The Internal Affairs

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Serena
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Posted by Serena »


Precision.
For one that was used in putting extreme care even into counting how many times they flossed each tooth, drawing an arcane sigil on which might or might not depend their own safety could become a very delicate matter. Not that it wasn't a delicate matter already, of course, but it certainly put the situation in perspective.

Useless to say, the half drow did count how many times he flossed each of his own teeth.
And right now that sigil was somehow an important part of his most immediate future, especially since he wasn't expecting the letters he sent to make a great difference, besides forcing the interested parties to abandon the open hunt tactic.



The brush ran smoothly over the overly polished marble of the floor, each element of the circle starting to glow faintly as soon as he added the connection runes he had saved for last, the energies perfectly balanced in the completion of the design.
It was as soon as the last two main lines that connected all the bodies of the elaborate trap were traced, that he confirmed to himself that there was no turning back.
"Hand me my shovel, I'm going in!"

Plays: Aidan Rhistel - Factor and Law Representative of the Fated
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Slayer of Love
Posts: 65
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2020 4:54 pm

Posted by Slayer of Love »


The ritual

A mystical, dark red spark wades through the seals' outlines. The path it traces glistens in a spectral half-light, and smaller beams of it flow over to subsequent parts of the mystical drawing. Once it is activated fully, a low, humming, disturbing noise precedes a burst of blinding bright, otherworldly light that engulfs Rhistel unleashed by completion of the spell.

Though clearly the spell is cast successfully, there is no figure summoned before Rhistel that he could see. Only a ghastly shrill that no creature of planes Rhistel has ever known could ever dredge from its throat. The unbearably horrid sound does not come from any direction around the wizard, yet it is ringing so deafeningly loud, and so profoundly disturbing, it feels like every inch of his body is imploding inside, wailing desperately for help yet not being able to speak. Like they are screaming loathsomely in some other, esoteric, innate dimension. Like what just happened is so unspeakably hideous that it is Rhistel's soul escaping the body, and it howls a harrowing lament as it finds itself powerless to leave the vessel. The dreadful experience is so intense Rhistel senses do not even perceive his body dropping on the floor inertly, save hearing a deaf thud and a brief a pain at the back of his head, that unlike the other sensations is familiarly real.



* * *
The possession

Uncertain of how much time passes before he sobers up, he catches a half-conscious glimpse of himself jumping up on his feet suddenly, filled with some weird blast of vitality, and running around the ritual room in a maddened frenzy he could not explain. Like an agitated, dire beast, driven by insinct, he grabs whatever objects are on his way and furiously destroys them uttering terrifying, monstrous, bellowing roaring no human could produce. He lifts heavy objects he could not think to move and hurls them around the room furiously. There is a weird illumination in the room, of dark, violet ambience and blatant, neon yellow outlines, or perhaps it is his vision that changed, for it is sharper, quicker, more detailed. His chest is itching, he looks at it somehow involuntarily, and he sees a miniature of the summoning seal burned into the skin and flesh right under the heart. This time it feels familiar in way Rhistel cannot quite understand, somehow it feels like he has known the arcane seal's engravings from somewhere he did not recollect earlier. It is much older than he thought, and he seems to harbour deeply an utter, inner despise towards this prison. Though he feels like he could draw from memory, that was somehow not just his, a greater understanding of the dark magic involved, a towering wave of uncontrollable rage fills Rhistel suddenly, and he sees himself busting out of the building and running a good ten miles through sunny fields of wheat and colorful orchards of fruit trees, and into murky forests of abundant vegetation and rich wildlife nearby. Watching through his own eyes, yet not really controlling his action.

The monotonous exercise and the enchanting landscapes soothe the untameable wrath that Rhistel was experiencing and as he becomes relaxed he finds his mind departing into some memories of his, almost as if compelled by some unknown, foreign will to browse the information on himself. At first he conjures flashbacks of what he remembered from most recent events: the vengeance he laid on the hellknights, the ritual, the preparations. He finds the reminiscence of his succesful cunnning and resolve blissfully pleasant, and so he resolves oddly tempted to indulge in that bliss more, recalling more distant events, bits of work and leasure, friends and enemy, relationships, childhood.



* * *
Pushed into subconscious

Some time later Rhistel wakes up in Sigil. His old room in the Hive, in his old bed. There is such softness, warmth and comfort here, the room though hardly extravagant is cosy, safe and simply feels home. Even though now it pales in compare to the mansions he can live in at slightest whim, none of them will ever have this place's early memories. He hardly feels like leaving, and all the recent events he finds himself remembering only vaguely now, blurred and discontinuous like it was a nothing but a bad dream. Considering he must have slept in too long, Rhistel takes a stroll around Sigil. He passes by numerous commoners but they are like shades, minding their own business invisibly, not getting in Rhistel's way and not bothering him. He visits a few friends on his way, some people he has not seen long for a while - some he did not think to see again, and some he did not even realise he missed, and they turn out to have returned in some miraculous fashion that seem improbable but still Rhistel does not question them, only cherishes the pleasant moments together. They have a few light hearted, yet witty, elaborate and creatively challenging discussions. A lot of words they say don't make sense, some are illogical, incoherent, inconsequential, a lot of them feel like reliving fragments of events of the past. And yet they make all the sense he needs. It is a pleasant cycle in the Cage, and the setting sun gives the streets of Sigil a surreally beautiful hue of sapphire blue, ruby rouge and opal gold. In its light all sounds and voices are distorted eerily like lost echoes. He finds it quirky, the odd ambience and that there even is a sunset in the Cage, so he looks into the sky curiously and he sees nebulae of stars, dozens of planets and hundreds of moons arranging in the same pattern that the arcane seal from his nightmare had, the dark occult symbols of the blasphemous ritual. For some reason he carries on simply accepting that to be a fact, maybe even embarassed quietly that he notices only now that the sky in the Cage looks like that, and that he didn't realise earlier that's how his mind must have smuggled it into his bad dream.

He sets off to wander the streets of Clerk's and Market Ward, marvelling at weird, exotic goods brought by merchants he has never seen before, artifacts of lost civilisations so vastly distant that their craft is beyond his most daring imagination, blossoming flowers on rampant vines forming bewitchingly beautiful patterns, and numerous tomes of ancient wisdoms in languages Rhistel only heard of in strangest of legends. Later, when Rhistel decides to return to his kip in the Hive, he finds the route home rather wearisome, the more effort he puts the further away it feels like his destination is, and the more straining the journey. When he decides to push it nonetheless he finds a darkness before him, an area where the enchanting illumination of the perpetual sunset does not reach. Eclipse begotten from an edge, a tear in reality, where all dimensions end and there is but void beneath. When Rhistel approaches that edge and looks into the oblivion he sees in it eyes, dozens of malicious eyes set on him intently, of bizzarely malformed monstrosities - a ovegrown fish head with strange mouth stuck in a sinister grimace, displaying dense twisted fangs, grown onto a body of a horse; an enormous hydra with lizardly scales and eight heads, each that of a different race of horse; all manners of grotesque humanoid or goblinoid and horse hybrids; a flesh golem forged entirely out of Narzugon limbs, heads and torsos, sewn together to form a hideously twisted shape of a horse; and other wickedly tangled, abberant abominations - all of equine descent. Alecto is there too, she points her finger at Rhistel and at once they roar horribly and begin to spill out of that dark hole onto the streets, chasing the wizard.



* * *
The clarity

Rhistel sees himself fleeing panicked, as quick as the legs will carry him, and he finds himself in the nearest place he considers safe which happens to be the Hall of Records. The journey is strangely quick, he turns out to arrive near immediately. As soon as he enters he is noticed across the entire office by the receptionist. Strangely the usually tame, socially awkward and indeed prudish woman is this time dressed in fashion bordering on acceptable decency around the Hall. With legs stretched boldly on the reception desk, and biting on a pen lasciviously, she stares at Rhistel provokingly as he approaches. Up close Rhistel realises that is not in fact the Hall of Records' receptionist before him, but Maraphiel in her humanlike form, and she asks of him rhetorically.

"::: Are you? :::"

It is an oddly vexing question, not only for Rhistel's gut telling him something was wrong with the deviless' another mysterious appearance, but also for his meaning to comment "You're not supposed to be here" and yet receiving the answer right before the his lips move to utter the words. A realisation strikes Rhistel that save some invasive mind magic, which the deviless admittedly could be capable of, she could only learn Rhistel's thoughts by too being but a figment of his mind, a projection of his own thought, perhaps his mind trying to tell him something. Like after sobering slap to the cheek, only now it comes to Rhistel how many inconsistencies he has been experiencing, and just how wrong the reality he finds himsef in is.

Dreamscape?
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Serena
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Posted by Serena »



It had been years now.
There was a reason he had resolved training his mind to enter Reverie even though his non elven part had made it infinitely more difficult for him. There was a reason he had held onto that practice despite being just barely resting for him, and why he only resolved to real sleep when his body could not cope with tiredness, sickness or wounds. And there was a reason he kept his old concoction at hand, despite not liking its side effects, for those occasions in which he knew he needed to abandon himself into unconsciousness.

Focus.

He could feel his heartbeat accelerating with the panic that follows the realization that eyes won't open, and the body won't move, but no matter how hard he tried, nothing happened.

This dream. This dream is all wrong

The Hall around him lost consistency and suddenly turned into his library, the shelves overturned and the books scattered all around. And there, the ominous sigil from the ritual once again, painted in blood red and covering the entire floor.
He remembered.

The ritual. The ritual had failed?!

No, it didn't. He was sure of it... or was he?
The figure of the deviless appeared again next to him, this time in her usual attire and black streaked make up, dark hair tied up. She stared at him pointedly.
"::: Are you? :::"

He yelled and dismissed the image in frustration, glancing back at the library around him.
How did they dare mess this place up? How did they dare enter his house?
As he slowly seemed to gain more and more consciousness about what was happening, the details of the room became clearer and clearer, shelves back against the walls slowly filling up with books again at every blink of his eyes as if nothing had ever touched them.
And then the sigil was there, perfectly visible again and filling the library with a dark, red light.

I am trapped

The realization hit him, and even before the thought was completed he was already cycling through all the scenarios the dream had forced on him, his surrounding changing wildly in a blur of images as he

Look for what they don't want you to see.

searched, until his mind stopped on one scenario, and he was yet again standing in front of the edge of that dark abyss: under it, the multitude of horrendous creatures, ready to jump at him again, and in their midst, Alecto.
His gaze unconsciously fixed on her, even as the mass of screaming aberrations came crawling out of the pit to get him, trying to force him away from the edge. Now that he could look at them again, they were...

Ridiculous.

Hiding his fears deep within himself was something he had always done unconsciously, and this wasn't the first time a creature had tried to use them against him, was it?
Memories of his experience in that figment of the Shadow Plane returned, anchoring him even more to reality as he recalled what real fear had looked like.
This was nothing. This was but the crumbles she had found under the carpet. She hadn't looked under the floor boards.
And with that knowledge, all of a sudden he felt a sense of security returning to him. Misplaced, maybe, but he hung on it, and as the horde of aberrant creatures closed on him, clawing at his skin, he called forth the strongest spell he knew, releasing it all around him in a burst of blinding energy.
It was in the following instant of unreal stillness that he made to step forward, and with his gaze still fixed on the red deviless, he leaped down into the pit and toward her.
"Hand me my shovel, I'm going in!"

Plays: Aidan Rhistel - Factor and Law Representative of the Fated
Feel free to reach to me IC for enlisting or general faction rp
Slayer of Love
Posts: 65
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2020 4:54 pm

Posted by Slayer of Love »


Before the spell hits the freakish nightmares they are already defunctly laying on the floor, drooling and crying pathethically. They are wearing jester hats, each with four little bells strung atop; and their legs resemble those of infants, unable to carry them. Ridiculous, as Rhistel has thought them. Met with the discharge of magic Rhistel brings upon them they fade out to nothingness, leaving no trace of their existence.

When Rhistel crosses the singular point, all dimensions around curl impossibly in a caleidoscopic vortices, and suddenly there is a blink. It's been a while since Rhistel has blinked. An image of wilderness flashes before him, and with it all bodily sensations of the mundane, waking world: cold, hunger, exhaustion; and even time itself feels to be flowing so shockingly different, so... regular. Awaken for that brief moment he makes a move and the body does as he wishes at first, but then it twitches against the desired direction violently, and a disembodied voice thunders from within.


""::: Fool! This is MY vessel now!!! :::" "

Right about now Rhistel starts to realise the nature of the ritual, for the mystical prison he forced the devil into is not within a binding ring or soul crystal, but the half-drow factor himself. The voice he hears is Alecto, struggling for control of the body they share, making a bid for the dominance. Rhistel can feel the cold oblivion of the end of the dreamscape calling for him, deep in his mind, entangling itself around him and pulling, trying to drown him under the lightless immensity of the dark void that whispers silent cries of consuming gloom and hopeless despair to his soul when he is not looking. Always has. But this utter emptiness he knows all to well, for it is his darkness, his mind, and here in his mental realm the only god is him. The dreaded void that was meant to consume him shapes to his convenience at slightest whim of his mind. And he knows the devil's grip over him is fading.
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Serena
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Posted by Serena »


The realization about the nature of the ritual hit him, so hard he almost forgot for a moment the actual circumstances of his predicament. A long moment of utter silence, so complete the deviless might as well think she had managed to banish him so deep in his subconscious that he had no knowledge of himself anymore...
And then came the anger.
It was sudden and violent, but chaotic in its manifestation, instinctively latching into Alecto's power as if finding an intimate affinity in it due to the nature of the feeling and the person it was aimed toward.

"::: YOU PLANNED TO USE ME AS A FUCKING BOTTLE AND YOU DIDN'T THINK ABOUT MENTIONING IT?! :::"

Alecto knew, she wasn't the recipient of that wrath. The half drow might as well have forgotten about her, in that specific moment, while his emotions were clearly all over the place, but that same building anger seemed to feed his resolution: she could sense it grow by the time, and while not threatening her directly, it was obvious it was evolving. The orignally chaotic rage made space for logical thought, and as it did, it became cold, steely. It shed off the excuses and the misplaced blame, and doing so its target shifted from the golden brachina toward the half drow himself, fueling his conscious.

It was at that point that it finally turned its icy eyes toward her.



"::: Get out of my way, I have a job to do :::"


The chains came down from the infinite, shrieking void that all of a sudden seemed to have replaced Alecto's surrounding, a pit all too familiar to her, for she had been there not too long ago - but how could the mortal know? He hadn't had access to her mind, she was su-
Rusty hooks dug into her new vessel, tugging at her, lifting her up, and what she felt was pain. Not the sensation she was used to, no: this was the pain a mortal would feel, and it was excruciating. She had the impression her host was making sure it was the case.
Up she went, endlessly, iron gusts of chilled winds cutting her skin and tossing her against the pull of her bounds, and for once she could also fully appreciate what cold really meant: a freezing grip any mortal knew could take their life in nothing but mere minutes.


"::: You wanted this vessel, so I thought I could give you a feel of it. :::"
"Hand me my shovel, I'm going in!"

Plays: Aidan Rhistel - Factor and Law Representative of the Fated
Feel free to reach to me IC for enlisting or general faction rp
Slayer of Love
Posts: 65
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2020 4:54 pm

Posted by Slayer of Love »


There is certainly nothing for Maraphiel to be remotely concerned about. Sure, the last window of opportunity is by her expectation is about to exhaust, but it is written that just by the end of the next eon, the planes are to arrange in constellation so outlandish that the balance of the 'verse shall be upset, and many chains and walls, that hold that which should not walk the planes, shall be broken.

Just by the end of the next eon. Surely, she won't even realise how quick that passed. Surely...

Some distant psychic echo resonates in the background. Ugh. So violently unruly. These mortals, always so fussy about things concerning themselves. Can they never see there is a picture extending beyond the tip of their nose? And doesn't he know he shouldn't be declaiming such profanities?


On the bright side, that would mean there may still be some use for some short-term planning.


* * *


""::: You figure I wanted this?! :::" " Alecto yells out just as wrathfully to no avail as the phantasmal restraints take her into the nightmare Rhistel conceives for her. Although like any fiend's her station she has a psychological endurance to torture, these dreadful, new feelings, as seen perceived from mortal's perspective take their vicious toll.

Unlike her stubborn competitor, this fiendess firmly believes one should take the dominance whence they have an upper hand just as they should bow when they are surpassed, both out of principle and out of cold-blooded, pragmatic calculation. She never understood what twisted form of gratitude must be derived from foolish denial against all odds. And as the vile gusts beat the life out of her it becomes clear which of these situations she has been forced into.

She senses logic beneath and resolves to try and reason with it before the suffering knocks her to deep into the unconscious.


""::: What do you want? :::" "
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Serena
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Posted by Serena »


"::: Nothing I can't take on my own, for now :::" was the almost immediate answer to her question. "::: But if you behave, I might forget how you sent your 'hooved tin cans' after me, and grant you a more comfortable accommodation :::"

That was the last Alecto heard of him, before the half drow pushed one last time toward consciousness: reclaiming his own body his first priority.
"Hand me my shovel, I'm going in!"

Plays: Aidan Rhistel - Factor and Law Representative of the Fated
Feel free to reach to me IC for enlisting or general faction rp
Slayer of Love
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Posted by Slayer of Love »


Strained from the calamitous perils that lurk abysmally in the dark depths of Rhistel's mind, Alecto is pushed away from consciousness. Rhistel wakes in a cove beset in shrubs, still on the plane he carried out the ritual, and he feels once again the weights of having a body, the dampness of air around and the cold sweat of the mundane dripping on his neck. His muscles and lungs are tired, worn after some physical effort that feels like ceaseless week of exhaustive work in the most demanding of mines. Aching for food and drink like he didn't have a drop of water throughout that week - likely, due to the body having to compensate for the sudden surge of strength that came from the infernal possession - and with clothes muddied and torn, he finds his shell his again, for now.
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Serena
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Posted by Serena »


A faint groan escaped him as he tried to sit up, probably too fast for his current conditions, and he ended up falling back down helplessly, all his muscles punishing his attempt with a symphony of painful complaints.
"Fuck this..."
He had never been the strongest... actually, his constitution had always been precarious, to say it gently, and he probably only had that unknown portion of his ancestry to thank for not getting sick as much as he ought to, although that hadn't been the case anymore, since he had been putting up with Sigil smog and unhealthy weather.
He slowly moved his hands over his body to make sure he wasn't majorly wounded anywhere, and then went to look for his holding bag, hoping to still find it at his belt where he had left it.

Alecto hadn't been able to access his spells, that much he could tell, and it was a good thing, at least.
After a time that seemed infinite, his fingers closed on the set of vials he carried with him at all times, mentally thanking the existence of extradimensional pockets - the only reason he wasn't holding a bunch of broken glasses now.
He slowly brought the vials in front of his face and then went to clumsily extract two of them from the leather bind. He had promised to himself he wasn't going to make use of painkillers no matter what, and he had been very good at keeping the word. Until then.

He was going to have time to get clean again it was no big deal.

The green concoction first, granting his body a little of what it needed to not feel like it was starving and offset the dehydration and tiredness, then the dreaded murky, grey one.
He uncorked the vial, making to bring it to his lips, but then, as if suddenly aware of what he was doing, he tossed the small glass vessel on the side, crashing it on the rocks of the cave with a frustrated growl.

When had he become that weak?

Gathering all his strength of will, he forced himself up to his knees first, and then to his feet, helping himself up with the nearby cave walls. Once he was up, he finally looked down at himself, seeming to acknowledge he was in a.... less than presentable state. All he could do for the moment was invoke a couple cantrips, part of the dirt and some tears in the fabric taken care of, then he ran his hands through his hair to fix them back.

He had somewhere else to be, at this time, and the mind of a fiend to browse to know where that somewhere was.
"Hand me my shovel, I'm going in!"

Plays: Aidan Rhistel - Factor and Law Representative of the Fated
Feel free to reach to me IC for enlisting or general faction rp
Slayer of Love
Posts: 65
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2020 4:54 pm

Posted by Slayer of Love »


Walking into anyone's mind entails menacing hazards, limited not by constraints of reality, but only the borders of their perception and imagination. Mind of a devil would be that much worse if not for sheer amount of horrors they would have seen and be able to conjure, then for its innate, so different, such alien nature. And even in the absence of their consciousness to hound the intruder, who knows what repugnant corruption could latch onto one that treads such bizzarely twisted plane. It is known that when one stares at the oblivion for too long, he find himself stared back at. Of course, the alternative is negotiation, but even if the devil seems cooperative one can bet she would demand a price probably even more perilous.

Fortunately Rhistel needs not wander too deep into the malignant dreamscape of his new passenger, dark eerie realm of dreams adjacent to his. To find a simple, concrete information in an ordered mind he needs only scratch the surface, and it proves straightforward enough. Smoothly he recollects a teleportation spell formula, words of an incantation just pop in his mind as though they were there already.

That seems to be it. Ready to use. No incidents. When he accesseses that information though, he senses more beyond. An amazing and bloodcurdling immensity of knowledge. Mounds, crypts, mazes of treasured, hidden secrets, many locked away carefully, some open and strangely drawing towards themselves as though they desired to be discovered. And so much more are shrouded from his perception, of odd sensation of weight, a mystic pull he cannot quite explain or describe, but can feel.

Somewhere at the back of his mind he hears Alecto's voice deafly, as though through layers of stone walls. She uttered a wrathful roar, but all that gets through is as faint as trivial, background thoughts one rarely pays much attention to, just barely loud enough for Rhistel to even notice.


"::: She got you in all of this. She used you! And you're doing it all for her?! ::: "
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