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

[gynvael]

Her instincts are good. It would be worse; even the sensation of her hand hovering near makes him pull away reflexively. As much as he can in this cramped cell.

He doesn't need her to tell him to breathe. Except he does, and it bothers him that this is so. That part of him recognizes he's losing his grasp on himself, his composure, on everything that he has spent his entire life building, brick by brick. He should not be this easily rattled. Not even over...these memories. He's faced them down so many times. They shouldn't be haunting him as though they're fresh wounds.

He exhales, slow.

"You need to—make something." Because he can't. He can't concentrate well enough to do it. Not right now. "Like a door. Or...stairs."

Doesn't matter what. Maybe it'll not be perfect, maybe it'll send them falling into a pit of snakes. He doesn't give a shit as long as they're elsewhere.

[tobeclosetohim]

He slams himself back harder and faster, and Jo's teeth nearly shake with the sound of that impact. No, not impact; retreat. Hard, heavy, desperate. It's clawing up her spine, the fucking freaked-out level that he's just ramping by the second, and she can't stop breathing in that horrid scent.

"Yeah. So. I'm—" Jo's voice is a little taut. "—not so great at all of that yet. At least where it comes to things that aren't inside the bar."

It feels stupid to admit, comes tumbling off her tongue a little too haltingly fast, and like something she should have figured out. But Dean. The Roadhouse. The Bunker. Libertas. She hasn't had the time. She hasn't taken the time. She's only been focused on her single goal from day one: hunting. And fuck all now, she needs those things she wasn't looking at.

"Look. Just." She doesn't even know. "Hold still. I'll try."

It's probably comic. Jo's once-floating hand ends up on the pillar. Her eyes close, her forehead scrunches, and she thinks about a door. And kill her, but it's right now the door in the bar going to the bunker? She tries to think about it as clearly as she can, teeth pressing, and it feels fuck all stupid. Eyes slit for staring at a wall, and going wide as a skinny crack of yellow-white light starts making the trail outline of the tall rectangle shape.

But the light won't get bigger even as she pushes hard as she can fathom, fingertips gripping the column to white. The space inside the line still looks like the wall.

[gynvael]

Oh. Of course. Of course she isn't. He can't talk; he doesn't struggle with creation in the Horizon, but it's still concentration, still on rare occasions prone to going sour if he isn't careful. If his mind is too full of distractions.

He lets her try. Watches closely, focused on it in an effort to drown out the tightness in his chest. His blood boils hot in his veins. Not real but real enough. Is it this place? His own damn head? The door doesn't form near quick, and he can't even be angry at her for all the overwhelming agitation that wraps around his throat. If there's one thing he understands well, it's how the Horizon can turn on you.

Shit. He lays his hand inside the glowing outline as if he might be able to help it along. The rough stone wall under his palm smooths, but no real door takes shape.

"Try again." His voice is tight. An order, a demand, a need for this to work. If not a door—then what? Widen the damn room at least? That won't help. It isn't the size of it which bothers him.

[tobeclosetohim]

It probably says something that no one in the tiny box has time to remark on that Jo doesn't glare at him when he bites out those last two words, so tight they could pop, so demanding it might as well be the crack of a whip, no matter that she can hear that part, under it, shaking like glass ready to shatter.

"I'm still trying," Jo says through mostly gritted teeth. "I haven't stopped trying."

It's just sitting there like that. It doesn't look anything like what Jo's picturing except for its shape, and that shape is just the shape of any door anywhere. Even as Geralt gropes the wall for purchase or handle, nothing is firming up, and Jo has no clue where to pull anything else from to make this work any better. It's invisible dream mumbo-jumbo that gave her back her childhood house. (Well, and Dean mixed in that. But no time.)

"It's just not. Doing anything else." Jo lets go, a wave blowing back through her body. Unclenching her muscles, dropping her shoulders back down from how tight they'd pressed. "I can't make it do anything else." She doesn't like that idea already, but that crack of light shape on the walls stays like a glowing reminder of failure to needle at her. "Maybe it has to be both of us."

[gynvael]

She is. He knows she is because he can see it, and that's the problem. She's trying and it isn't happening. This is beyond having difficulty. Something is interfering—in the back of his mind, he realizes that. At the moment, there isn't space between all the shit running through his head for him to untangle the threads.

Even beyond this room, they still have the problem of the domain itself. If it is a domain.

He glances at her. That's not how the Horizon works. Except, that isn't quite accurate. The Horizon should work however they wish. He's done it: added a window to a wall that another made. He should be able to reform a door that she cannot finish.

His hand drops from the incomplete door. Sighs. "I can't."

No why follows. He can't.

[tobeclosetohim]

"No. No-no," Jo says very close to the heels of his two words. "You can. You were lighting the torches, and you made that thing—" She gestures with her hand back in the air. "—in your hand earlier, whatever it was. When we first got here."

Yes. Jo can be extremely observant even when it's not apparent.

"Look, I know these are not the circumstances either of us would choose—" And god is that an understatement. "—but maybe if you talk about whatever this is, maybe you can help me make a better door out of whatever the hell this is." She raises a hand that hovers, making a circle, before her fingers pull back, gesturing to the whole of him. "So." Said with a beat, like she's giving him that one beat to take a breath. To follow her, without the chance to say no first.

But her voice doesn't demand, it coaxes,
something warm sparking in her chest,
"What is all of this?"

She'd never seen him so much as flinch at anything she'd said until that room.
And this. This was nothing like that. This was nothing she could label.

"Is it the space? Is it too small?" Jo groped, just taking her annoyance with a breath in out on her words, too. As much a release of her tension as just letting her voice fill the space, so maybe he would only focus on her and her questions. "Is it this horrendous smell that I swear has kicked up 2-3 more punishment notches since the door wouldn't form like someone decided they could turn children's cough syrup and, I don't even know, dirt?, into the bastard red headed stepchild of candle scents? Because I've got to tell you, I feel like it's trying to grow a colony on the back of my throat right now."

[gynvael]

The torches, he wants to say, are simple Witcher Signs. Removed from the Horizon. But she's not wrong. Nothing is truly removed from the Horizon while they're inside it. Creation doesn't feel right even before they spun between these walls, but that is not the reason he says I can't.

He doesn't want to speak of it. Not to anyone. And yet. Perhaps it's the gentle prodding, the first time she's asked instead of flinging the first bullshit that comes to her mind. Or maybe he's just fucking tired and it isn't that hard to wear him down at the moment. Even so, the silence stretches taut, spilling into minutes.

She must have linked it. The fetor of toxic brewed herbs and additives he never knew the name of. How it was there in his place, too. He doesn't bother to pretend it means nothing. It's been following him since they fell into this fucking...trap of a realm.

"I didn't dream it. That room. I lived it." In a manner of speaking. He didn't die in it, at least. "It's not meant to be there."

It's not meant to form here, either, but evidently it has. There are some aggressive downsides to existing in a space sprung from one's thoughts.

[tobeclosetohim]

Whatever Jo was expecting to have to talk him down from?
It's not the words that come out of his mouth.

Jo's mouth opened as though she'd been spring triggered on a loop, ready to take whatever he said and spin right back for him; however he needed to hear it put. But her mouth opens, semi-closes, opens. Her brow ruffles in it. Because. She couldn't've heard that right. But there's nothing at all to steal a scrap of sound from bouncing all over this tiny god-forsaken lockbox.

She doesn't even. That makes no. He can't. But. If he. The beds flash in her head again. The chains. Child-sized. He had to have been a child at some point, right? Did that. Was she. Blood on the walls. Blood on the floor. (A flash, again, of that sheer rage in her face.) She opens her mouth again, and it hesitates, trying to find the right words because you're shitting me, right? are not the words that will get her out of this room.

(It's not quite an invitation for round two,
but she doesn't need to be any closer to this wall than she is.)

And, even in her head, she knows they're a bright bit of poison for shielding herself, more than rebuffing against him, against that precarious crack with Dean Winchester's name on it wrapped around the whole of Geralt's existence. A contradiction in trust and confidence.

Jo pressed her lips together, tongue licking her bottom lip, before finally.

"That's -- it's -- a memory?"

[gynvael]

No. She would not expect it. Why would she? Geralt isn't looking at her, but that doesn't mean he can't see her out of the corner of his eye. They're stuffed tight inside the stone enclosure.

He knows. What she's thinking. About what she said to him before. Perhaps someone else might've found satisfaction in her inevitable regret, but he does not. There's a reason he's not ever defended nor explained himself. He shouldn't have to. He should not need to burrow into the deepest fissures of his memories to prove his existence not a monster.

But this is something else. It's been laid bare for him.

His gaze flicks to her. Stays on her for a second before he looks at the half-formed door. That is answer enough. Yes. A memory. A nightmare. What is the difference? Was saying it supposed to help? Seems as though it helped fuck all.

But he spoke it. It's out. So here they are. The smell is not stronger, but it's not dissipated, either. He stares at the pulsing glow. Forces himself to think. Perhaps a solid door is not the answer. If everything is cracking, decaying—

The outline fills, morphs. A door does form: splintered, the wood rotting, and he just. Shoves it, once, twice, with a burst of magic that shatters it open. He tumbles out. The stale underground air is the freshest breath he's taken in an age. His stomach lurches from the abrupt change; a rush of cold air wraps around the heat under his skin. He hits the ground on his knees, heaving bile that clings bitterly to the back of his throat.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's brain is scrambling as the door shifts, rots, explodes forcefully enough to send debris every which way, making her throw her hands up over her face, but she can still hear it. Geralt's not even looking at that as he throws himself through it and down to the ground. Smacks that ground in a jumble on his knees, which might be the least together, solid and stoic, she's ever seen him, and then, his back is shuddering forcefully, and he's retching into the hard, cold earth.

A fact that sticks hard for a second, and her mental claws dig into that passing scrap of logic like a door in a tornado. The ground isn't the same either, making her look at everything around him. Barren dirt packed between those same walls and three pathways not far off, but nothing that looks like immediate danger, whatever the fuck that even might or might not look like now. But there are more pressing things, and she scrambles out the door.

It's more graceful than him, uses the bottom door ledge, twisting to hang from it, and doing a drop from there, rather than a free jump right out the door at the ground hard like a missile. Approaching him quietly, waiting for him to stop retching, awkwardly uncertain of moving forward and staying back both, Jo lets him get it out of his system. Until it's just the soft, low, grasping for air returning to being called for the outpour.

The smell is still there, but it's got more air to mix with out here.

Jo crouches down, nearby but not right by him. Conflicted wariness (her mind shouting that there are still horrible monsters that started out as innocent people; it doesn't change who they are now, why they have to be stopped), but it's all part of that whirlwind. It can't latch down. It comes, screaming, jerks away into the tumult just as fast.

"If it's not supposed to be there, why is it there?"
Because it's really, really vividly there.

She shouldn't ask. She shouldn't. She knows better. It's a goddamn door with a big red x flashing blinding. It's details she doesn't need, details that will only trip her up, tangle in that mess of her chest. "What happened there?"

When was she ever good at listening to anyone, even herself?

[gynvael]

A breath, drawn sharp between his teeth. For a second, two, he forgets Jo is here, though distantly he's aware of her moving. His pulse thunders between his ears. He digs his nails into the rough ground until the pain reminds him where he is.

Fuck. Since when did he grow so quickly overwhelmed?

(Since a day or two ago, if he's being honest. Since he dreamed of fire, consuming, and a desiccated flower. And as he lifts his hand to wipe it across his mouth, a single wilted petal flutters, unnoticed, crumbling to dust.)

He pushes himself upright—not standing, but leaning against the cobwebbed wall behind him. His head tips back. He heard. What she's asking, he heard. There's just not an answer to give as for why. Not one that isn't obvious. As for what happened—

He wishes to touch on that even less.

"What does it matter to you?" His gaze slides towards her. Not angry, just tired. Exhausted. "So you can search for new reasons to justify your contempt?"

[tobeclosetohim]

The whole of it feels weirdly alienly (or ... weirdly human?). Geralt doesn't get up, doesn't take all of this, and shoves back into the broad, solid set of those shoulders and unimpressed towering height. Instead, he takes the wall as if he needs it to hold him up. The wrecked hell that is vomiting aside, he looks as shaken as he sounded in the pitch black of the box.

Which, with a look up, is gone as though it was never there, to begin with.

Then, back. Maybe not as bad as up there. Wrung out by both things, though. Jo pushes up from her crouch, and it's hard not to be struck by the weirdness of looking down at him. It's for granted how tall he is, and it's not fitting to say it makes him look small. He's just as broad, and there's still just as much body akimbo vertical on the ground rather than upward. But.

But smaller, maybe. Something-er. Somehow.

It's not a great question because it shouldn't matter. Jo shouldn't be making any space at all for it to matter. What that answer is. What that past might be. What that room might represent. But she's not as heartless as she'd ever wish, no matter how she might be able to carry that mask, marry herself blood and breath to that task without a flick of hesitation, and use it as needed in certain circumstances.

"Maybe because you look like someone drug you straight through hell in less than two minutes--" A feat in itself. "And it might give me something more than those wrong assumptions of mine, that you're so fond of pointing out, to go on?"

[gynvael]

Silence falls. Geralt lets his attention turn to his surroundings for a moment. Same stone walls, same narrow corridors. Hard ground. Filthy, dusted with dirt and rats and age. He's starting to catch on, as he sees the long paths, the even steady walls lined around them. The sharp turns.

A maze. Great.

He rests his arms on his knees. Right. Assumptions. He can acknowledge he's been stubborn about it. Born of too many decades learning not to yield, that it is not worth it to lay himself out for the approval of those who will only find reasons anew to hate and fear his kind. Deep down, he's aware they do not come from the same world. That this does change things, even if it's simpler to pretend it does not, that people are the same everywhere.

(And they are. But sometimes— )

He does not wish to mire himself in bitterness, either.

"It's alchemy," he replies at last. He shifts, feeling raw, exposed. "The smell. They force mutations in the body. If you survive, you become a Witcher. Most do not."

[tobeclosetohim]

Some of those words strike harder than others. Jo'd have to be that level of heartless she was errantly thinking about for them not to matter. Forced. Survive. Most don't. Broken children's bed where once there were children (who broke their own beds? Who broke each other's bed and possibly worse?) and the child-sized cuffs on the wall, that doesn't need clarification against that cold light.

"You weren't born like this." It's a statement, but it reads like a question (even as her mind is reciting those first words from earlier), and there's a tip and nod of her head toward him, and the obvious question slides out right against its back. "How much of all of this is it?"

She almost immediately tacks on a shopping list of options at the end of her guesses—the yellow eyes? the black ones and the veins? the hyper-reflexes?—but she manages to stop herself time. To let the question be left up to him what it touches, without the demand of specific dots and lines connecting immediately for her.

[gynvael]

Like this. She doesn't need to run the list for him to grasp what she means. The noise he makes is wry, exasperated, because of course that's what it comes down to. He looks up at her, steady and unwavering once more.

"I don't recall the colour of my eyes before they improved them," he says. "If that's what you mean. Though at least I kept both of mine."

Lucky him. How much. All of it, is the answer, and maybe she can surmise that from his reply. He sighs, unfolding himself from the ground. His arms cross over his chest. Why is he still entertaining this conversation? And it isn't a secret, no. He's told plenty before that he was made. Created. That is a simple fact. But it's different with her, when she's seen him—

In there. (Afraid.) It is more intimate, even, than exposing a memory. That was not a memory. Something he could dismiss as long ago, the terror and agony of a child. That was here, now, his breath seizing and his stomach turning inside out. All from of a dark room and a too-powerful stench.

His weight shifts. "We should go."

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo frowns because she can feel the pointlessness smack her in the fucking face of actively choosing not to assume the answer first, out loud, without waiting, and then having it assumed of her. And it's fuckall annoying that it's not even wrong, but it burns at the edges where it feels stupid for having even attempted to press that inch into existence. To let him draw the lines instead of her.

He still answers,

but Jo's posture has shifted toward an aloof tension.
Part of her wants to ask if that means someone else didn't,
make it out with both eyes, but that part of her is still smarting.

That part knows she wasn't supposed to have asked for details to start with.
If it's smarting. That's on her. She was supposed to actually know better. Did.

"We should," Jo returns as her only words this time. He's up, and that means whatever this is, it's over, too. They're on the ground, and he's not falling to crackers in the open. She turns toward the only direction the path has again.

The intersection with three directions: right, left, and forward.

"Thoughts?"

[gynvael]

At a certain point, once he'd knitted himself back together, the doors were always going to close again no matter what she asked or didn't ask. That's simply how Geralt is. It's a damn miracle she's drawn even this much out of him—but he is clearly finished with the matter, unwilling to dig any deeper into his past. For now, at least.

They walk, and he's quiet—no longer the casually stubborn silence he's often held around her, but just quiet. Like he's still thinking about other things, like he's still not quite all here.

He stops when she does. Peers left, head tilted to listen. This place isn't real, which means anything can change in an instant. But. They work with what they have. And what he has is a whisper of wind, the scratch of rats.

"There's something to the west." He peers around the corner. When he lights another torch, this time he hands it to her. The orange glow illuminates the path, dotted with iron spikes this leave just enough space to walk between and no room to trip. "Watch your step."

[tobeclosetohim]

He stops, and it takes Jo a few seconds, wrinkled brow about to ask a question about what he's doing before the answer comes, and if there's a tally she's supposed to be keeping, her inability to hear anything adds something like super hearing. But there's a sour edge to it; petulant and annoyed at her, and then him, and then herself, again, for it.

But she can't hear anything, and something is still better than nothing.

Jo takes the torch afforded to her, trying not to think about it being weird, and wafts the light play from the flames in the right direction, looking down at the spikes, that, on closer examination, look like swear tips almost more than spikes. She reached out a foot and nudged the closest one to her, saying, "Mmm, spiky death. Just what I've always dreamed of."

The moment the tip of her boot touches the closest spike, the ground violently shudders, and the spike-speartips up and down the whole section suddenly shoot up several more inches in every direction they were pointing.

[gynvael]

If he notices the annoyance emanating from her, Geralt says nothing of it. He does not frankly have the time nor patience for what registers in his mind as childishness. Perhaps that's uncharitable; but he's still raw after what she saw, after the small cracks he's allowed her to have, and if anything that's only made him shutter the windows more firmly than ever.

He isn't sure what to think about her anymore. And he doesn't know what she thinks of him, either. At least before, the lines were clear. Now it's suddenly grown complicated. Part of him wants to push them back to where they were: tense, wanting nothing to do with each other nor to have any understanding of one another. That's not possible. She knows now, these pieces of him he shows to almost no one. It leaves him in a limbo state he's ignoring because it's easier than—what. Talking to her about it?

Essentially.

He's almost grateful for the spikes she triggers. Another impossibility: he had not heard a switch, a click, no gears. She had simply brushed it with her foot.

Shit. He turns around, but what path was open before ahead and to the east are abruptly closed.

He touches the spikes with a thumb. The shaft is rough, covered in tiny smaller points along. He can fit between them. It just won't be pleasant. What choice have they got?

He goes.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo had jerked back from the one near her, seeing it coming out at her chest before noticing it was the rest of the area. But not catching those bits yet, she'd missed entirely the one that lanced up from behind her half in the wall. She hisses sharply at the score it lands across one shoulder, and it's ducking down slightly, with her hand going there—thin, shallow, just a surprise, just a graze, a fucking little miracle.

She learns fast and doesn't rebound through movement this time. Her fingers are touched red, but it's not deep enough to matter. Only lace into the annoyance already there under her skin, as she starts making it Geralt's way far more carefully, aiming to see if she can keep the fire from touching any of the now far too protruding metal. She'd rather not learn the hard way it reacts to everything that touches it that isn't air.

The question comes even as she's navigating between two that she's just slim up to slide sideways between without touching. "Let me guess—" It's to him, to the spears, and to the life of her that can't not bounce back, even if it's just all in a cloud of judgemental noise. "—one person just happens to fall on one them wrong, and not lift fast enough, and everyone in here is a shishkabob suddenly."

It doesn't help matters that she's pretty sure the further they get, the walls?
They seem closer together, rather than standing their same distance.

[gynvael]

His gaze snaps back to make sure she's not spiked clean through. He can smell blood, though her reaction tells him the wound is shallow. Something that can be dealt with after they're out of this damn mess.

He exhales, pushing past the spikes as best he can. Could he conjure some armour? Perhaps, but with how fucked creating anything has been, he'd rather earn a few scratches. Or. A lot of scratches. It's fine. She's right at least: unintentional or no, triggering it was the safer option. One misstep would've skewered them otherwise.

He sees it, too. The walls. Narrowing as they press forward. A hiss as a barbed shaft scrapes a chunk out of his arm. It's irritating more than painful—and he can't say he wants to be leaving trails of blood around this place. For him, it's not a matter of how careful he is. He can't do shit about the width of his shoulders.

He steps slow. The problem is, nothing here is real. Things morph and change, and it means his hearing, his senses, can only predict so much.

Something that's especially clear when he edges too close to one of the narrowing walls and—without an ounce of warning—has about a hair's breadth to duck a spike that shoots out from the side. He throws a hand up on instinct, catches the tip in his palm. Fuck. He yanks his hand back with a wet squelch.

"Keep center." His eyes lift upwards. Are there ceiling spikes? He's aware one cannot perish in the Horizon, in theory, but he also doesn't want to test that while everything's...twisted.

[tobeclosetohim]

She did not sign up to be a burglar. Lines, duck dodging, and constantly contorting into a different shape to slip past these things are annoying. Balancing where any and all of the spikes are coming from in every direction. Sticking to wherever there's enough space to get both feet and precarious shifting balance from one foot to the other foot around clusters of spikes where she can't.

If they weren't razor, she'd consider some gymnastic climbing of them, but Geralt gives a grunt up there, and that's just her point, isn't it? He's shaking a hand dripping blood, and Jo only calls out, "Are the walls actually getting closer? Are you going to fit up there?"

What. It's a sensible question. If the walls kept moving in up there, and Geralt can't, she's moving in the wrong direction. Though she's already well into the idea, there is not a right direction anywhere in this place.

[gynvael]

It is, in fact, an extraordinarily sensible question. Geralt squints into the distance. Tries to gauge if he can.

"Stay there."

There is no right direction, but there's no reason for her to follow at his heel if he's going to end up wedged between these fucking walls. The walls are closing in, but they aren't moving. Yet. He's time to reach the end, see if he can even slip through. So that's what he does. Just moves, ignoring the blood dripping down his hand. The end is so tapered, he can't even tell what lies beyond it. Maybe nothing until they step through.

He fits. Barely. Part of him half-expects another spike to nail him through the eye, but he forces himself through with a dozen more rips in his skin. He curses. Yeah. All right. She should make it intact. Provided no further surprises await them.

He flexes his fingers. "Clear."

[tobeclosetohim]

Waiting is not her favorite sport, even if how good she can be at it gouged into the deep parts of her too far down. She's in an awkward position, but she's been in worse, too. In a lot of ways, all of that is easier smaller. Less to worry about. Jo squints after him, semi-planning toward the possibilities. Whether she'll have to find a way to get in front of him, space be damned, or.

Jo gives a look, a good way back through the spiked path. It's darker now, without any light left down there, but she thinks she can make out the opening back onto that spot with the three open tunnels on it. Not that she trusts that dark or has forgotten the small room slamming upward into life and vanishing immediately after. Each time a new wall appeared behind them, giving them only one way if they considered turning back.

Watching him wedge through spikes that are very clearly digging in more, as the walls are getting closer in, is uncomfortable, and she can't tell if it's weird or not. But she grimaces a little when he pushes through that smallest area, the spikes digging into him more as he gets past them. He makes it through, to what, Jo can't see well, given the bulk of Geralt, the minute space of the passage right behind him, and the dark beyond their torches, but she takes his word for it and goes back to navigating the spikes around her.

When it gets tight, there isn't anything to do but what he did. Plow through, wince, grit her teeth, doing her best not to make a sound or move away each time one of the razor-sharp points clips or slashes her. It's so many less than him, but it's still not none when she gets to the last section.

Once she finally makes it the whole way, Jo switches the torch between her hands, rolling her shoulders and stretching her arms slightly in front of her body. It wasn't even long, but it's the residual feeling of hypervigilance against movement. "Well, that's on my bucket list for things to never do again."

[gynvael]

Apprehension lies not in if she'll be able to slip through. It's in what may spring forth unbidden. He's no desire to end this little excursion with a pike through her skull because of some twisted labyrinth designed to fuck with them.

She clears the spear tips—scraped and bleeding, but alive. Standing. Best they can ask for given the circumstances. He doesn't ask if she's all right, though there's a sweep of his gaze over her, he practiced look of someone who's learned to identify injuries from a distance.

Then he turns. Barbed trap behind, what lies ahead is...

More darkness and tight corridors. He wipes the blood off his palms on the leather of his trousers. Genuinely wishes for his sword in hand but unwilling to risk what may happen if he tries to summon forth a blade in this state.

Besides. There's something they both must be thinking. They've just not said it out loud.

"This place doesn't give a shit which direction we choose."

And yet, he continues to walk. It's drawn on his emotions, his memories, once already. If they stop and his thoughts overtake him, he's not certain the outcome would be any better.