Catalogue of Visions (and things)
Jun. 2nd, 2013 12:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cordelisseHe Waits Dreaming Visions
Zoey’s sleep was not a peaceful one. She tossed and turned on the bed, fitful and restless, her mind filled with shadows and portents.
She wanders through the halls of Miskatonic University. Each side of the corridor is lined with people; they are fellow transplants to Arkham, she knows this, even though she has not yet met everyone. But they are here, in her dream, and it does not surprise her in the slightest.
Something is wrong. Something is very, VERY wrong. She feels it in her bones, and prickling along her skin. But she continues walking forward, step by step. There is no turning back. There is never any turning back.
The farther she walks the more the feeling intensifies, and she slowly begins to understand why. Some of those lining the hall are BLEEDING, huge chunks of their bodies just... missing. The ground is wet with their blood. She cannot turn back, no matter how much she longs to. So, on she walks, unable to look away. She has to see this. Has to know.
The sound of liquid pattering onto tile stops her, draws her gaze down... She is not exempt from the horror surrounding her. A gaping hole mars her chest, right where her heart is. Was. Someone has removed her heart. Blood streams from the wound, splattering the floor. She can do nothing except press a suddenly numb hand over it before everything goes black.
Zoey lurched awake, screaming at the top of her lungs as she scrabbled backwards and slammed hard into the headboard. She couldn’t breathe. All she could taste was blood, and all she could see was the gaping hole in her own chest.
Carnival of Rust Visions
Once she was closer, it was unmistakable. They were, indeed, Nemo's eyes...only it was as if the color was turned up somehow, the light drained away and replaced with something artificial. His voice was ever-cheerful, nearly to the point of being grating, like -
Nails. A few of them, long, blackened with grime and rust, stacked against each other, tumbling into a little pile, one at a time, clink, clink, clink, clink, SPLAT and they're all glistening, and preceding each is the wet crunch of something being pulled from flesh -
...Like nails on a chalkboard.
*****
She was back in the darkness, and whatever it was that was pursuing her was closer. Even though she knew it was pointless, she took off running in a direction at random. Hoping that it would be different, that maybe this time she could get away.
Something slammed into her, driving her roughly into a solid, flat surface. A wall. She struggled desperately, trying to get away. NEEDING to get away. But it was no use, she was pinned fast. Tears were streaming down her face, she could feel them as she struggled.
It touched her, on her chest, over her heart... and PULLED. There was a wet, crunching sound (she knew that sound) and agony tore through her body as the nail (it was a wood nail, it had to be a wood nail) was wrenched from her body. She screamed. The faint sound of the nail hitting the floor reached her ears... and then it slowly, inexorably dragged another one out of her. The pain was overwhelming, and she couldn’t stop screaming.
Another.
And another.
And another.
And another, the metal nails clinking against each other as they were dropped to the ground.
And another.
*****
BANG.
Even if she tried to move away now, she would realize that her hand was stuck in place, held as if by some invisible force. The long, rough, rusty nail slid a bit through her fingertips with the first impact.
BANG.
The nail went in further, the rust caught against her skin. She still couldn't move her hand away. But he was going to hit her eventually, wasn't he?
BANG.
But it didn't budge this time. It was caught on something. It was caught on Zoey's skin, fused to it somehow, pulling at it but never tearing. "Huh. Must have hit it wrong." He struck, repeatedly, but the hammer falls stopped sounding like hammerfalls. Distorted. Garbled. But something there. Something that Bo-Bo could hear too, were he listening, were he paying attention.
,¡ON,
,-I 'ǝsɐǝlԀ-Ԁ,
,˙NMOp WIH p˥OH,
*****
Zoey is once again standing in utter darkness. She is beginning to grow accustomed to being here in her dreams. For this is a dream. She knows it. Can feel it in her bones. There is something in the air here. Oppressive and disturbing, it makes a shiver of unease run down her spine.
She begins walking, picking a direction at random and moving forward. Always forward. Never back.
Something shimmers out in the blackness, and she can feel the weight of its gaze upon her. As she walks deeper into whatever is waiting for her... eyes blink and flutter open. Dozens. Perhaps hundreds. Watching her. She can feel their dark hunger focused upon her. Something about them sets her teeth on edge... and then she realises just what, exactly, it is. Many of the eyes watching her every move... are sideways.
She does not let that stop her. CANNOT let that stop her. Zoey knows that she has to keep moving. To stop would be deadly. Scattered amongst the multitude of eyes are those with red and white swirls for irises. Those are the most dangerous. How she knows this, she cannot say.
After what seems like both forever and a matter of minutes she reaches a room, though she cannot see its walls, she knows it is a room. Light flickers, in shades of red, faintly illuminating a figure seated at a table. His face is all in darkness, but just as she knew she had reached a room, but she knew it was a ‘he’. There is a bowl at his right hand, and every so often he reaches into it and removes something, raising it to his mouth and taking a slow, savouring bite. The quietest squishing-gooshing sound reaches her ears.
Somehow Zoey keeps moving forward, closer to the table. Closer to the figure. As she does so, he picks up the bowl and holds it out to her, as if offering her some. She takes another step, and something pops and squishes underfoot. Under her very bare feet. The red light flickers over the contents of the bowl, and with a stomach churning realisation she knows what it is he is eating. What it is that has burst beneath her feet.
Eyes. Human eyes.
Zoey lurched into consciousness, gagging and gasping desperately for breath. Oh fuck. The horror of what she had just awakened from coursed through her in a full body shudder, mingling with the nausea in such a way to make her curl in on herself, trying to swallow the heaves and gasps and groans before she disturbed her tent-mates. Tears streamed silently down her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to rid herself of what she had just seen. Just felt.
*****
It was near Nemo that she staggered, something sending her reeling. She barely managed to catch herself against the fortune telling booth, the carnival swirling around her dizzily. The taste of tar was in her mouth again, sharp and nauseating, mixing with the metallic tang of blood.
Something was wrong.
She needed to keep moving; stopping here, out for anyone to see, was a bad idea. But she couldn’t. Trying to move, to keep walking towards the tent as she had originally intended only sent her sagging back against the worn wood of the booth. Her entire body was trembling, fingers pressed shakily against peeling paint and old wood. There were two fortune telling booths now, overlapping each other underneath her hands. “Nemo.” One was still standing, worn and solid. The other... was torn apart. Smashed open. Practically destroyed.
OH.
Knees buckling, Zoey half slid, half crumpled to the ground, a strangled cry slipping unbidden from her lips. Something had torn open in her mind, as though a dam had ruptured, then burst completely. Everything poured into her, THROUGH her; images, feelings, thoughts, WORDS. The past. The future. And it BURNED. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, pupils eclipsing the iris so that scarcely any blue showed at all.
Fingers threading and tangling tightly into her hair, her hands pressed hard against her temples, she writhed under the onslaught of agony coursing through her frame. Tears of blood began trickling from her eyes and down her cheeks in a steadily increasing stream.
Words, not entirely her own, tumbled from her mouth, voice ragged and pained.
"Mirror, Mirror, tell me
Will I escape your blackened panes?
Or will the merry murd'rer
Leave me here to die in vain?
Shall I spin forever?
Shall I be torn apart?
Or shall I feel old glass and nails
Come tearing through my heart?
Woe's me, woe's me,
He's never going to set me free
From this dizzy prison
From this darkened glass
From his watchful gaze
From his cruel intent
That's to slay me"
Zoey arched off the ground, keening in pain. There was so MUCH, all desperate to be heard, to burn its way out of her in fire and ash. Oh god, she couldn’t breathe. She coughed and choked, tasting blood on her tongue.
"Weeeeeeeell, I KNOW why you're here, DEAR BOY. But I'm AFRAID it's just nooooot going to WORK! Fool me ONCE, shame on YOU...and I will NOT be fooled TWICE."
*****
Through the deafening tumult in her head Zoey could hear a panicked rapping, a rapping she could feel vibrating ever-so-slightly through her body. Nemo. Oh gods she had to warn him. He had to know. She couldn’t... she wasn’t sure she could fight her way past everything rushing through her to find the words. To find her voice. She cried out in agony, one hand scrabbling against the worn wood of the fortune telling booth to try and find a purchase. “Nemo,” she gasped breathlessly. She hissed as the words and images throbbed harder in her mind, as though upset by her battle against them.
“Mirror, Mirror, tell me...” Ah, GOD! A groan was wrenched out of her as she fought against the onslaught of images and pain. There was so much. SO MUCH. Somehow she managed to find her way mostly upright, trembling hand pressed hard against the glass. The booth was the only thing holding her upright aside from sheer determination.
“Your booth... destroyed,” she ground out, hissing at just how much it HURT to talk. To talk as herself, not the seer. Though she was both. “It’s going to be...”
Bleeding eyes widened in shock and surprise. She could see it now. See what she had only caught glimpses of before. “He stole you,” she whispered, the finding of her own voice again burning. “He took you. Stole your face.” Her voice was stronger now, because it had to be. No matter the pain. Nemo had to hear her. Needed to hear her. “You looked like the Carnie. He looks like you.”
It made so much sense. Why the Carnie’s eyes had seemed so familiar when he had first cornered her in the practice arena that first day. What IS HE? The tears of blood were coursing steadily down her cheeks now, although she scarcely noticed.
“Pleaaaaaaaaase, DON’T make me go in there! They’ll – they’ll HURT meee again -!”
Her forehead thudded against the glass, eyes widening for a second before she squeezed them tightly shut, screaming as a white hot bolt of agony coursed through her. She was gasping – FIGHTING for breath. She couldn’t... it was too much. She was being overwhelmed.
Throne of Shadows Visions
Zoey knows where she is before she even opens her eyes. She knows the presence of the Carnival as well as she knows herself, anymore. But something is wrong. Something is horribly, horribly wrong. She is wearing the white dress given to her upon arrival in Dagaz, only it’s ragged, torn above her knees, and dirty, covered blood and mud and soot; her feet are bare, the dirt warm against her skin. She’s standing just inside the gates. They lay in the dirt to each side of her, twisted and warped, as though something... or someone wrenched them off their hinges and flung them aside.
There is no sign of anyone. No sound, save her quiet, uneven breaths.
“No.” Her voice is loud in the silence as she begins to move, taking careful steps through the wreckage of what once used to be a Carnival. What happened? She sees the fortune teller’s booth – Nemo’s fortune teller’s booth, and freezes in her tracks in shock. It’s torn apart. Smashed open... Practically destroyed. No. Nonononono. She’s running now, heedless of the debris and wreckage littering the ground. It doesn’t matter. She’d seen this. A fortnight into her captivity, she saw this. “Nemo.”
There’s no sign of him, no sign of the man who had his appearance stolen from him, trapped in the booth, unable to speak except in riddles and rhyme. Who had tried so hard to warn them... She wants to stop, to drop to her knees and mourn him she knows...
So she walks. Forcing herself not to run... she walks through the broken, twisted, smoking ruin.
She finds Morpho first. He is lying sprawled just outside the House of Dusk, bloody and broken, his eyes wide and unseeing. He isn’t alone, though; around him are countless moths. Careless of the dead bugs, Zoey kneels beside him, reaching out with one trembling hand to brush fingertips against his shoulder. Her eyes are burning with tears, but she refuses to let them fall. Not yet. I should have been here. Angry with herself, and heartbroken, she rises to her feet and continues on.
The silence is deafening, and the longer she is there, the more she has to force herself to remain calm.
Slowly, one, by one, she finds them. Jilles. Wes. Genta. There’s something odd about his being there, but it doesn’t matter. He’s there, and he’s gone.
Reaching her tent, there is a moment’s relief that Ashlin is safe; she’s in Dagaz, with Zoey, she cannot be in the wreckage of the Carnival, and then she walking through the tent-flap. “Oh god.” It’s Angel. And Juniper. The tent is drenched in blood and the two lie in each other’s arms. Her hands clench into fists, so tight that her nails draw blood. No... Oh god no. She stumbles back a few steps, and nearly trips over something.
It’s Michael, his white suite bloodied and dirty. His katana is lying on the floor inches from his hand, blade stained with blood.
She cannot bring herself to linger there any longer. So she leaves. She will not stop searching until she finds everyone. She has to.
Wesley and Salis lay in a wreckage of drums, and seeing them breaks her heart farther, the bits growing smaller and smaller. Soon it shall be nothing but dust. Their drumsticks are still held tightly in their hands, and she feels her eyes burn with tears. They were the first she had encountered with a gift anything like hers. And she liked them. Very much. Kneeling down between them, she touched their cheeks with gentle fingertips. “I’m sorry.”
Rising to her feet, and giving up all pretense, Zoey runs. She RUNS. Her feet are torn and bleeding now, leaving scarlet footprints in her wake, but it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is him.
He needed her and she wasn’t there. They all needed her and she wasn’t there. She left them. She abandoned them. It doesn’t matter that it was against her will and out of her control. She left. That’s all that matters.
I left.
“I’m so sorry, Jason.” She was supposed to protect them. Keep them safe. And she failed.
*****
Zoey is once again standing in almost total darkness. She is long since accustomed to doing so, particularly in dreams. It’s always in dreams. The air smells of smoke and ash, but it is distant. Somewhere in the back of her mind she realises that it won’t be distant for long. Taking a steadying breath, she walks.
There are no eyes shimmering into existence in the blackness surrounding her this time, and she is glad. So she walks, on into the darkness, the cobblestones beneath her feet cool against her skin. There are, however, lights. Dim and flickering like flames, illuminating a path leading off in the distance. And so she goes.
It doesn’t take long for smoke to begin to billow and swirl around her, irritating her throat and making her cough. Still she continues forward, because she has to, because there is more for her to see. So she walks, the ground growing uneven beneath her feet. There is always more for her to see. It’s warmer now; sweat trickling down her brow and down her neck. But she does not turn back. She needs to know. She needs to see. This is her burden.
Her gift.
The farther she goes, the more ruin she sees in the dim lighting. Stone, broken and crumbling, flames licking at their surface. It’s familiar, a path she had walked many times.
Thurisaz is burning. She cannot see much in the darkness, but she knows this with a certainty she can feel in her bones. Why it is burning, she doesn’t know, but whatever it means, it’s coming. And it’s coming soon.
Zoey stumbles, tripping over something in the shadows, sprawling onto the hard ground. The wind is knocked out of her, but she forces herself back to her knees, then to her feet. She turns back; to see what it was that caught her feet, knowing all the while that she will not like what she sees.
Pasha.
Oh god. Pasha. The younger girl is drenched in blood, her body broken and eyes staring blankly. She takes a few staggering steps back, eyes burning with tears. It’s only going to get worse. She feels it in her bones. In her blood. So she turns – FORCES herself to turn away, and walk on.
And it does get worse.
There are more bodies now, lying scattered like breadcrumbs in the blood. Some are obviously Nysgod... others are not. They are like Pasha, people she knows. Clawed and broken and bloody.
(Some of them are her friends.)
Chell.
Glinda.
Diana. Fuck. She’s lying crumpled a few feet away. There’s... something (a spear? She’s not sure) wooden and charred protruding from her chest. From her heart. She’s pinned to the ground. Whether that happened before... or after, Zoey doesn’t know.
She’s also glowing, a flickering, fading purple that in the back of her head Zoey realises is her aura. Why is her aura purple? She doesn’t know why; all she knows is that it IS, in fact, purple.
Zoey forces herself to keep moving. Even though this is a dream, she knows this is a dream, she cannot tarry.
The smoke is thick now, filling her lungs and choking her. She can scarcely breathe, but she doesn’t stop. She can’t stop. Not yet. Her hands are shaking and she is drenched in sweat, but she continues walking.
It’s Bert and Alain that bring her to a stuttering halt next, their bodies as blood-soaked as all the others. They died protecting each other; even if she didn’t know them enough to say so, it is obvious in the way they lay on the cobblestone. There are claw and bite marks covering them, and her stomach turns. They aren’t just bite marks. Something had taken a bite out of them; eaten them.
No matter how accustomed she is to the vagaries of her gift, it still frustrates her. When is this going to happen? WHY is it going to happen?
Can she stop it? She can’t stop everything, she’s never been able to stop everything, but all she can do is try. Do her best to keep those she cares about, and those they care about, alive. And those she doesn’t know. Forewarned is forearmed.
There’s movement behind her, and Zoey turns, reaching for a weapon she no longer has. It’s quicksilver (and that is painfully, painfully true in ways she doesn’t have a chance to realise) fast, and she can do nothing as it slides over her, coiling around her body and forcing itself down her throat and into her lungs.
She’s drown-
Zoey awoke with a desperate, choking gasp of air, which transitioned almost instantly into screaming. She scrambled backwards on the bed, still caught in the throes of her vision. Still feeling herself drowning.
*****
He opened up to her reach, and she, as carefully and as gently as she could manage, slipped deeper into his mind. Maybe it was the deeper contact of her mind to his, maybe it was something else entirely. She wasn’t sure. But Zoey had scarcely enough time to inhale sharply, a hand fisting into the bedding, before the vision took her. Images, sensations, flickered through her head.
Lava.
Heat.
Pain. So much pain. It burns at her, tears at her, takes her breath away. It’s more than physical. Far more than merely physical. There’s sorrow, and heartbreak. And loss.
And darkness. So much darkness.
Everything is all twisted together, tangled, but it doesn’t all belong to the same person. She knows that with a certainty she can feel in her bones. Something has ended, and something is beginning. Something... awful, that will stretch across the galaxy. She cannot see it, nor can she tell exactly what it is going to be, but she knows it all the same.
“... I loved you.”
The pain intensifies, burning white hot. She opens her mouth to scream...
Zoey recoiled instinctively, both physically and mentally, jerking back on the bed even as she put up as many walls as she could, in an attempt to keep Obi-Wan from seeing what she’d seen, feeling what she’d felt. Fuck. She dropped her head, taking a moment to gather herself and steady her breathing, watching without surprise as droplets of blood spattered onto her thigh.
Fuck.