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| Dead But Dreaming | |
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| Topic Started: Nov 1 2009, 08:56 PM (38 Views) | |
| skazka | Nov 1 2009, 08:56 PM Post #1 |
Major Arcana
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Leather-bound, and quite heavy, it might have had pride of place in a university library. If he hadn't known its origins, he could have made an educated guess that Maxwell had stolen it. One of his little things, like badly decaying folios and quartos of long-forgotten plays. There'd been Shakespeare performed, back at Miskatonic, and like a good young academic West had attended performances with all due attentiveness, but there was too much wooly thinking about the theater, about literature in general. Love and magic spells and other irrational behavior. Maxwell had always some foolish ambition of becoming a polymath, of stretching his natural dilettantism from medical practice and law to the entire spectrum of liberal arts. As a proud skeptic, he couldn't help but wonder if this was some subtle brand of revenge on his companion's part. Transcribe this for me, West, write out my silly mystical incantations, I need it for my book. Your Greek is better than mine. As if that were high praise; he'd always been the better student of the two of them. (And it wasn't even in Greek past a certain point. The relevant passages were in some pagan nonsense language; leave that to someone else to handle.) The book had clearly been rebound several times; sloppy transcription had left some parts, such as rather dubious illustrations, almost illegible. Smoke and grit had settled in between the pages during its time in storage; it left a fine dusting of earth on his desktop and brought back a pang of trench smoke to his senses, tore up a fresh memory. Those had been good days during the war. The ancient but serviceable revolver was still in his desk drawer where it always was. He heard the house shift, and circumspectly laid it out on the desktop, like a sign against evil. The tourniquet and needle were neatly stored away with the rest of his kit, though they wouldn't have been of notice should anyone interrupt. As if they had housemaids or prying maiden aunts. West had grown accustomed to a choice between perfect solitude and a few choice companions who knew his little ways. Having strangers force themselves into the scene made everything so ugly and untidy. Without a grand basement lab to keep his personal effects in, he made do with the rather shabby rented room, and a spill of electric lighting from the lantern, rather than alarm Holmwood. (There had been disagreements on his own tastes for drug use in the past, and that was another thing he didn't want trouble for. His high spirits had been dampened a little by chemical alteration, but that was for the best. Trudging along on an even keel.) His lips moved absently as he neatly rewrote a line on better paper. Syllable by syllable, exactly as it sounded. How odd. How really very odd. |
   The Corinthian | Herbert West | Clarice | |
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| Lena | Nov 1 2009, 09:25 PM Post #2 |
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In all honesty, Phobetor did not wish to wake up. It had been several weeks since he saw the mists of lilac and crimson and he had slept. Morpheus and Phantsos, they could not sleep for they had not yet completely their given tasks. The god known to the shn'Ahnmik as Pholuni, a moon circling Mars was done with the tasks given by his father. At times, there was the routine clean-up, the extravagant dreamer to converse with, the mortal to damn for a misstep that may or may not have been their fault. It was not Icelus's place to judge that. He did as he was told. Eternally as he was told. Which is why the pale god began to twitch in his sleep. The texts of followers. Mmm. It had been some time since they had been touched. A collection of prayers and warnings and summonings. Those were the days of old, the days in which an older brother would speak the tongue of his people to summon him, if only to cleanse his sister of the devils of unrequited dreams. He would. . For a price. In those days, the price was never too high . . These days, no one summoned. No one dreamed anything original. He hadn't had a good conversation with someone in several years. He had been forbidden to tread in either dream worlds that were not his own, both the Dreaming and the land of his middle brother, the land of Jehanlo. The world in which he lived had no name and no official language save that of screams and pleading. But he knew the languages of old. The languages of the dying and the dead. Latin, Greek, ha'Dasi. Languages in danger of being forgotten as their kind were dying. Magic languages. Soon, he figured, there would be no way for him to visit the Earth any longer. Merely see the changes through the landscapes as they changed from sights of villages burning to cities dissolving in rains of acid. "K'la'infiti'pholuni'gah'hemiline'stri. And he sturred. Shn'pholuni'tu'ja. And dark eyes opened. It was enough, wasn't it? Enough of a warrant to leave, wasn't it? The dangers of Morpheus thinking it to be some sort of folly, some sort of excuse to leave his realm, ran through his mind even as he let it happen. Father would not approve. Mother would. . Mother would sit and watch out for him through the eyes of the addicts and the delirious. Her approval, however, was not important, for she was of the mad. Ah, it was happening and Murphy could not stop it! Phanny could not prevent it! Oh, he had to prevent himself from laughing, for it would become contagious and ruin any sort of proper entrances to his new worshipper. Perhaps he had an older sister who had been unfitful in her rest and needed a proper cleansing? Ah! And he could tell the boy that his mere worship was not enough and, to spite him, drain him of his ability to properly enter the Dreaming. For his mother, he would damn him with entrance into Phanny's realm. Dream of chairs and nonsensical things. And then he was. . . Where was this? He did not see the emerald skies of tri'Ahnmik nor the velvet drapes of a well-to-do Victorian family. There was candlelight that was not candlelight and. . . and a man. Odd, since when did men wear that sort of garb? He seemed to be reading. . Oh! There it was! It appeared to be a collection of spells. Bother. Not all of it was about him. They normally bound it in dark purple if that were the case. Phobetor stood there, feet behind the man reading by the odd lantern and wearing dark, intimidating robes. He crossed his arms, waiting for the man to notice him. Would he? Was the summoning accidental? Damn, he dd not wish to interrupt if he was a scholar. Was the man a scholar? The god waited a moment more before coughing a bit in his hand. "Pardon me. . . But you summoned?" |
   Ned Walker: No, you cannot be his Chuck Jolene Dumoi: Coming soon to a gentleman's club near you Ral Dunn: We'd say his full name, but we don't have that much time dreeda ftw! | |
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| skazka | Nov 8 2009, 12:59 AM Post #3 |
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Major Arcana
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It would be a gross disservice to say that West startled. A melodramatic overstatement to say he jumped in his chair, pushed back from the desk with a grating of chair legs on cold tile and reached blindly for the revolver. It would be even worse to imply that he said a rude word in the heat of the moment, because if he hadn't done that with visions from some pagan hell shambling after him in the dark, seeing the bloody sclera of their eyes in his nightmares, well, a strange intruder with Gothic stylings and puddling black robes. (He did go for the revolver, though, nerves instantly and sharply ajangle with warning.) This was quite odd. On the whole, he didn't hallucinate. He'd tried hashisch, of course, but that gave so little now, and nothing so coherent. Or rather, it had never been people, but the most terrible nightmares, foreign places and bare scenery. Not people. Nothing remotely human, both man-shaped and self-aware. More wooly-thought nonsense. Anyway, if it were a creature of flesh and blood (which every nerve in his body was set aflame with the thought of, the urgency and his finger rattling on the handgun's trigger) that would soon be ended. In the light, West blinked a bit, and gave an irritable look of reproach. “And who are you?” he demanded. Some specter this was. Nothing supernatural about it at all, for all his searching. The trickeries of an untested mind. He drew himself up to his full height, very aware of the tingling in his veins as he did so. He had a great sense of personal dignity, rumpled as he was and so completely at sea. |
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The Corinthian | Herbert West | Clarice | |
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5:29 PM Nov 28
