802/Mentality and Chaos

Mentality and Chaos
Date of Scene:	14 October 2014
Location:	A Quiet World
Synopsis:	Fayt has a little nightmare.
Cast of Characters:	183, 319

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Mizuki (183) has posed:
    As always, the eponymous dark and silent night pervades the library. This night in particular, though, small flakes of snow are gently flitting about outside, teasing the stained glass at the steeple above the door. Said door is, of course, wide open to accept Fayt as he arrives, and Mizuki is not far beyond. She's leaning on the edge of the fountain at the heart of her library, writing something in a miniature book. Whatever the work, it seems fairly engrossing; the chaos mage might have to try a bit at first to get her attention. Eventually, though, he would, and she would raise her gaze to him with a demure sort of smile.

    "Ah. Apologies." The book closes, and she sets it aside. "I was writing a poem that had just come to mind. I do not know whether you've ever had a 'eureka' moment or a moment where your soul was otherwise enraptured by artistic fascination, but if you have, then you know how important it is to note these inspirational thoughts as they come. But I do go on! You didn't come here this evening to listen to me babble about writing, did you?" No, of course not. So, with a small flick of her bangs and a quick flourish of her fingers, she calls forth... a bed. A rather simple bed, considering, wrought from lightly colored wood and covered by a soft, lavender-and-white checkered blanket. She gestures to it.

    "Come, come. Rest your eyes and we may begin. Oh, and don't fret if you're the sort that suffer from insomnia! The influence of my world is, not surprisingly, quite hypnotic that way."

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
    Fayt blinks slowly as the bed appears. Head slowly tilting from side to side. "Um... ok?" Understandibly, he sounds confused.

    Still, There was that offer to help and he did mention the dreams he usualy has over radio so... Well, probably best not to question things too much.

    Slowly, carefully, the pale mage climbs into the bed and lays back. It takes awhile, the little workaholic isn't known for being big on the whole 'resting' thing but eventually, Fayt dozes off, he's even snoring slightly.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    And as promised, rest arrives quickly, and in all likelihood far more gently than he is used to. For a time, the world becomes a warm, all-encompassing, vorpal black; as though he had submerged himself in a silken hot spring. He dives further and further there, for a time likely too relaxed to remember any earlier apprehension. Over time, though, sensation other than what tranquillity can be directly felt resurfaces. He hears the emptiness of this place; the silence. Soon, he sees it as well. There is barely a difference between opening his eyelids and closing them at first, but something eventually comes into view: a light. A bright, pulsing light that constantly cycles through colors.

    It may take him a moment to notice, but Mizuki is there, hands balanced upon the grip of her blade as she watches Fayt's descent with a calm countenance. As if he was flying through space or floating in the water, his body orients itself autonomously, naturally, placing himself a few paces from the lady who had allegedly taken him here. He is standing on... nothing. Black expands above and beneath him for as far as he is able to see. Somehow, he would know that this area in which they stand is the only bastion of light in this catacomb of thoughts.

    Mizuki nods to him again once he has had some time to settle. "Welcome, Fayt. This is an interstice between your conscious and unconscious mind. I have halted your ego before it had time to sink into the membrane of dreams. And incidentally," She points her sword at the prismatic bulb before them. "that is precisely what that is. A gateway to your dreams." She sets her blade back on the ground. "And now that I have had time to ensure that your dream is a lucid one, I see no reason to tarry. Please, reach out and touch it when you are comfortable. Do take all the time you need, though; the passage of time is not represented in any tangible way in the imagination. Hence, we have all of it that we could ever need."

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
    Fayt is... supprisingly a bit different than normal. Having been so relaxed just a few moments ago. The mage is lacking his usual jumpy edge. He slowly galnces at the nothing around him, looking curious and maybe a bit confused, but the usual fear or timidness he's known for is missing.

    Give it a few moments, he'll likely be back to normal in a bit.

    Mizuki's explination casses him to tilt his head to the side. "I.. see? sort of?" He looks over at the orb, "I'm not sure what to expect in here, but if it's like my usual dreams? There's not going to be a lot to see. Still..." He reaches out to touch the orb.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki's smile is eternal. "Ah, but this is no 'normal' dream. This is a dream in which I have manually pried your mind's eye to full openness." His fingers touch the orb, and the cluster of lights begins to whirl. "What, if anything, that could mean in difference," The whirling ceases, "we shall see shortly~."

    With that last word, the already soundless void stiffens further. The small sun betwixt lucidity and undefinition revolves upon an unseen axis, inviting an explosion that resounds throughout the entire area. The black cracks away as glass might when struck, and resolves into something much more... crisp. Vivid. If he didn't know any better, /real/. Mizuki is gone now, it would seem, and he...

    ... well. He is back home.

    The grass is there, as normal; green and placid. The sun hangs in the sky, sentinel over the daytime Earth. In the distance, the front door beckons. Everything is as it should be... but he can't ignore a certain, creeping feeling of wrongness. It isn't dread, no. Far from it. All that he can pin down is a sensation of invasive staleness, and if he focuses, a film of sepia over the entire area. It is equal parts dream and reality.

    But he knows, somehow, that the balances will begin to tip the moment he takes his first step.

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
    They say home is where the heart is, and for Fayt?

    Fayt slowly looks around his office,looking jsut a tad confused. "...Hello? Anyboday here? I thought I left for the-oh right, dreaming." Shaking his head clean, Fayt takes a moment to look for Mizuiki and notice she's gone, lets out a shrug, frowning "Hmm..."

    Well, no point just standing around. Fayt decides to leave the office, making his way downstairs and outside, The Dragons nest is usually pretty busy, maybe there's some ships out there or something. he's not sure what, if anything, he should be looking for right now.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    And the dream is not quick to yield points of obvious interest. Though he would quickly realize, as he approaches the Dragon's Nest, that things are nowhere near as busy as usual. That's to say, not busy at all; there is not a single person in sight no matter where he walks which, dream or no, may strike him as a bit eerie. Ships are present, but immobile. And come to think of it, isn't everything else fairly 'immobile' as well? The clouds aren't moving, from ought that he can tell, and he can't feel any wind blowing. It's as though he's found himself in a void that makes a disturbingly accurate mimic of a place he once knew.

    Cruelly accurate, even. Slowly, he starts to hear voices. See people.

    But they aren't /people/ exactly. Rather, shadows of them; they start out as two dimensional figures that he sees on the ground, as any normal shadow would be placed. However, the longer he stays, the stranger things become. The shades rise from their places on the ground and occupy space in the three dimensional world, filling out from their flat profiles to become more 'normal' humanoids. Their forward progress ends there, though, for immediately after they have peeled themselves from their imprints on the ground, they begin to... melt. Bits and pieces of them slough off in putrescent waves, poisoning the ground beneath them with their bile.

    But it isn't just the ground: the sun, too, is slowly obscured by a swirling trail of black as more shadowy beings rise up around Fayt. The whispers, once pleasant reminders that he is not completely alone here, have become maddening; hisses that refuse to leave his ears, locking away any more pleasant noise. The clear sky is giving way to some hellish twist of orange and purple, and the dark men and women are quickly forming a circle that threatens to close around him. If he doesn't act shortly, he could very easily be trapped.

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
    
Fayt's frowns as he sees well... nothing. Everything's where it shold be, the're ships out here, the wherehosue is where it sohud be, he there's there's at least a ship or two in the airspace overhead but... no people.

    And wait, why can't he feel anything, There should be a little breeze or something, right?

    Then the shadows show up, and the sky goes all weird. "...crap!"

    Fayt runs for it, pulling his staff off of his back as he makes his way for the main gates. Maybe outside the nesti s better than here...

    probably not though.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Unfortunately, it isn't. The shades follow him, sprouting up from the ground as he moves. Worse still, they seem to be gaining momentum, approaching him in a sort of lumbering bound. More appear in front of him now, likely forcing him to change directions. But if he glances to his right, more are coming. And to his left? More there, too. Even behind him, there seems to be no method of escape. He's either going to have to use his magic or fly, though he might not consider the second option as readily.

    The shades don't give him any excess time for contemplation, though -- one is already coming at him, flailing its arms, its previously normal head transmogrifying before his eyes into a gaping maw of teeth and gnashing pads of inky 'flesh' comparable only to the mouth of a venus flytrap. Its arms, too, bend and stretch in abhorrent ways, threatening to grab him, perhaps even squeeze the life out of him, if he doesn't move - or attack - soon.

    Meanwhile, the world continues to grow darker. Even the buildings he had once run to for shelter are melting into puddles of distorted color, emitting a maddening, scorching scent...

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
    Unfortunatly, while Fay'ts ad the wing scarf for awhile now, he still has a bad habbit of forgetting he can fly. So magic it is then!

    AS soon as the one shadow closes in on him, Fayt jumps back "GAH!" almost without thinking, he pops his staff up in front of that things face(?), the things twisting about in his hands in an odd manner as he blurts out. "Force bolt."

    If everything is working properly, Fayt's staff would fire a small bolt of energy at... what that THING in front of him is. Though with how crazy this dream is getting, there's no telling what might actually happen.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    What emerges from his staff isn't a bolt of force, necessarily, but a bolt of... more of that disgusting material that the bodies of his enemies are comprised of. Nevertheless, it works as intended, punching a hole a literal hole in the face of the encroaching monster. After a few seconds of delay, the monster explodes, falling backward into a pile of its own filth. Oddly enough, all of the other shades respond in kind. The whispers in his head suddenly quiet, and all of them stand perfectly still, eyes trained on Fayt.

    ... and soon after, to his horror, he may notice something else: residual slime from the magic he called into being earlier is sliding down his arm. It feels... cold. Wet. As though he's being encased in a deep, dark, vicous material every bit as deplorable as its appearance would have suggested. By all appearances, though, there doesn't seem to be a way to stop it. It continues to advance until it has consumed his entire arms, and advances to his shoulder, then his neck. Should things proceed in this way, the shadows would begin to stir again. One after the other, they would attempt to jump on top of fate, detonating themselves and encasing him in yet more of that deathly, demonic slime. Again, he would become lost in darkness as before, but this time it comes with a distinct feeling of rottenness. Not emptiness, but uncomfortable frigidity.

    Decay.

    But once he has had time to acclimate to this new environment, he would find that he is no longer writhing. Rather than being covered in the slime, it seems that the world around him has changed. It is still the same place, his intuition tells him, but... nothing is the same anymore. The ships and buildings have been replaced with oozing pools of bubbling black tar. His feet can find absolutely no distance from a constant feeling of sinking. And yet, in it all, he is still able to catch sight of one image, on the horizon: himself.

    A perfectly normal and clean version of himself stands at a ledge at a further extreme, clutching his staff and staring blankly into the distance.

    And once again, there is no sound. No movement. No wind.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    What emerges from his staff isn't a bolt of force, necessarily, but a bolt of... more of that disgusting material that the bodies of his enemies are comprised of. Nevertheless, it works as intended, punching a hole in the face of the encroaching monster. After a few seconds of delay, the monster explodes, falling backward into a pile of its own filth. Oddly enough, all of the other shades respond in kind. The whispers in his head suddenly quiet, and all of them stand perfectly still, eyes trained on Fayt.

    ... and soon after, to his horror, he may notice something else: residual slime from the magic he called into being earlier is sliding down his arm. It feels... cold. Wet. As though he's being encased in a deep, dark, vicous material every bit as deplorable as its appearance would have suggested. By all appearances, though, there doesn't seem to be a way to stop it. It continues to advance until it has consumed his entire arms, and advances to his shoulder, then his neck. Should things proceed in this way, the shadows would begin to stir again. One after the other, they would attempt to jump on top of fate, detonating themselves and encasing him in yet more of that deathly, demonic slime. Again, he would become lost in darkness as before, but this time it comes with a distinct feeling of rottenness. Not emptiness, but uncomfortable frigidity.

    Decay.

    But once he has had time to acclimate to this new environment, he would find that he is no longer writhing. Rather than being covered in the slime, it seems that the world around him has changed. It is still the same place, his intuition tells him, but... nothing is the same anymore. The ships and buildings have been replaced with oozing pools of bubbling black tar. His feet can find absolute no solace from a constant feeling of sinking. And yet, in it all, he is still able to catch sight of one image, on the horizon: himself.

    A perfectly normal and clean version of himself stands at a ledge at a further extreme, clutching his staff and staring blankly into the distance.

    And once again, there is no sound. No movement. No wind.

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
    That's... not a force bolt. Fayt blinks at the weird thing that fires form his staff. last he checked, force bolt doesn't do that so what could-wait what's that think on his arm? "Huh?"

    Oh hey, it's moving...

    Fayt, panics, staring blnakly as the thing starts to climb up his arm, frantically he brings his staff around, ready to blast his own limb off just to make it STOP but too late, it's reached the shoulder Fayt's eyes move from his arm as he notes the shadows are back. "..."

    There's a loud scream as the bodies pile on top of him.

    When his vision comes back, Fayt's actually twitching slightly. Franticlly glanceing around for something, ANYING to get out of this mess. He stops when he sees.. himself? Fayt tilts his head to the side. "Um... w-what's going on? w-why am I over there? shouldn't I be..?" slowly, he looks down at himself.

    He's still actually himself, right?

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    He sees his scarf, and that much is the same. But he would immediately notice something off. An even more overbearing wrongness than that the world around him has already come to bear. This is clarified further in the sound of his voice, which sounds... twisted. Garbled. He can faintly make out his words, but he knows he would not have understood them had he not known what he wanted to say beforehand. They weren't the words of a sentient being, a man, but of a monster.

    And if it is the voice of the monster, then it is one in its death throes. His throat sounded gagged and mutilated. Any attempts he makes at moving are accompanied with a massive, nigh nauseating experience of dissonance. He -feels- his normal body in his actions, but what he sees is... different. Ghastly. A writhing mass of the blackness that he had seen all about him, sinking to the ground in layers.

    He, like everything else, is melting.

    But his other self comes toward him, offering his hand in an offer of salvation. Or that is what he appears to do, at first. When he comes without a certain distance, Fayt can immediately tell that something is wrong about his 'pure' self as well. His pallor is tinted a purple, sickly hue. His facial expression isn't a thing that could have existed in any rational universe. And indeed, it can't -- it is banished by the laws that bind those who walk through reality, but not in the same way the rest have been. Rather than oozing into nothingness, this Fayt's skin hardens. Then it begins to crumble as a stone worn by the tides of time, before his ashes are swept away by a suddenly reappearing wind. The very same wind that gradually sweeps away the vulgar dark that has enveloped his body. He blinks, and the world is momentarily dark.

    And next he can see, there is another hand being offered to him. A different hand this time, though: Mizuki's. Somewhere along the line, Fayt had fallen to the ground, and she is offering one hand in assistance, keeping the other clasped about the handle of a frilled parasol. Her smile is warm and welcoming. Evidence enough, once the trauma wanes, that he is again among the world of reason, clarity, and companionship.

    Yet still, he can tell that the chaos is still there, out in the distance. It is merely being held at bay for the moment so that Mizuki would have the time to find him. If they wait too long, though, one never knows.

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
Notgoodnotgoodnotgoodnotgoodnotgoodnononononononono...

    Fayt's mind is a rush of pure PANIC at what he's seeing, and it only gets worse as 'Fayt' approaches him. He struggles to move to speak, to ANYTHING as the world melts around him.

    Then Mizuki finds him, Fayt stares up at her for a moment, shaking uncontrollably, pure terror on his face before he reaches out to the offered hand. He doesn't say anything. "..."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki... frowns slightly when she finds him shaking. She sighs faintly, kneeling down so that she's at eye level with him. She eventually reaches a hand to gingerly pat his shoulder, hopefully in such a way that won't give him a start. "It's over now, Fayt." She attempts to resurrect that smile of hers. "You're safe. The chaos is gone."

    She stays close, but elects to give him some space for the time being. Once he's shaking a bit less, she'll offer some more words.

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
    Fayt just quietly stares at Mizuki, still shaking as his shoulder is patted. Eventually however, he calms down, taking slow, deep breaths as the shaking subsides. He doesn't say anything, he just watches Mizuki.

    He looks... worried.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki widens her smile a bit as he begins to calm down. When again she speaks, her tone is infinitely more gentle than her usual. Smooth and flowing, as though she were preparing to sing. "It was scary, wasn't it?" She folds her hands at her waist. "... but that was not pure chaos you were overtaken by, you know. There is something more. Something without which the chaos itself cannot propagate. Do you know what that is? I'll give you a hint: it is the same thing that your shinki and others have so often cautioned you over." She hesitates only a moment before adding, "Doubt."

    She relaxes her shoulders. "... any fool could see that you are a sensitive soul. And sensitivity, to a degree, is a good thing; it ensures that you will ever be receptive to the feelings and opinions of others. In some cases, it may even lead you to deeper understanding of those you care for. But." She raises a finger. "With that nature comes a great burden. One that even I, in my Ivory Tower far, far away from you, have witnessed gnawing at your proverbial bones. You mustn't let your fear of your power cripple you; indeed, that fear is the greatest catalyst for damnation." She folds her arms behind her back. "In other words, your fear is what will make your fears come true. If you are able to surmount the high hill of your inward pain, the things you might be capable of..." She looks up at the sky a moment, "... are truly astronomical, I'm sure."

    Then, she levels her gaze with his again, offering her hand another time. "Now, let me see you stand. You need not mask your fear, but let me see that you understand. That, if this experience has become yet another scar upon your mind, that it will mend into a scab that shall further your development as a person." She cocks her head slightly to the side. "Please, let me see the face of a Fayt Ravus who is willing to accept and move past his fears with the aid of his friends. Somewhere in your quivering, there is strength."

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
    Fayt quietly listens to Mizuki as she talks, head slowly tilting to the side. He doesn't speak, hopefully he hasn't actually lost his voice from this.

    honestly, he doesn't seem to be giving much of a reaction at all as everything runs through his mind, untill eventually he nods slowly, reaching out to take the offered hand as he stands up.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mimi smiles and helps him to his feet when he takes her hand. "I'm sorry if the dream was a bit too harsh, or if my words were too much to digest at once. But regardless, I feel there is some lesson to be learned here. So take heart. You may yet emerge from this whole affair as something greater. But..." She sighs. "... alas, one cannot remain in dreams forever. Unless they are one of my kindred, that is. But you, Mister Ravus, must return to the world of the waking." She releases his hand, giving a curtsey. "I shall see you on the other side."

    Then Mizuki fades away again, but slowly this time. The world around Fayt becomes a foggy haze, and before he knows it, he's back under the white-and-lavender checked blanket. Mizuki is by the fountain as she was before, watching him with some degree of concern. She gives him a nod of acknowledgement should he notice her.

Fayt Ravus (319) has posed:
Fayt slowly opens his eyes as he wakes up, there's a small groan followed by a small gasping noise. There's a few more weird noises as Fayt Tries to speak before. "H...h-hello?"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki stands from the fountain, setting aside a book and quill as she had when he had first come in. Then she curtsies to him pleasantly, smiling. "Good morning, Mister Ravus. And welcome back to the world of definition and lucidity."