EVENT #8: MÆRE - IC POST (MAIN EVENT)

[abraxasmods]

Event #8 - Mære

go to the OOC event info and plotting post or the IC faction intervention post.

---

Sleep can be a welcome escape from the daily toils of life. No matter one's magical affinity or physical prowess, many succumb to the need eventually. While some find refuge in it, others prefer to avoid sleep for as long as they can, fearing what lurks in the corners. For the latter, perhaps what happens next is just part of their nightly struggle.

Beginning on the night of JUNE 18, characters will be met with unsettling dreams and their worst nightmares. It will build slowly over the course of the following week as manifestations of their deepest fears and regrets make themselves known.

Night Walk

How does it start? Familiar, perhaps: experienced before or a recognizable concoction of events and feelings. Your old home, a town you've visited, a room you met an old friend in, a corridor where you faced off with a great foe, or a mosaic of the different pieces of your life. You don't yet sense danger. It's safe, you think. Or alternatively: you are consumed immediately by an unsettling feeling, finding yourself in a darkened room you don't recognize, falling endlessly, unable to move, already wounded in the middle of nowhere, or the growl of an animal. Whatever the recreated vista, you slowly get the distinct sense that you are not alone.

As you explore your dreamscape, this sense does not leave you. You may find a shadow looming over you, catch something in the corner of your eye, hear a sound far off in the distance. Wherever you turn, you seem to just miss it. Whether this unsettles you or not will vary, but you will remember this come the morning. If you are one of the lucky ones, it all ends here. Strange dreams are nothing unusual. Those happen now and again. But for many others this is just the beginning.

The Entity

If you are among those less fortunate, you will find yourself plunged into the same dream. It may not be the next night. Perhaps it happens later, when you're napping in the afternoon, or a few nights afterwards when you've already forgotten all about it. Regardless, it returns to you. The stage might be different, the details shifted, but the feeling of something watching remains. In your absence, it only seems to have grown. Each time you return to this singular dream world, its presence grows ever stronger. Oppressive, suffocating, you know you are being hunted.

When you finally see it, you know exactly what it is. The Entity that hunts you is born out of your subconscious itself, your deepest fears and traumas given form. A twisted manifestation of unshakeable guilt, a creature or foe you have fought with once before, a person you may have loved so dearly now turned against you - the sight of it chills your blood and you know in your heart that it is here for you.

The Guest

Should fate twist further, you might not be the only one. Instead, you'll find other Summoned with you. They might also be running from a presence of their own or maybe they're merely unlucky enough to have fallen into the path of yours. Whatever it is, they too will bear witness to that which haunts you - or you will see what haunts them, as well. Your respective dreamscapes might meld together, shift and change, or one might take over the other completely.

Though it's likely you won't realize you're trapped inside a dream, that doesn't mean you can't fight back. Gather your courage to face down your fears or try to help those you find yourself in the company of - you might just find your surroundings steadily shifting in your favor. A weapon here, a pathway opening there, a wooden door that transforms into steel. Be careful, though: should your awareness grow that things aren't real, the world will try to consume those thoughts and you within it, twisting things further in an attempt to make you forget that you're dreaming.

The Imprint

Luckily, you do eventually wake - unsettled, damp with sweat, but at least you're safe. It was only a dream, wasn't it? For some, that might be the case. For others, you'll start to hear the sounds of the dream in the waking world, glimpse the shadow of the Entity in a reflection, feel a breath against your neck. Marks or injuries might also follow you into the physical world: dirt staining your palms from where you fell, a cut from where you were struck, dampness in your hair from the rain. These occurrences could be obvious, but they might also be so minor you feel like your mind is playing tricks.

Still - what if it isn't merely a dream? As the week goes on, whether you experience the phenomenon for yourself or not, you'll most certainly hear of it happening to your friends, loved ones, neighbors. Word reaches you of fellow Summoned being stalked from the shadows, waking up with injuries they shouldn't have, possibly even suffering a near-fatal wound in their sleep. Clearly, there's more to this than uneasy visions in the night.

The Factions

While it is each Summoned who is the focus of their Entity's ire, they are not the only ones who seem aware of its movements. The factions will soon approach each Summoned with an offer: work with them to help contain the threat and aid the suffering of you and your friends - but the one thing they cannot explain is how they have come to know about the existence of the Entity.

Will you take the offer and try to convince your fellow Summoned this is a vital path to take? Or will your mistrust of those in power have you not only refusing, but trying to prevent others from making what you believe is a mistake?

The choice is yours, but the decision might impact more than just you this time.

A separate log located here will detail the reaction of the factions and so forth. You can tag in under the specific heading for each faction.

To thread out any arguments or conflict prior to participating, please do so in this event post. The IC Faction Intervention log should be only for those actively participating in the full process.

The Horizon

When dreams are no longer an escape, desperate souls might turn to the Horizon for safety - though they may remember that, previously, the Horizon was not safe at all.

It Follows

At first, the same doesn't seem to hold true. Things are quiet in the Horizon. There is no need for sleep or dreams here. You have full control over what's formed inside your domain. However, it doesn't take long for the remnants of that horrible dream to seep into your sanctuary. A field you grew may start to turn dark, becoming nightmarish corridors. Maybe the tower you placed so carefully begins to crumble, or perhaps the reflection you see of yourself in a lake isn't you at all. You will find that despite your best efforts, your Entity has followed you into Horizon and is corrupting your domain with it.

As menacing as the presence may be, the Entity will not be able to destroy other's domains. Within yours, though, it may twist the design to varying degrees, ruining carefully laid paths, staining blood on your walls, darkening what is most important to you no matter how much you might try to change it back. Conversely, its hold may only be strong enough to be a shadow in the corner of your eye. It all depends on the strength of your nightmares and how deeply its affected your mind.

Nonetheless, the message is clear: dreams are born of your mind and your mind is what the Horizon is formed from.

The Looking Glass

Whether you see the manifestation of your Entity in full or whether your domain is barely affected by its presence, all who enter the Horizon during the course of the week will find that they are once again plagued by a flash of a vision.

This is nothing like the glimpses into another's past, however. There are no headaches, no recognizable faces. This time, the vision will flicker in and out of focus like an old television trying to find the right signal, staticky and not quite clear at first. The flashes are brief, lasting only mere seconds, if that. In fact, at first, one might even mistake it for a trick of the mind. For some, this may be all they see. For others, it may return in another burst the next time they enter the Horizon, becoming clearer each time. It might appear as soon as you step in, or it might take an hour, two.

What you see will not be anything familiar. The scene itself will never change. It is a soundless meteoric picture. You may glimpse heavy winds stirring some sand, but you will not feel it on your skin nor hear the wind. You may see a flicker of the sea, but you will not smell the sea salt nor hear the crashing waves. All in all, this image which appears to you is abstract, strange, and impossible to understand in their absurdity - except for one part: the appearance of a single Arcana sign.

Intriguingly, this sign likely does not match your own. It might not even match anyone you know at all. It is an undeniable fixture, though, appearing emblazoned on the scene somewhere, not always in the same place, but always present: seared into the ground, carved on stone, scrawled on a page.

The six available images are below and each one is labeled with the Arcana sign your character will notice when they glimpse the scene. Choose any image you like, but only one may be selected. Characters do not need to be experiencing nightmares or the Entity to see these images.

As noted, the Arcanum on the image itself does not need to match your character's. At this time, there are no real details on what the Arcanum itself means or why it's appeared, though the possibilities are endless. Everyone in Abraxas possesses one, after all.

If you want to be surprised and assigned an image at random, comment here and we will do so for you!

The Hermit

The Sun

Temperance

Death

The Lovers

The High Priestess

CODE

Comments

the present

[ordinar]

Tonight, the nightmare goes off script. The beginning is the same — the car ride with Erik, which begins pleasantly but lurches into panic the second he realizes what is supposed to happen and there is nothing he can do to stop it. The crash, which expels him from the passenger seat, not in the typical violent way of car crashes but in the curious way of dreams, where suddenly the scene careens ahead and you find yourself somewhere else. His brother's broken body. The invisible weight that paralyzes him, the inexorable force that pulls him along like something caught in the undertow, as his mother's words echo from everywhere: you will always be compared to Erik no more mistakes no one asks for this the only thing that can give Erik's death any meaning—

Then suddenly, a new voice cuts through. What am I supposed to do? They're all going to die! When Wilhelm looks up, the dark, distorted rooms that enclosed him have opened up to a wide field and a wider sky. Blinking and squinting in the sunlight, it takes him a moment to realize that he knows the man standing beside him where he kneels in the grass.

Disoriented, all he can think to croak is, "What?"

He scrubs at his cheeks with the heels of his hands to try to hide the evidence that he'd been crying. Dressed in a full suit, he looks like he belongs at a funeral rather than a farm. Or, he looks like he should be in that crowd of dark suits filing out of the two vans...

[wolfssegen]

When Wilhelm arrives in the dream, Chester is still rooted to the spot, a cowardly version of himself trapped in his own self-doubt while the Wraith approach. A version of himself unable to protect his pack, unable to stop this massacre in the making. A wave of people like this should smell like a wave of people, with all their histories and intentions written on them in scent. But it doesn't - there's nothing, no scent, nothing but the scent of whatever they've tracked their boots in, and it's like being blind, being deaf, no way to get a read on them, no way to track them, no way to do anything.

At first, he thinks the young man in the suit is one of them, a scentless nameless Wraith come to kill his people, and he makes some small move, helpless and hopeless, to get his gun from where it's tucked into the back of his jeans. A moment later, he registers the scent of the boy. Familiar, but still new, standing out against a scentless backdrop of people who shouldn't be people.

Wilhelm. The boy from the meet and greet. The one Kylo had arranged.

It comes crashing back to him then, where he really is and what this place is, what this scene is. Not reality, but a nightmare, and a dangerous one at that. Almost immediately he snaps into action, his brain jumping from detail to detail - the boy in the suit, the tears on his face, the Wraiths in the background, approaching in what looks suddenly like slow motion.

Reaching out, he takes hold of Wilhelm's arm and pulls him behind himself, standing between him and the Wraiths, pulling that gun from the back of his pants.

"Stay behind me! Don't let them catch you. Run and leave me if you have to."

[ordinar]

When Ches yanks him up, Wilhelm stumbles to his feet and follows the force of that strong arm. After a small eternity spent paralyzed, he's surprised to find that his legs work at all. His eyes jump to the gun Ches pulls from his waistband, then to the ominous suited figures fanning out around the farmhouse, then back to the man shielding him. For weeks now, ever since Erik's death and his subsequent rise in rank, he's been shadowed by an armed body guard at all times, but Malin has never had to actually draw her weapon. Nothing was going to happen at Hillerska or around Bjärstad.

"What's going on? Who are those guys?" The questions stumble out on a thin, shaky voice. Breathing requires manual effort, his chest pinching tight. Clawing at the top button of his shirt, tugging his tie looser, he glances around for potential cover. A tree, a fence post, the wheel of a tractor.

And everywhere he looks, he sees that shadowy figure staring back, the same one that stalks him every night in the dark behind his eyelids. He feels its stare, rather, because he never glimpses it long enough to determine what it looks like beyond an unsettling blot on the landscape. He feels it like the tug of gravity, as if the figure is cut from the same material as a black hole — something that devours light and air. Instinct has Wilhelm grabbing at Ches's shoulder, fingers like hooks, even as a second bewildered glance around shows nothing but a vacant field.

[wolfssegen]

Something feels a little more stable in him now that he's got someone at his back who needs protecting. Suddenly he feels like he can react, like he's not rooted to the ground with that sense of fear. When the Wilhelm asks who these guys are and what's going on, Ches glances over his shoulder.

"The Wraith. They're hunters who go after supernatural creatures. They're here to kill my pack."

It's the first time he's revealed anything about what he is to anyone in this place. Hopefully, the kid won't remember it once they've woken up from the dream, but in a worst case scenario where he does, at least Ches knows the information is pertinent to the boy's survival right now.

"If they ask you what you are, you tell them you're a plain human, hopefully they'll leave you alone." he adds, after a minute, and draws his gun, though he doesn't point it at anyone yet. The Wraith are moving toward the house more than they are toward him, and he feels that gut-clenching fear of what they're going to do to his pack again. Cursing under his breath, he starts to move toward the house.

"I have to protect my people. I can't just let them die here. You think you can hide?"

[ordinar]

The shift in Chester's demeanor is something he might register later, when he thinks back on this nightmare in his waking hours — frozen fear melting away to reveal a sharp focus, a protective instinct. But in the moment, adrenaline spinning his mind and heartbeat pounding in his throat, it's his instructions that he pays exclusive attention to. Except, so much of what he says makes no sense. Supernatural creatures. My pack. A plain human. All these fragmented clues fit together in a confounding equation.

What is Ches if not a "plain" human? The way he describes his family, his people, as a pack makes Wilhelm's thoughts lurch toward— But that's insane, right?

All of this tears through his mind in a matter of seconds. A beat late, he realizes Ches asked him something. Dumbly, he nods. He can hide. He has to hide.

His eyes dart back to the large tree shading the border of the field, but before he makes a break for it, he asserts, "You're not allowed to die either." Raw words, thrumming with fear. He hasn't known Ches for long, doesn't even know him all that well, but he likes him. He's a good guy.

And with that, Wilhelm dashes for the shelter of the tree. He runs low to the ground, pumping his arms as if meaning to push the air — and with it, the earth — behind him. Each time his foot hits the earth, it seems to send echoes of his brother's voice: Let go. I'll see you soon.

cw: gun violence

[wolfssegen]

When Wilhelm says that he can hide, Ches nods.

"Good, you do that." he says, and is about to head toward the house when he hears the boy say he's not allowed to die either. That stops him in his tracks for just a moment before he offers the kid a smile and a nod.

"I don't intend on dying anytime soon. Got too much to do."

Reaching out, he gives Wilhelm's arm a squeeze and watches him dash for the shelter of the tree at a good solid run, a reassuring run because it means that he's taking this seriously, the risk and the danger that Ches warned him about, even if it sounds weird to him in the moment. Because it had obviously sounded weird to him, Ches could tell by the look on his face when he'd talked about a pack and supernatural creatures and all of that.

He's heading toward the house once he sees the boy get to safety behind the tree, only to spot a contingency of Wraith heading towards where they'd seen Wilhelm run. Cussing under his breath, Ches redirects and pulls his gun, aiming it at the Wraith in the lead and getting a shot off. The Wraith jerks as the bullet connects with his thigh, but after a moment he keeps going, and Ches swears again, running toward the tree at an angle.

"Hey! Leave the kid alone, you're not looking for his kind! He's just a human!"

hi I'm here to make things worse

[ordinar]

At the peak of adrenaline, everything happens in a clatter. His feet, pinched inside shoes ill-suited to running, pound the ground. His heart knocks against his ribcage as if demanding to escape. Just as Wilhelm reaches the shadowy circle of the tree, the gunshot splits the air and pulls his eyes back toward the house. He looks only long enough to register the suited figures moving toward him, then pours all of himself into the last burst of his run. He all but slams into the broad, knobby trunk, swinging himself around it to place the tree between himself and...whoever those people are. The Wraith.

Ducking his head and folding his arms over it, he tries to catch his breath. When he looks up again, the gently swaying shadow of the tree has solidified into the dark shape of it. Wilhelm's mouth hangs open, but his scream stays lodged in his throat. Too terrified to come out. Because the figure doesn't vanish when he looks at it — it holds his gaze like gravity. For the first time, he can see its face. Amid all the writhing shadows that compose the figure, it's his brother staring down at him with lightless eyes and skin the hue of death. A crown circles his head.

It stretches a black claw toward him. Flinching, Wilhelm shrinks against the trunk. For the length of a held breath, nothing happens. He opens his eyes to find the figure gone.

But the Wraith are drawing closer. He peers around the trunk to scope out their position compared to Chester's position. What he sees slaps the air out of his chest.

"Erik?" he croaks, stumbling out from the shelter of the tree. That's his brother. Alive and healthy and whole. Wilhelm darts a look between Erik and Ches, whose gun flashes in the sun. He signals the latter with a slashing motion. "Wait, stop!"

His brother would never hurt him. In the twisting, turning logic of dreams, it doesn't occur to him to question how Erik is there when he just saw his lifeless body, or why he's involved with a team of monster hunters. All that matters is he's here.

[wolfssegen]

Ches is unaware of what it is that Wilhelm is seeing on the other side of the tree. All he can hope for is that the boy's hidden himself well and that he's not having to witness the violence that's going on around him. Ches has learned enough about Wilhelm to know he's had an affluent upbringing, and he assumes that comes without much violence or having had to run for his life or being in the middle of this kind of raid.

Cocking his gun again, Ches takes another shot at one of the Wraith, pegging him in the shoulder and knocking him over, though there are still several of them running toward the boy hiding behind the tree. Lifting his gun, he takes aim at another of the Wraith only to hear Wilhelm's voice, panicked and desperate, asking him to stop.

Ches assumes that it's panic at the violence of the situation, or not wanting to see someone die, or something else like that, but he hesitates just long enough that he realizes he's not going to take the shot. Instead, he looks over at where Wilhelm's voice had come from just in time to see him fully exposed on this side of the tree trunk and that Wraith in the lead, the one Chester hadn't shot, grabbing him roughly by the arm, pulling it behind him.

"Leave him alone!" Ches bellows, running toward the Wraith and the boy, his panic pounding in his blood, his ears ringing, his chest tight with fear and protective anger, all adrenaline and cortisone pounding through his system, "Let him go! He's just a human, he's got nothing to do with my pack! He isn't even supposed to be here!"

[ordinar]

Wilhelm grunts, eyes blowing wide as the Wraith yanks on his arm to pin it behind his back. Instinctively, he struggles against the hold locking him, but his assailant answers with greater force, shoving him forward against the tree. He bangs his chin on the trunk, scrapes his cheek on the bark.

"What the fuck?" Now it's not panic cresting in his voice, but confusion, indignation, and cutting through both, hurt. "Cut it out!"

Why is Erik ignoring him? Just like he did in the car, when he brushed off every one of Wilhelm's pleas to be careful and pushed the gas pedal harder and harder. When he laughed even as tears spilled down Wilhelm's cheeks, grinning right up until the moment of impact. For a moment, his mind spins trying to reconcile these two truths: Erik, both dead and alive. Nothing makes sense.

Yeah, we'll see about that, the Wraith sharply replies to Ches's protests. The unfamiliar voice crashes through Wilhelm like a cold wave, makes him jerk harder in the man's grip, because he swears it was his brother— He'd seen him crossing the field. Thrashing and twisting, he tries to get another look over his shoulder, but the hands pinioning his arms are like manacles.

cw: gun violence, death

[wolfssegen]

When the Wraith shoves the boy against the tree, Ches can hear him swearing, and telling the Wraith to cut it out, and that somehow just makes him feel fond of Wilhelm. The kid has spirit, at least.

As the Wraith turns to him and says 'we'll see about that' in that tone of voice though, Ches feels a surge of rage, and he holds his gun up again, aiming it at the Wraith and hissing his words out.

"I said leave him alone. He's got nothing to do with any of this. Nothing to do with your stupid vendetta against us. He's just a human, and he didn't do anything."

He keeps moving, stalking his way forward, even as the Wraith shoves the boy against the tree trunk again, and Ches can see his face has been injured by the bark, scrapes and cuts that'll heal fast enough but are more than the kid should have endured.

The next part happens in what feels like a split second. Holding Wilhelm in place with one arm, the Wraith goes to draw a weapon, and Ches takes that moment to pop off his shot. It catches the Wraith in the side of the head, and the Wraith's body snaps to the side before crumpling.

"Quick, over here, stay with me!" Ches yells to the boy, beckoning him over.

[ordinar]

It all happens so fast. When the shot rings out, Wilhelm freezes against the tree. Behind him, the Wraith's sharp grunt cuts to silence. Grip slackening, the man collapses to the ground. Wilhelm's own knees feel ready to buckle. Gripping the trunk for support, he turns himself around to stare at the body spread across the grass. The frozen face tilted toward the ground is that of a stranger. Tears, sudden and sharp, blur his vision anyway as an empty aching guts him. Of course it wasn't Erik, because Erik is gone. Despite his brother's promise that they would see each other soon, he'll never see him again.

Ches's shouting seems to come from somewhere far away. His heart and his heavy breath are louder in his ears. His chest pinches tighter, his vision narrows — and at the dark edges he sees the crowned figure again. His throat constricts around a whimper.

Blindly, Wilhelm surges forward, stumbling over the splayed legs of the felled Wraith. He manages to stay upright, but it seems that the harder he tries to pump his legs, the heavier his body becomes. As if the gravity of some unknown mass exerts its pressure on him by inexorable degrees. He doesn't remember going down, but suddenly he's on his knees in the grass. His arms curl over his head and his fingers curl into fists around his hair.

"Sorry. Fuck. I'm sorry."

Dimly, he's aware that the other suited Wraiths must be swarming the house. And Ches is out here trying to protect his stupid, useless ass while his family is in grave danger.

[wolfssegen]

Ches isn't sure what the boy saw when that Wraith came at him, but there's no time to question it, question him, right now. What he can tell without having to ask, though, is that whatever the boy saw, whatever happened before he arrived here, is really messing with his head. He can see the tears welling in Wilhelm's eyes, can see the look of shock on his face.

But the boy pulls himself together enough to come running toward him on shaky legs, at least until he falls to his knees and curls his arms around his head self-protectively, crying out that he's sorry, swearing.

Ches jogs toward him and crouches beside him, running a comforting hand along his back, squeezing at his shoulder.

"Don't apologize." he says, his voice soft and gentle, completely out of tune with the world around them that seems to be falling apart into chaos. They're at the house now, he can hear the snarls of wolves, the cracking of gunshots. They're fighting back, now that they've seen their leader in action.

"We've got this. Okay?"

[ordinar]

Wilhelm feels like he's held together with a rubberband that's about to snap apart. Or maybe he's always felt this way — at least since Erik's death, a length of time that feels eternal despite the freshness of his grief. But now, with the nightmare churning to the surface all these fears, picking at all his insecurities like scabs, it's suddenly much harder to pretend that he isn't.

Ches's reassuring hand on his shoulder is what steadies him through the next cycle of breaths, still rough but slowing through his efforts to get in control. At the same time that he tries not to think of his brother, he also clings to the bit of comfort that comes with the thought of Erik crouched down beside him. He rubs at his chest as if the tightness there can be undone like a knot. He keeps his eyes squeezed shut, afraid to find that shadowy figure looming over him again.

After a long moment, Wilhelm manages, "How can you be so calm?"

He doesn't mean for it to sound like an accusation. But words backed by strong emotions can launch with more force than intended.

[wolfssegen]

Ches keeps that hand on Wilhelm's shoulder, sensing that he's finding some comfort in it. Ches is used to that, to people relying on him to be an anchor, a support, a tether to reality and safety, and he has no problem functioning in that way for Wilhelm, no more than he would with any member of his pack. Something in him has already bonded to this boy, has already decided that the boy is under his protection, someone to be watched over.

When Wilhelm finally speaks, though, he asks how Ches can be so calm, and it cuts his heart a little, the way the boy says it. Like he's some kind of jaded individual who doesn't feel the effects of violence anymore, a monster who can kill a man and not freak out over it. And it is the truth in a way, Ches has killed his fair share of people protecting his pack, leading them in protecting themselves. It's not second nature, it's not natural, but it's something he's become accustomed to.

"Because this has happened before. Because they've come for us before, and we fought back, we won, we turned them back. And they left. We can do it again."

It's not a defense of himself, of whatever perception Wilhelm might have of him as jaded or distant or a monster, it's just a statement of fact, the real reason.

[ordinar]

The thing is, he didn't even mean it like that. Where Ches hears an indictment of his darkest insecurities, Wilhelm feels his own weakness. He crumbles under pressure. He makes a mess of everything. He wishes he could seize just a piece of the steely calm that Chester commands, wearing it like armor amid the chaos.

But once words leave your mouth, you can't control how they land on others' ears. Or clatter in others' hearts.

In a way, Ches's hand on his shoulder does imbue Wilhelm with some of that calm. At least, his panic recedes from an all-consuming clamor to a dull, distant roar. He can breathe normally again. His field of vision widens and holds still, no more dark edges and dizziness. He reaches across himself to place his hand over Ches's and give it a squeeze.

"You have to help your family. I'll be okay out here," he insists, though his resolve is more cardboard than steel. He doesn't want Ches to worry about him when he has bigger problems looming.

As if to demonstrate just how okay he can be, Wilhelm climbs back to his feet. His glance darts around the field like a skittish rabbit. The rest of the Wraiths have swarmed the house. Out here, there's just him. And...the shadowy thing borrowing his brother's face.

He would be fine.

[wolfssegen]

To Chester, it seems like something normal for a human who's not exactly experienced at this sort of thing - to be afraid, to crumple under the pressure, to be weak like that. He hasn't been through this before, hasn't weathered it yet, hasn't lived through it, doesn't know yet that he can live through it.

It still hurts, just a little, to feel like Wilhelm, who he wants to protect, who he feels bonded to in a way, thinks of him as a jaded creature, a monster for his focus in the face of all this chaos. But he brushes it off, just like he usually brushes off his hurt, and he focuses in harder on what he has to do in this situation, the things he has to accomplish.

When Wilhelm says he has to help his family, that he'll be okay out here, Ches doesn't really believe it. Doesn't believe that Wilhelm will be completely okay by himself, that the Wraith won't come for him. But the boy is right, he does have to protect his family, he has to make sure they're fighting back, that he doesn't lose anyone. He can't lose any of them.

"No, no. I can't leave you." he says, his voice strained.

But he can't take him either, can't bring him right into the crux of the battle, where the violence is most intense, where he stands the biggest chance of falling to the enemy or to friendly fire by people who don't know who and what he is. Running a hand back through his hair, Ches makes a frustrated noise, then as Wilhelm stands, he takes hold of his wrist, heads back toward the barn, looking over his shoulder.

The last of the Wraith are heading inside the house now, and so he leads the boy into the barn and pushes him into one of the stalls, an unused one, that has nothing but clean bales of hay in it.

"Wait here, if you're going to wait. I'll send someone out to mind you." he says, his voice low and rough, "I'm not leaving you alone with this."

[ordinar]

After the supernatural calm that Ches emanated just a moment ago, Wilhelm is startled by the rough edge of his voice, the shadow of fear thrown by his words. Underneath his own fear — a heavy, suffocating thing — he's...overwhelmed by the realization that Ches could care about him this much despite hardly knowing him.

Luckily, no response is necessary as they pelt toward the barn. The journey passes in a blur. Wilhelm anchors his eyes to Ches's back, as if a single stray glance might create an opening for the shadowy entity to ooze through. He focuses on the firm reassurance of the man's hand around his wrist, on the pattern of one foot in front of the other.

Once in the stall, the only halfway useful thing he can do is try to lessen Ches' worries.

"I'll be okay," he says again, holding anxious fists at his sides, fingernails carving crescents into his palms. Maybe if he says it enough times it will have no choice but to come true. "And so will you."