aungier | "All that we see or seem..."

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"All that we see or seem..." - November 4th, 1888

Date: November 4th, 1888
Time: 12:30 AM
Location: Second floor hallway
Characters: Warsman and ultimately Robin Mask, but also open to everyone! [OPEN/~~CLOSED~~]

Summary: Warsman reacts less than positively to the fungus' spores and finds himself overwhelmed by paranoia in the hallway, taking it out (aggressively) on those around him- including the one person he trusts more than anyone.
Warnings: Event-related horror, violence.

In the hallway, Warsman staggered.

The fear beat against his skull in a brass knuckle one-two, and in between the thuds he could feel his own heart kicking at his throat like a frightened horse. His head had been a dreamy hurricane of stranger's faces and jeering voices only a few minutes before but now he wasn't sure if he'd even opened his eyes at all. What time was it, even? Deep down, he knew he was at Aungier House- he knew he was in the hallway- he knew he was by his bedroom--

But there were so many shadows, so many dark gaps in his vision for things to hide in while he was distracted, and he'd seen so many things in his dreams... he'd spent so many years wrestling (boxing) that it seemed inconceivable to imagine a world like the one he found himself in now that wasn't about to turn on him. More alarmingly, he felt slow and stupid, as though he'd been drugged, and that thought only frightened him all the more; he hadn't had a sensible thought since he'd awoken. If he'd awoken.

He fell drunkenly against a wall with tendrils at his back, but his senses were almost totally self-absorbed. All he could hear was the harsh, shallow sound of his own breathing, that metal ko... ho... sigh that seemed to haunt him day and night and that now commanded his full attention in its inhumanity. But if all he could hear was himself, didn't that mean that just about anything could creep up on him? And with the state he was in, he was perfectly, painfully vulnerable.

Something flickered in the corner of his vision. Warsman's eyes flared a searing red through the darkness and he rounded on it fiercely, fists raised. "Show yourself-!" His voice cracked like old china.

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Lancer too stumbles through the house, half fatigued and half wanting to tear something apart. He has to get to his mistress, but he doesn't know if she's even here. After all, this entire place might just be a dream.

He stops in his tracks when he hears a voice. Unlike the whispered snatches or general clamor ringing at his ears, this one is clear, though strangely echoing.

"How about you come out first? Unless you're an Assassin, you shouldn't hide in the shadows like some coward!"

For the moment, he doesn't even notice the inconsistency in his own speech.

The filaments underfoot deaden any approaching footsteps, but there's no mistaking the crack of a second voice through the hallway; Warsman's nerves are jangled enough that he looks up with a hissing intake of breath, fists jerking defensively into a striking position.

"Where are you?" He's dizzy enough now, trying to focus on every corner of the hallway at once, that he barely even realises he's slipping into Russian until it's too late. But language barely even matters when he's potentially in danger. Spying a humanoid shape nearby, he takes a few threatening steps forward, eyes burning. "Don't make me hurt you...!" And doesn't want to hurt anyone, but...

Lancer's body tenses. He starts to give off a quiet, bestial growl. He has no compunctions about fighting back against anyone who might attack him.

"Hurt me? As if you could!"

He starts advancing toward one of the shapes fluttering at the corners of his eyes. Hopefully, it would be the right shape.

The growl splits into three distinct voices of varying pitches and Warsman claps a hand to his head with a thin gasp. His fingers find feathery blond hair and it occurs him him vaguely that he's left his helmet behind, and that his head is worryingly exposed, but there's no helping that now.

The figure lurches towards him, and before he can stop himself he's narrowing the gap between them. "D-don't say I didn't warn you!" Russian again, but it's hard to care when he's moving into seize the figure in a rib-crushing bear-hug.

Lancer can't tell what is charging at him, screaming sounds that couldn't possibly come from a human mouth. But he can tell it's dangerous. He quickly ducks to the ground and lashes out with a kick aimed to the charging monster's legs.

The sweep seems to come almost from nowhere, kicking out from blotchy shadow, but as Warsman staggers and falls he sees his opponent close up in one bewildering flash of eyes and teeth and hands- and throws his arms out, trying to drag him down with him with his own immense weight. Assuming, of course, that the glimpse he's seen isn't simply part of a whole far greater than himself.

Lancer hasn't regained his balance yet, so even though he tries to back away from the monster, it still crash lands on him with its greater mass.

"Fuck!"

That exclamation was in Old Gaelic, but not like he notices.

The two of them are knocked clumsily to the floor and Warsman is about to drag the creature into some sort of lock- if, indeed, it has arms to lock- when their struggles reveal a curious fact. His vision may still be wavering too badly for him to make much sense of his opponent, but he can feel perfectly well and the body beneath his is distinctly human. Not only that, but it's a lot smaller and leaner than he is- strong, yes, but not monstrous.

Warsman hesitates, disarmed and loosening his grip before he even realises it. "Who are you?!" he spits out again, and this time his voice is edged with concern as well.

It's a massive shock when the monster pulls off of him. Enough that he also stops moving and actually listens.

"You can call me Lancer, if that means anything to you."

His body is still tense. He's ready to strike out at the monster if need be.

"Lancer...?" It's not a name he'd readily associate with a terror of the night, and now that he's calming down Warsman finally finds himself wondering if he'd really be speaking to him at all if he were going to tear his throat out in the next fifteen seconds.

He's still ready to throw a punch if need be, of course, and he's more than willing to crush him if he has to... but something calmer and more reasonable than anything he's felt so far tells him that he won't have to. "... I'm sorry. I don't know the name." A beat. "Warsman. I'm Warsman, that is."

"Wars...man."

His head is swimming. It's hard for him to think. But he knows he should have heard of the name from somewhere, even if he didn't know the person.

"W-what happened to you?"

It's possibly a well-meaning question, but it instills a blood-chilling jolt of panic in him and he jerks back, eyes glowing red in his fear.

"What do you mean? What did happen to me?" Before Warsman can stop himself he's feeling for Lancer's shoulders, just barely highlighted by mushrooms, seizing them in a vice-grip that makes for quite the counterpoint to his trembling. "What do you see?!" He can barely see his own hands in the dark; how does he know they haven't warped and twisted while he was distracted?

He winces as he feels the grip on his shoulder. One of his hands goes to grip Warsman's wrist. To his surprise, it feels rather...human.

"Look at you! You look like some sort of monster! Some sort of...blob!"

Shirogane doesn't really have a better grasp on the situation. His sleep was fitful, full of dreams of losing himself in a mask and of building-sized metal titans pummeling one another. Then there was whatever this plant-thing was...it had to be a plot. Something was out to get them all.

He really wasn't in the best frame of mind when he saw Warsman there. Something about that figure was unnatural, which only heightened Shirogane's aggressive stance. "...Org?"

At first, Warsman thought it was in his head; 'org' seemed too nonsensical a word to be anything but something fragmented by his own imagination. But with it came a twitch of movement in the periphery of his vision that set his heart thudding anew, and he rounded on it furiously.

"Who are you? Wh-where did you come from?" He could see a figure illuminated by a nearby cluster of mushrooms, but without any details they remained a threatening shadow.

Shirogane knew how to introduce himself properly. His mother had taught him how when he was very small, and it was expected of anyone who served in polite society to be able to handle such a simple task. Really, there was no excuse for what came out of Shirogane's mouth next, even if he only saw some possibly monstrous threatening figure there in the shadows.

"The Sparkling Wolf! GaoSIlver!" The stream of nonsense was accompanied by a pose that might have been half-combative, half-flashy, for a moment before Shirogane assumed a stance that was all combative.

Silence.

Warsman peered into the gloom, suddenly and unexpectedly thrown. Part of him wanted to laugh at how patently ridiculous it was, nonsense words and sounds strung together like a children's poem- but the other part of him bristled in the face of his own confusion. Was it supposed to mean something? Was it a threat?

He stood there for a few moments longer, breathing heavily, before settling on an solution. There was no mistaking body language, and his opponent looked ready to strike.

"Don't come any closer, Wolf!" he snapped, in a voice that had sounded so much more commanding in his head. He dug his heels into the floor, between the tendrils. "I won't let you- I won't--"

Let him what? What was the other's fear there? The sane part of Shirogane thought that getting out of there and coming back with some sort of weapon might be a sensible idea, if he even came back at all.

The part of Shirogane that was controlling his actions saw nothing wrong with this. "Do your worst! I won't let you, either!" Not that he was sure what the other was going to be doing...but the part of his brain that was still in some hazy dream had seen things like this before, and that part of him knew that this meant only one thing--a fight. He rushed at Warsman, clearly intending to throw a punch.

Robin was used to dreams of implacable noise and panic and fury. Even the most fierce and iron-willed of soldiers would, at some point, find themselves waking with wracking cries, drenched in sweat. But this was his first in years- and more disturbing than any he had ever had before. Searing hot pain in his chest and his vision fading in a dizzying flurry of bubbles. Eyes going dull and bloodshot as every vein erupts- he could feel the prickle of each- and bleeds out. Bitter cold and a spreading numbness that crept up over his body until there was nothing left of him but the sound of ringing metal. He awoke in a frenzy, clasping at his body through the quilt to make quite sure that it was still there, that he existed.

With heavy legs, he forced himself to his feet. He couldn’t stay in here. The darkness was oppressive and lighting a candle wasn’t a task that he trusted his hands, trembling and damp and fading from- no, they were real. He flexed them, making each finger move separately before allowing himself to be convinced of their existence.

It was the sound of a door opening and closing that made him look up and, to his shame, he did so with a short gasp. Warsman? He needed to see him. Maybe doing so would ease the flood of unfamiliar images and sounds reverberating through his ears.

Robin paused by the door, only for a moment to rake a hand through his hair. His mask. How foolish of him to forget it. The thought slipped unbidden into his mind and then away again before he could fully register it as alien and he opened his door without stopping to consider it.

“Warsman?”

Edited 2013-07-19 08:12 (UTC)

This voice, though-- of all the voice he'd heard between these walls, this voice he recognised.

Warsman froze.

He'd dreamed of Robin, of course; he'd understood his presence even when the sounds and images had reached a crescendo of confusion, and even if he hadn't been able to make sense of the gleaming helmet (mask, he wants to say, but that doesn't make any sense at all) he'd known it was Robin behind it and it had been a comfort. Now he wasn't so sure. When everyone in the house knew that he was closest to him, it made it all too easy for someone to trick him with the man's voice. And, more than that, how could he even guarantee that he wasn't still dreaming? He hadn't been dreaming the others, but maybe this time-

He took a tremulous step forward. "R-Robin...?" He didn't have the strength to resist. His voice quivered in the steamy night air and for a moment he thought he saw it create ripples, but his eyes remained steadily fixed on the source of his voice- on the man in the doorway. He could just see the edge of his nose, the strong line of his jaw...

But that wasn't right, and for some reason he was back to the image of the knight's helmet, a helmet he couldn't see and whose absence only frightened him all the more. "N-no... no, I'm dreaming..." Russian now. Warsman didn't care. He put his hands to his mask, pressing hard against the glassy eyes as if breaking them might free his sight.

Warsman's was a shape that he'd seen in his dreams but, in a way he couldn't place, there it had been tinged with a deep sort of sadness, loss almost. Maybe a loss more tangible than he had felt when Sir Lati- father had passed away years ago. Seeing him here, in the flesh and not a flickering after-image of sensation and colour, soothed him enough to ease the drumming of his heartbeat in his ears. Enough to take in his surroundings, at least.

Robin gave a short, horrified gasp and shoved the door open the rest of the way, scraping the floor's new thin, fleshy layer of fungi back in the process. Like skin peeling back to reveal dark, visceral muscle and beneath that the bone and... no, he had to focus. The sweat that had started to bead at the back of his neck rolled down his spine. Hysteria would serve no purpose but to disturb him further.

He took a breath and tried again. "What in God's name-"

No, I'm dreaming.

Russian. It was only now that his eyes moved back to his companion and he realised that his steps were unsteady, his voice trembling with fear and uncertainty. Robin took a tentative step forward, holding up both hands. "Warsman, this is real. I'm real."

Who was he trying to convince here? Warsman? More likely, himself.

Warsman flinched beneath his fingers. It wasn't that he hadn't remembered that Robin was fluent- he just hadn't expected it of the Robin-shaped man wavering in and out of his vision. He hadn't, in fact, expected any sort of interior truth to it at all, and now he'd born witness to it he wasn't sure how to process it anymore. If he could so perfectly mimic him in all the most important ways, if he could sound like him as well as look like him-

He'd stepped forward. Warsman sucked in a breath, frozen by his own indecision. He could stand and fight- he could run- or he could trust the gentle peace offering in those upturned palms and back down now.

He wasn't in any place to trust.

A drunken mirror, he took a great, uneven couple of steps towards Robin. "Y-you're not-" Warsman shook his head, still clasped in one hand, as though he might be able to rattle the words into order. "You're not right! You're lying!" Now both fists were engaged, raised ready to strike the second we was close enough to take a swing. With the wriggling set of his vision he was more likely to miss than to hit, but he couldn't just stand by while some creature misused Robin's shape.

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"All that we see or seem..." - November 4th, 1888

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