Post by eyren on Jul 3, 2008 1:26:09 GMT -5
(Quick Note):
My computer decided to short wire so I lost Redhale's intrance post. It couldn't be helped. Use your imaginations though?
Eyren Is left to stare at the seeming one-sided battle between Redhale and his demons, her eyes twin pools of shock, her mouth seeming to be undecided as to whether it should have closed or fallen agape. Then in a violent trick of realities as it were,Redhale is brought sprawling at her feet, and with light movements she slides from her bar stool, crumpling to the polished floor. The floor served as a wicked mirror, seeming to stretch and magnify this scene of surreal horror, being played upon it. His body, a casualty, blood had not yet marred his flesh yet he was hanging on to reality, which was just as precious if not more so than life itself. Trembling, having now witness the extent of this nightmare, Eyren slips an arm beneath his fallen form, her lips gone suddenly dry, her mouth following suit shortly after, she could not speak. With what strength she could muster she'd pull him in to an embrace, scented of leather and jasmine, her eyes closed, as she made to temper her fear with her concern for him. She kept the silence then, knowing that there were no words that she could give him that he himself did not already possess somewhere in that mind of his. One hand rose to trace the outline of his mask, temptuous sparks itched at her flesh as her fingers strayed from the cool facade that he presented to the world, to test the reality of the surrounding flesh. He was real, this nightmare was real, and the soft breaths that tickled at her palm were real, as she let her hand hover over his mouth. "I am here with you. In this, staying right here till you come back do you hear me?"
Redhale shook and trembled in the woman's arms, head turning frantically to look from one place to another. The recovering figure moved forwards again, looming over the two huddled figures, all the while spitting gravelly words. As it approached the pair would notice it had in fact been warbling the same few sentences, in whatever language it spoke, over and over again. The shadowy figure looming over the two brought one arm up and swung it down to strike, and though the phantom limb passed right through Eyren there was undeniably something there, a buffeting wind pressed down with each strike and the being's limbs pinwheeled in endless successive strikes, "Take me away again, tell me what you would have me hear..." Redhale murmurs. His words rang clear from beneath the sounds of his creation.
Eyren inadvertently tightens her hold upon Redhale as the nightmare figure cast a shadow over them, huddled there, in the midst of a winking chandelier, and broken glass. Eyren would raise her eyes as the figure would raise a hand to strike at her, and she felt her body tense, anticipating the blow, yet when it comes it is, if possible worse than if bone and flesh had met with a resounding crack. No the blow seems to sink through her, and envelope her soul in a darkness that had her shivering as she clung to Redhale, he was real, solid there in her arms, though she could feel him trembling as well. Again, and again the phantom blows came, yet she stiffend her spine, willed her mouth to remember the art of articulation. Request, he was speaking once more, and somehow she managed to tear her gaze from the phantom that continued its incessant gurbled speech. Away, he wished to be taken away once more, and with her eyes settled upon his mask, she'd once more feather cool fingers along his temple, her mind whirling in a varitable maelstrom of memories, struggling to sort through the irrelevant ones, the painful ones, to at last capture a sunbeam. There unfurled now another tavern, much like this one, save for the fact that it had seen much more wear and tear. She was there, clad in a gown spun from the bosom of midnight, and he was there, his mask removed, smiling, brushing crumbs from his robes. "A smile like the sunrise." she whispers, leaning to drop the thought in to his ear, as if the phantom might overhear. Harder, she pulled at his consciousness with every ounce of internal strength she possessed, dragging him in to the noise, for a moment, before she would change the screen. It was empty now,replaced by a landscape dotted by snow drifts, and the spectral footprints of passersby long departed. "See? I am still here." She breathes, needing to say that more to reassure herself of that fact than anything else.
Redhale eased his struggles as the woman tipped back his hood to touch the side of his head, murmuring something to himself as his oppressor quieted and threw a fit by itself, no longer bothering the living but knocking about the furniture of the tavern like some kind of poltergeist. Redhale let himself sink into the vision, the same mentioned smile blooming out of sight as he stared at the snowy landscape with Eyren, "Where is this?" He asked quietly as the shade collapsed back into its shapeless form, drifting about the tavern aimlessly. "Who has been here? I can find my way around most wilderness but am no tracker, certainly not in dreamscapes..." It seemed the illusionist was there now, and if one looked down upon him they might see a different form, unscarred, slightly shorter, hair cropped neatly and falling in clean straight locks. The man that waited below the locks actually looked nothing like this, wild hair framing a face of experience and hardship, a lean and masculine frame beneath his thick robes, but the innocent mental form would watch the visions offered by Eyren, unpresumptuous and calm.
Eyren slides her hand down to take up Redhale's own once more, he'd come to her, fallen in to the vision she'd painstakenly woven in to a semi-reality. Her first success, and she pulled her energies to the center of herself, unwilling to break it just yet, he was calm. Snow flurries flittered and circled about the landscape, leaving phantom kisses upon the man, the centerpoint of this vision. She'd never seen him here before, had Redhale brought him here? What's more she could not see herself, this dreamscape was in short not her own. It was something else, and yet she was there, moving fluidly through the snow, becoming the snow as it continued it's slow dance of decent and ascent. "Again." she murmurs in that wordless language granted the empathic, "I feel as if I should know this place and yet I do not. I have been here before, and yet it is new every time." She turns her specter's gaze to the man, currently the only other living being, there was something familiar about his stance, she felt as if she should have known him. "You brought him here." She gently probes the lines that waver between her and Redhale, the phantom shape that she had taken swooping down to land a few feet from the stranger. She watched as her dream-self parted vaporous lips to speak, yet there only came more flurries of flakes that danced before the phantom, before becoming lost in the winds that made her real, then made her aught more than mist. Change, wished she to change this scene? Curling her fingers more securely about Redhale's there came in the wake of her phantom a bundled figure, small and slight, pulling a bockety sled in its wake. It past before the man, seeming not to notice him, then it stopped and turned its face, too hidden by yards of ppurple scarving to be recognizable. "Who is he?" She asks Redhale silently.
Redhale seems to not hear the woman's words, lost in thought and wonder. He searched the new environment as best he could, perhaps confused by the whole situation. "I don't know who you mean..." His words seemed to spill like a thick liquid from his mouth in the false world. After testing the grounds the man throws his imaginary self into a deep drift of snow, his robes spilling out around him in a black puddle. Only after sinking into the drift did the illusionist spy the unfamiliar child, and its appearance only led Redhale deeper into nonsensical thought, and the man himself began to fade from the scene, watching it rather than partaking in it, "What is happening? The life-drinker had me surely, but now there's only snow and this child."
Eyren watches, along with the child as the man seems to discipate in to the very atmosphere, each gust of wind shredding his image till he was nothing but a memory. The child halted, looking about for anysigns of this strange apparition, yet to no avail. Eyren finds herself leaning forward, straining her eyes in this phantom snow strewn dream, searching for him as well. Then the child abandons the sled, gloved hands rubbing together as if inspired, and with one last look to the spot that had once been occupied by the dark-haired man the child falls to its back, arms and feet akimbo, and it lay there, face turned heavenward, the purple discipating from about its face, and slowly one rosy cheek then a freckled nose is revealed. Eyren knew, and with a shudder the dreamscape shifts and there is only left in the snow the imprint of a crudely made angel. Then there was yet another shift, as Eyren felt her grasp upon Redhale's hand waning, the vision becoming less defined, blurred around the edges, a light film of perspiration settling over her face, as she struggled to keep this dream together, yet with each passing second she saw it flee, come together for a moment to shatter once more, and opening her eyes, she sees only the remnants of the shattered glass, that winked up at her, Redhale still oddly positioned against her, her arms gathering as much of him as she could. "Have you come back?" She asks quietly, even at a whisper, she felt that her voice was somehow amplified, chasing at the cobwebbed shadows, grating against her ears. Her hand was shaking now, too weak to properly retain possession of Redhale's, she could feel it slipping from her grasp, yet she made no attempt to reclaim it.
Redhale lets his hand fall to the floor with a soft thud, his relaxed body contradicting the active signals buzzing about behind his mask, "What have you shown me? I don't understand... Are you trying to tell me something?" As his thoughts raced the thing that had terrorized him moments before slunk to the stairs and disappeared, out of mind and out of sight. The illusionist pulled himself up and offered a hand to help Eyren to her feet, "And as for whether I've come back, I'm not sure I ever left, but you've got me here either way."
Eyren blinks confusedly as she comes back to reality in the truest sense, feeling the hard unyielding wood of the tavern floor beneath her, the sudden absence of Redhale, and looking she can only watch as he extends a hand to her. Taking a deep breath, she raises a hand to accept his, curling cool mist-textured fingers about his own once more, allowing him to act as the part of savior now as he helped her regain her feet. Once there she wavers for a moment, the intensity of the vision still buffeting her senses, leaving her disoriented and questioning the existence of equilibrium. "Where'd we go?" she asks, her voice sounding rusted, as if her vocal chords had endured centuries of silence. "That dreamscape, it was not mine. That man, you brought him there, and that child, I believe she may have been .. myself." She experiences another earth-shifting bout of dizziness her fingers involuntarily tightening about his, then quickly she releases lest she inadvertently weave yet another web of astral allusions. "My dreamfold, it has been invaded by phantoms."
Redhale takes a seat at the bar, something he rarely does, and quietly signals for Steadmen to pour two drinks as Eyren speaks. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to let anything, or anyone, into your... Dreamfold?" He reached across the bar to take one of the drinks for himself and slid the second towards Eyren, his actions seeming far more natural now, the man seeming more like the one that Eyren had met a couple of weeks ago. "Nor do I know where we were," He continues, "I thought that was all your doing." The illusionist took a sip from his drink, pondering for a moment while using one hand to flatten out the odd crumple in the robes that cascaded over the barstool, "Why were you left alone in the snow as a child?" He said, taking the vision literally while not knowing whether this was the case or not.
Eyren in turn, seats herself across from Redhale, greedily grasping at the offered drink, a cursory glance given to the contents before she raises the glass to her trembling lips, the liquid burning her mouth, she turned her head as if she intended to expel it on to the floor, yet it slid deceptively down her throat, burning to the very pit of her stomach, and she coughed, embarrassed that this was her first taste of this liquid fire. Yet she raises the glass once more to her lips, and lets another slide of fire in to her stomach. "That is just it. I do not know. I've never before had figures in that place. It is just a place where I go when I slip in to deep thoughts that I am not controlling. I've lost a good bit of my memory, my childhood is so blurred now. Yet I believe I caught a glimpse of a forgotten memory just now. I may only see it through if I return to my dreamfold. Yet you somehow triggered this sudden turn, somehow, you made me remember." She stares across at him, the damnable mask obscuring her view. With a flourish she downs the rest of the liquor, nearly falling from her seat at the intensity, yet biting her lips to keep herself from sending the contents to the floor. Down, the fire sank to her belly, and she smiled to herself. Thinking herself a "woman" in a sense as she set down the emptied glass with an exaggerated and resounding crack, her face alive as a smile chased its way across her features, for an enchanted moment. She wished he could see her then, for some unknown reason.
Redhale sits staring down into his own drink, swirling its contents and mulling over the woman's words. He then put the drink down and lifted his mask from its place, setting it down next to the glass. The man opened his mouth as if to finally respond but instead lifts his glass again and takes a deep drink, twisting his head to one side as if pained once the glass parted from his lips. After setting it down once more, a small splash spilling over one edge as he did so. Finally, after mopping the spatter up with the sleeve of his robe, he answered, "Well I'm glad I can be of some use, though I've no idea how I managed to do that... Why do you need help remembering anyway?"
Eyren can only shake her head then, needing desperately to be alone, to be somewhere where the physical surroundings weren't so obtrusive. Everything seemed to scrape at nerves strained raw and bare, and suddenly, there was something in Redhales manner; nay his very existence that had her raising one trembling hand to her temples; fingers absently raking at mussed curls. "I ... cannot say." she murmurs faintly, sliding shakily from her stool; booted feet landing with a soft tentative thud upon the polished floor. "I am off to find out though." she finishes, stretching to lightly squeeze Redhale's arm in farewell. "There's a mess." she mutters in passing to Stedman, before with a push and a puff of chilled air, Eyren returns to the streets of Vailkrin.
---To be continued.
---Always looking for feedback; I wants to get better!
My computer decided to short wire so I lost Redhale's intrance post. It couldn't be helped. Use your imaginations though?
Eyren Is left to stare at the seeming one-sided battle between Redhale and his demons, her eyes twin pools of shock, her mouth seeming to be undecided as to whether it should have closed or fallen agape. Then in a violent trick of realities as it were,Redhale is brought sprawling at her feet, and with light movements she slides from her bar stool, crumpling to the polished floor. The floor served as a wicked mirror, seeming to stretch and magnify this scene of surreal horror, being played upon it. His body, a casualty, blood had not yet marred his flesh yet he was hanging on to reality, which was just as precious if not more so than life itself. Trembling, having now witness the extent of this nightmare, Eyren slips an arm beneath his fallen form, her lips gone suddenly dry, her mouth following suit shortly after, she could not speak. With what strength she could muster she'd pull him in to an embrace, scented of leather and jasmine, her eyes closed, as she made to temper her fear with her concern for him. She kept the silence then, knowing that there were no words that she could give him that he himself did not already possess somewhere in that mind of his. One hand rose to trace the outline of his mask, temptuous sparks itched at her flesh as her fingers strayed from the cool facade that he presented to the world, to test the reality of the surrounding flesh. He was real, this nightmare was real, and the soft breaths that tickled at her palm were real, as she let her hand hover over his mouth. "I am here with you. In this, staying right here till you come back do you hear me?"
Redhale shook and trembled in the woman's arms, head turning frantically to look from one place to another. The recovering figure moved forwards again, looming over the two huddled figures, all the while spitting gravelly words. As it approached the pair would notice it had in fact been warbling the same few sentences, in whatever language it spoke, over and over again. The shadowy figure looming over the two brought one arm up and swung it down to strike, and though the phantom limb passed right through Eyren there was undeniably something there, a buffeting wind pressed down with each strike and the being's limbs pinwheeled in endless successive strikes, "Take me away again, tell me what you would have me hear..." Redhale murmurs. His words rang clear from beneath the sounds of his creation.
Eyren inadvertently tightens her hold upon Redhale as the nightmare figure cast a shadow over them, huddled there, in the midst of a winking chandelier, and broken glass. Eyren would raise her eyes as the figure would raise a hand to strike at her, and she felt her body tense, anticipating the blow, yet when it comes it is, if possible worse than if bone and flesh had met with a resounding crack. No the blow seems to sink through her, and envelope her soul in a darkness that had her shivering as she clung to Redhale, he was real, solid there in her arms, though she could feel him trembling as well. Again, and again the phantom blows came, yet she stiffend her spine, willed her mouth to remember the art of articulation. Request, he was speaking once more, and somehow she managed to tear her gaze from the phantom that continued its incessant gurbled speech. Away, he wished to be taken away once more, and with her eyes settled upon his mask, she'd once more feather cool fingers along his temple, her mind whirling in a varitable maelstrom of memories, struggling to sort through the irrelevant ones, the painful ones, to at last capture a sunbeam. There unfurled now another tavern, much like this one, save for the fact that it had seen much more wear and tear. She was there, clad in a gown spun from the bosom of midnight, and he was there, his mask removed, smiling, brushing crumbs from his robes. "A smile like the sunrise." she whispers, leaning to drop the thought in to his ear, as if the phantom might overhear. Harder, she pulled at his consciousness with every ounce of internal strength she possessed, dragging him in to the noise, for a moment, before she would change the screen. It was empty now,replaced by a landscape dotted by snow drifts, and the spectral footprints of passersby long departed. "See? I am still here." She breathes, needing to say that more to reassure herself of that fact than anything else.
Redhale eased his struggles as the woman tipped back his hood to touch the side of his head, murmuring something to himself as his oppressor quieted and threw a fit by itself, no longer bothering the living but knocking about the furniture of the tavern like some kind of poltergeist. Redhale let himself sink into the vision, the same mentioned smile blooming out of sight as he stared at the snowy landscape with Eyren, "Where is this?" He asked quietly as the shade collapsed back into its shapeless form, drifting about the tavern aimlessly. "Who has been here? I can find my way around most wilderness but am no tracker, certainly not in dreamscapes..." It seemed the illusionist was there now, and if one looked down upon him they might see a different form, unscarred, slightly shorter, hair cropped neatly and falling in clean straight locks. The man that waited below the locks actually looked nothing like this, wild hair framing a face of experience and hardship, a lean and masculine frame beneath his thick robes, but the innocent mental form would watch the visions offered by Eyren, unpresumptuous and calm.
Eyren slides her hand down to take up Redhale's own once more, he'd come to her, fallen in to the vision she'd painstakenly woven in to a semi-reality. Her first success, and she pulled her energies to the center of herself, unwilling to break it just yet, he was calm. Snow flurries flittered and circled about the landscape, leaving phantom kisses upon the man, the centerpoint of this vision. She'd never seen him here before, had Redhale brought him here? What's more she could not see herself, this dreamscape was in short not her own. It was something else, and yet she was there, moving fluidly through the snow, becoming the snow as it continued it's slow dance of decent and ascent. "Again." she murmurs in that wordless language granted the empathic, "I feel as if I should know this place and yet I do not. I have been here before, and yet it is new every time." She turns her specter's gaze to the man, currently the only other living being, there was something familiar about his stance, she felt as if she should have known him. "You brought him here." She gently probes the lines that waver between her and Redhale, the phantom shape that she had taken swooping down to land a few feet from the stranger. She watched as her dream-self parted vaporous lips to speak, yet there only came more flurries of flakes that danced before the phantom, before becoming lost in the winds that made her real, then made her aught more than mist. Change, wished she to change this scene? Curling her fingers more securely about Redhale's there came in the wake of her phantom a bundled figure, small and slight, pulling a bockety sled in its wake. It past before the man, seeming not to notice him, then it stopped and turned its face, too hidden by yards of ppurple scarving to be recognizable. "Who is he?" She asks Redhale silently.
Redhale seems to not hear the woman's words, lost in thought and wonder. He searched the new environment as best he could, perhaps confused by the whole situation. "I don't know who you mean..." His words seemed to spill like a thick liquid from his mouth in the false world. After testing the grounds the man throws his imaginary self into a deep drift of snow, his robes spilling out around him in a black puddle. Only after sinking into the drift did the illusionist spy the unfamiliar child, and its appearance only led Redhale deeper into nonsensical thought, and the man himself began to fade from the scene, watching it rather than partaking in it, "What is happening? The life-drinker had me surely, but now there's only snow and this child."
Eyren watches, along with the child as the man seems to discipate in to the very atmosphere, each gust of wind shredding his image till he was nothing but a memory. The child halted, looking about for anysigns of this strange apparition, yet to no avail. Eyren finds herself leaning forward, straining her eyes in this phantom snow strewn dream, searching for him as well. Then the child abandons the sled, gloved hands rubbing together as if inspired, and with one last look to the spot that had once been occupied by the dark-haired man the child falls to its back, arms and feet akimbo, and it lay there, face turned heavenward, the purple discipating from about its face, and slowly one rosy cheek then a freckled nose is revealed. Eyren knew, and with a shudder the dreamscape shifts and there is only left in the snow the imprint of a crudely made angel. Then there was yet another shift, as Eyren felt her grasp upon Redhale's hand waning, the vision becoming less defined, blurred around the edges, a light film of perspiration settling over her face, as she struggled to keep this dream together, yet with each passing second she saw it flee, come together for a moment to shatter once more, and opening her eyes, she sees only the remnants of the shattered glass, that winked up at her, Redhale still oddly positioned against her, her arms gathering as much of him as she could. "Have you come back?" She asks quietly, even at a whisper, she felt that her voice was somehow amplified, chasing at the cobwebbed shadows, grating against her ears. Her hand was shaking now, too weak to properly retain possession of Redhale's, she could feel it slipping from her grasp, yet she made no attempt to reclaim it.
Redhale lets his hand fall to the floor with a soft thud, his relaxed body contradicting the active signals buzzing about behind his mask, "What have you shown me? I don't understand... Are you trying to tell me something?" As his thoughts raced the thing that had terrorized him moments before slunk to the stairs and disappeared, out of mind and out of sight. The illusionist pulled himself up and offered a hand to help Eyren to her feet, "And as for whether I've come back, I'm not sure I ever left, but you've got me here either way."
Eyren blinks confusedly as she comes back to reality in the truest sense, feeling the hard unyielding wood of the tavern floor beneath her, the sudden absence of Redhale, and looking she can only watch as he extends a hand to her. Taking a deep breath, she raises a hand to accept his, curling cool mist-textured fingers about his own once more, allowing him to act as the part of savior now as he helped her regain her feet. Once there she wavers for a moment, the intensity of the vision still buffeting her senses, leaving her disoriented and questioning the existence of equilibrium. "Where'd we go?" she asks, her voice sounding rusted, as if her vocal chords had endured centuries of silence. "That dreamscape, it was not mine. That man, you brought him there, and that child, I believe she may have been .. myself." She experiences another earth-shifting bout of dizziness her fingers involuntarily tightening about his, then quickly she releases lest she inadvertently weave yet another web of astral allusions. "My dreamfold, it has been invaded by phantoms."
Redhale takes a seat at the bar, something he rarely does, and quietly signals for Steadmen to pour two drinks as Eyren speaks. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to let anything, or anyone, into your... Dreamfold?" He reached across the bar to take one of the drinks for himself and slid the second towards Eyren, his actions seeming far more natural now, the man seeming more like the one that Eyren had met a couple of weeks ago. "Nor do I know where we were," He continues, "I thought that was all your doing." The illusionist took a sip from his drink, pondering for a moment while using one hand to flatten out the odd crumple in the robes that cascaded over the barstool, "Why were you left alone in the snow as a child?" He said, taking the vision literally while not knowing whether this was the case or not.
Eyren in turn, seats herself across from Redhale, greedily grasping at the offered drink, a cursory glance given to the contents before she raises the glass to her trembling lips, the liquid burning her mouth, she turned her head as if she intended to expel it on to the floor, yet it slid deceptively down her throat, burning to the very pit of her stomach, and she coughed, embarrassed that this was her first taste of this liquid fire. Yet she raises the glass once more to her lips, and lets another slide of fire in to her stomach. "That is just it. I do not know. I've never before had figures in that place. It is just a place where I go when I slip in to deep thoughts that I am not controlling. I've lost a good bit of my memory, my childhood is so blurred now. Yet I believe I caught a glimpse of a forgotten memory just now. I may only see it through if I return to my dreamfold. Yet you somehow triggered this sudden turn, somehow, you made me remember." She stares across at him, the damnable mask obscuring her view. With a flourish she downs the rest of the liquor, nearly falling from her seat at the intensity, yet biting her lips to keep herself from sending the contents to the floor. Down, the fire sank to her belly, and she smiled to herself. Thinking herself a "woman" in a sense as she set down the emptied glass with an exaggerated and resounding crack, her face alive as a smile chased its way across her features, for an enchanted moment. She wished he could see her then, for some unknown reason.
Redhale sits staring down into his own drink, swirling its contents and mulling over the woman's words. He then put the drink down and lifted his mask from its place, setting it down next to the glass. The man opened his mouth as if to finally respond but instead lifts his glass again and takes a deep drink, twisting his head to one side as if pained once the glass parted from his lips. After setting it down once more, a small splash spilling over one edge as he did so. Finally, after mopping the spatter up with the sleeve of his robe, he answered, "Well I'm glad I can be of some use, though I've no idea how I managed to do that... Why do you need help remembering anyway?"
Eyren can only shake her head then, needing desperately to be alone, to be somewhere where the physical surroundings weren't so obtrusive. Everything seemed to scrape at nerves strained raw and bare, and suddenly, there was something in Redhales manner; nay his very existence that had her raising one trembling hand to her temples; fingers absently raking at mussed curls. "I ... cannot say." she murmurs faintly, sliding shakily from her stool; booted feet landing with a soft tentative thud upon the polished floor. "I am off to find out though." she finishes, stretching to lightly squeeze Redhale's arm in farewell. "There's a mess." she mutters in passing to Stedman, before with a push and a puff of chilled air, Eyren returns to the streets of Vailkrin.
---To be continued.
---Always looking for feedback; I wants to get better!