video | morning after the audience | unseelie & open non-locket comms

[boutant]

[ It's safe to say that Ariadne has never been this upset about anything in her entire life. She tends to smile, with large, gentle eyes. She does not tend to look murderous.

She does today.

Her trust has been broken, betrayed. Her people have been caught in the storm that Reynard started. Her mind has been violated, her companion dead.

When she speaks, her voice starts out calm. Cold. ]

So. When were we all going to start sharing what we know about the Cult of the Fox?

[ A breath and then she snarls. ]

Because it turns out they're wearing shard masks that let them look like anyone and they can get into your memories and mind control you to the point that you'll hang yourself.

[ It takes a tremendous amount of effort not to throw something. ]

That lying little fuck and those like him know how to use shards even when they're masks. If we don't stop sitting on our information then they're going to tear us apart from the inside. Do not trust anyone without- somehow verifying it's them, though I don't know how when they can do that much.

If you're staying at Diasbaile -- get to work or get out. I don't know how many people might still be under his spell but he's destroyed wards and rooms on the top two floors, read what was in my office if he didn't just steal it.

Everyone- be on your guard. And share your information, because otherwise we're all fighting this blind and then everyone is dead.

[ locked to steve rogers & sam wilson; ]
You need to get out of the Station. Just in case. Bucky's with me, he- we're not okay, he was with me when it happened, neither of us remember anything after a point. But we'll look after each other; he at least knows I'm me.

[ locked to grell, jason todd, loki, & waver velvet; ]
Gaff died in the Battle of Falling Fire. It was a cultist all along. Grell, can you watch Diasbaile? I can only assume that he'll know what I would do, but he didn't get in your head.

Comments

[boutant]

I can stand.

[ She's traumatized, yes, but she can stand. ]

[erythristic]

Okay.

[she'll let go then, pulling back just far enough that their eyes can meet.]

Tell me why you supposedly can't kill him.

[boutant]

He anticipated- everything. Even before he got in my head. He was too fast, too strong, he used similar shadow magic...

[ She shudders. ]

This isn't my first time having someone else in my head, but I couldn't do anything.

[erythristic]

Ariadne. If he anticipates what you would do, then it leaves him with one very vital flaw that you can then use. It means you know what he'll expect you to do. From there, you can determine how much you need to play along to the role he thinks you inhabit before striking from a place that Ariadne wouldn't.

[subversion was the only way to win. if he expected her to punch him in the stomach, feint there before stabbing him in the back. use a mace instead of a sword. that was the way to survive.]

You must become unpredictable, while playing that you are predictable still. Seeing a person's memories has a drawback - you only can see things up to that point in time. What they do after they leave you is still as much a mystery as it ever was. This I know personally, as I possess this capability.

[boutant]

The problem is that I'm not sure where I wouldn't strike from, because I'm still me.

[ They know that she knows that they know what she knows...

... though, uh. One moment. ]

You do?

[erythristic]

...I do. It's something I choose not to broadcast to everyone, but it is an ability of my kind, something I can access under...let's say specific circumstances.

[she pauses, and exhales slowly as something comes to mind.]

If things were to get too risky, I was going to use it on "Gaff" so we could save his shard and information if not his body. If we had...

[then they would have known he was a cultist. it's clearly implied in her tone.]

[boutant]

You look human.

[ It's blurted out and Ariadne flushes a little, because that's possibly the stupidest thing she's ever seen. A lot of people in the Drabwurld look human. It doesn't mean they are. ]

If. There's- we start thinking of those, we'll never move.

[ Beat. ]

That said, if there's a way to do it that doesn't involve lethal blows, I might have you try it on the next person I rescue.

[erythristic]

Keep your own healing magic sharp, and they might only lose some blood as a result.

[the inevitable scarring, she won't mention.]

But no, I'm not. However, it is some relief that given the passage of time only half the Court knows what I am, which is one of the race of grim reapers.

[hence the speed, the strength, the endurance, the strange eyes.]

[boutant]

I can do that.

[ The race of grim reapers. Well. She had no idea that was a race, but she supposes it explains some things. ]

I'm sure plenty of them missed it anyway.

[erythristic]

Not enough to suit me. It is both blessing and curse to have what I am a matter of public knowledge even in that capacity. But what I wish hardly matters in that regard, doesn't it? Isn't it silly that it's such a concern?

[boutant]

No. We like to have our secrets. We like to reveal them when and to who we want them revealed.

[ Her head was just tampered with, memories played with. No, it's not silly at all. ]

[erythristic]

...Quite so.

[for a moment, Grell's eyes look distant, focusing on a memory rather than the present.]

The young man who exposed me, I think it is safe to say he will not violate my privacy like that again.

[boutant]

[ ... she doesn't want to know. ]

That's good, at least.

[ Ariadne wishes she could say the same. ]

[erythristic]

[she only threatened him, gosh.]

Do you find me deceitful, to have taken advantage of your hospitality and yet not to have told you what I was?

[boutant]

No more deceitful than I've been.

[ She shifts to take Grell's hands in hers, squeezing them. ]

I'm an architect. But back home, I don't design buildings. Not anymore. I design dreams.

[erythristic]

You design dreams?

[the look on her face shifts to curiosity. she isn't mad, but she's intrigued.]

You never even hinted you were that sort of mage...

[boutant]

It's not magic. There isn't magic back home.

But- yes. It's technology the military developed for training, since it's safer to do that sort of things in dreams. It can do more than that, though, depending on the people; you can steal secrets right out of someone's head, or participate in extreme sports, or see different places...

[ It's clear she's passionate about it, that this secret has been burning in her chest for two years; Ariadne speaks about dreamshare with animated gestures of her hands, swooping and gesticulating. ]

You can break and bend the laws of physics, create mazes with paradoxes inside. It's amazing.

[erythristic]

...Even with the advent of technologies I've heard of, this is beyond what I might have imagined. Please, go on.

[she's hanging onto every word, thinking of what might be. in a dream, one could be and do anything. and Ariadne could create these things.]

[boutant]

Time moves differently between the dream world and the regular world, so five minutes asleep gives you about an hour of dreamtime. If you die in the dream, you wake up, so even a training accident or- say, if you went into a dream to fight someone. You wouldn't have to worry about permanent death or injury.

There are some risks; with certain amounts of sedation, a death in the dream or dreaming too many dreams within dreams can have you end up in Limbo -- the subconscious. Potentially the shared subconscious. And if you interfere too much with a dream, the people in the dream that belong to the subject can get violent.

But... there's nothing like it. Nothing at all.

[ And she misses it desperately. ]

[erythristic]

Who wouldn't choose to experience it, if they had the choice? It sounds...it sounds like its own form of magic.

[time without limits. potentially creating whatever you wished. the future was going to be a brilliant one, if Ariadne's words held true.]

Do you think that there'll be a way to do it again, somehow replicate what you had? And what's wrong with the subconscious?

[boutant]

Maybe. I would think so, with magic. I know when people were having visions, dreams were spilling over into each other.

[ But those weren't constructed dreams. ]

If you spend too much time there, you forget what's real and what's a dream. If you wake up -- if -- you might not be... all there. "Brains turned to scrambled egg", that's what someone I know called it. People have lived entire lives there and woken up to their old ones and been unable to handle it.

[erythristic]

The weight of years too much for them to take?

[she says it lightly, but she can imagine the shock. living, dying, and living again in perfect clarity. a human's mind could only take so many things in.]

I'd think that a place where you could be anything would render this world...tragic.

[boutant]

The weight of years, of seeing that much of your subconscious -- I don't know.

[ Ideas planted in your mind like a virus, spreading until it's in every part of you, until it's all you know... ]

You're limited by your own creativity. And there are more people to talk to, here.

[erythristic]

True enough. It'd be poor company, yourself and whoever else you dreamt. And I doubt they could ever be as...colourful as the company here. Some of our mutual friends come to mind.

[boutant]

Right?

Sometimes your subconscious will create projections that look like people you know. But they're just based on your idea of them, they aren't real. They're your impression, they're not the same, not as complex.