look how the marked cry. look at the shape of her, reduced to all of her bitter regrets. caustic inner turmoil makes for a bottomless well and the nest shrieks greedily. they reach not to pull the blood that fuels her heart, but to encase her, fold her into themselves and feed from her forevermore. 

"...!"

look upon this shade who has found you. you do not see the silver hair, the gold in his eyes. we wash that away. we unmake him, just as we will unmake you. when he reaches, do not go. we are so tired, and we are so few, and we need you. 

is that not what you want? to be needed? wanted? loved?




a figure looms above her, words stolen as the mist takes his mouth. he reaches for her.

Mitsuru Kagami

☉

the dust begins to settle. around them lay a massacre of bodies. phantasmal arrows fade away into wisps, but the wounds they leave behind are very real. alecto sinks her claws into arteries in order to watch how quickly the blood might let from the bodies. 

palamedes is cleaner and turns his attention more to the unown priam immobilizes for him.

when they're finished, the gruesome sight even makes nikkari turn away. "we should leave it like this," he says. "as a warning to the rest of them."

priam conrad

☉

so much for the liberation operation. after priam abandons his dig through the drk triad tactical gear, nikkari sticks a finger in his mouth and whistles sharply.

palamedes flies from above. the unown's attacks aren't accurate, but sooner or later they'll hit a lucky shot. alecto, on the other hand, thrives in the chaos. while palamedes strikes them down from the air, she emerges from the shadows, gnarled fingers around their cordlike bodies.

"if we can't take them with us, we make sure they're dead." both halves to a whole. and at nikkari's command, alecto wails with glee, happy to tear apart human throats instead.

priam conrad

☉

the shroomish sails through the air. palamedes, from his place in the trees, looks on in earnest, phantasmal bow drawn in case things go south. alecto is absolutely overjoyed and clasps her furry little hands together, cackling under her breath. 

when the agents fall, one by one, their unown startle to action. 

"good. if they're dead, that's less agents to hunt our own. looks like their unown aren't happy with us though." 

spirit shackle pins one of them to the ground. alecto eviscerates another (sorry, nomi), but three more converge on them.

priam conrad

☉

clever and genius, eh cross? 

the shroomish isn't a half bad idea and the corner of his lips twitch in a smile. he nods and gets a bit closer, motioning for quiet as they approach. 

maybe they might overhear something useful. he pauses, hesitating, but the agents linger about quietly, their unown floating stoically above them. 

he casts a glance at his companion and gestures for him to take the stage.

priam conrad

☉

for once, he's not out there by himself and he's quite honestly happy about the change of pace. jayden cross has had his hands full; nikkari's can't blame him. the people he and his companion are looking at have supposedly been hunting avatars. 

useful. clever. skilled. loyal. genius. 

five adjectives is what he'd gotten when nikkari haphazardly asked after priam. so he has a measure of respect for him, nodding when he suggests the plan.

"i suggest we take the stealthier approach. they are assassins trained to take out avatars, are they not?" alecto lurches upright from where she'd been hiding in his shadow and cackles. from the trees, his decidueye coos. 

priam conrad

☉

let us beckon so we may break you, child. that's all you are, is it not? your scrap of meat upon this earth is an insignificance, your lifetime a stringent thought. you are not even a grain of sand - you are an atom, making up parts of a larger whole. 

making up Us. 

we see you. we hear you tout your talents, scrape money from desperate palms and deliver your best showmanship. your home, your flesh, is a jester's stage. occultist, you brand yourself, but you don't know the true price of sight, do you?

the darkness is a living, breathing thing. every heartbeat is an echo of another, and another, and another, and every step forward is matched in invisible stride.

and then the meat falls. little shivering baby, accepting its end. ribbons tumbles over themselves across the ground. they don't know how cold they are, how their touch is death incarnate, but they seek her warmth all the same. wrap around ankles and wrists and promise sweetly, 

"WE WILL RELEASE YOU FROM YOUR PRISON."

and another voice, that same voice, shouldering through the dark - "can you hear me? i'm here to help!"

Mitsuru Kagami

☉

humans dream. not because they want to, but because chemicals in their delightfully squishy brains demand they rest their heads and make themselves vulnerable. they must wander listlessly through the machinations of their imaginations, so massive and incomprehensible that they forget in the morning.

but more than they dream, they fear.

they fear the lonely. fear the buried. fear the forgotten. fear sickness. fear rot. fear war. fear pain.

fear the dark.

would creatures like the flutter mane exist if not for the unholy matrimony between dream and cataclysm? their nightmares, realized. 

the mist thickens. the nest shivers. 

a woman screams and somewhere, very far away, a man hears her and he begins to run. thousands of eyes turn towards her, around her, and tendrils of darkness with twisting, rotten mouth begin to laugh as they cover what remains of the sky. 

intelligible babble between shrieks and giggles, and then a single word, bitten from a laugh, his hollowed out stolen voice:

"RUN."

Mitsuru Kagami

☉

and it all comes crashing down. a shower of crystal sprays out, debris and shrapnel spraying. a dust cloud swirls outward from the blow and he raises a hand to his mouth, coughing and squinting. 

"you okay in there?" he calls, blinking rapidly. ianthe and crown fuss over their dirtied coats while nikkari searches the dissipating cloud. 

and then he blunders through, his obstagoon wholly intact. he would have felt somewhat bad, crushing him like that after attempting to save his life, but more for miscalculating the situation than the actual loss of life from his negligence. 

he shakes his head. 

"no, we got it. sorry about dropping a couple tons of rocks on you."

tavish rose

☉

for the most part, he's gotten along on his own. several rocket outposts set up and underway, communication lines strung between them, and wild pokemon forced away from their immediate areas; all of this has culminated in a nearly safe environment. 

safe enough where he thinks it alright to shrug away from the buddy system and trek off along the outer perimeter of camp on his own. he has his own selfish reasons for being down here and one of them has to do with sightings of some marvelous creatures. 

the dogs of his homeland are rumoured to have been spotted. some dither about the point, saying said rumours are wrong and the dogs they've witnessed can be attributed to the likeness of paradoxes like walking wake. 

he doesn't expect much of the little information he has to go off of until a fog starts rolling in around his ankles. ianthe and crown's ears perk up at once as a warbling howl echoes through the trees, its source an indeterminate distance ahead. 

Mitsuru Kagami

☉

"oh, come off it, crown. you're not out of commission yet," he says to the weakened vulpix in his arms. she sniffs petulantly at being called out for her play-acting and as nikkari runs behind the other man and the pursuing fluttermane, she leaps from his arms. 

she and ianthe flank him. his obstagoon keeps it hot on its tail; nikkari looks for any fissures, calculating distance and velocity and thinking this better work. at the end of the day, though, it's not his hide they'll find out here. he could just as easily turn around and leave the man to his fate. 

but people are typically more useful alive than dead, especially when they owe you said lives. 

"i don't hesitate," he says, though there's no way he's heart with this much distance. ianthe and crown follow his hand as he orders an attack from both of them. ice meets fire in a combustible display and the tera crystals above the fluttermane rain like meteorites. 

tavish rose

☉