(Closed) Octeuril Catch All

[mirshikar]

Who: Asura + Plotted CR
When: Octeuril
Where: Various locations in Aefenglom and the Wilde.
What: Quests, event threads, domestic undertakings, and general gallivanting about.
Warnings: None yet!

Feel free to drop me a line @ the October CR and Plotting Post if you're interested in threading and would like to work out details for a starter. DM works just as well, too! o9

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[mirshikar]

Just me, when it's been the both of us together since you decided to be my escort out into the Wilde? [ It takes at least two to practice oneiromancy, after all. And more than that, Asura's interest in the other man remains keen, sharpened anew by whatever it is that Geralt's unconsciously woven into the framework of the dream—the power which drives the temperature lower and lower and turns each exhale of breath to pluming vapours. Whatever it may be, it most definitely disagrees with Asura's Summer constitution, but he'll be damned if he doesn't at least try to see it fully actualized beyond bone-chilling cold. ] What we need to do is test some limits.

[ Because now that the Witcher's found his voice and rooted himself into the plane of the dream, it's time to shake things up; to bring a little more life to such a lonely and solemn place. ]

Sure, we made it here all right, but the bigger feat is shaping this dream's natural state into something else.

[ And knock out the first tier of the brand of oneiromancy which Asura is familiar with from home: dreamscaping. ]

Should be easy for you and a bit more difficult for me. [ Because the original architect knows the foundations best, what will hold and what will plunge such a beautiful and desolate place into further ruin and collapse. And Asura? In this scenario, he may as well be akin to a restoration artist. ] How about you try your hand at bringing up the temperature before the cold shocks us both back to waking? I'll see about redecorating the courtyard.

[ And lo: Asura saunters off (direction: somewhere over there), heading further out into the courtyard in examination of its broken stone pathways. As he walks, wildflowers and tall, reedy grasses crop up in his wake (as they would back in Asura's own realm, where the blossoms were affixed to his Mantle because yeah, Changelings are creatures straight from fairytales), unfurling from cracks within the limestone, but...! They won't last long without a fix for freezing. Are you working on that, Geralt? ]

[niespodzianka]

[ Geralt is not creative. When he daydreams, when he fantasizes, it's all about comfortable beds in warm rooms, seeing his loved ones safe and living unfettered. He tries to think about a time when Kaer Morhen isn't cold - the summer, maybe, but even then the altitude means it's nippy whenever the air isn't stagnant. Oxygen is thin this high, the mountains unforgiving, despite the fact that they were once beneath the ocean. (That's what the keep's name means in Elder Speech. Castle by the Sea.)

Why would it be so cold? So unnaturally cold?

For a moment it works and Geralt has something like control. The blooms remain, and on the stone wall before Asura is a tapestry of a happy family. A man with white hair, a woman with black hair, and a child, ashen-colored, bright green eyes.

It'd be this cold if the Hunt were here.

The flowers wilt. Behind Asura, someone walks up and stops, their gait demanding attention. ]

What are you doing here?

[ Not Geralt. Some meters back, where he'd been left, Geralt stands, hand outstretched as if in warning, frozen solid. ]

[mirshikar]

[ It isn't meant for Asura's eyes, that vivid illustration of a family—no different from the cold which ebbs, allowing for the blossoms which mark the King's steps to linger on in their beauty, the depiction had likely surfaced from the depths of a memory. A good one, unbidden but not unwanted, far as Asura can tell, because... he doesn't look away from the image (though he should; he is not an existence without reverence for that which is precious, after all, and there is nothing more valuable in all the realms than memories and the emotions attached to them), not until the temperature sinks and there is the susurration of fallen flower petals against stone.

That voice...? Definitely not Geralt. A Sandman? No, were that the case, it'd want nothing to do with an interloper (Asura) and everything to do with the dreamer. A Kindly Stranger? Nah, not a chance, Asura would've felt one long before the creature spoke. So then what? Well, Asura guesses he can spare a glance back, over his shoulder, to gauge this new, imperious presence which—

(Is a figure evocative of the Wild Hunt that Asura knows.)

—has encased Asura's escort in ice. Well, how about that? The source of the cold which Asura had wondered at has finally decided to introduce itself. ]

Me? I was invited. [ More or less, anyway. Asura wouldn't be here if Geralt didn't want him to be. And speaking of Geralt, Asura knows that the guy—Witcher or not—won't last long in a second skin of ice, and so (in the interest of maintaining the oneiromancy for as long as possible), Asura makes the attempt of thawing him out.

But the temperature doesn't budge beneath the press of Asura's magic. The flowers at the King's feet do not unfurl again. Asura has no draconic fire to shield against the cold. Still: ] Though it looks like you weren't.

[ Not intentionally, that is. ]

Why attack the Witcher first? [ Because Asura's the anomaly here, isn't he? ]

[niespodzianka]

[ Geralt doesn't dream on his own because he's a mutant, but when Geralt does dream, it's because of someone who isn't. Someone whose destiny is linked to his, whose fate he accidentally sealed before she was even born. He dreams of his daughter when she's in danger, just like she dreams of him. He saw her racing from the Aen Elle and she saw him scrambling out of the swamps with the Scoia'tael, over and over, linked subconsciously even when they thought the other dead, even when he had amnesia.

But this is not one of those dreams. This is something else, crafted deliberately, and rapidly moving from dream to nightmare - entirely out of Geralt's control. Hamstrung in his own head, because even if she's just a figment, he can't hurt his daughter.

Ciri is a fixture in his dreams, and just because she isn't the cause this time doesn't mean she's not present and forefront. Never harmless in the first place, the conflicting brands of magic twisting in on themselves that are making this dream into something unpleasant have warped her into someone truly menacing. Bright green eyes only barely visible through dark red and black armor, the figure - only barely recognizable as female - draws its sword. ]

What are you doing here?

[ The same question again. (Geralt isn't creative, even when his mind's being hijacked, it's still his mind.) She darts forward, attacking, twisting, zipping from place to place in flashes of light. ]

[mirshikar]

[ So there's good news: the dream remains intact, despite the incongruity of the building blocks holding it up. It means Geralt's a better anchor than either Witcher or Changeling realized, even when immobilized by ice. And to think that Asura felt a twinge of concern for guy, when it turns out that Geralt's still very much driving the narrative which unfurls about them—it can't be comfortable, standing in frozen vigil over a dream gone awry, but the Witcher hasn't blipped out, into wakefulness just yet, and that paves the way for...!

A problem: Asura likes to fight, and in this landscape of a deteriorating dream, he's been gifted an opponent swathed from head to toe in ebon plate, their sword drawn ("what are you doing here?") in one instant and put to use in a barrage of advance in the next. The figure—a woman?—with eyes the same, vivid green of the child depicted in a tapestry of memory (there are no coincidences here, there can't be, every variable is fixed and set in accordance to subconscious design), is nimble despite their armored trappings. Too quick to track with the eye until they're upon Asura who defends and deflects blows with his twin gauntlets of dragonscale, finding himself easily immersed in the erratic rhythms of the fight.

Until he feels the barest brush of a touch against his cheek (a butterfly's wings), the ghost of a sensation refocusing his priorities. ]

...you're protecting him. [ And Asura goes abruptly still, ceasing to defend against any further attacks, heedless of what the sudden (in)action might incur, because: ] That's why you benched him immediately, huh? He's fine, underneath all that ice.

[ But unless Geralt and Asura both hightail it out of the dreamscape in short suit, who knows how it'll be in the waking world? Tink's fluttering is not so insistent yet, but ignoring that call for much longer would be careless when Asura promised to see the Witcher safely back to the city. ]

[niespodzianka]

[ Ciri's projection isn't much of a conversationalist, even though in reality, she might be happy to banter, or at least scream at Asura. Much chattier than dad. Much more vicious, too, having none of Geralt's pesky inclination to neutrality. Ciri is bloodthirsty and impatient, and she launches attack after attack at Asura, attempting to boot him out of the dream - which remains intact with Geralt on pause.

But he can't just sit it out, or wait until Asura ends up chopped into little pieces by a girl with the ability to skip freely through time and space. Geralt tries to break out of the ice and the spell that maintains it - it's not real, he tells himself, and the ice begins to crack.

Each crack in the ice brings a crack in the fabric of the dream. Spinning faster and faster into an outright horror-filled nightmare realm. It grows dark and impossibly colder, the sky begins to tear open, with armored creatures and strange, dark knights looming closer like ash falling from the sky. Surreal and impossible, but this is a dream, after all. ]