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DAY: 011
[ It begins in drum beats, louder and louder over itself, begins like eyes opening out of childhood nightmares, begins like a mother waking to her child's crying in the night, between Sam and Zhukov and something that is the sea - something that is a river in full flood. Out and out to where there is no difference between them. Through the hive and through the void in a space that is not space and like any waters, the void takes the path of least resistance, eager to expand in every direction.
Finds Sam first, of course it does. Wraps about him like a sycophant. It beats itself out against him, demanding, demanding, wanting and pushing and clawing and gnawing at once. Looks for a crack, any crack, just one simple divide, and as Sam splits his mind. It slips in stiletto blade thin between ribs and cracks apart at the edges. To take and take and take, to carve on the edge of a knife a way forward and engulf.
Not in words, but it speaks:
( a city, a city overrun in gnawing creatures, rats, thousands of them, their fur wet and spillery smooth as nails try to pry their teeth out of supple muscles, between fingers as they crawl, of flies, loud and buzzing, sickly honeyed hives that are corpse sweet and they nestle like lovers into flesh. Of something older than modern lights and inventions that sits at the back of the tongue and is suckled out by empires as oils. This is what the flesh of the sea looks like, this is what the water tastes like free of everything and full of nothing. Of cities under the earth, forgotten. Of the rot and the festering and the piling: this is what happens to a body that is on top of another body, this is what happens when the flesh is stripped away in salt and dried to air. Lovers that are in sewers and together, together, together. Looking up is to look down to the depths. There is no left or right, there's only a deep, deep breath and coughing up the taste of blue and violet and dark-light. This is the sun through the ice, reflected over and over again until it sears the skin in its reflection. Objects that float like they never knew the ground, or that they exist and don't exist and forget where to walk, paths that overlay paths that overlay paths,
and black - black eyes. There is nothing, nothing so black as those eyes. Nothing so beautiful as them as when they stare down into these oceans of you. Above and below and no where at all. Crawling in the sewers, through grand mansions, not welcome here but oh, so very, very wanted. Come, come, you are its lover, and it wants to carve purpose in bones. You are so beautiful, it wants to lick the marrow out of your bones, and it will call you pure for the broken parts of you, it wants, just give in, just give it everything.
these waters will never give back what they have taken. )
It takes Sam, where they are a half beat apart, and when he slips, it rushes over the top of him, holding to him tightly and then the everything stops. Expanded as far as it can go. The healing on his body is nothing but tinder, something new to be devoured.
And then, there is nothing but the dark and a naked flame.
Out of mind and body, Zhukov starts screaming as he burns. ]
( ooc: this is the continuation from this thread here, and is open for anyone to feel and react to. I am also happy to have the void reach out to touch whoever wants to from him. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a plurk to @aeneia or send me a message here! )
Finds Sam first, of course it does. Wraps about him like a sycophant. It beats itself out against him, demanding, demanding, wanting and pushing and clawing and gnawing at once. Looks for a crack, any crack, just one simple divide, and as Sam splits his mind. It slips in stiletto blade thin between ribs and cracks apart at the edges. To take and take and take, to carve on the edge of a knife a way forward and engulf.
Not in words, but it speaks:
( a city, a city overrun in gnawing creatures, rats, thousands of them, their fur wet and spillery smooth as nails try to pry their teeth out of supple muscles, between fingers as they crawl, of flies, loud and buzzing, sickly honeyed hives that are corpse sweet and they nestle like lovers into flesh. Of something older than modern lights and inventions that sits at the back of the tongue and is suckled out by empires as oils. This is what the flesh of the sea looks like, this is what the water tastes like free of everything and full of nothing. Of cities under the earth, forgotten. Of the rot and the festering and the piling: this is what happens to a body that is on top of another body, this is what happens when the flesh is stripped away in salt and dried to air. Lovers that are in sewers and together, together, together. Looking up is to look down to the depths. There is no left or right, there's only a deep, deep breath and coughing up the taste of blue and violet and dark-light. This is the sun through the ice, reflected over and over again until it sears the skin in its reflection. Objects that float like they never knew the ground, or that they exist and don't exist and forget where to walk, paths that overlay paths that overlay paths,
and black - black eyes. There is nothing, nothing so black as those eyes. Nothing so beautiful as them as when they stare down into these oceans of you. Above and below and no where at all. Crawling in the sewers, through grand mansions, not welcome here but oh, so very, very wanted. Come, come, you are its lover, and it wants to carve purpose in bones. You are so beautiful, it wants to lick the marrow out of your bones, and it will call you pure for the broken parts of you, it wants, just give in, just give it everything.
these waters will never give back what they have taken. )
It takes Sam, where they are a half beat apart, and when he slips, it rushes over the top of him, holding to him tightly and then the everything stops. Expanded as far as it can go. The healing on his body is nothing but tinder, something new to be devoured.
And then, there is nothing but the dark and a naked flame.
Out of mind and body, Zhukov starts screaming as he burns. ]
( ooc: this is the continuation from this thread here, and is open for anyone to feel and react to. I am also happy to have the void reach out to touch whoever wants to from him. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a plurk to @aeneia or send me a message here! )
a space dorito and a cornflake come a-runnin'
[ His legs take him to Life Support, bile burning in the back of his throat in the aftermath of all the festering rot and thick, black furred teeth burrowing into flesh - the void remains, not so great and burning cold as it was when it first hit, but raises the fear into his throat. There's a man screaming, and only nothing from Sam. ]
NYYYOOOOOOOOOM
[Focus.]
[Steve gets there before he does. While he tries to fight down what he fears is coming, and take in the scene.]
Get them away from each other -- You take Sam!
[If there's something wrong with the screaming man, something that shouldn't be touched, contacted -- well. Out of the two of them, he's the one with the ace up the sleeve. Isn't he?]
[His fingertips flare purple for an instant, while his feet are already moving him toward the screaming from.]
oh good snacks for the bbq
The garments he favours, the heavy jacket, the gloves, the goggles, are seared away to tatters, feeding the flames over him as he writhes on the floor. The pulled up sleeve where Sam had been healing him exposes the flesh that had been so briefly healed but to true skin bubbles away from flesh, replacing it back to his previous state of deadened skin. Down, down, down to where his hand is still gripping onto Sam. The gloves that are the only thing still intact, and perhaps, the only thing protect the man as he burns. The reek of seared skin, roasting meat, left too long until it chokes with smoke and charcoal. Easy enough to tear by teeth from the bone.
The flame looks still to take. It licks across, trying to reach to the closest it can. Jumping across as fire jumps, devouring as the void devours. It took, tries to reach for Sam.
He twists, as he screams on his side where he's slide off his chair. The twin blade knife that is never far from him is tossed across the room, brightly glinting from the corner, glittering in the firelight. Pleased, perhaps, it what it has wrought.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. ]
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But then, so sweetly, there is fire.
She wonders for a moment, brief, if it is one that she lit but it becomes clear soon enough this is a memory. A memory of flesh, which cannot truly forget. Cannot forgive. Cannot be saved.
She observes his smoldering dispassionately from her own mind, emotion contracting down to only this: pity, disdain. ]
( Burn in silence. )
For Misato
She's perched on a chair in the kitchen, glass of water in front of her. She's in the middle of describing a complicated bit of code (which may or may not be boring poor Misato to tears) when she first gets an inkling of what's going on behind Sam's barriers. Mental shields help, but the brood link is still a powerful thing. There are echoes rippling toward her. She blinks and stares at Misato.
It's like having a sudden migraine or headache and she reaches up to rub her head, trying to send an inquisitive tendril toward Sam. ]
Did you feel that? I hate this stupid symbiote...
[ It's about to get a hundred times worse. ]
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It's all pleasantly mundane, until the girl's monologue stops suddenly, prompting her to look up from her databank. ]
Mmm . . . nope. [ Said with a mouthful of something that shouldn't be fit for human consumption. To her, the sensation is much more distant, like a faraway storm brewing, but her instincts tell her something's not right. It's only when the symbiote sends flashes of bright sun through ice, white hot and bone chilling, pitch black eyes, that she rises to her feet in alarm. ]
Wait-- Katie--?
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Over it all, there's the void. The engulfing darkness and the sharp sense of fear that cuts off as Sam falls into unconsciousness and then there's nothing left as an anchor, just a grabbing, greedy, devouring force that's looking for something, anything, it can latch onto. She can feel the flames trying to take more, searching for an opening.
And when Sam drops, he threatens to take Katie with her. She can feel the tug of his mind spiraling into unconsciousness and she takes a few stumbled steps down the path. She's rigid in her chair, knuckles going white as she grabs the table like a lifeline. ]
Misato-
[ Katie's voice pitches up, sounding strained. ]
It's Sam. There's something, I don't know, it's trying to find a way through, it's like - it wants to consume everything-
[ Panic, panic, panic.
Her eyes start to roll back in her head. ]
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It rights a split second later when he sees that Sam's still breathing.
No moving him like this. He reaches to try to make contact with Sam's skin, burned and cooked at it is Steve tries to find a place that looks less damaged. Would the symbiote work Sam's power in reverse? ]
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[There's not really time to think about it, anyway. While Steve goes to Sam, he's jerking his human hand over his mouth, trying not to think about what's happening. About how hard his heart is racing, or how much the thing in his head wants out to destroy the potential threat.]
[Metal fingers lock around a burned and smoldering (or burning, he's not sure) wrist. If his arm can slam through a spaceship hull, he's almost certain it won't hurt him -- ]
[ I wouldn't be okay without you in my life, Shiro. ]
[ -- even if it does, he's going to get the screaming, burning figure away from their friend. So help him. He grips that wrist in metal fingers, glowing metal fingers, attempting to yank the other form away with everything in that arm.]
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While she moves fast, her mind is notably calm with laser sharp focus heightened and adding no panic to the equation and little in the way of worry. Such things can wait for later. Now what matters is what one does in the moment. Practiced and automatic, her priority is on ensuring Pidge can breathe and doesn't hurt herself, holding the girl sideways and tapping her cheeks to try and keep her conscious. ]
Katie. Look at me. What's happened to Sam?
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But even so, he recognizes Steve's presence - familiar, trusted, safe. There's a pull at their connection when Steve touches him, and though he doesn't wake, Sam's hand shifts to rest over Steve’s. What he’s healed can't be transferred to someone else, but the faint cuts in his skin made from moving, the bruise to his head from when he'd fallen, those can. If Steve holds on, he might end up with them. ]
you're welcome alnilam..
But physical distance only does so much. It doesn't stop him from feeling this-- and he knows what it's like to be consumed, even if it's not by fire.
The others in Alnilam (and maybe others who, like him, haven't quite figured out how to block things out very well yet) get different images mixed in with what's come from Zhukov, not only darkness and black eyes but stained hands and red-black marks crawling over skin, the sense of losing control, of being shut out, laughter that might as well be someone else's ringing in the background; blood flows, but there's only a detached recognition of the pain, as if it's all happening to someone else despite the sensation of it dripping from your skin.
There's a distinct sense of instinctive fear welling up with that feedback, shoving back to try to shut it all out, teeth grit and hands clenched hard, nails digging half-circles into palms. (Make it stop.)]
( the fuck are you doing over there cut it out before I do it for you- )
[He gets the feeling the target of that threat isn't exactly listening, but he's not the only one who can hear it, either.]
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I don't know. I think - there's something - it's trying to consume... everything.
[ It's just a jumble of emotions in her head right now. All second-hand from Sam and none of it makes sense in any particular order. ]
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She keeps a bruising grip on Pidge's arm and doesn't soften her touch when she grabs hold of the girl's jaw to force her to focus. Let the pain ground her. She can thank her later. ]
You have to fight it. Come on. Block it out. You're not even trying.
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I - am-
[ It's half-muttered from the edge of unconsciousness, but she manages another push and her eyelides fluttter a few more times before they settle, half open, eyes struggling to focus.
She's going to have a hell of a headache and she feels drained, like she's been fighting in her lion for the last half hour. ]
H-hey. Misato.
[ She sounds shaky, but at least she's not bonelessly limp and there's color coming back into her cheeks. ]
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Her relief is palpable when she hears her name and the tension hardening her face takes a backseat. But the anxiety remains, tightly coiled, barely restrained. She doesn't let go of her grip just yet because something that feels so dangerous and all-encompassing can't possibly be frightened away so easily. The worst is yet to come, she thinks. ]
Hey-- How are you feeling? What was that?
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The screaming, however, does not stop. He cannot control it, because if he had any of what had happened to his body, he would never have become such. What future is there for a burning thing but to run out of that which fuels it?
Which is to say, the screaming continues, with a promise, because the fire always promises, it will stop when he runs out of air. ]
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It looks to wash into him too, to drag him down as far as it can, and it's promises is felt words, tasted whisper. That far deep down, there will nothing but lovely and quiet and nothing, nothing, nothing. ]
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She feels the way it seeks to devour her, her presence sits like a bear too heavy to move, occasionally taking lashings and grumbling with agitation.
The heat, she meets with cold. The heat is more irritating than anything else. The dark that had put her on edge the first time is easier to understand at this intensity. She takes it, because she must -- few others will be equipped to handle it, she thinks.]
( Enough. )
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Does one love the wolf, even as one is--]
( Get back. )[ A rumbling, perhaps thunder, but Ilde really knows nothing of rain and thunder, but she knows everything about the rumbling of a volcano. ]
( Back into your rotting shell. Get back. Go. Go. Be gone. )
[ She has begun to burn now too, she too is noxious, coming alight in the psychic space like a column of furious light. All of her beautiful terribleness alight within her egg-shell of protection. The tiny little shell of the Godking's love for her seems as if it can almost not contain her now as she shoves back, angry claws ripping into blackness. ]
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Like someone rammed a moon into my head. That's how I feel.
[ Deep breath, Katie. Focus. ]
I - wish I knew. I've never felt anything like that.
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That was the symbiote, wasn't it? So, Sam--?
[ She refrains from saying the words. Sirius disappearing felt nothing like that. Maybe it's nothing. ]
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Through the web of the Nest he turns from Sam's mind to Shiro's, a steady hand in the storm that is Zhukov. Steve's offering is solid ground to stand on, small but centered. Back up. ]
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[There is a brief, terrifying moment when he feels it start to drag on him, too. Feels part of him pulled in, lured in.]
[Everything reacts. Seizes on the foundation Steve is offering, without realizing it. Taking a stand there, the feel of that anger surging along his senses, that powerful, alien rage in every fiber of his being, shoving back that tide with a roar that thunders in his ears.]
[His fingers release. He hadn't realized he'd still been holding the man's arm.]
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I - I don't know. I don't think he's dead. I think - I would've felt that.
[ She frowns and reaches up to touch a hand to her forehead. ]
I don't know. I've never actually... felt someone die before.
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His mental presence reaches across the connection, anchors himself in both of them - it's familiar, it's easy. He's done something like this before with Steve and Bucky, with Shiro alone, but that was when he was awake, not floating in a hazy dormancy. If Sam were more conscious he might realize that through working to strengthen his own mind, he's deepened his connection to the Nest. As it is, all that matters is supporting both of them. ]
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Her voice is gentle, but firm. ]
Don't worry about that yet.
[ She reaches to rest a hand against Katie's cheek. ]
Can you hold it off if it comes again?
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( Hello, Death Knight. Will you stand with me. )
[ They are not words, it is an incantation older than either of them; the witches' call to coven, to a shared victory. ]
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[ Katie frowns as she settles into a chair, still rubbing at her temple. ]
I hate this thing. It's -- this wouldn't happen if I didn't have it in my head.
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She thinks of Murphy, so bullheaded and so determined to protect himself from the tide of the Nest , and how this curse might break him and cripple her in turn. She thinks of Shepard, a kindred spirit in her own way, how humans unaccustomed to the sort of magic that desires to costume everything -- like those monsters she once spoke of. She thinks of The Darkling, how his darkness sought to empower instead of costuming all, and she thinks of herself -- armored to the teeth, Deathlord if the Ebon Blade, risen for the sole purpose of destroying her enemies in death.
Frostreaper and Icebringer leak their own corrupting whispers in her hands, urging her to devour and dominate. She sheathes one of them to hold a hand out for Ilde without blinking.]
( By your will. )
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[ Even so, there's no need to be curt, a reminder to herself that comes a tad too late. Misato makes a face that could pass as remorseful, certainly displeased, as she draws her hand back and lets out a sigh. That helps little to allay her anxiety. ]
Sam's not really answering, is he?
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[ Pidge's response is equally curt, so they're even. She sighs softly (more of a groan) and shakes her head. She is not pleased with the empty buzz where Sam should be, even if she doesn't really like the link. ]
No, he's not. I - we should go find him.
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There is Sevilia, the frozen creature whose existence is suspended at the agonizing edge of a wintery abyss. Then there is Zhukov, lost in the depths, a phantom of death and delirium. And what is she? Handmaiden to a mad god, carrier of his tortured love, a tender gift and a corrosive curse. Spirit alight beneath the burning eye of the flames.
The disciples join hands, join rites. Fire and ice: standing against the waves, unmoved by the ugly way reality swirls within the loathsome waters. ]
( Back, back to your apostle. )
[ It is not so much Ilde's voice as theirs. ]
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Would you know where to look? Or should we sound the alarm, get everyone to help?
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[ Pidge winces and rubs her head again. ]
We should definitely find him, though. I think I know where he is. Maybe. But, uh, talking to everyone else would probably a good idea...
[ She glances up at Misato, brow furrowed in a worried frown. ]
I just wish I knew what triggered this.
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[ Whatever it was felt bad. And as much affinity she feels for Sam, when the matter of strategy and most effective placement of resources kick in, it's a terrible idea for everyone to come running to the rescue. If even a trained fighter couldn't take down whoever that was, it would be best to retreat and regroup. She doesn't think Pidge would agree. ]
But he's one of yours. I'll go with you. Come on.
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[ Pidge nods. She's still shaky on her feet, but she's not going to let that stop her. Time to move. ]