EVENT #10: AFFLICTION - IC POST

[abraxasmods]

Event #10 - Affliction

go to the OOC event info & plotting post

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With tensions heavy across Abraxas and all the destruction that's happened, it's no surprise that the dark shadows which sweep over the land go unnoticed...at first.

Winds initially stir in Solvunn, where the influence of the Old Gods remains the strongest. Slowly each Herald infects Thorne and the Free Cities, as well. The Summoned are the first to feel its effects and are the most heavily impacted.

Though no one will realize it until well afterwards, Nocwich remains unaffected. After all, the Summoned don't reside there.

NOTE: This event will deal with themes of death (people and animal) and horror imagery.

Emergence

It begins sometime in mid-October, around the 18th. Not everyone will experience it at the same time. You might even believe you're spared until days afterwards when you're visited by an unusually vivid dream.

The dream starts the same for everyone: you are going somewhere, anywhere, walking to your bedroom or enjoying a stroll on the beach. You might be driving down a familiar neighborhood. Wherever you're headed, you eventually come upon a stone tablet engraved with your Arcana. Laid on the tablet are three objects:

◎ A dead moth trapped inside a wilted rose, symbolizing Koth of Festering Lands
◎ A teacup inside which sits a single nightshade berry, symbolizing Adlewyrd of Poisoned Tongues
◎ An ornate cracked hand mirror that contains no reflection, symbolizing Sannleikr of Many Faces

Make a choice. Something inside your soul will be drawn towards one of the objects. Maybe you spend hours in the dream deliberating, but sooner or later, you'll pick one of the items up. The moment you do, the other objects vanish and the chosen Herald appears before you. Where one might expect a god to seek subservience, the strange figure instead extends a friendly hand towards you - as though it's greeting you as an equal.

Whispered around you, you hear its name. Then it fades and with it the dream. You awaken.

Affliction

You go about your day as usual. That's when you realize something isn't right. Creatures and people around you behave strangely. You begin to sense that you are the cause.

Depending on your chosen Herald, you'll experience at least one of its afflictions. The effects might start small, then grow. They might rush you all at once. You can't shake what haunts you, though you can try. Spells, potions, and willpower can help keep the afflictions at bay but you won't ever be completely free.

As the afflictions seep into your mind, you start to find shadows of it following you: a dead moth here, a nightshade bloom there, a cracked mirror elsewhere. You may even wonder if it's following you in the first place. What if instead, you are the one leaving these signs behind?

Corruption

The first time you inflict your ability on someone else, you don't mean to. It might be a stranger, some unsuspecting soul, or it might be another Summoned. Regardless, the afflictions that ail you seem to spread through you into another. Someone falls down as if in the throes of an invisible death or secrets spill. You brush by someone and they're suddenly upset and confused.

The more this happens, intentionally or not, the better you feel. You may grow full of life and energy, gain a renewed strength of heart, or radiate a charm that turns heads and garners compliments. The afflictions haunting you could even start to fade or completely vanish. And if you use your newfound power deliberately? You'll feel better even faster for longer. Of course, these boons are temporary, lasting at most an hour or so. When the feeling wanes, you might miss having it.

You are not possessed. You can't control this power that spreads through you, but how you respond or behave is up to you. You could be attracted to the allure of power, enjoy the boons you are granted, or realize you can gain relief from your afflictions if you choose a victim. Not everyone will fall headfirst into the pull. Some are not easily swayed by power, some struggle to overcome their dark impulses, and others would rather endure their suffering than inflict it on someone else. But others still might succumb to temptation and turn on those around them with purpose: once, twice, multiple times. The choice you make is yours alone.

Blight

With the call of the Herald at your fingertips, the world around you twists. No one knows whether this stems from you and your newly imbued afflictions, or if the Heralds are exerting power on their own. It's for sure easier to think of what occurs as the influence of something monstrous beyond your control. No matter the cause, the earth is changed all the same.

Omens

The omens arrive shortly after the initial Summoned receive their dreams, but they don't come to every faction at once. SOLVUNN is first, being home to the Old Gods' shrines, before THORNE and the FREE CITIES follow only days afterwards. Depending on where you are, the omens will affect things a bit differently.

Solvunn

In Solvunn, the ground stirs. A desiccated hand breaks through the grass, a cloven hoof. Human or animal, they crawl forth, animated against their will. Some might attack, but most do not. At the same time, crops around the settlements begin to fail. Some chickens lay rotten eggs while cows produce spoiled milk. Any livestock that perishes overnight will surface in the mornings with empty eye sockets - pecked out by crows or gnawed on by rats. From a distance, the ocean can be seen bubbling as leviathans beneath thrash.

Worth noting is that many of the dead are concentrated around the shrines, especially the ones deep in the woods. They're too decayed to recognize, and some might not even move from the site, as though they are waiting for the earth to take them again...or as though they once chose to give up their life at this very spot.

Summoned can assist by helping to cast spells or place warding charms around shrines, farms, and gardens to protect crops and livestock. As a commune, the Solvunnites will share their resources as much as possible and would appreciate those who might lend a hand bringing supplies, herbs, and offerings to neighbors who are lacking. The Summoned can also brew a common herbal remedy to aid any animals who have fallen ill or to help purify the well water.

Free Cities

In Libertas, the dead buried under the rubble dig themselves out. More crawl forth from graves in Cadens' cemeteries. Beasts and bandits slain in the desert wilds rise, hungry or searching for the ones who killed them. At the same time, dead fish wash up onto the shores of Aquila while birds fall dead from their perch, dropping like flies from an unknown illness. Vultures and other scavengers begin to prey upon the eyes of the dead, leaving behind hollowed-out corpses.

Worth noting is that in the Badlands, a few very old and skeletal corpses rise with a metal plate or two screwed onto their bones, which are also oddly elongated. Only one or two make their way near the city. The army is quick to dispose of them before many can notice. They will not disclose any information about this and will claim these are just monsters like anything else.

Summoned can assist by going on patrol with the soldiers to put down any risen dead. Merchant caravans are also hiring escorts for their journeys. Additionally, they can help look through any received supplies and packages to make sure the food isn't rotting or worse, use a special dissolving compound to purify the waters, and donate staple food items to refugees and the less fortunate who can't afford the rising prices.

Thorne

In Thorne, the dead emerge only from the outskirts of the castle city. Thanks to information from one of their Summoned and their recent monitoring of the Singularity, Thorne was able to act swiftly and was able to ward any royal or otherwise significant burial sites. Graves and tombs of less importance, though, will not be protected in the same way. There are fewer encounters with eyeless corpses, though some animals might appear outside the castle in such a state. Normally extravagant dishes from the Castle's kitchens use simpler ingredients as they struggle to ration their food stores.

Worth noting is that a few unexpected corpses make their way up from deep under the castle in places beyond the dungeons. These are twisted and mangled, missing limbs, heads, fingers. The castle guards are quick to dispose of them before they get too far into the rest of the castle, but one or two may be spotted.

Summoned can assist by contributing to the wards around Castle Thorne and the city, using spells to put down the dead without mangling the corpse, and taking inventory of food stores. Further, in Nott the situation is more dire for anyone who is traveling there to continue assisting with repairs following the attack. Nott will welcome help with any problems caused by the omens. It'll be clear the kingdom has neglected the city somewhat. Thorne will claim the Castle takes priority, of course, due to King and Queen residing there along with the entire royal court.

Apprehensions

Across the factions, locals are beginning to catch on that something isn't right with you, the Summoned. No one will say it outright, but there's an air of caution and wariness around you where you go. Merchants might be quick to hand you your wares so you'll leave or locals give you a bit of space when they walk by. Chatty innkeepers are more reluctant to hold lengthy conversations.

Much of the time, it may not be conscious. The natives might simply sense something off that instinctually makes them want to put some distance between them and you. The only exception? If you've chosen Sannleikr of Many Faces, you'll continue to exude your charm towards people you encounter. At least for as long as you continue to inflict that ability you've been gifted.

Displacement

Everyone responds differently while in the Horizon. You might exert better willpower over your afflictions or you might feel its effects more strongly. It all depends on the individual and their mindset. Regardless, the Heralds are only one part of the equation. There's a much bigger disturbance going on.

It could happen as soon as you enter or it might be as you're stepping over the threshold into another's domain. Whatever the case, you are suddenly not where you're supposed to be. Instead, you're in one of two places depending: transported into a domain you never meant to go into or in a foreign setting altogether.

Visitation

Whether you're the one transported or someone teleports unexpectedly into your space, the Horizon becomes unpredictable for the next little while. Rooms normally locked to strangers, areas you yourself may not even realize exists - you and your fellow Summoned continue to pop in and out despite your intentions.

The effect isn't painful, just disorienting, like missing a step you didn't see or stumbling through a door into a too-bright room. The person whose domain you've inadvertently visited might sense an unwanted presence, whether they're inside the Horizon or not, or they may be completely oblivious. This will depend on the strength of their connection to the Singularity and the Horizon.

Not to worry. You won't be trapped or anything in these cases...unless the domain you land in happens to seal from the inside. You might stumble on secrets you weren't meant to find, though, locked away in someone else's mind.

Ensnared

The less fortunate will be pulled into a space that they've never encountered before. The bizarreness of it resembles the glitchy visions that flashed through a few months ago, but rather than an image flickering by, you are now inside the space itself.

Trapped between minutes to hours, you can't use the Horizon's creation magic as normal. Attempts will falter or go sideways: trying to fly out might cause you to tumble, tools and objects are broken or not quite right, wounds don't vanish or heal completely, etc. More significantly, you can't seem to send or receive messages through your connection. Anything that manages to come through will be garbled and distorted. It's as though the place you are in is just out of the reach of your control.

Luckily, you may not be alone. Someone else may have gotten lost alongside you. They might already be there when you stumble through or they might arrive after you do. They might even fade out sooner than you, unintentionally leaving you behind.

Eventually, you'll be released back into the Horizon proper, spat out in a random place in the Horizon. While you're stuck, though, you can try to survive, explore, sit and wait it out, or make friends with your fellow trapped partner. Each area has its challenges and quirks that you'll need to deal with.

Scenes to Explore

JUSTICE ◎
FULL IMAGE

High in the clouds, these snowy peaks are as cold as they look. Giant marble hands reach out, though their sheer scale means you might not recognize them as hands from up close. You can scale the mountain, but if you try to go down, the hands will flip the mountain, which sends you tumbling to the top again.

It's up to you whether you can be injured when you fall. Maybe the snow will feel like marshmallows, or you'll break a bone on the jagged rocks. No two experiences are the same. If you have a partner, they could end up faring better than you despite being in the same place.

Conjure some warm clothes or a log cabin even if you wish - they might not manifest perfectly, but it'll be better than nothing. At least the view's fairly nice...while the sun is up. A blizzard will come through by nightfall. With it arrives a strange hovering light that entices you or your friend to follow it into the frozen darkness. What draws you out depends on you. It could be a familiar voice, an image, or a simple compulsion. If you're lucky, the person with you is unaffected and can try to stop you. Or maybe you're the one desperately chasing after the other person?

---

THE CHARIOT ◎
FULL IMAGE

From a distance, it's hard to tell if they're shipping containers or houses stacked atop each other. A gooey mess covers the ground below. Oddly, the smell isn't as unpleasant as the goo looks. It smells like bubblegum or cotton candy, artificial and sweet. When you first fall in, you might land inside one of the homes, on top of the stacked structure, or the ground. You can try to reach anyone else who's there with you, but be careful: the ooze is spreading. Climb if you must or move from room to room. If you don't keep moving, you risk getting sucked into its sticky mass.

Each block of a home is different. Some are furnished, whereas others are empty or filled with strange knickknacks. Some might even have subconscious creations spawned by you. Keep ahead of the gloopy substance, and you'll be fine, probably. Or you can try to fight it back or block its path by sealing yourself in a room or otherwise, which can slow it down significantly. Mostly, you'll have to hope you fade out before the pink mass completely consumes the landscape.

---

THE WORLD ◎
FULL IMAGE

The hazy neon glow obscures a nothingness that seems to extend forever. In the middle of the wet ground are several stacked television sets with wires plugged into nothing. Inexplicably, there's also a cat. At first, it appears perfectly normal, but keen observers will notice that its behavior is on a loop where it will walk a certain path, pause at specific intervals to lick its paws, and meow at set points. It does not acknowledge any of its intruders. You can break its loop by picking it up, at which point it'll go limp as a ragdoll. As soon as you set it down, it'll resume its actions as before.

While you can see the same images as someone else on the screens, it's also possible you'll each see something different despite being in the room together. What you see is up to you. It could be an old fuzzy movie, home videos of your childhood, trivia questions you have to answer correctly, or even a memory or vision you wouldn't want to share. Words or faces taunting you could appear between staticky flickers, or maybe your very thoughts are projected onto the screens for anyone with you to read.

Break the televisions if you want, but given a few short minutes, they'll reform between one blink and the next. Looks like you'll have to keep watching until you're released.

---

THE FOOL ◎
FULL IMAGE

Sprawling and massive, you're unlikely to recognize at first that you're trapped in a labyrinth. Stone walls rise around you, and your surroundings are pitchblack. Manifest a torch or a flashlight if you can, though these will be prone to going out at inopportune times. Escaping over the walls will only send you into another section in the maze.

As you navigate the twisting corridors, you'll encounter any variety of trials and troubles: gaps in the ground, spiked traps, haunting whispers, monsters, decaying corpses. Some of these might've formed from your mind, others might've spawned from anyone else who's trapped with you.

If you aren't alone, do your best to locate your fellow Summoned. Voices do carry and echo over the walls, and there could be landmarks that help you find each other. Finding the exit, however, is another matter. Walk and climb all you want. A way out is impossible until the Horizon chooses to set you free.

Players can pick any scenario that interests them from the four choices above. Unlike the visions from before, characters can accidentally be trapped in as many of the scenes as you want, as many times as you want. Another option is that they can stay trapped in only one scene while a variety of characters fade in and out to join them, or some combination of the two. Choose what works best for your plans.

Each scene will once again carry an associated Arcana etched somewhere inside it, which can change from person to person or instance to instance. It might be on a wall, a table, or on the ground. Characters with a stronger connection to the Horizon are likely to be trapped for longer but the extent of this is your choice and it won't ever exceed a few hours. It's also your choice whether the afflictions continue to haunt them or not. If you want characters to deal with both problems while stuck together, you're welcome to!

Generally speaking, there are no restrictions other than that they won't be able to communicate with anyone outside the area, they can't escape it until the Horizon chooses to release them, and their creation magic will go wrong just enough that it'll make things tricky.

Comments

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo had lain down on her bed, like normal, closed her eyes, like normal, crossed her hands on top of her stomach, like normal, and opened her eyes —

Not in the Roadhouse.

Somewhere as far from the Roadhouse, she can't even get to the thought because there's piercing screaming and the stench of fresh and old blood both, something sickly sweet the first confused breath in spun her stomach's complaint at it even as she couldn't give it any attention. Not when her hands were raised to find her ears, but they never quite got there, just her shoulders punched toward them, and everything around her has most of it.

Her eyes might as well have been made for shadows. Torches dot the walls, but the shadows can't hide the chains, the blood stains, or the broken beds in splintered pieces. All of them are too small. Too, too small. The beds. The chain cuffs. Child sized. Her hand reaches for a dagger that isn't there because she's not in the real world. Not real, but absolutely fucking real in every direction.

Even as she has no want to touch anything in whatever this place is, she sizing up a piece of broken wood on the floor, how easy it might be to snap a hand-sized part of this section of the bed. To take it with her to wherever the screaming is coming from.

But that's when the snarl of a voice cuts through (into?) the screaming, has her whip the opposite way, and it's Geralt. She doesn't need more light to see the fury on his face, either. But it unchecks her mouth, and it's an effort in the face of both that she doesn't mind staring loudly. "What the fuck am I doing here? What the fuck are you doing here?" Barely a beat. "What the fuck is all of this?"

[gynvael]

The absurdity of her question makes him blink (what's he doing here? This is his fucking domain). Then it's gone. His brows furrow deeper. He curls his fingers around the edge of the door frame. The wood whines, splintering.

Geralt stares at her. She shouldn't be here. How did she get here? Logically, he knows it must be the Horizon fucking up. This isn't the first time it's happened, not even the first time today. He's been sent tumbling into spaces he hasn't meant to go, as well. But he can't think straight. All he sees is Jo, here, in a place he has not shared with even those closest to him. Not willingly.

It's been a year. He's ignored it for a year, and he wishes to continue to do so. He most certainly does not want to move forward with the knowledge that Jo has seen it.

Fuck. He should leave. He also isn't willing to walk away while she's intruding. Perhaps it's worth noting, though, that he doesn't come in to drag her out. Doesn't move any further than where he stands, as though he can't step past the threshold of the door. The smell turns his stomach. Not the blood, but this. This specific combination of odours.

"Leave. Now."

[tobeclosetohim]

Geralt stares at her for a long moment, and she doesn't stop herself from raising her eyebrows at him for the seconds it takes. The screaming stops, and that smell keeps filling up her chest with each new breath. It's not the blood and the death—so much of her life is both of those scenes in various forms — but the cloying sweet she can't recognize.

Whatever that is. It's the one that makes Jo want to twitch her nose or reflexively swallow. It's like whatever it is hits the back of her throat too thick, even just breathing it in. The chill that must have been here from the beginning was starting to creep up her skin, too, even as it was all background through processed around the fixation point of Geralt.

"Leave where? Does this look like it has a bright red blinking exit sign?" She clips it, but only as the screaming comes again, making her look away from him entirely. Trying to figure out what direction the screaming is coming from. Isn't that more important than yelling at Geralt anyway? Getting to whoever that is? Like getting to the people in Libertas was?

[gynvael]

She's not going to figure out where it's coming from; it's everywhere: around them, inside the room, staining the silence. Echoing. But there's a muffled quality to it, too, like it's blurred. Indistinguishable.

There's a door. She can walk through the fucking door. That's the exit. And maybe if his thoughts weren't so jumbled, his veins not so icy, he'd understand. What she's feeling. How disorienting it is to land in this room without warning. That it is not a vision he would wish on anyone. He's buried it here for a reason. He's tried to rid himself of it. He has. He's touched this door several times, willed it away. It never lasts more than a few hours.

She will want to know what it is. He does not wish to explain. Why would he? What the fuck would she even understand?

His jaw tightens. He sucks in a breath. "I will not tell you again."

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo looked back again at his word, still as stone and icy as the room itself,
the air under it that just kept getting sharper, and Jo's eyes narrowed. "Wait."

And why didn't she think of it before? Even if he hadn't been as rabidly bothered by being stuck in that corner of the city and that rooftop patch as her, he had been there. In Libertas. He'd come there to help. He's here now. And nothing about that look is one about caring. About giving a damn about whatever is happening to the person—people—somewhere being hurt.

It's blistering, barely checked, rage.

The kind of dangerous level of rage you get tripping over someone's secret.

"This is yours, isn't it?"
It doesn't dawn like an epiphany;
it crashes like a vase.

Baffled confusion slid slick in the blood between them, on the floor, walls, and everywhere, to something deeply horrified. It skipped across that shot of self-preserving fear and right into flaming, righteous indignation. "You can dream anything in this place, and you dream of torturing children??"

[gynvael]

A split second where he almost thinks he misheard her. Fuck if he knows why. Perhaps some part of him had expected different solely because she knows Dean, because Dean's defended her more than once.

Then it sinks in. The air crackles. He moves lightning fast, slamming her against the blood-slicked wall with a low snarl that's more animal than it isn't. The chains rattle. It's fury, running cold, not hot; the dagger at her throat doesn't press against her skin, doesn't threaten to draw blood. It rests gently in that way which suggests he knows she's no match for him—not for a matter of skill but for what they each are. For what he is.

He has not noticed his eyes turned inky black, the darkened veins that spread. His nails where he grips her are sharp, claw-like. It is not just the presumption. It's that she is saying it here, in these walls, in a room built by humans and then destroyed by the same.

His voice is quiet. Death soaks everything around them, and it seeps right through him. "Say it again."

[tobeclosetohim]

The only warning she has isn't much of one; there's the blur of a lunge, and then her shoulders and head crack back against a damp wall. There's the sharp kiss of a blade, against but not in, fingers digging in hard and unyielding, and when her head swings up, it's black shining demon eyes, veins of black around them, and the bottom barrel bitter vindication of being right.

That he's everything she called him out for being—that Dean's wrong.

But everything distorts around his voice. Each syllable is less clear. The words indistinguishable. His lips move, but all Jo feels is a slam of cold through her harder, farther, faster. Far more brutal and unyielding than those hands or the wall she's pinned against. Even as she's kicking out and up at him, there's the quick hiss of breath in between her teeth, like being dunked into a frozen lake—

( And then it's all gone. Geralt's gone. A flood pushing into that same space. Then. A windy street. A woman with long dark hair and dark eyes, shaking her head and smiling slyly. The growl that comes from her side. Running. Turning back to see Dean Dean Dean on the ground, shouting his name and turning back for him. No other option.


P A I N


More than she'd ever thought possible. )

And in Geralt's grip against the wall, Jo's body drops solid and complete as a stone into the hold of those clawed hands suddenly, as though her ability to stand, to hold her weight was just as suddenly ripped out.

( There's a floor; one she's not getting up from. Blood coming out as fast as she'd ever seen it come out of someone else. It only means one thing. Everything's moving so fast. That cold is coming back, here, too. Her feet. Her legs. Too many voices. She can't keep them straight. She can only just keep her back straight. Her head up. Too many voices. Too many faces. The same, but cracked. Refusal in their faces is the only fuel to keep it that way.

The plan is simple. The plan is easy. Child's math.
She just has to stay alive long enough to do it.

Press back the black just a little longer.


Even that doesn't go right. Sam. Dean.
Her mother staying. Because of her. For her.

Because she doesn't make it to the end even then.
There's the solidness of her mother's shoulder. A blast of heat. )

— Jo gasps loud and body-wracking hard; air a finite, terminal, impossibility one second ago.

[gynvael]

The rush that flows through him is the first thing he notices. Indescribable. Like being satiated when he'd not even realized he was hungry. Fills his lungs with his next breath.

Then Jo goes limp, dead weight in his grasp. He pulls back. It's not concern, exactly—nothing can really happen to you in the Horizon—but it's so damn unexpected, it startles the anger out of him. For the moment, anyhow. He'll remember when she wakes back up later.

(Though in some ways, he almost knows what happened. Does he not? Not in precise terms, but he knows he did it, that it came from him. A flood of power that leeched into her.)

One foot half-passes the threshold between the room and the corridor. The ground gives out. He falls—tumbling through nothingness. His back slams against hard ground. Jo collapses right on top.

She's fine. Probably. He can hear her pulse, at any rate.

He squints in the darkness. Where in the hell. "Fuck."

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo barely has that breath back in her, the feeling of her body as her own, in one piece, and gravity up and vanishes. She's falling. They're—they???—are falling. A tumble of bodies. The sound of another person. The all-encompassing, suffocating too, terrifyingly familiar dark. And just when it seems like it won't stop, it stops. Jo crashed into the solid mass of the body, brain still shoving itself back together.

Feelings, images, cold, blood on her hands.
Feeling her life spill out in her hands.

Jo went to push up and found herself slightly weaker, disorientation roiling as she forced her vision into focus and scrambled right back off Geralt. It means she lands wrong, ends up on her ass first, and is still scooting back until she accidentally slams one shoulder into a wall; one that definitely shouldn't be this close. "What the hell did you just do?"

She knows. She knows. She.
Dean said. But that's not possible.

[gynvael]

He sits up, pressing one hand against the heavy stone walls narrowed in around them. These are not the corridors of Kaer Morhen. Nothing about it is familiar, in fact. Jo stumbles and shuffles back and Geralt ignores it all until she finally speaks.

His eyes flick back to her. They've faded to their typical yellow, something that becomes clear when he stands and lights a torch hanging in a sconce with his palm. The gold gleams in the flickering fire: hard, just as icy as before.

"You tell me." He brushes his fingers over a dangling broken chain. "I doubt you've run short on presumptions about my nature."

He had not done anything to her (except he had, deep down). She'd. What. Lost consciousness? For a brief moment. And he should care more about it, perhaps, but her words remain sharp in his mind, leaves acid on his tongue. What baseline decency he's extended between their little excursion on the roof and inside the Roadhouse has thoroughly dissolved.

[tobeclosetohim]

She can still feel it, enough that her hand drops against the left side of her stomach as she's pushing to stand. Being ripped wide open, so fast and hard, it made the world spin. The wet of her blood soaking into her shirt, her jeans, and the floor under her. The effort it took. To keep her chin up. Still calling her mom on being ... her mom. (This is your last chance...) And Dean, too, more seriously, there at the end. (Make it later.)

"I saw it." Vehement, if not as sharp as she'd like. The shock isn't waning, but she's shoving it down as hard as possible. Here, like there. Here, nothing like there. It's pushing through disoriented overlap in her head and fisting her own guts for the hardness to come back into the weight of her bones, of her tone. To take back whatever slide he'd won.

"What was that supposed to do? Scare me into dying earlier than all that?"

Scare her into the actual fear of her own death, her choices. Of the kind of death hunters went down in the dark and light like all the time. Every year more came, just as more went. All in that same wash of blood. It doesn't.

(It does.)

[gynvael]

Where the fuck are they? Geralt sniffs the air. Stale. An ivory bone peeks out from under the dirt. Are they in the Horizon? Someplace beyond the Singularity? It is simpler to focus on the problem at hand than the screams that still ring in his ears. It's fine. They're old memories. He's carried them with him for decades; he can carry them for a few decades more.

His brows furrow, concentrating. A small wood horse materializes in his palm. Misshapen, one leg crooked. So they are in the Horizon. Of a sort.

He huffs. What is she on about? Saw what?

"Jo." He doesn't turn towards her, but his hand pauses where he's feeling around a latch on the stone wall, following where it might trigger. "If I wanted you dead, you would be. And I hardly need to lift a finger to invoke your fear and hatred. You do that all on your own."

She can tell herself whatever she wishes to justify it. He's fucking tired of this world putting her in his path.

[tobeclosetohim]

She doesn't care about his words, not how wrong or right they might be,
only about the goddamn abject level of clear dismissal in them.

"Right, and so you just thought you'd shove my death wholesale down my throat in fucking technicolor surround sound for fucking shits and giggles instead?"

Each of those words cranks harder. Sharper. Jo uses her own truth, her own death, like a blade, stabs it into that air behind him and his goddamn not even looking at her, turns it outside of herself like it isn't there, spreading wider and wider through the inside of her. Like she's not suddenly aware, too too aware, of how small she is, how thin her skin, how always close to that end, always locking that knowledge out, to be able to keep running forward, into the dark, toward that ending always promised right at the beginning.

For this moment, Jo has zero fucking fucks to give about his back, and everything about him, everything she saw, everything he did, it's all roiled up in a screaming ball drenched in her blood. The only thing she has to keep from letting it get a cuff around her ankle (her head, her heart) is bloody fucking rage, wielded like a cudgel, toward it being done and spoken about like it was less than worth his notice to fucking force it on her.

[gynvael]

Jo can rage all she wants. He's no stranger to accusations, but something about what she says makes him turn around. He frowns. He knows nothing about her death. Only that she died. Even if he did have the power to enter her mind, where would he have drawn the details from?

The tips of his fingers tingle. She isn't lying. He also still doesn't know what she means. What, is it the Horizon again? Showing visions? It wouldn't be the first.

Either way, it certainly was not him. (Was it?) Were it anyone else, he'd have taken a moment. Considered. But this is not near the first nonsense she's slung at him in anger and he has no time to entertain yet another. He's a Witcher, not a mage. What will she blame him for next? Throwing them into wherever the fuck they are? A broken nail?

"I did fuck all to you. I have not done shit to you from the moment we met." He steps forward, closing the distance between them. "Do you think Ciri would be teaching you how to handle your steel if she knew you thought her father a monster? I've stayed my hand because I've learned those like you are not worth my breath nor my blade. But do not mistake my desire to preserve my efforts for better people as leniency."

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo grits her teeth and doesn't back away when he steps menacingly close.

Like all hunters, there are things Jo does not want to look at and spends a good deal of effort and time on both not looking at and not connecting the lines between, and Ciri and Geralt are one of them. Because equating Ciri—strong, beautiful, a little too serious, easily flusterable, incredibly skilled— with Geralt? With the black eyes that had been her last sight before it and that room all around them?

If Jo did, she'd had choices she had to make, and she likes Ciri,
and she doesn't want to think about it or do what she should because of it.

"I did not just will myself—" Those words get emphasis. "—into that, I don't even know what to call it because it's not a memory, it's not something I'd ever have to see until it happened, and it's not something I would have gone looking for. I had enough details from Dean about what happened; I didn't want to live it now."

Those last words come out faster and more honest than she even means for them to. Need. Need to see it, live it, would have been better. Want is too bare, too much like fear and avoidance. Too close to the core, of being close enough to her death, knowing enough of it, and not needing more than Dean's words. And now too intimately all he'd left out now that night after Lucifer's appearance. All he couldn't have known inside of it. Or about the end of the end.

[gynvael]

Silence falls between them. She sounds—he isn't sure. Angry, but the kind that's rooted in too many open wounds. It's not that he doesn't know what to say. It's that everything which feels right to say are not the words he wants to offer her. Not right now. Not when his own nerves are rubbed raw.

He turns away. Even so, the edges of his voice have softened. Not quite empathy, not anything solid. But softer nonetheless.

"I don't know how you saw what you did. If it came through me, it was not intentional. The Horizon's hardly stable as of late."

As in, the whole reason why she landed in his domain in the first place. In that room. If she stopped to think about it for a second, she would realize that—but then, no one has their head twisted forward these days, do they? And it is far easier to lay fault with another.

He grabs the lever again. This time, he pulls it—and in the distance, somewhere unseen, the groan of stone grinding on stone echoes. He peers forward through the dark stretch before them. Unfortunately, with all three sides closed off, the only direction is forward. So they're stuck together. Again.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's brow wrinkles at that, still too sharp in that anger, but it's not what she expected. It's a disturbing lack of parallels. He turns away, again, toward that wall, looking for something, but his voice is quieter. She wouldn't call it soft, but it's lost the matching disgusted bitterness looming over her or that black-eyed rage slamming her into a wall.

He pulls a lever, and the sound of stones groaning and grinding somewhere far off is ominous, rumbling through the walls and the floor. The darkness stretches beyond and down that only one side she hasn't paid enough attention to look at, which is absolutely on her. She's not standing close to him, but there's no way to get further away from him in this space.

"You've got to be kidding. You have a dark, creepy rat-race maze under that—" And Jo does have an ounce of compromising preservation inside her disgust every once in a while. "—room, too?"

[gynvael]

He walks. It doesn't feel as though they're indoors. It feels as though they're underground. A cave structure? The walls are flat, sturdy. Manmade. Perhaps they're in someone else's domain, but he doesn't think so. He can will himself out of another's domain. Here, it's—

Unusual. As though the tether which links him to the Singularity is stretched taut. Or is that only his imagination?

He lights another torch as they pass by it. Just to keep track of where they've been. He steps over a rat scurrying past.

"This isn't mine," he replies flatly. Why the hell would this be his? "Are there any other incorrect assumptions you'd like to make or are we finished?"

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo stops walking almost as soon as she'd started, because he can keep saying that and she can keep ignoring that he's saying it when he's actually going on about something she's decided he deserves hell for. This isn't. That doesn't make any sense.

"What'd you mean it's not yours? We were just up there."

This with pointing at the ceiling... which, okay, does look different entirely. But it's the Horizon. The bunker ceiling looks nothing like the Bar floor, and the ground outside that has to be covering the rest of it is unchanged. That doesn't mean anything.

[gynvael]

"And now we're not."

He can't explain it, either. He's accepted there are inexplicable aspects to the Horizon no one understands. Whether that's the Singularity or the minds which occupy it, who knows?

What he does know is they require a way out. Wherever that might be. Jo might've stopped, but he's still walking, pausing only at the end of the narrow path. A fork in the road.

"When I stepped into the Horizon yesterday morning, I landed in a stranger's domain." This isn't quite that, but it's undoubtedly related. He glances left, then right. Where had the grinding stones been? The sound. To the east, he thinks. "This way."

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's weight shifts a little, something not quite to surprise piquing toward that fact. The one she didn't know at all. Things have been a little weird here and there at the Roadhouse. Little spotty things that were here and then gone before she even got around to needing to check in with Dean about the fuck that might have been about. Maybe she should have.

She does at least decide to follow Geralt because he and the torches are going that way, and a look over her shoulder points out it's the same way he's going or just sitting there in that spot forever. And that idea is way too full of standing or sitting in silence, having to think about what's curling around all the edges of her thoughts.

(Case in point, right now,
It's the growl at the beginning,
and the one right at the very end.)

"If it's not yours, and it's definitely not mine—" And there's a wrinkle in even the last word in her head, even if it never touches her tongue. "—whose is it? Does someone else specific's domain look like this?"

Whatever this is.

Dark and creepy in a way that is more evoking of annoyed wariness than it is fear.

[gynvael]

The grunt from Geralt is exasperated. A distinct, Does it look as though I fucking know? rolled up in one brief noise.

He's moving for the same reason. Hasn't got any desire to sit and think and remember what's buried deep in his home. That she saw it, that he has no wish to get into it with her. It's not a secret, how his kind are made. But knowing the bare facts is one thing. Witnessing the scars it left behind is another. He doesn't want something so personal, so rooted in his past, in her hands.

Except it's too late for that, isn't it?

They bump up into another stone wall before long. Geralt makes another sound, impatient this time.

He glances over his shoulder. Turns back—and then hears a click under his foot where he knows, without a doubt, should be solid ground. They had walked over it only a second ago. But the Horizon does what it will: the floor they're on spins, swinging the walls around. He stumbles, catches himself on a pillar as everything shuts on all four sides.

Tight. So tight there's barely room for two.

And somehow, that stench drifts through again: rotting herbs and thick magic. He curses. Swallows down the spike of rare panic that rises inside him. A door. Is there a damn door in this place? Where he's often been unshakable, steady, there's something almost erratic in how he feels along the walls, searching for what he already senses is not there. He almost forgets Jo is even trapped alongside him. He just wants to get the fuck out.

[tobeclosetohim]

"So eloquent."

Jo mutters it under her breath, to herself, more than says it to him; it might even be a concession to the fact some part of her has begrudgingly accepted she has to deal with him until they get out of whatever this long, weird, vaguely chilled hallway is. Jo is trying to find something to focus on anything, even the stupid back of Geralt's shirt, rather than let the cold slip into her bones, remind her of the cold taking over both of her legs.

There's a half collision with that shirt and Geralt—who is still too god damn tall—when he suddenly halts, and she'd been fixating on not fixating, which just fucking made a loop of fixating-not-fixating. It's right as she's trying to step back as the floor lurches upward, spinning, a wall somehow suddenly behind her, and she doesn't even intend for it to happen when she braces herself against some part of Geralt.

Who is rigid as a fucking statue.
As that column he's clutching.

Not because she touched him. A thing she notices only when she does it accidentally on purpose (why is that getting to be a thing? At least it's not with a weapon this time; not that his was). Muscles coiled, still enough. She's pretty positive in the tiny box, he's not breathing. "Sorry" is habit (all of it still happening, being realized in a stamp of seconds) at not quite average volume still, but at least it is specifically for him this time.

Then, like the world coming back to life he's all movement, shifting hands on the walls so close to their sides, and Jo tries to press back into the wall at her back, but there's almost no room, and as she's frustratedly taking a breath in her nose, feeling at the wall behind her, when it comes back.

That heavy, cloying sweet something that makes her throat tighten and her stomach roll a little. It's almost nauseating in this small space in a way it hadn't been in a massive room, and she coughs slightly just out of reflex even when nothing's in her throat. "What the hell is that?"

[gynvael]

The darkness is suffocating. Even he struggles to see without a single pinpoint of light to aid him—or perhaps that's simply a feature of the Horizon. Of where they're trapped. He isn't thinking about it, because he isn't thinking about much at all except not being here.

He slams his palm against the wall—trying to knock something loose or sheer frustration, it's difficult to say. The crack is sharp; the sting drags his attention back to reality. In time to hear Jo speak, reminding him that she's here.

He takes a deep breath, and the smell immediately roils his stomach.

"It's not real." That isn't an answer. He might not even be talking to her, but it isn't. None of this can be real.

He closes his eyes. Imagines a door. A hole in the wall. Nothing. Not even a doorknob.

He's so fucking done with this place. His head hurts; his eyes are beginning to burn like they've been dipped in hot coals. It's his imagination, probably, but he can't shake it. For the first time in a long while, he doesn't know what to do. The dawning realization that they've no choice except to wait this out grips him. He does not want to sit and wait. He's not certain he can. And the fact that Jo is with him is—

His fingers dig into his palm. Like he's trying to stop himself from clawing through the stone itself. "There has to be a way out."

[tobeclosetohim]

Yeah, that's definitely not an answer. But it's not like earlier; it's worse.

Because it's not to her, it's like he heard the question but then forgot she asked it. Forgot if it might not be serious. Or for him at all. But his voice is a brick truck of serious swerving. Shuttered by quick breaths and Jo doesn't need a face to know what first-stage not-going-to-hyperventilate sounds like. She's had it firsthand more times than she will ever admit to. Between that and the viciousness he's hitting the stone, Jo doesn't even check the stoplights before she's talking, walking straight over the fucking sudden weightlessness of the bonkers weird.

"Hey. Woah. Woah, there." Jo's hand lifts and almost goes out, instinctive, even as it stops in midair in that dark. It can't even be far from him. But she can't quite, beyond that, doesn't know enough to know if it'd be worse, even as she keeps talking. "Breathe. There's a way. There's no point to us being trapped in a two-foot cube until we die."

She does not need the guy with fucking black eyes, who can body slam her in less than a second, and keeps incredibly suspect things around in his (basement? Domain?), losing his shit in less breathing space than half an elevator.