( closed; quest ) the long and winding road

[sorser]

WHO: Stephen, Thancred, & Yennefer
WHAT: Three individuals go on a quest to help perpetuate better magical monitoring of the Singularity!
WHERE: ALL OVER THORNE
WHEN: End of March into mid-April.
WARNINGS: Some eventual monster-related violence and injury! But nothing else for now; will add as needed.



(( quest info here ))

Comments

stephen. tw; mentions of self harm

[vixening]

[ it's disorienting, more than anything; waking up on the ground with a piercing, pounding headache. she tries to sit up and the pain alone almost causes her to get sick again. it takes a few moments before she steadies herself again, before she's able to get to her feet. she hates that it's not a totally foreign feeling, hates the way that this part of it, too, reminds her of aretuza. of tissaia. of information getting out. it takes her those few moments for her head to stop pounding, a few more before the pounding in her chest slows.

she supposes that there is very little, here, she should be worried about. supposes she should be grateful that most, if not all, of her secrets are already out. because the feeling of knowing she wouldn't have been able to stop it, that she wouldn't have been able to stop it. yennefer takes stock of her location, of where thancred kneels not far from her, and where stephen now stands, unsteady of his feet. she doesn't remember stephen in the memory, doesn't recall seeing him anywhere near, but then why...? ]

Stephen. [ her voice is a bit hoarse when she speaks, reaching out because he hasn't yet put it together - that the touch is what did it. that this is something happening to all of them. instead, she does reach out, sets a hand on his elbow, tries to get his attention because maybe he might have an idea of what this is, if it's singularity or if it's something else. there's something tight in her throat thinking ronan might be behind something like this again, but then her hand settles on stephen's elbow and they're somewhere else.

Stephen runs, or it's not quite Stephen, is it? Because the sign etched along the hem of his tattered cloak is that of the Chariot. And he knows he's not Stephen, knows that he's never been here before or seen any of this, knows that he's not really even choosing what steps he's taking at all.

But Stephen does run - he runs through the underbrush, through the rain. There are thoughts on his mind that aren't his, panicked fragments of sentences, of facts. It's gone and you're alone and then someone else's voice, a lower voice, a voice he knows saying you, me, and her. Stephen runs faster, more desperately, trips over the roots and shrubbery of the Continent. There was a woman, an older woman, and she'd promised him the chance to have it back. A chance he turned down. And he remembers her voice. I want your desperation crisp. You will beg me to take it from you, and I will. Blood, pouring down his palms.

Fringilla had offered for him to go with her, had shaken her head at him, as glib as ever, and he'd turned that down too. Instead, he runs through the countryside, through the rain and the forest. He screams words that should respond to him, chaos that should be his. But nothing happens. He just wants to go back, he just wants to be home, but over and over again no portal appears. Eventually, whether it's the mud or the exhaustion or something else, he falls to his knees - he falls, and he lifts his face up into the sky. The rain.

He feels the frustration and helplessness catching up with him. He knows it's happened, knows that it won't work. It's gone, his magic, his chaos. Everything.

He screams.

yennefer squeezes her hand on his elbow, tries to shake him out. she doesn't know why but she doesn't let go of him, her eyes searching his face.

whether she knows it or not, she's going to be able to ease that headache for him, when he comes to. he just has to come to first. ] Stephen.

[sorser]

[He cannot know what's happening to him until it's too late, even if his incident with Thancred's memory has already set a precedent. This is all still too new, too sudden, and without context, they cannot know what is causing it. Their close proximity to the Singularity just days before? Something about the thaumametors that Ambrose conveniently forgot to mention? Another outside influence, ripping their memories from their minds and letting them settle in someone else's head? Why? How?

As before, he finds himself debilitated by it. Barely kept standing, some unconscious part of his mind anchoring himself against Yennefer's touch, perhaps the only thing that keeps Stephen from pitching straight into the ground.

(What is this? Running, running, screaming, voices in his mind telling him that it's gone, he's lost it. His magic is gone--no, her magic? The lines are blurred, they're one and the same now--and there is no way to get it back. The rain pelts against him, the sky is grey and heavy and suffocating in these moments of desperation. His hands sting; his palms are bloody.

Words that would summon magic do not come. The space in front of him that should whir to life with a portal remains empty. Once again, in that dimly aware part his brain somehow still active in this wayward memory, it reminds him too much of his own scarred hands beyond this place. That feeling of uselessness after his injury, cutting deep, hollowing him out from his core.

The scream is not his own, but it might as well be. He's felt this way before, in almost every degree, and in that whirl of frustration, anger, hopelessness, desperation, he understands, because he has he knows what it is to have lost everything.)

Stephen.

Her voice jolts him back into reality--or maybe it's merely the severance of the memory finally freeing him--and when he opens his eyes, he's a sensation of daggers behind his eyes. His head may burst on the spot, and he hisses out a curse under his breath, disoriented. The whiplash from her memories to now might as well have set the world at a tilt.]

Yen... Yennefer. Your... [Words feel clumsy on his tongue.] Your magic, you were running-

[vixening]

[ this is different, which is what throws yennefer off. not that long before she had been walking, side by side, with thancred through his memory. they had been able to discuss, to touch, to be involved in that experience. she had been able to be there, with him, while he explained the context. it was odd, an experience she wouldn't necessarily love to trip into without warning again, but it wasn't this.

this - which has yennefer's eyes wide, her hand still on stephen's elbow. still trying to rouse him. she can recognize the pain in him when she does stir, as he curses and comes to, though she can't help the measure of relief she feels when he does. when he speaks, his words are clumsy - which is an odd, very un-stephen-like experience to have, and yennefer's brow creases. ]

What? My magic? [ what's most confusing about this is that they know - thancred and stephen got the gist of it, back after the wolf attacks. back when she couldn't do anything to help him. they know she is without magic, that she did something that was against whatever rules the brotherhood had always had, and that it left her empty. why stephen is bringing it up now...

a chill goes down yennefer's spine, then, her eyes going a little wide. part of her wants to pull away from him, but she also finds she can't. not if he already knows. not when she's cut herself off from everyone else already. so instead, her hand squeezes a bit around his elbow (which, in turn, will help ease some of those daggers. some of that pain. )

because if she had seen thancred's memories, if something about the dream of the eye and the focus of the singularity is bringing them all together, then... ]

What- [ she swallows, suddenly unsure if she's ready for his answer. her magic, running. it applies to so much of her life, so much of what she's done. you pick p a few things while you're in hiding. ] -what did you see?