eswareinmal | Action: but you never tire of dreams

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Action: but you never tire of dreams

Characters: Any willing dreamers
Open? Yes
Where: In your minds
When: After the party
What: Part two of the dream plot!
Warnings:

The party went on, with the beast's head on display. A proud, twisted thing. Behind false ruby eyes, it waited. And as the music became slower and the wine less plentiful, it waited still.

Those who had gazed upon it at the ball. Those who had seen it once living in the forest. All heroes who dared to look upon its face and dream still that they would be able to live another day...

There are all sorts of ways of living. In waking. In sleep. Perhaps, now, they would find one in between.

(ooc: Feel free to keep tagging into the party post! Once your characters go home and go to sleep of their own accord, that is when the dreaming will begin. Remember, it is up to you to set up what kind of world your character is trapped in and how best to help them. Plotting post is here, make use of it!

The beast's power will wane once the bulk of the dreamers have escaped his curse. If your character was not at the party but you still want to involve them in the dream plot, that is fine! They can either help get people out or have seen the beast wandering in the woods before it was killed and have caught its attention that way.

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The survivors scatter. Giles looks up from his latest victim, blood ringing his mouth, and throws himself aside just in time with inhuman speed and reflexes. He lands in a crouch, glaring up at Olindra with eyes that all but glow in the darkness.

He pauses to wipe away the new blood with the back of his hand, before straightening up and regarding Olindra thoughtfully.

"...well. I would have thought you'd have been...sharper."

She circles around, snorting in agitation. "What has become of you, spirit?" she asks, keeping him in sight, keeping him at a distance.

And Giles turns in a circle, keeping her in sight. He settles into a fighting stance, baring bloodstained fangs and bunching his clawed hands into fists. But Olindra has accomplished what she intended to. The surviving mourners are already vanishing into the misty distance. The dead remain scattered on the ground. Their faces change whenever they pass across her range of vision. Occasionally, one or two even seem to have a pair of tiny wings affixed to their backs.

"A different sort of death. Common enough, in my world. You're the one out of place. Run along back to your storybook"

Bloodsucker. Vampire. They had existed in Tyrol -- oh yes. Hated, and rightly so. Olinda could hold no positive opinion of those whose diets were so gruesome.

"I am as real as you, and we are both out of place." She makes the mistake of glancing at the bodies; their changes upset her focus on him. "Is this a curse?"

"A curse? No, not a curse. We can be cursed, horribly cursed, tormented by magic. We should be. But this? No. Not a curse. A ritual, I suppose. Ritualistic murders, only with less hopelessly gaudy daggers and more blood. I should know. I know all about what I am, now. I wonder if you can imagine what a metaphysical nightmare that is."

Giles nods at the bodies - they change for him, as well, but it doesn't affect him half as much. It's all the same, in the end. A corpse is a corpse.

"None of them will rise, if that's what you're so afraid of. I'm not sure if I could turn you even if I wanted to. No. It's only me."

Words, so many words, and the meaning of them strung together is lost on her. She is perplexed, additionally because of his surprising calm.

Another snort of agitation at his musings -- a vampire unicorn? Absurd. Absurd and frightening.

"What caused your change?" she asks warily, unsure of whether or not his change in demeanor is part of some trick.

"They drink your blood, and you drink theirs'." It's a sensible enough sentence only because it has the air of an explanation given countless times before. "You die, you're buried, and you claw your way up again. Don't need to breath anymore, so it's possible. A right of passage, as it were, and if you're lucky there'll be someone waiting for you at the surface. I'm afraid I woke up a bit earlier than they expected. I'm just as angry at that as they are."

He keeps his eyes on her face, a feat in and of itself and one that demonstrates that his threat of a vampire unicorn was idle musings at best. She smells fascinating, but her blood doesn't tempt him.

He speaks with confidence and it unsettles her. The Giles she had become acquainted with stuttered, occasionally stumbled over his words. He spoke like a wagon on an uneven road.

She had wondered if he had problems with his self-esteem. Now she wishes that Giles was back.

"You were a spirit," she says slowly, as if trying to parse her words for herself, "a summoned hero for Schwanheim. You spoke of the fairy tale forest with old authority. If Schwanheim follows the patterns of fairy tales, then your assistance is all the more necessary."

A pause. Why ask -- if she doesn't know what to do if the answer is unfavorable?

Because she could never face her sister or her friends if she ran from this.

"Can you still save them like this?"

Giles had a great many problems with his self esteem, starting from the problematic issue of his own continued existence and working down from there. One of the many advantages of being a vampire, though, was that the demon that took over the body looked on the world from the very top of the food chain. Self esteem concerns were a thing of life.

Giles listens to her words with an impassive expression, broken only by a faint frown as something in his buried consciousness tries to make its way to the fore. Olindra might be aware of a ticking of the clock, filling the space around them, soft but noticeable.

"We consume," he finally says. "We're not the sort of beings that can stop others being consumed."

And then, for just a moment, the stars are blotted out by great wings as a bird bigger than any bird that ever was glides across the sky. The roc, distorted and made even more terrible by the dreamscape, stares down at Olindra before flying on into the distance.

It would have eaten Olindra then, if she hadn't had the magic prepared, and Giles wouldn't have been able to do a thing to save her.

She does notice the ticking, her ears swaying this way and that in an attempt to pinpoint the source. It only unsettles her further.

She jumps and starts when the roc flies overhead, pure panic rushing through her body. She fights to control it, but there is a wild look in her eyes now.

What had he said, before the bird had appeared? Consuming. Consuming others?

"If you have strength, if you have cunning, if you have support, you can stop many things." Her ears flick to and fro -- the roc is gone, but the ticking is not. "Regardless of the fault of the summoning, you have knowledge to share. Share it, please, that a kingdom may be saved--"

The wildness leaves her. In its place, a sense of longing. "That we might return to those we hold dear."

Consuming others. It was what a vampire did. They were beasts, when all was said and done, creature of unbridled selfishness and greed, putting their own base desires above all else.

Some were just a bit more erudite than others.

But it's true that there's a self awareness to Giles that most wouldn't have. A lifetime spent studying these very creatures tended to have that effect. He knows that he has knowledge to share, knows that it would be useful. As long as they can provide him with someone out of the dungeons or, hell, even a nice fat pig? Well, there are worse arrangements, especially if it would prevent him being consumed by the thorns along with them...

"For those of you that have someone to hold dear, you mean?" He shrugs, and turns away, looking towards the cemetery gates. "Well, I suppose the dead to occasionally have things to offer. Why else would books exist?"

There's the same sound of shifting muscle and bone and flesh, and when Giles looks back at her, his face is human again.

"Just try and stay out of trouble. There's something a bit unsettling, about being in your head. Suppose it has to do with...well." He indicates her current form with a wave of his hand.

His words are true -- to those who have someone to hold dear... But there was nothing to say that Giles couldn't have someone or something like that, too.

But he is shifting back now to a form less worrisome. She tucks his words away for later. It is selfish of her, she knows, but accepts, too.

"You are not the first to warn me, though you are the first to move me," she says, canting her head to the side. Was it safe now? To be casual?

"Then make sure I'm the last to have to warn you," Giles retorts. "Honestly, reckless girls like you are probably the reason I'm still here in the first place."

But there's an affection behind his words, albeit a barbed affection, and then Giles turns away again, beckoning Olindra to follow.

"We shouldn't stay here. Or, well, I don't want to stay here any longer, and I doubt you do either. Coming?"

She ducks her head, chided. "Yes. I am not sure how I came to be here, to be honest," she says, following his lead. "I was asleep, I think."

"And you're still asleep. How you managed to come into my dream, rather than yours'...that's a problem for another time, I think. A waking time. But now that this is my dream again, and after all the difficulties I've caused you tonight, I suppose the least I can do is see you out."

The iron gates of the cemetery are ahead. At their approach, they creak slowly and ponderously open, as though in a ghostly wind.

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Action: but you never tire of dreams

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