[OPEN] cold wind blowing beneath my wings

[coerthantorment]

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.

Comments

[stealsthetruth]

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?"

[coerthantorment]

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."

[stealsthetruth]

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."

[coerthantorment]

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.

[stealsthetruth]

"Umm..." It takes her a second to reply again; everything she just said before had kind of just... Tumbled out of her mouth, almost unbidden? Maybe she hadn't quite realized how much the whole experience had really messed with her head. It's like the second she realized she had the chance to tell someone not even remotely related to the case, all her angst about it just vented off in a rush. She's not used to being so open about her problems. It's embarrassing.

"...No, not exactly," she says finally, brow equally furrowed. "To be honest with you, the whole case was way beyond complicated. And with my memories being all scrambled while it was happening, I still don't think I quite understand the full picture of it." Mr. Edgeworth was the one who was always in charge of keeping track of all the case details and such. Kay just did her best to keep up.

She sighs, subconsciously moving to rub the back of her head; months later the wound there has mostly healed, but she can still feel a tender spot where she'd cracked it against the evidence room floor. "It's kind of embarrassing, actually. I got drugged by whoever it was that kidnapped me. And when I woke up..."

When she woke up, there'd been a dead body on the ground in front of her, but she doesn't really relish letting her cool elf dad know that she got spooked by a corpse.

"...When I woke up, I was still really disoriented, and I lost my footing and fell down this sort of... Trap door, to the floor below? I guess I hit my head pretty hard in the process. So the amnesia was my own fault, really... It was just a really convenient coincidence for the slimeball who wanted to frame me."

[coerthantorment]

She didn't lie - that is very complicated. It does make him slightly less frustrated, conceptually, than the idea of someone purposefully beating her about the head in that context. Drugging and kidnapping is still a lot, though, even from his perspective.

"I can see that making a lasting impression," he says, frowning. "Insomuch as the head injury would allow." He certainly doesn't seem to view it as trivial 'angst' at the least, even if he isn't totally sure how bothered she is by it on an emotional level.

"Were you merely a victim of circumstance that time as well? Or was there some value to kidnapping you in particular? I can't say I would peg you as a would-be murderer without solid reasoning."

[stealsthetruth]

I wanted you to catch Blaise for me... So I took dear little Kay.

It comes to mind all too vividly. Cloaked with a modulation device, the unsettling voice of the Mastermind had set the tone of the conversation to make it feel more like she and Edgeworth were having a phone call with some kind of demon, rather than a human. Those words hadn't even been directed at Kay, but they'd struck her to the core all the same. That she'd been used like some kind of pawn to manipulate someone so very dear to her... That hurts. And it haunts her that she was pulled into this world before she and Mr. Edgeworth could identify the perpetrator and bring them to justice.

She doesn't want to explain all that, though. That's no one's concern but her own.

"Of course there was value! I'm the Yatagarasu, remember?" she jokes, putting on her best happy-go-lucky grin. "Plus... We're certain my accuser, the real murderer, wasn't the person who drugged me." She shrugs. "Like I said... It was a complicated case. Makes my head hurt to think about, for more reasons than one."

There's a beat; the grin fades as Kay cocks her head at him, looking a bit worried. "Hey, um... By the way... Do me a favor? I don't know when you'd even get the chance, but... Don't mention any of what I just told you to Mr. Wright, OK?"

[coerthantorment]

Okay, yeah, that's a lot of conflicting details that he's pretty sure he's not going to understand from his perspective as an outsider. He barely even knows what Yatagarasu means, and she pointedly tried to explain that to him. Some sort of clan, or what have you.

Honestly, her follow up reaction is more concerning to him. He tilts his head a little, indicating his confusion.

"I'm not sure I could tell him, even if I tried," he says. That would involve understanding what the hell she's talking about. "But I can keep it quiet if that's what you prefer. Do you expect it would complicate matters?"

[stealsthetruth]

"I guess? Kind of..." Kay chews her lip thoughtfully, awkwardly directing her gaze elsewhere for a moment. "It's not that I don't want him to know, I just... I haven't had a reason to bring it up yet, and I don't want him to think I don't trust him, or that I've been keeping secrets from him for some reason."

In many ways, it'd be a lot harder and a lot more emotionally taxing to explain the whole situation to Phoenix. Unlike Estinien, he has stake in the well-being of multiple other players in the case. She's only able to talk about it here because there's little threat of him delving for specific details. Phoenix is from much further along in their timeline than she is, so he knows AND has told her certain things of concern do turn out OK... But that doesn't make it any easier for her to talk about them in such details.