abraxaslogs | [OPEN] cold wind blowing beneath my wings

Entry tags:

[OPEN] cold wind blowing beneath my wings

WHO: Estinien Wyrmblood and YOU
WHAT: Estinien is back in the real world and not particularly happy about it, at least until he manages to meditate his way into the Horizon again. Meanwhile, his cellmate Relena goes missing and he gets very angry about it.
WHERE: In prison and also the Horizon.
WHEN: From July 24th to August 12th
NOTES: If you'd like something more specific with Estinien feel free to hit me up on the Discord or at

quixocalypse.

I➔ And Back Again

The descent from the Horizon feels akin to being summoned back to a dead body, both in terms of power and relative comfort. The aches and pains of his imprisonment return with merciless acuity. While his energy had been boundless in that higher realm, here it is reduced to scraps as the ravages of hunger and exhaustion weigh down on him. It's the contrast itself that is the most jarring, along with the fact that he wakes up in shackles.

Yes, the fear that had been haunting his subconscious his entire stay in the Horizon has come back into context. This is what he'd been desperate to escape, and now that he's returned to it, he feels no less dread. Even worse is the fact that Ambrose seems perfectly chuffed with himself for what they've experienced.

Upon being returned to prison, he wonders what it was all for. Any connection to the power of the Horizon seems to be gone, and given that somehow accessing the Singularity was his one hope of escape, their return leaves him in a rather dire mood. To make matters worse, it seems that the guards haven't forgotten about his aggression on the way to the portal, and also on the way back. They decide to deny him food entirely on his first day back to his cell. He should be glad he's not been simply put back into solitary, something in his gut says.

The atmosphere around him is one of miserable defeat, during those first few days back in prison. Even during the recreational hours, his accumulated frailty can be seen. As much as he tries to flex his muscles, he soon finds himself slumping against the rec yard wall. He's tired, starving, and clinging more and more tenuously to any sort of hope. Was the Horizon an escape at all, when it was all according to the High Mage's plan?

II➔ To The Horizon

Fortunately for him, his obsession driven life means he is not one accustomed to giving up for good. It takes only a couple of days before he realizes the futility in surrender - especially when he's hardly explored all his options. The Horizon was something experienced outside the body, was it not? So why not see if the connection remains?

He spends the rest of that day attempting to sink back into the Singularity's power, carefully clearing his thoughts. He is used to stilling his mind from years of being connected to Nidhogg's eye, but it has been a while since such intense concentration was required of him. He's not sure when it happens, but finally, something clicks.

Instead of awakening on his prison mattress, he wakes in a field of rolling grass - and not long after, a pile of snuffling karakul. Everything comes rushing back. He'd remembered his time in the Horizon, but something about experiencing it again reforges the connection between those two states of mind: the mind of the dragon, and the mind of his true self. To think, that all of this had been made by his hand.

He frees himself from the overzealous affection of his flock, a lifetime of memories allowing him to better keep his reflexive fear of them at bay. He wanders the valley for a while, his memories casting all he sees in a new light. What did it mean, that his unshackled soul decided to build this? Was this what he wanted, after everything? He comes along the long bit of housing within his domain, a single-family household carefully crafted of timber, but left completely empty inside. For all the time he'd spent in the valley, he spent little time dwelling on this creation. He thinks he can understand, the emptiness of its walls resonating with a similar emptiness in his heart.

He traces his fingers along the windows, across the door, but he doesn't dare open it. Instead, he decides he'd rather go somewhere else.

Without his memories, he hadn't been particularly curious about other people's domains, mostly interested in his own creations and keeping them safe. Now, though, a lifetime of experiences draws him to the outside world. He wonders if anyone else has reawakened to this place. He traverses the Horizon on foot this time, and occasionally in soaring leaps and bounds that are nearly akin to flying. Yet, he summons no wings. He can't imagine he made a particularly good impression on anyone, the way he was before.

III➔ The Weight of Absence (Aug 5+)

And then, some days later, Relena is taken.

He doesn't know the meaning of it, at first. The guards simply come to remove her from the cell, saying it's for some manner of 'trial', and she goes, with nothing he or Himeka could do to stop it. He demands answers at the time, shouting at the guards, but receives none. Initially, he wonders if she'll be freed, much like Kay was. It'd make sense, he thinks. If the trial was just, he could see no reason for her to be put in solitary or anywhere else, and he knows she has at least one friend on the outside.

Yet, when he doesn't hear anything from her in the coming days, he can no longer rely on that hopeful thought. Kay has been allowed to come and go, just like the other guests. Would Relena not have come to speak to them, after being freed? If not for him, for Himeka or the others?

As each day passes, his frustration and worry increases. He'll start attempting to flag down any passing guests, asking if they have seen her amount the others upstairs. On the way to recreation, he will check to be sure she hasn't simply changed cells, and ask around the other prisoners.

"Relena - the girl from my cell, with the long sandy hair - the guards have taken her somewhere. Have you seen her?"

With fewer and fewer kind possibilities in his mind, he'll start turning his aggression to the guards, shouting at them to ask for her location, and trying to grab at them through the bars when they inevitably ignore him. Finally, he manages to catch sight of a guard he thinks he recognizes from the day she disappeared. He manages to catch them by the arm, dragging them back against the bars of the cell.

"Where is the girl?" he snarls.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Her first call could be missed - her more urgent pleas, less so. His vision focuses, with the sensation of not being fully certain where he is as he wakes. For a moment it feels like it should be among grass and towering stone, but then... no. It's a cell. And here, he knows who he is.

And who Kay is as well. His last memory is of her in the Horizon, in a context free from Thorne's trappings. Now that there back here, though, everything is a lot more complicated.

...But he's not completely capable of ignoring her concern. It clashes against the knot of irrational resentment in his gut. Had she really thought they were dead this whole time?

"Kay," he acknowledges roughly, slowly shifting to a less vulnerable pose. "You've risen up in the world."

She relaxes a bit once he finally answers, glad to see he's still some degree of alert. "Oh, yeah... Mr. Wright argued me out of here just like he said he would," she says seriously, frowning slightly. "Which, I remember you being kind of skeptical about his methods, so congrats on being wrong about that."

...Probably not the sort of sentiment he needs to hear right now. An unintentionally cruel comment, even, although she's really just trying to raise the mood with some playful ribbing.

She may realize, too late, how much of a deep cut that is from the way his shoulders tighten and his gaze falls. His failure in that regard is still fresh after all, and he knows full well the damage that his own skepticism might have caused. It's something he can't take back.

If he had believed in the possibility, would he have still insisted upon doing things his own way? Would he have pulled Himeka along with him so boldly? Would anything have been enough to change his mind when he keeps making things worse for himself, even now?

"You best cut your losses, then," he growls, reflexively digging in his heels. "There will be no clemency for me now."

"Cut my losses? As if!" Kay whisper-yelps, scandalized by the very notion. "I'm one leg of the Yatagarasu! What kind of hero of justice would I be if I just gave up on my friends like that? If they won't grant you clemency, I'll just have to steal you some!"

(Kay has no idea what the word "clemency" means.)

Estinien isn't sure that clemency can be stolen, or that she has any idea what she's talking about in the first place. Though, he also didn't believe she was right when she said that Phoenix Wright was going to negotiate her release. What does he really know about anything?

When in some circumstances this might be a reason to loosen up and listen, right now it just makes him feel frustrated and helpless. He still doesn't look at her.

"You are still at their mercy in your own way, girl. How much meddling do you expect them to put up with before you find yourself back here?"

"Hmmmmmmm... I dunno!" Kay answers after a long moment of looking pensive, shrugging the question off. "Guess I'll just have to make sure to find you some clemency in a way that doesn't involve meddling! Or if I do have to meddle, I'll just avoid doing it where anyone can see me."

Easier said than done. In this case however, her blase answer isn't one of pure naivete. The subtext she's sending here, with her body language and her just-a-hair-too-chipper tone, is: 'I don't have an answer for that right now, quit being cranky and let me worry about the specifics later.'

If he doesn't want to look at her, that's fine. Her visit down here is multipurpose anyway. She starts rummaging around her bag instead. "Did you want some food? I brought some with me, and you look like you need it."

The thing is, he really does need it, and it would take a feat of extremely stubborn willpower to turn her down. However, it seems like he might just pull it off when he looks up in alarm and something like worry, his eyes flashing to the hall in search of guards.

He starts trying to get up, a motion that causes him to wobble with a sudden headrush. As flecks of light flicker through his line of vision, he makes his way to the bars.

"Don't let the guards see you with that," he says. "I've been sent to bed without dinner."

And he doesn't know how much they'll tolerate.

That gets through to her, enough that she also gives a quick cursory glance around for any guards that might be skulking nearby. But the coast seems clear enough...

"They're starving you?" Kay asks when she turns back to him, in a proper whisper this time. Her expression uncharacteristically grave, though she still has one hand tucked inside her bag, paused mid-rummage.

Closer to the bars, they can at least speak more softly. Up close, she may notice that his features do seem somehow sharper than before - as a man with little body fat, there hasn't been much to lose. His expression falls slightly, his own despairing emotions becoming a bit more visible.

"If it's any consolation," he murmurs, "I've brought it upon myself."

By trying to escape, by fighting with guards for little reason beyond fear and pride. The ones he's given a hard time haven't forgotten and combined with his escape, he's been marked as a difficult prisoner.

"I'm only fortunate they haven't done worse."

"I don't care what you did, you don't starve people as punishment!" Kay hisses fiercely, struggling to keep her voice low in the wake of her outrage. "There's no excuse for that!"

She finally fishes something out of the bag and carefully hands it to Estinien through the bars. It's a lukewarm drumstick, wrapped up in a cloth napkin. "Here. I have bread and stuff, too. Focus on eating, I'll keep an eye out for the guards. Are they doing this to Miss Himeka, too?"

Now that it's in his hand, it would be more foolish to push it back and prolong the exchange. At least, that's what he tells himself. It may also be that, hungry and weak as he is, he can't actually bring himself to turn it away, despite being concerned about the consequences.

He moves back into the cell with the gifted meat, shaking his head as he does. He's mad about this, but he'll take it. Thankfully, he's also an expert at inhaling food in a hurry.

"Nay, not since we were freed from solitary. The food there was a pittance." Worse than the single meal a day in the regular cells. "I put up a fight when being taken to the portal, and have made enemies of the lot."

Combined with everything else he's done, of course.

"I thought I was on my way to execution."

Well... That's a relief to hear at least, that Himeka isn't in the same boat. Not that she probably isn't in need of extra food anyway; Kay recalls all too well how hard it was to get by on one meal a day.

At the mention of execution, she can't help but shiver, a chill running down her spine at the very idea. She and Estinien haven't known each other for very long in the grand scheme of things, but the idea of someone she has befriended being put to death is a little too much for her to contemplate. "They couldn't!" she insists. "For a measly escape attempt and roughing up a few guards? That's not exactly worth killing someone over!"

Speaking of treason... That guest on death row is probably down here somewhere, isn't he? Maybe she should look into that while shes here.

Estinien is already half done what she's given him, wanting it out of sight as quickly as possible. No time to savor any flavours, unfortunately, but at least that's what he's used to. Actually attempting to enjoy food is a relatively new thing for him.

He has to pause, though, at what she says. There is no scorn in his expression at he looks back to her. Though he would agree on an objective level, he doesn't believe that is how this place operates.

"The High Mage threatened to drown me for resisting their attempts to shackle me," he says. "On the very first day... I shall not easily forget that."

It's hard to remain optimistic, with that in mind.

Edited (changed dialogue i'm sorry) 2021-08-07 02:57 (UTC)

...That sure lines up with Kay's impression of the mage, based off of the very limited interactions she has had with the man.

"Well... People threaten to do stuff all the time and never actually act on it," she points out, though she looks a bit less certain now. "Plus, Ambrose is kind of the worst."

Estinien has no way of knowing if the threat was genuine, given that he's survived to tell the tale. It had certainly felt real, at the time, to be drawn to this strange place, naked and weak, only to have your host all but spit upon you. To threaten his life, to take away his freedom...

Even if not for everything else that's happened since, it would be hard to shake that memory, or to still the hatred that turns in his gut when he thinks of it.

"I spoke to his sister when we were recaptured... even she seemed to think he would trivially put an end to us if it aligned with his goals. I shall survive as long as it's a convenience to him, and that's all."

He really shouldn't be drilling in the inevitability of his death to this girl, but he's too lost in his misery to think better of it.

Maybe he shouldn't, but maybe it's not the worst thing for her to hear, either. Kay has yet to truly grasp how differently the society of this world operates compared to her own, but sooner or later she's going to have to confront it.

"He has a sister?" she asks, dodging Estinien's grim point like a champ. "...Is it weird that I think it's weird that he has actual family out there somewhere? I think I kind of imagined him just spawning into existence fully formed, like from some pond scum or something."

Edited 2021-08-09 23:44 (UTC)

Estinien snorts, raising his brow at her comments. Honestly, he can't argue that. He can't claim to find no amusement in her saying so, either. The traces of humour show on his face.

"It beggars belief, aye. But he does... and apparently, she hates him, which is far less surprising." He shrugs a shoulder. "She was decent to us when we were captured, but it was clear she had no desire to attempt treason to save us. She said she would do what she could to sway the courts, but..."

He makes a helpless gesture to his surroundings.

Kay falls silent for a moment, looking unusually pensive. So someone native to this world even promised to go to bat for the prisoners, and yet they're still all stuck down here?

"Maybe she lied about helping...?" She suggests, though she seems less than confident about that. "Or she just hasn't made it a priority..."

Her frustration spikes all at once in so saying. If she were in a position of power like that, and someone told her about the injustice being done here, she'd absolutely make it her first priority to resolve. Bad show, Ambrose's Sister! Getting someone within the Thornean hierarchy to be on their side is something Kay had always thought to be beyond their reach, but she dreamed that if they COULD obtain such an ally, that might very well solve all their problems. Hearing that this isn't actually the case kicks off a fire in her heart, and Estinien's fatalistic attitude about his estimated lifespan adds fuel.

Kay crosses her arms, huffing in frustration. "I don't know how much more of this I can take," she declares. "I thought the justice system in my world had its share of problems, but this is just...! It just... It stinks!"

She's so mad, she can't think of a better way to describe it.

Estinien watches her, his expression softening. He can tell how much this distresses her, how much it seems to go against everything she believes in. For him, it seems malicious but common enough to not be surprising. He knows the Ishgard of yesterday would have done the same thing to its prisoners.

He can also see there's no point in laying it on thick. It's hard to shake his own fears of the days to come, but...

"...I expect that she has tried, but found little success," he says, a bit more gently. "This place is not unlike my own world... even the most well-meaning souls can be waylaid by opposition and bureaucracy."

He sighs.

"It was clear when I spoke to her that she was at the behest of the king and queen, that she could not save us without damning herself. I have hope that her efforts may make some difference, however slight."

If not for him, then for someone else.

Kay's not sure what to say to that, other than to just agree with a quiet "yeah..." Because she hopes that too. She really does.

She looks down at her bag full of smuggled food, distractedly fiddling with the strap before chiming in again.

"Where I come from, it's pretty common for people to get falsely accused of crimes... Sometimes, they even get wrongly convicted, and they go to prison for a long time, even when they don't deserve to. I visited the inside of one of those prisons recently... I wouldn't want to wind up in there, but it still seemed better than this."

She finally looks up at him again, grinning awkwardly. "Heh, did you know? I've actually gotten falsely accused of murder before. Twice."

Estinien just kind of nods along to her explanation of her home's legal system, none of it sounds all that surprising to him. It's much the same in his land, after all. The last part does actually send him for a bit of a loop, though. He raises his brow.

"Is that so?" he asks, obviously curious. "And what did you do to inspire such rumors?"

Kay tilts her head back a bit, recalling the details of each incident. "Well... The first time, I was kind of just in the wrong place at the wrong time? I kiiiind of chased a suspicious person into a building that had just stopped being on fire, and when I did that I wound up being the first person to discover a dead body, which... is a thing that the police tend to consider pretty suspicious, for some reason."

In truth, the circumstances around that whole debacle were even more wild than she's letting on, but. The more detail she provides to explain her actions, the higher the risk she'll wind up having to explain how her father was murdered and it took 7 entire years to bring his killer to justice. Which, is more information than Estinien has asked for, and more information than she's willing to give right now.

"Mr. Edgeworth at least managed to keep the creep who was accusing me from actually arresting me that time. Then the second time something like that happened to me, um..."

The second time was a lot more complicated, and feels a lot more recent, even if both incidents only happened a few months ago for her. Kay holds her bag open to offer Estinien more food, asking, "Do you want the short version or the long version?"

Edited 2021-08-19 14:19 (UTC)

Ah... well, that isn't so scandalous as far as mistaken murder accusations go. He was more inclined to assume it had been an intentional framing. Estinien listens attentively - he supposes that being a thief and a sneak, occasionally getting caught in bad business is part of the job description.

He'll take more food without question, cramming it down just as quickly as he takes a brief moment to glance at the cage around him. He turns back to her, raising his arms in surrender.

"Do I look as if I have elsewhere to be?" he asks. "The long version is fine, if you see fit to tell it."

~~Hah hah hah yeah speaking of intentional framing~~

"...Okay, good point," Kay laughs. "Geez, where do I even start..."

She pauses a moment before continuing, trying to recall all the facts of the case. Her own memory around it is still hazy, even though she's had plenty of time for her memories to recover. At this rate, she's beginning to suspect that they may just never fully return.

"The second time around was way worse. I got kidnapped, first. And then I got framed... For killing a defense attorney with a fancy candlestick, of all things! And that time, the police really did arrest me. Even though I got hurt pretty badly just before the murder happened, and I'd lost all of my memories, including my identity... By the time the initial investigation was done, I was convinced I really HAD done it, and had somehow just buried the memory of it somewhere deep inside me."

So, it went from more simple than he expected, too far more complicated. Amnesia and kidnapping? It seems like a lot of work to orchestrate something like that.

"Were your accusors the ones that hurt you?" he asks, furrowing his brow. He can't tell if the amnesia was intentional or merely coincidental.

[OPEN] cold wind blowing beneath my wings

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)