You can never leave... [open-ish?]
Who: Felix Harrowgate
What: An ill-advised trip into dreamland
When: Saturday night
Where: Felix's room (1015)
Rating: Slight R, to be safe, for cursing and mild self-inflicted violence
Felix’s trip into town had turned out to be ill-advised. It was probably doomed from the start by his little inquiry. The reminder that there was little he could do to escape being beholden to the castle was not the way he had wanted to start the day off. By the time Felix got back to his room he was in a worse mood than ever. He thought - foolishly, it turned out - that getting out of the castle would take his mind off things. What he hadn’t been prepared for was the city’s rather startling similarity to Mélusine. Sure, there wasn’t those high walls crowding everything in, nor was there the ever present wet metallic smell of the Sim permeating everything like a disease, but everything else - the buildings, the people, the occasional horse and cart rambling past, and even the shadow of the castle in the distance - was so like the city he had grown up in that every step was like walking on knives. Because he knew, despite his brother’s hopes to the contrary, that he was never going to see it again.
And then he had to read the journal. Crowley’s entry was at least the second he could recall since arriving where he was witness to the toll this place took on its residents.
He would gladly face his ambiguous fate at the hands of some anonymous council of foreign wizards than stay here even another day. And, he had to admit, he missed Mildmay. He could still feel the binding-by-forms like a severed limb. At least his brother didn’t have to suffer it. He’d put him through enough already.
A part of him wondered, maliciously, if he somehow deserved this.
He sat on the bed with a sigh, raking his hands through his hair, the white at his temple stark in the moonlight from the window. What could he do to get out of here?
The Khloïdanikos. Of course. It was a long shot, certainly, but he had to at least see.
Felix sat on the bed. After a brief moment of thought he placed his journal under a lamp, then took a breath and closed his eyes.
Pulling up his city-construct was so ingrained that it required no more mental effort now than summoning his witchlights. More a mental twitch than anything - a slight shifting in reality - though in truth he was in a deep trance in mere seconds. One moment he was in his room, the next the dream city rose up underneath him like an island in a sea of black. He stood as always on the Crown of Nails. Below the lights of the Lower City gleamed - even in Pharoahlight and Britomart now, where before there had been nothing. The flowing line of the Sim, still black as ink, cut through the middle like always, and reflexively his eyes follow it to the south where the jagged gap that is the Septad Gate - the gate of madness - stands forever and always open, a reminder of his madness like a scar is a reminder of a wound. It’s almost comforting in its familiarity, and no longer trying to swallow him and his city whole. It is fear that makes him move his gaze slowly along the wall, checking that each gate is as he left it, coming ever closer to the northeast.
The Horn Gate. He’d sealed it open years ago, and it had been evermore his access point to the Khloïdanikos, the dream-of-the-garden. Unlike his city, the garden was a oneiromantic construct - a place of magic that existed only in the world of dreams but no less real because of it. But more importantly, it was a portal. True, in the Mirador, which was a building of great magical power not unlike Paradisa, reaching the garden had been impossible. But he had no reason to know if that was true here. He had to know. The garden had been his only respite in his madness and when he was trying to undo the damage he’d done, but most important now, he could find Thamuris there. He could find a friend.
He wrenched his gaze to the northeast and his heart fell.
Bricks. The Horn Gate was sealed up by giant bricks, which, on a second glance, looked exactly like the ones that made up the walls of Cair Paradisa.
He could feel himself rushing forward.
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” he cried out in anger and despair, beating his fists lamely against unyielding stone, over and over and over, his hands beginning to leave bloody marks with each pointless strike.
“FUCK!” he screamed, punching the wall one last time, hard, and the blinding pain jolted his straight out of his trance.
Panting, he cradled his hand as blood oozed from his knuckles, and tried very hard not to cry. Thankfully, he’d had lots of practice.
[For fun, if you want, any residents on his floor (that's floor 10, if you don't know) may have heard this little outburst. Cause the castle wants you to, that's why. Feel free to bother.]
What: An ill-advised trip into dreamland
When: Saturday night
Where: Felix's room (1015)
Rating: Slight R, to be safe, for cursing and mild self-inflicted violence
Felix’s trip into town had turned out to be ill-advised. It was probably doomed from the start by his little inquiry. The reminder that there was little he could do to escape being beholden to the castle was not the way he had wanted to start the day off. By the time Felix got back to his room he was in a worse mood than ever. He thought - foolishly, it turned out - that getting out of the castle would take his mind off things. What he hadn’t been prepared for was the city’s rather startling similarity to Mélusine. Sure, there wasn’t those high walls crowding everything in, nor was there the ever present wet metallic smell of the Sim permeating everything like a disease, but everything else - the buildings, the people, the occasional horse and cart rambling past, and even the shadow of the castle in the distance - was so like the city he had grown up in that every step was like walking on knives. Because he knew, despite his brother’s hopes to the contrary, that he was never going to see it again.
And then he had to read the journal. Crowley’s entry was at least the second he could recall since arriving where he was witness to the toll this place took on its residents.
He would gladly face his ambiguous fate at the hands of some anonymous council of foreign wizards than stay here even another day. And, he had to admit, he missed Mildmay. He could still feel the binding-by-forms like a severed limb. At least his brother didn’t have to suffer it. He’d put him through enough already.
A part of him wondered, maliciously, if he somehow deserved this.
He sat on the bed with a sigh, raking his hands through his hair, the white at his temple stark in the moonlight from the window. What could he do to get out of here?
The Khloïdanikos. Of course. It was a long shot, certainly, but he had to at least see.
Felix sat on the bed. After a brief moment of thought he placed his journal under a lamp, then took a breath and closed his eyes.
Pulling up his city-construct was so ingrained that it required no more mental effort now than summoning his witchlights. More a mental twitch than anything - a slight shifting in reality - though in truth he was in a deep trance in mere seconds. One moment he was in his room, the next the dream city rose up underneath him like an island in a sea of black. He stood as always on the Crown of Nails. Below the lights of the Lower City gleamed - even in Pharoahlight and Britomart now, where before there had been nothing. The flowing line of the Sim, still black as ink, cut through the middle like always, and reflexively his eyes follow it to the south where the jagged gap that is the Septad Gate - the gate of madness - stands forever and always open, a reminder of his madness like a scar is a reminder of a wound. It’s almost comforting in its familiarity, and no longer trying to swallow him and his city whole. It is fear that makes him move his gaze slowly along the wall, checking that each gate is as he left it, coming ever closer to the northeast.
The Horn Gate. He’d sealed it open years ago, and it had been evermore his access point to the Khloïdanikos, the dream-of-the-garden. Unlike his city, the garden was a oneiromantic construct - a place of magic that existed only in the world of dreams but no less real because of it. But more importantly, it was a portal. True, in the Mirador, which was a building of great magical power not unlike Paradisa, reaching the garden had been impossible. But he had no reason to know if that was true here. He had to know. The garden had been his only respite in his madness and when he was trying to undo the damage he’d done, but most important now, he could find Thamuris there. He could find a friend.
He wrenched his gaze to the northeast and his heart fell.
Bricks. The Horn Gate was sealed up by giant bricks, which, on a second glance, looked exactly like the ones that made up the walls of Cair Paradisa.
He could feel himself rushing forward.
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” he cried out in anger and despair, beating his fists lamely against unyielding stone, over and over and over, his hands beginning to leave bloody marks with each pointless strike.
“FUCK!” he screamed, punching the wall one last time, hard, and the blinding pain jolted his straight out of his trance.
Panting, he cradled his hand as blood oozed from his knuckles, and tried very hard not to cry. Thankfully, he’d had lots of practice.
[For fun, if you want, any residents on his floor (that's floor 10, if you don't know) may have heard this little outburst. Cause the castle wants you to, that's why. Feel free to bother.]