ronan knows that no one deserves to get on the wrong side of his hangriness.

Confining himself to Room 2, he sits on the edge of his bed and waits. What for? Who knows. He probably won't feel it when he gets his powers back, because he never does. If he had the energy for it, he'd distract himself with pushups or go find something to hit, but if he had that kind of energy, he wouldn't need the distraction at all. The only thing he can do is sit here and feel the slow collapse of his essence, the yawning void of his unmaking, the creep of death working its way outward.

He checks his nose for a bleed. He checks his ears for a bleed. He checks his nose for a bleed.

He's so fucking hungry.

He looks like shit.

He should probably have tried this sooner. In the back of his head, he can hear Bryde's voice scolding him wearily: "You wanted a world where you could dream anywhere, and now that you have it, what have you done with it?"

"I know," Ronan mutters to himself as he leafs through a book in the library. "There are not two of me."

A nearby scholar, formerly engrossed in reading, turns a glare at him. Ronan returns it until he wins the staring contest, then drifts to another book.

Books. Fucking books. Learning magic, of all things, from fucking books. These were trees once. If they were still trees, they'd probably be a lot more useful in teaching him than they are in this corpse form, scrawled knowledge imparted in a way that makes Ronan feel like a corpse, too. This feels about as natural as Wikipedia. Does this really work for everyone else?

A quick glance around tells him yes. To his left, one mage conjures rainbow bubbles out of thin air. To his right, another lights a candle with a snap of his fingers. The scholar who ocularly scolded him now appears to be rearranging inked words.

"Fuck," sighs Ronan, shoulders sagging.

The room is a forest of swords. Hundreds of them, stuck into every surface like pins in a cushion. The mattresses and pillows are stabbed through as if a rain of swords fell from above, though of course they did not fall. They've embedded themselves there without human hands or gravity to guide them. The bedframes and canopy poles are splintered where broadswords and rapiers have become wedged in the wood. The stone walls and the decor are lost behind a frost of hilts climbing all the way to the ceiling. The floor is overgrown with sharp blades, some of them stabbed into it and some growing out of it.

The dreamer is spared, though he can't lift his head to see if any other sleepers are present or whether his roommates are in the same ruined state as the furniture. Like some kind of carnival trick, Ronan is sprawled out on the bed while sword blades stick out from everything that isn't a part of his body.

He's paralyzed. He always is, when he brings something back with him. In this case, he's brought almost a thousand somethings back with him, and all he can do is contemplate the disaster while he waits to return to his body. No one is screaming and he can't tell whether that's because they're still asleep or they're already dead or they had the good fortune of partying too late to end up at ground zero.

Kylo can tell something's off before he even sets foot in the room. Tired as he may be and distracted with thoughts of the tunnels, the moment he steps back through the fast travel portal to the Castle it hits him. There's a wrongness. An imbalance. He feels ripples of it in the way some of the castle servants look at him as he makes his way through the halls. Amusement, he thinks— though he can't think why.

The mystery reveals itself when he finally reaches the dormitory, ready to sink into the comfort of his gloriously oversized bed... and finds that in his absence, someone has turned the entire room into some kind of nightmarish pincushion.

Someone who appears to be in the process of trying to pull one of the hundreds of swords speared through every surface out from the post of his bed.

Kylo stands in the doorway for a moment.

"Yours?" he asks, redundantly.

room 2 | june 12 | closed to kylo ren

room 2 | june 13 | open to roommates

the library | june 13 | open to all

room 2 | june 19 | open to roommates

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