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This post contains potentially sensitive material:

child death

gore

(in hallucinations)

All at once, he remembered.

I was to protect them.

Nightmares didn't have to make coherent sense--in the moment, the mind believed them. And when the Sentinel looked sharply to one side in horror, he knew nothing of reality: he knew only that he had failed. Canis was no longer bright, tan, bone-strewn: instead it was slicked black, morphed into the breathing oil of Draco. And while he had been toying with Fairyflies, he'd forgotten his actual purpose.

And now he saw the consequences.

The broken little chrysalises, scattered across the floor. The ragged shards, dripping with still-fresh fluid. The torn and mangled bodies of the half-formed children that had been growing within.

His gaze snapped up, eyes wide, breath caught in his chest. And yes, what he'd feared was there: the young he'd been meant to watch over, too, their little forms draped across the rock, half torn to pieces. And it seemed, in that moment, that he remembered them, these fragments of imagination: that he'd known the black eyes and spines of that one, and the soft fur of the one over there-...

The Sentinel staggered, turning from one direction to the other, bloody evidence of his failures all around him. A cry escaped him, one of anguish, and he lifted his halberd and turned--rage roaring up in him. These were emotions he'd never known, and their intensity was appalling; they were uncontained.

He would find whoever had done this.

His eyes settled on Giggle, at last, and he didn't know who she was--why she was here; he saw a shifting purple-black monstrosity whose form could not seem to settle into a single shape.

He hesitated--for a moment, he knew fear--and then he ran for her, a mindless charge without strategy or plan.

Round: 5
Attempt: Rush Giggle
Defense: --
Injuries: He has no idea wtf is happening

Her gut briefly wrenched with regret as she saw the sudden anguish on him--the way his halberd's tip dropped, the way he looked this way and that with a sudden lost, desperate air. The clear grief, and rage, in his cry as he staggered.

She was considering putting a stop to it all--at least a halt, to see if he was all right--when he turned and fixed his multitude of eyes on her. The pure hatred in them as they narrowed changed her emotion from pity to deep, deep alarm in a heartbeat. Oh, shit, she thought, and then he was rushing for her, shockingly fast.

She scrambled for his mind, to form the tether she'd been toying at. To her deep relief it snapped right into place, and she practically bellowed into his mind. "SENTINEL!" she cried, echoing this word into his head, even as she scrambled back (and even as she knew she'd be nowhere near fast enough). Frantically she projected the real imagery around them--she didn't know what he'd seen, but the nature of the magic was to make it something horrible. She showed him the reality, as best she could--the empty rock, the worn-down mud paths, the bones scattered here and there.

STOP! And though there was panic in it, there was the stern authority of a mother there, too. We are sparring! You asked me to fight! It's me, Giggle--stop! Stop!

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Round: 5/?
Attempt: Try to remind him of reality REALLY quick
Defense: Inky capped
Injuries: Sore limbs

Her words--but more importantly, the imagery and the meaning--hit him just in time for him to snap the halberd up, to scramble backward and stumble to an unsteady halt instead of plowing into her. His chest was heaving with unsteady breaths, his eyes wide with confusion.

He had not felt, like this--he was controlled, calm, and he had to be to contain the halberd's insistence upon violence. This fear, this anger, was new and unpleasant, and very unwelcome.

He was, he realized, trembling.

The images were fading, and now he began to realize that they were fake--but one thought struck him, something she had said, and he blurted it before he could contain it.

"What is--Giggle?"

As soon as he said it, he remembered the others mentioning her--Oliver, Enoki--and remembered that this was her name. He had been calling her the Bone Seer, and she had not corrected him; he'd forgotten his name.

Abruptly, everything--the children, the horrors he'd briefly seen, the sudden unpleasant rush of emotions--crashed in around him, and he lowered himself in a near-collapse to the ground, dropping his halberd and burying his face in both hands.

Character: The Sentinel Age: +3 (3 Cycles) Magic Level: +3 (Brawler) ROUND 1 Attempt: +10 Penalties: - ROUND 2 Attempt: +5 Penalties: - ROUND 3 Attempt: +10 Penalties: - ROUND 4 Attempt: +5 Penalties: - ROUND 5 Attempt: +18 Penalties: - Total: 54

Character: Giggle Age: +68 (68 Cycles) Magic Level: +5 (Master) ROUND 1 Attempt: +19 Penalties: - ROUND 2 Attempt: +6 Penalties: - ROUND 3 Attempt: +15 Penalties: - ROUND 4 Attempt: +14 Penalties: - ROUND 5 Attempt: +20 Penalties: - Total: 147

WINNER: Giggle

Regret pulsed through her, her teeth gritting. He wasn't attacking her--that was good. But he looked, suddenly, like an oversized and frightened child, and she felt awful about it.

Shit. He was not ready for this. Hell, he might even still be a kid, she realized, gut wrenching. She hastily paced over, dropping to her haunches just beside him and lifting one paw to try and rest it at his hunched-over shoulder--somewhere without spines.

"I'm sorry. And--I'm Giggle. Everything's all right, okay? Just take a few minutes, and breathe." She hesitated, giving him a moment; he was hitching in breaths like a crying child and she had no idea how to handle that, really--from her own kids, sure, but from a seven foot void monster? "I don't control what you see--it's just hallucinations. You see what you fear. I thought..." You thought a bland-ass description would be enough to prepare a half-grown thing that's been raised by Vargas to face his worst fears-? Her face again twisted into a grimace, and she said nothing, for a time.

What was there to say?

"Everything's fine. You're safe, and I won't hurt you," she tried, at last--but judging by the horror in his eyes when he lifted his head and looked around, everything was very much not okay.

She hesitated, then pressed her mind subtly to his, looking for a brief glimpse into it. What she saw was chaos--grief, fear, confusion, regret, and almost overpoweringly, shame. A flash of horror reached her mind, so strong in its bloodied, limp-bodied imagery that she was glad at how weak the pulse of magic had wound up. But she'd seen enough--the children.

She didn't know if he thought he'd killed them, or just found them or what have you, or if they were real living beings he knew, or not. It didn't really matter. "Shit-... I'm sorry, kid," she said.

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It took him a few moments--Giggle's words mere background noise--to come to terms with the fact that it had been hallucination. And to begin to come to terms with the rush of unfamiliar emotions he'd been struck with.

At length, he dropped his hands and lifted his gaze, but his stare outward was a thousand-yard one. He was trying to both remember, and forget, the brief but horrific visions that he'd seen. To forget, because they'd been awful; but to remember, so that he never failed so badly that he would see it made a reality.

"Its task," he rasped softly, at last, "is to defend Draco, and the Chaos Forge. It saw... a failure of that." He looked to Giggle sombrely, and half-explained: "There were many young."

He had no idea she already knew this--no clue she'd been dipping around in his mind to see it for herself.

And before she could properly respond, he'd looked out at nothing, again. "It is... unexpected motivation." Prior, he had operated purely out of a sense of duty. Now, the ticking of the pocketwatch around his neck seemed almost a warning: time passed, and enemies would threaten. Would he be ready..? The sense of duty had strengthened into a sense of true responsibility: that the Forge and those within it were under his protection, and that should he fail, they would perish.

He did not wish for that.

"The Seer of Bones holds... powerful magic. The Sentinel did not expect it. Despite description. How does one fight, when one is removed from reality?" he asked, and looked to her, as if for guidance.

Giggle refrained from revealing that she already knew, instead offering a mostly-genuine grimace yet again. She didn't speak, though--he was moving on--and she'd lowered her paw back to the floor by the time he'd finished.

His question was a practical one, as much as rhetorical, and she thought about it for a beat. "I'm not sure. I'd say you could try other magic to sense with, but I'm pretty sure this stuff would mess with all your senses, not just sight. It goes right into your mind. Your best bet would be to try and remember that the Gembound you're fighting--assuming you know it, I mean--can do it, and try to be aware that anything suddenly... uh, out of the ordinary? Isn't likely to be real. But that's not always easy when your emotions are being torn at, too," she added.

She gave it a moment, for both of them to think, then went on. "You wanted to know what my magic can do. It's not as outright deadly as some. I mean, fire will burn you alive pretty quickly. But this stuff... it can be insidious." Had she pronounced that right? YEAH! Omen reassured her, cheerfully, through their mind link. Giggle suppressed an amused snort--the bird was just happy to be involved, a positive affirmation thrown through the line without any clue of what the word even meant.

"Uhh--it can warp your perceptions, make it hard to tell what's real or not. Which means against something bigger, stronger, faster--it's better than brute force. For you? That means, I guess, being aware of what was around you, and trying to keep it in mind no matter what the hallucinations say. But like I said. Easier said than done."

She hesitated, for a moment. "If that's something you want to practice, in the future... just telling reality from the hallucinations? We can try that. You and me. Just--without your spear-thing, maybe."

She tried for humor at that last, but it felt as though it fell a little flat.

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He was quiet, for a moment, trying quite hard to focus on her words. Practice-... he could do that, yes. Study. Learn to differentiate, as best he could.

He did not ache for another round of whatever the hell she'd done to him, but it would help him against true enemies wielding such powers. He took a shuddering breath, and then nodded, turning to meet her gaze. "It... requires such training. It has never--experienced this before. This... loss of reality." And for a moment, too, there was something else he'd never really felt: empathy. Was this what she had undergone, thrown into the void-? Separated from what was real?

"It must-... rest, again. And think on this. Its mind is-... In turmoil," he added. It was already fading--he was not an emotional being, despite what she'd thrust at him. The strong feelings he'd experienced were sinking away, like shining metal gradually engulfed by the rising mud of a swamp: drawn down, smothered, hidden entirely from view. He couldn't access them so easily, even if he'd wanted to--it just wasn't who he was, and it wasn't how his biochemical makeup worked.

Still... now he knew those feelings. He had experienced them, even if only once, and this had... changed him, somehow. He had yet to really grasp the extent of it, but launching into further practice as muddled as he was seemed somehow unwise.

She offered a little, amused snort.

And for a moment, some distant, bitter part of her reflected almost gleefully that they were even, now--that he'd shoved her into the void, but she'd shoved him into something equally horrific. She shoved that right down, admonishing herself--don't be an asshole, Giggs--then glanced around.

"I've got a den not far off if you want to rest there. But don't go telling everyone where it is. Come on; I'll look after you, for now," she told him, pushing up and heading that way at a walk. She paused, and glanced back, to see if he would come.

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He offered the briefest shake of his head, even as he pushed up, taking the halberd in hand.

"There is... another place, that it will go to." He was thinking of the grove, already--of Oliver. A relation, of sorts. It was not that he distrusted Giggle, but that Oliver had already shown himself trustworthy. The place was softer, with water, food, and cover beneath which he could rest.

A pause, and he thought to add: "Her aid is... appreciated. It will return." He waited, a moment, and then dipped his head--almost shamefacedly, not wishing to think about what had happened here--and then was gone, striding down toward Oliver's grove and the relative, welcome safety it represented.

exit Sentinel