[mission: hyrypia] and when our bottles and all we are fill’d with immortality

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: The Barithian Hunters (and anyone sneaking along)
WHERE: Hyrypia - The Finger Maze
WHEN: DAY :018
SUMMARY: The barithian hunt leads into the depths of the Finger Maze.
WARNINGS: Violence. Animal slaughter. Character death. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

THE FINGER MAZE
DAY :018
IN MORNING'S PRE-DAWN GRAY the camp is far more subdued than on preceding days. There's no music, breakfast is a quiet and simple affair, and the servants are hushed as they go about their duties. Before the sun has even fully risen, the members of the Envoys participating in the hunt make their way to their mounts. When they arrive they are given a speech that seems practiced - likely only a slight modification of something that the Elinmaster has said many times before. The group - just under forty hunters kitted out with all of the weapons and traps they have had time to learn in their days on the graze - is brought to the fenceline running parallel to the technomagical barrier which guards the mouth of the Finger Maze proper. In the fence is a plain gate. Once the hunting party is gathered there, it opens. A slash in the technomagical barrier disintegrates before them and the smell of ozone evaporates or is carried into the twisting depths of the Maze by the wind howling mournfully inward from off the Graze. The Elinmaster leads the hunting party through the gap.

Once on the other side, the party draws pauses until the technomagical barrier rises once more behind them. No crowds today. No onlookers (unless they're being especially industrious). Then the Elinmaster brings a familiar sounding horn to their lips. It's long, low wailing note echoes down into the maze and splinters down the endless twisting pathways. With that, the hunt begins.

INTO THE LABYRINTH
I. THE STAGING GROUND
HERE IS HOW YOU HUNT A BARITHIAN, explains the Elinmaster. First, a field of battle needs to be chosen - and it's always better to know the ground you're fighting on than to be caught unawares in unfamiliar territory. The hunting party will need to establish a fall back position inside the canyon that's advantageous to them, at which point it will be lain with all manner of traps. Memorize it. You'll want to know every nook and cranny when you return here under duress.

Plan your routes and lay your traps. You do remember how to set them, don't you?


II. BY THE TAIL
WITH THE STAGE SET, only the star is lacking - or the villain is. But the Finger Maze is a vast labyrinthine space that stretches on for miles. Finding the Barithian, even as large as it is, presents a challenge - perhaps the second greatest challenge of the hunt. It is time for the hunters to separate. Some go off alone, some travel in small groups. Each is equipped with a small version of the horn that had summoned them to this work in the first place. Their task is simple and herculean: to search the maze for signs of the beast and locate it, then to draw its attention and lure it back into the staging ground. Lastly, they must send out the call to summon the rest of the party to rendezvous meet them where the chase will end. However, only one route leads to the barithian. Perhaps--

a) There were signs - a bone, a tell-tale scrape on the canyon walls, a corridor of felled coral. It was difficult to tell from the back of the Elin, so it made sense in the moment to dismount and check more closely. --At least, it made sense right up until now when you suddenly hear something. Something-- big. Its footfalls shake the floor under your feet; its heavy breath snorts out of its multiple sets of nostrils with a wet visceral sound. You can’t go back the way you came - the trembling footfalls seem to come from that direction. Luckily, there's a narrow cave opening in the canyon wall right there.

Inside is dark. The cave goes very deep indeed - so deep that after a time you can smell the promise of fresh air again. Maybe there's another exit? Which is good, since the way you entered is no longer an option: the beast is there, it's massive forepaws clawing into the stone on either side of the cave entrance and its huge mutli-nostriled nose sucking in big, gulping breaths.

b) ((OOC NOTE: first come first serve)) You find the Barithian. Even with its great hulking back turned to you, it's awe-inspiring. Terrifying. The Elinmaster's assistants had described it on the way in, but their words failed to convey the details. It's disturbingly massive - mammothian, even -, its six legs coiled tight with muscle, and strong, sharp claws on each of the massive paws. You have to get it’s attention. How you do it is up to you, but you know that the moment it turns its massive head toward you with its beady eyes hidden behind a broad, triangular face plate and its multinostrils flaring with a horrible groaning noise that it's time to get a move on.

c) Your search has turned up nothing - but that's not surprising is it? The maze is huge. Not everyone could strike gold. Hell, not everyone would even want to. It’s almost a relief until you hear it: the low, moan of the signal horn echoing through the maze-like canyon. You need to get back to the staging ground and you need to go fast - or risk leaving the other hosts to face the beast alone.

III. THE BATTLE
THE HORN DOES ITS JOB. By the time the hosts unlucky enough to have the tiger by its tail come riding back into the staging ground, many members of the hunting party have already returned and are armed, if not ready, for when the creature comes barreling in behind them. It shakes the brittle bone coral with the weight of its galloping footfalls and makes a deep, low sonorous noises that echoes down the stone walls. With its ire raised, the barithian is even more fearsome than it had seemed from a distance. It’s size and strength are undeniable up close. The creature tears great mounds of earth up under its clawed feet and there's a mesmerizing, horrific quality to the flash of filtered canyon light off its sharp teeth.

The riders are now tasked with the last phase of the challenge - kill or be killed, using the weapons and techniques they have learned in their time here. And hey, maybe you have a few non-Hyrypian tricks up your sleeves you can play with some subtlety. Fighting fair seems less than ideal when one of those huge paws comes swiping right at you.


IV. THE FRUIT OF DIPLOMACY
'DON'T GET CLOSE TO THE HEAD,' had seemed like an easy to follow rule back on the Graze, but the reality of facing down with the barithian is far more complicated. And despite being slowed by the environment, the traps laid for it, countless spears jutting from its dense marbled hide, here in its last moments the great beast is at its most dangerous. Maybe someone gets over confidant. Maybe it's just general exhaustion. Maybe it seems like the barithian is staggering when really it's turning for one final, deadly snap of its ferocious jaws.

It bowls three riders from their Elin with one swipe from its massive paw - mechanics twisting and bursting with brilliant flares of released technomagical energy - then lunges for the felled hunters left in the wake of their ruined mounts. A Descendant throws up both arms in some lunatic, useless defense mechanism. Beside her, Lavellan drives the blunt end of his spear into the ground and braces the shaft across his knee. The Barithian drives itself down on the point of the spear, snaps down on his arm by reflex and then recoils - tossing him clear like a horrifying rag doll as the great animal thrashes.

There's an immediate, palpable, indescribable POP! A ship being hulled and all the air sucked out of into into the vacuum of space. A glass bauble splitting into a hundred thousand pieces on some distant stone floor. A seam splitting. A branch snapped across the knee. And then there's nothing left at all except the frothing barithian snapping out those nearest i to it.


V. THE RETURN
THE RIDE BACK TO THE CAMP seems to take twice as long as the one they took to the Finger Maze - though it hardly seems long enough, knowing what lies at the end. Certainly the other Hosts will have felt Lavellan's death, but you know what they say. Seeing is believing.

It doesn’t matter. The camp awaits their return regardless. As they ride through the gate again one of the massive technomagically driven wagons passes them, headed into the maze to retrieve their kill. Once they reach the edges of the encampment, the atmosphere there remains subdied. While the other Envoys and Hyrypian hosts might not know the nitty gritty details, the certainly seem to have considered the possibility of things going badly. There is food, drink, and eventually even some gentle, sober music, however the evening is quiet and many of the envoys retreat to their own tents rather than remain in the public spaces.

Some victories are not celebrated.

---

((OOC Notes: This log covers the barithian hunt and any relating events that take place on DAY :018. You can find information about the hunt and ask event specific questions HERE.

Have more generalized questions? Drop them on the MISSION: HYRYPIA OOC POST or get in touch with us on the Mod Contact page.))

NAVIGATION • GAME CALENDAR • MISSION: HYRYPIA • FAQ
• MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[redheadcarrier]

Asuka feels wretched. She feels sorry for herself even as she berates and despises her own being for daring to accept help and comfort. As good as it feels to have the solidity and warmth of Lakshmi's comfort, there's an equal tug of disgust and sullen anger. She doesn't deserve to have this help. She doesn't need it. She should stand on her own and accepting this is weakness. The mixed emotions bubble and boil under the surface, but she stays put, hands curled into fists in the robes that drape over her. Her shoulders tremble as she sobs, every harsh breath another sound that gives her a deep, abiding sense of shame and relief in equal measures. She won't be stopping for a while. There are too many raw nerves that have been touched, too much pent up grief and anger that goes far beyond the loss of a single person, for her to be content with a few tears.

No, this is going to be good, long cry. And Lakshmi is simply going to have to put up with the crying girl in her lap.

"I shouldn't be doing this," her voice slips out in a harsh almost-whisper, through a throat worn raw by sobbing.

[shri]

She says nothing for all of it. Holding her still, she presents herself in this moment as the only thing that matters: there, and immovable. Her cheek resting against her hair, fingers light as they move in the same brush back and forth. The same rocked soothing motion through it all.

A hoarseness in her own throat: she does not weep, not anymore. But not because she ever thought she should stop doing such. "No." Firm, direct, as she tilts up her face up towards her. "Life will give you many reasons to weep, it's true. The greatest cruelty is when we cannot even mourn." Her hands brace either side of her face, sweeps her fingers in a far too motherly gesture that bellies something, so unhappily kept, blotting the tears with edge of her thumb in a broader motion. She has not done this for anyone for years, she has never forgotten this motions. "So mourn, Asuka, as long as you need. I promise you, there has never, nor will ever be, shame in it."

[redheadcarrier]

Despite the reassurances and the gentle touch, a part of Asuka still shrieks that she shouldn't accept a single thing. Not a word of reassurance, not a touch, not even the idea of comfort. She shouldn't rely on others, shouldn't accept any of it, because everyone leaves. Because she should stand on her own. Because accepting this makes her a weak little girl. But Lakshmi's touch is soft and motherly and it's everything that Asuka has ever truly, deeply wanted in her life. It's someone to brush the tears away, to card fingers through her hair and tell her that everything will be alright.

She's stuck on the edge between childhood and adulthood and for now, she's a child. For now she wants (needs) comfort. Even if she keeps hating herself. Even if she'll beat herself up (now and later), this helps. It's a step in the right direction. A small step, but a step.

"Only little kids cry-" Asuka objects, trying to will her tears back inside of herself. It's something she's told herself over and over again, but it's never really stopped her from crying.

"I'm not a little kid!"

But she's crying all the same. Ugly and red-eyed and still trying to get a handle on the empty nothingness where her brood used to be. She was too used to them. And now they're gone.

[shri]

She keeps her motions the same, smoothing, but doesn't look away, not for this. Doesn't let her mistake in her face be for anything else. Other than to let Asuka know

"The grown weep, often, perhaps they do not do it openly - but I promise you," the shudder, the grief that is still so hot in her throat after all these years. Oh she had wept, she had wept so long, her body felt like it would waste away. But to that she does not speak, because her mind blocked it to a daze, in the after hours when they took her son away. Gangadhar's head in her lap. Her fingers in his hair, it is a moment without end. A grief that knew no beginning, middle or end.

She had stopped. Gangadhar never had. "we do." Her own blinders, she knows, are from a need to protect herself.

[redheadcarrier]

Asuka feels the tug of grief and she knows it isn't her's. Her own is different. It has roots from years and years ago, but it hasn't become quite the all-consuming thing that Lakshmi has. And it just makes her weep all the harder, because she doesn't know if she'll ever overcome this hole that's been burned in her with the loss of her mother and all of the others she's lost along the way. Her own lost years, her neglect, the constant feeling of never being good enough.

And now the loss of another. Someone she didn't know as well as she should have, but who had been, in a way, a friend and someone she relied on. She feels weak and helpless and she despises it, but the tears keep coming. She's an ugly mess.

"I don't know what to do," she admits in a small, ugly voice, throat raw from sobs, "I don't want to be like this anymore. I don't want - I don't-"

[shri]

She falls quiet with that. A stretch of crackling embers. Burning at the center of greater walls. Padmavati might have had the right idea, when she let herself burn, than ever let hereself be taken.

Another kiss, dropped warm into her hair. Pulling her in tighter, like the mere motion of covering - of being like a home ought to be, a thing she finds only has ever had meaning when it is built out of limbs and body parts. A spine of support beams, femurs like pillars, a rib cage that might do for walls, if she breathed in deep enough.

Like there might ever be replacing this feeling.

But in the way she never admits how lost she had been, she does not know how to do otherwise now, than to be there no relief. Maybe the kinder thing might be to lie, and give her what she wants - I will be here, I will always be here. - but she has put those things out of her tongue too long now for them to be easily feigned, and nor would she pretend that Asuka was a child to deserve that kind of coddling.

So she gives what she always has. "You weep, you weep until sleep comes, then in the morning, you will weep again." her fingers keep their motions, pulling through, her cheek laying against her hair. A soft rhythm of voice, that come not in the English she forced herself too - but the Hindi that the symbiote translates as she speaks in memory. "You will do so, for every morning that comes afterward. Perhaps it will be for the whole day, sometimes no more than a few minutes. More and then less and then more again. Sometimes you might be even aware of it."

A sigh. "Then, there is a day, where you find that you haven't wept, not once. Not even for a second. It will feel strange. It feels like weeping has become part of you now. But it isn't you." A firmer, stiffer press of her fingers, she goes on. "There will always be more to you than this. It will take time, but day by day, you begin to remember it."

It's the only affirmation she's had for years, when it came to her own griefs. "You will always be more than this."

[redheadcarrier]

That soft, soothing lie wouldn't really do much for Asuka. At least not in the long-term. In the short-term it might help soothe the pain. She might even trick herself into believing it. But Asuka would know, deep down, that it wouldn't be true. That she's going to lose more people one day and that she's going to have to keep living with the pain for a long, long time. It feels hard and it is hard. Like here whole life is going to be nothing a never-ending struggle to get one foot in front of the other. That she'll always be losing people, that there will always be this hollow spot in her heart where her mother used to be. Where Levallan used to be. Rubbed raw by neglect and left aching every time she feels she hasn't done enough.

Despite the voice at the back of her head that chides her for being a weak, scared little girl, she curls in against Lakshmi, lets the support and warmth of her body wrap around her and shut her out from the world for a time. Her mind is a buzzing, active landscape of jagged spikes - keep out, go away, why won't anyone hold me, why, why, why - and her emotion keeps pouring out of her, despite her best attempts to reel it in. Most of the storm has passed, but she's left feeling... drained and exhausted. Her fingers tighten against Lakshmi's robes and a part of her resents Lakshmi for this, almsot as much as she's grateful.

Mostly, she hates herself for wanting the comfort that she provides.

"Is that really it?" Her voice has a tremble, but the choking sobs have slowed and faded.

"It just hurts?"

She sounds small; like a child. No one told her that that was how it was. Everyone's expected her to keep moving. To brush it off. Or to be more accurate, it's what she's always expected of herself, because that's what adults do. Right?

[shri]

"It does."

She keeps the motions small and repetitive, the words said into a empty flat space that is her grief. Deep as the sacred rivers of her home. Unforgiving as the fires that scorched the desert. She talks only in the tone of experience.

"It will hurt for a very long time. Anything else is a fallacy they say to lie to themselves. But it hurts, and it will hurt, and there is no shame in that. Pretending there is no pain does not make you stronger." Measured, she pushes through, saying as much as her own truth knew, either way.

[redheadcarrier]

Asuka has tried to pretend that the pain wasn't there. She spent years doing that, trying to harden herself and act as if she wasn't impact. As if she were able to brush off the loss of a mother, the indifference of a father. But it hadn't worked, had it? And if that didn't work, if she simply had to bear the pain and live with it - that was the only choice now. She can feel the Lakshmi's pain, distant and flickering, almost as an echo of her own, and she does her best not to cry again.

"People will think I'm weak," she croaks in response, "And I'm not."

She has to assert that. That's the important part. They can't think less of her for this and there is an alarmed, panicky part of her that fears that more than she fears the pain of loss.

[shri]

She tilts her fingers against Asuka then. The smoothing gesture used to tilt her chin up to look up at her. A firm direction that brooks no argument, not a request but a direction to here and now.

"No. The only people who matter - will know you are strong. Not in spite of, but because of." Sharp, direct. The weight of something either miserable or old and with no in between. "I have been ruling men since younger than you are now - and I have been killing them for older too. I have seen them all, brave, strong, weak, cowardly, wise and conniving. It is those who say such things - who are weak. Anyone who puts down another for their heart - it is they who are weak."

She wraps her up then - not softly to comfort - but determined, gripping hard, all of the affection she wants and she cannot tell so well if it is for Asuka or herself only that the anger that grips her is so suddenly - deep. Who had done this to her?

"You are strong, little Asura, you are. You always have been and you always will be. Even I can tell that."

[redheadcarrier]

Asuka doesn't want to look at Lakshmi, not with red-rimmed eyes from crying and her cheeks stained by tears. She feels wretchedly ashamed of her own emotions and that carries across in the way she treis to shrink back and hide. But she has nowhere to go. She came to Lakshmi for comfort and this is what she's getting. She takes a shaky breath and tries to be strong, even though it kills her a little to allow herself to be vulnerable.

The anger that rolls off of Lakshmi is almost a relief then. She can feed on it. Use it. Anger is familiar; it's what she's run on for so long and she takes it and folds it into herself and she can feel that furnace inside of her starting to churn again. Her fingers fold in and curl against Lakshmi's robes. She's telling Asuka what she's wanted to hear. But she doesn't know if she believes it herself, which has always been the problem. Relying on someone else to tell you that you matter is fragile. When they leave, everything collapses again.

"I'll try."

That's all she can promise. Her throat works in a swallow. The words stick in her throat and she finally chokes them out.

"...thank you."