He returns to his cave, it’s the closest thing to a home he has after all. Even though he has never truly felt like he belonged there. Staying at the orphanage could put the children in danger, which is something it wants to avoid at all costs, and it’s not like there’s many other places he can go either.
He pauses just in the entrance, completely exhausted in a way nothing he tried has been able to fix. Reaching out to people takes energy he hasn’t been able to find lately.
Maybe that’s why the loneliness has been settling in so deeply, why even thinking about his friends hurts so much. It doesn’t help that he is constantly forced to see them get in danger without any way to help either.
He snaps back to reality as he slams into a door that wasn’t there before, carved from a smooth dark material similar to wood yet visibly still something different. Its surface has been inlaid with a delicately crafted moth motif.
What stands out to him most though, is that the door exists in all five spacial dimensions, which also explains how he slammed into it. It was placed here for him.
Kilik exhales slowly, something he learned to do by watching the people around them. Of course he recognizes it. The stupid thing fused into his hand made sure of that, making him completely unable to avoid the endless noise of the network, no matter how badly he wants to. Duskmourn has been brought up quite a lot there, the plane that makes you face your worst nightmares.
His fingers curl slightly as he just stands and stares at the door. The noise of the recording plays trough its head again, she always seems to come out feeling better somehow. Maybe the same could be true for him?
His halo shivers as he reaches for the doorhandle, it's weirdly warm to the touch. When he opens it he sees someone kicking a humanoid figure curled up on the ground. The person notices kilik and yells something he doesn't understand before running away.
They need to be punished.
He sends his last message and steps trough the door. The constant throbbing of information coming from its left hand immediately quits.
Oh how he missed this silence. He can finally think again.
He thinks he needs to punish the murderer.
It doesn't take long for him to catch up, not even a second. He rises into the air above them as the figure cowars beneath him.
He summons his lance and readies a smite, a bright white light channeling into the weapon, yet something grabs his ankle before he can strike the murderer down.
And pulls him down.
Hard.
The figure that had been lying on the ground moments earlier now clutches his leg with surprising strenght.
The impact rattles the floorboards.
For a moment Kilik just lies there, halo flickering softly above him as it tries to figure out what is going on.
Slowly the shadowy figure pushes themselves upright. Something about their movements seems odd but he can't quite figure out what exactly.
Bruises mark their face, contrasting heavily against their pale face and their bright smile.
"You made the wrong choice" they say, their voice seemingly coming from somewhere behind Kilik.
Kilik quickly gets up, dragging the figure behind him and turns around to where the sound came from.
Nothing.
He looks back down at the figure.
Nothing.
He tries to find the man he chased earlier.
Gone.
Kilarotoralik's grip tightens around his lance as the sudden quiet truly settles in.
He crudely tapes a stopwatch to the interior of the elevator shaft. The wall in the bond goes up. He thinks to himself, "Not a word. Not a thought. Not a single indication. As far as anyone knows, I'm out on business. I am bringing him home." The Door stands before him. Moths carefully engraved. The feeling of fear permeating his bones. He grabs the handle and twists. It doesn't budge. He yanks and moves it around. Still no movement.
He summons Lightbane. He carefully maneuvers the hook of it into a small gap in the Door. He channels Th'ich'che's powers, void tendrils grasping the Door, wrapping around both the Door and the elevator shaft. He pushes just a little, then just a little more, and then breaks the door open, just like a crowbar. He takes one final look at his locket before stepping through the Door.
A forest. He thinks. Inside, outside, hard to tell. The snapping of branches echoes through the trees. The windows and doors floating at all angles makes it hard to focus on the shifting movement on the horizon. He walks forward, meeting—
"— running for what feels like months. Damn razorkin. Persistent little shits," Lake bemoans. They twirl some sort of large energized knife in their hands. "Not too many, but our resources are thin. If you're willing, we—"
—sinks into the flesh of the once-sane. A thunder pistol is drawn, jamming at the worst possible moment before a candelabra comes down on the thing's neck. Gesserith turns around, wiping the blood off his blade. "That's it. We won. You all won." He chuckles—
—crackles under the night sky. "I'm looking for an angel," he states. "I have my ways of tracking him but it helps if you have at least some idea where to start. Large, blue, beyond our dimension, big lance, anything?"
"Wouldn't you know it," Lake replies, "We've had reports of something foreign like that wandering around. We can make an expedition for it tomorrow. But for now, we—"
—around them. Ground continuously shifting beneath their feet. The trees themselves wrapping themselves around the party. Great drapes seemed to move behind the trees. In a pattern. A mask slowly emerged, far above their heads. Hands grasping the trunks as it stepped—
—snapping bones as they fell to the floor. Running was no use. Weapons forged from the House left marks, but nothing strong enough. The horror continued its feast. Gesserith launched Lightbane at its face, causing the thing to reel back. He followed it up with more stabs as he was able to mount it, chaining it to the floor with lashes of pure darkness. Lake gazes up in pure shock and horror. "GESSERITH! WHAT ARE YOU—"
—thrummed even stronger than ever before. Whatever had been wrong before, it was sated now. "It's done," he says. "The angel. Where is the angel?"
Lake throws him some sort of tracker. "This should show nearby things. If we're on the right track, that should help you. Go. We'll never forget this." They smile as they turn back towards the battlefield and begin—
—clasped around a throat. "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE." Lake struggled to get the words out of their mouth. Claws tearing at Gesserith's arms, digging into his flesh. Teeth aching to taste just another bite of flesh. "THE DEVOURING FATHER HAS NO USE FOR ONE LIKE YOU-" The blade opens, stabbing into their neck. They choke on their own blood, just for a moment, until the wound properly takes hold. Gesserith gets up, and brings Lightbane down onto—
—so long. How does this place even work? Last time at least made some sense. He flips down his layered glasses, picking up the faintest trace of Halo. He was so tired. He needed to be done, fast. He follows it, leading to what looked like a fragment of a weapon. Bright. Strong. Kilik's. He casts a short spell, and suddenly his vision is bright with the traces of his mark. He presses—
—through the window. "Kilik?" "Beezy?" That's it. That's him. He can see the faintest light. He calls Lightbane and begins relentlessly smashing through the window. After what felt like hours, a small crack. No bigger than a coin. He closes his fist. What must be done. He plunges his hand through the window, glass shattering to the—
—lands with more of a thud than he would have liked. "KILIK!" he shouts. "KILIK! DON'T! STAY BACK!" He runs full speed at the Xerexian, praying that this wouldn't be the end for the both of them. "IT'S NOT REAL!"
As Kilik stands on the edge of the door, it stops at the Broker's yelling.
"Oh this one is a bit more realistic, not sure how I'm supposed to be scared of Gesserith though." He mumbles to himself, which is still loud enough for the broker to hear, as they ready its lance.
As the lance turns to face him, Lightbane disappears and he puts his hands up. "NONONONONONONO WAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT! It's me! Gesserith! For real!" He scrambles to come up with a good excuse. "Uh, uhm, you hate me, you want to kill me, you're engaged to the person I'm bonded with, I fucked everything up to high hell, uhhhhhHHHH Biilzie! Biilzie sent me here! She uh, oh angels what's something specific, uhh... she's best friends with my daughter! She hangs out at my apartment. A lot actually." He stops panicking. "You know, she's still hiding why. Why do I keep letting her...?" he trails off.
"There was no sending," he admits. "I came here on my own. No one knows. I didn't want to cause panic, I didn't want to waste time. It was dangerous and reckless and a stupid idea, I know. But I'm the one who didn't tell Koda until it was too late, so now I'm the one fixing my mistake." He opens his palms, showing nothing. "I promise you, I'm here to bring you back. And then, you go back, you tell everyone that a survivor group saved you, I get nothing, and we're all okay. End of the day. Everyone lives."
"We move. Fast. I shouldn't even be here. It didn't want me back. I forced my way in here. I recommend we get started, before bad things start happening." He adjusts his clothes and checks the scanner. "We're clear. Let's go."
He summons Lightbane, barely holding it upright. "Alright. We get through whatever this knocking is, and then we're home free. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please just let this be the last thing."
The door opens inwards, shining a bright light into the hallway as it does.
Leaning slightly against the other side of the frame stands a relatively short woman. Lavender hair falls neatly around her shoulders. Pale antlers curve upward, smooth and symmetrical. Round glasses rest on her nose, one of the lenses being tinted considerably darker than the other.
She is dressed formally, a structured coat in muted tones falls elegantly along her form. Subtle patterns run along the fabric, faintly luminous and somewhat resembling constellations in the sky.
Once their eyes become used to the bright light they see that behind her isn't a hallway like there was before the door opened, but a room.
The walls are smooth and pale, with various lines seemingly hand drawn on to them to form a crude map. A single desk stands further within, the objects on it neatly arranged.
His eyes are rapidly scanning the new being before him. The room behind them. The antlers aren't exactly putting him at ease. He doesn't move his weapon away. "Frankly, no one knows I'm here, and I want to keep it that way. Now if you would kindly explain who you are and how you can help us get out, that would be lovely." A shield is brought up, covering the majority of Gesserith's torso. "If you don't, then we don't have another choice other than considering you a threat."
"You can consider me whatever you'd like," she says calmly, "it doesn't change where you are."
She briefly looks past them, down the hallway where they came from.
Something seems to shift there, making her look worried for about a split second before going back to her neutral expression.
"You're not particularly close to leaving without me." She taps her knuckles on the doorframe.
"If you want to go, it's this way" she gestures inward, towards the room behind her.
She doesn't look at the lance. The light gathering around its edges reflects faintly in her glasses.
"You shouldn't." There is no hesitation in her answer.
A door seems to open in the hallway.
"You don't need to trust me right now," she elaborates, "just understand I am basically your only option. I can explain things once you step trough."
She taps her knuckles against the doorframe again, this time a bit more nervously.
"We're already getting more time to talk than usual. The last few people duskmourn inter-"
Her sentence is interrupted by a figure coming trough the door in the hallway. It resembles a human merged with machinery, with large purple metal wings. Not unlike FRG-NUL-47.
He makes an executive decision. "As are we." He grabs Kilik's arm and drags him through the door and out of this damned House. He can deal with Kilik beating him up later, the objective must be secured now or never.
She waves her hand as they pass trough, making the door disappear right as the FRG unit is about to reach it.
The room they enter is about the same one as they saw from the hallway, except the walls now have various shelves with objects from across several planes on them. After the door disappeared, this room has no exit.
"You made the right call." they say as they snap their fingers, conjuring three chairs and sitting down on one of them.
"A couple of entities have gotten the jump on me, but my halo has already healed all damage they did."
The angel glances at the chairs, which are too small to fit it.
"Doorwarden, huh? Hello then. My name is Gesserith Edmund. I'm a planeswalker. I broke in here to get Kilik out. I'm a Broker, I do lawyer stuff." He dusts off his coat and takes a seat. "What exactly do you do?"
"No thank you," he declines. "Though I'll take some coffee if you have some on hand. Is there any way you can bring us out of Duskmourn? And can you keep in contact after that?"
"Wonderful then. If that's the case, I feel it would be best to return home and get away from Duskmourn. Oh, and if we meet on a communicator network, Doorwarden, you haven't met me. I am here on my own and I aim for people to never know what happened. If you would be so kind."
"Certainly."
She makes a few gesture and a new door appears where the old one was, behind it is a pretty quiet alleyway in the tenth district.
"Feel free to leave whenever you desire, all I request is you open a door for me when I need it."
He returns to his cave, it’s the closest thing to a home he has after all. Even though he has never truly felt like he belonged there. Staying at the orphanage could put the children in danger, which is something it wants to avoid at all costs, and it’s not like there’s many other places he can go either.
He pauses just in the entrance, completely exhausted in a way nothing he tried has been able to fix. Reaching out to people takes energy he hasn’t been able to find lately.
Maybe that’s why the loneliness has been settling in so deeply, why even thinking about his friends hurts so much. It doesn’t help that he is constantly forced to see them get in danger without any way to help either.
He snaps back to reality as he slams into a door that wasn’t there before, carved from a smooth dark material similar to wood yet visibly still something different. Its surface has been inlaid with a delicately crafted moth motif.
What stands out to him most though, is that the door exists in all five spacial dimensions, which also explains how he slammed into it. It was placed here for him.
Kilik exhales slowly, something he learned to do by watching the people around them. Of course he recognizes it. The stupid thing fused into his hand made sure of that, making him completely unable to avoid the endless noise of the network, no matter how badly he wants to. Duskmourn has been brought up quite a lot there, the plane that makes you face your worst nightmares.
His fingers curl slightly as he just stands and stares at the door. The noise of the recording plays trough its head again, she always seems to come out feeling better somehow. Maybe the same could be true for him?
His halo shivers as he reaches for the doorhandle, it's weirdly warm to the touch. When he opens it he sees someone kicking a humanoid figure curled up on the ground. The person notices kilik and yells something he doesn't understand before running away.
They need to be punished.
He sends his last message and steps trough the door. The constant throbbing of information coming from its left hand immediately quits.
Oh how he missed this silence. He can finally think again.
He thinks he needs to punish the murderer.
It doesn't take long for him to catch up, not even a second. He rises into the air above them as the figure cowars beneath him.
He summons his lance and readies a smite, a bright white light channeling into the weapon, yet something grabs his ankle before he can strike the murderer down.
And pulls him down.
Hard.
The figure that had been lying on the ground moments earlier now clutches his leg with surprising strenght.
The impact rattles the floorboards.
For a moment Kilik just lies there, halo flickering softly above him as it tries to figure out what is going on.
Slowly the shadowy figure pushes themselves upright. Something about their movements seems odd but he can't quite figure out what exactly.
Bruises mark their face, contrasting heavily against their pale face and their bright smile.
"You made the wrong choice" they say, their voice seemingly coming from somewhere behind Kilik.
Kilik quickly gets up, dragging the figure behind him and turns around to where the sound came from.
Nothing.
He looks back down at the figure.
Nothing.
He tries to find the man he chased earlier.
Gone.
Kilarotoralik's grip tightens around his lance as the sudden quiet truly settles in.
He crudely tapes a stopwatch to the interior of the elevator shaft. The wall in the bond goes up. He thinks to himself, "Not a word. Not a thought. Not a single indication. As far as anyone knows, I'm out on business. I am bringing him home." The Door stands before him. Moths carefully engraved. The feeling of fear permeating his bones. He grabs the handle and twists. It doesn't budge. He yanks and moves it around. Still no movement.
He summons Lightbane. He carefully maneuvers the hook of it into a small gap in the Door. He channels Th'ich'che's powers, void tendrils grasping the Door, wrapping around both the Door and the elevator shaft. He pushes just a little, then just a little more, and then breaks the door open, just like a crowbar. He takes one final look at his locket before stepping through the Door.
A forest. He thinks. Inside, outside, hard to tell. The snapping of branches echoes through the trees. The windows and doors floating at all angles makes it hard to focus on the shifting movement on the horizon. He walks forward, meeting—
"— running for what feels like months. Damn razorkin. Persistent little shits," Lake bemoans. They twirl some sort of large energized knife in their hands. "Not too many, but our resources are thin. If you're willing, we—"
—sinks into the flesh of the once-sane. A thunder pistol is drawn, jamming at the worst possible moment before a candelabra comes down on the thing's neck. Gesserith turns around, wiping the blood off his blade. "That's it. We won. You all won." He chuckles—
—crackles under the night sky. "I'm looking for an angel," he states. "I have my ways of tracking him but it helps if you have at least some idea where to start. Large, blue, beyond our dimension, big lance, anything?"
"Wouldn't you know it," Lake replies, "We've had reports of something foreign like that wandering around. We can make an expedition for it tomorrow. But for now, we—"
—around them. Ground continuously shifting beneath their feet. The trees themselves wrapping themselves around the party. Great drapes seemed to move behind the trees. In a pattern. A mask slowly emerged, far above their heads. Hands grasping the trunks as it stepped—
—snapping bones as they fell to the floor. Running was no use. Weapons forged from the House left marks, but nothing strong enough. The horror continued its feast. Gesserith launched Lightbane at its face, causing the thing to reel back. He followed it up with more stabs as he was able to mount it, chaining it to the floor with lashes of pure darkness. Lake gazes up in pure shock and horror. "GESSERITH! WHAT ARE YOU—"
—thrummed even stronger than ever before. Whatever had been wrong before, it was sated now. "It's done," he says. "The angel. Where is the angel?"
Lake throws him some sort of tracker. "This should show nearby things. If we're on the right track, that should help you. Go. We'll never forget this." They smile as they turn back towards the battlefield and begin—
—clasped around a throat. "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE." Lake struggled to get the words out of their mouth. Claws tearing at Gesserith's arms, digging into his flesh. Teeth aching to taste just another bite of flesh. "THE DEVOURING FATHER HAS NO USE FOR ONE LIKE YOU-" The blade opens, stabbing into their neck. They choke on their own blood, just for a moment, until the wound properly takes hold. Gesserith gets up, and brings Lightbane down onto—
—so long. How does this place even work? Last time at least made some sense. He flips down his layered glasses, picking up the faintest trace of Halo. He was so tired. He needed to be done, fast. He follows it, leading to what looked like a fragment of a weapon. Bright. Strong. Kilik's. He casts a short spell, and suddenly his vision is bright with the traces of his mark. He presses—
—through the window. "Kilik?" "Beezy?" That's it. That's him. He can see the faintest light. He calls Lightbane and begins relentlessly smashing through the window. After what felt like hours, a small crack. No bigger than a coin. He closes his fist. What must be done. He plunges his hand through the window, glass shattering to the—
—lands with more of a thud than he would have liked. "KILIK!" he shouts. "KILIK! DON'T! STAY BACK!" He runs full speed at the Xerexian, praying that this wouldn't be the end for the both of them. "IT'S NOT REAL!"
As Kilik stands on the edge of the door, it stops at the Broker's yelling.
"Oh this one is a bit more realistic, not sure how I'm supposed to be scared of Gesserith though." He mumbles to himself, which is still loud enough for the broker to hear, as they ready its lance.
As the lance turns to face him, Lightbane disappears and he puts his hands up. "NONONONONONONO WAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT! It's me! Gesserith! For real!" He scrambles to come up with a good excuse. "Uh, uhm, you hate me, you want to kill me, you're engaged to the person I'm bonded with, I fucked everything up to high hell, uhhhhhHHHH Biilzie! Biilzie sent me here! She uh, oh angels what's something specific, uhh... she's best friends with my daughter! She hangs out at my apartment. A lot actually." He stops panicking. "You know, she's still hiding why. Why do I keep letting her...?" he trails off.
"There was no sending," he admits. "I came here on my own. No one knows. I didn't want to cause panic, I didn't want to waste time. It was dangerous and reckless and a stupid idea, I know. But I'm the one who didn't tell Koda until it was too late, so now I'm the one fixing my mistake." He opens his palms, showing nothing. "I promise you, I'm here to bring you back. And then, you go back, you tell everyone that a survivor group saved you, I get nothing, and we're all okay. End of the day. Everyone lives."
"We move. Fast. I shouldn't even be here. It didn't want me back. I forced my way in here. I recommend we get started, before bad things start happening." He adjusts his clothes and checks the scanner. "We're clear. Let's go."
He summons Lightbane, barely holding it upright. "Alright. We get through whatever this knocking is, and then we're home free. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please just let this be the last thing."
The door opens inwards, shining a bright light into the hallway as it does.
Leaning slightly against the other side of the frame stands a relatively short woman. Lavender hair falls neatly around her shoulders. Pale antlers curve upward, smooth and symmetrical. Round glasses rest on her nose, one of the lenses being tinted considerably darker than the other.
She is dressed formally, a structured coat in muted tones falls elegantly along her form. Subtle patterns run along the fabric, faintly luminous and somewhat resembling constellations in the sky.
Once their eyes become used to the bright light they see that behind her isn't a hallway like there was before the door opened, but a room.
The walls are smooth and pale, with various lines seemingly hand drawn on to them to form a crude map. A single desk stands further within, the objects on it neatly arranged.
His eyes are rapidly scanning the new being before him. The room behind them. The antlers aren't exactly putting him at ease. He doesn't move his weapon away. "Frankly, no one knows I'm here, and I want to keep it that way. Now if you would kindly explain who you are and how you can help us get out, that would be lovely." A shield is brought up, covering the majority of Gesserith's torso. "If you don't, then we don't have another choice other than considering you a threat."
"You can consider me whatever you'd like," she says calmly, "it doesn't change where you are."
She briefly looks past them, down the hallway where they came from.
Something seems to shift there, making her look worried for about a split second before going back to her neutral expression.
"You're not particularly close to leaving without me." She taps her knuckles on the doorframe.
"If you want to go, it's this way" she gestures inward, towards the room behind her.
She doesn't look at the lance. The light gathering around its edges reflects faintly in her glasses.
"You shouldn't." There is no hesitation in her answer.
A door seems to open in the hallway.
"You don't need to trust me right now," she elaborates, "just understand I am basically your only option. I can explain things once you step trough."
She taps her knuckles against the doorframe again, this time a bit more nervously.
"We're already getting more time to talk than usual. The last few people duskmourn inter-"
Her sentence is interrupted by a figure coming trough the door in the hallway. It resembles a human merged with machinery, with large purple metal wings. Not unlike FRG-NUL-47.
He makes an executive decision. "As are we." He grabs Kilik's arm and drags him through the door and out of this damned House. He can deal with Kilik beating him up later, the objective must be secured now or never.
She waves her hand as they pass trough, making the door disappear right as the FRG unit is about to reach it.
The room they enter is about the same one as they saw from the hallway, except the walls now have various shelves with objects from across several planes on them. After the door disappeared, this room has no exit.
"You made the right call." they say as they snap their fingers, conjuring three chairs and sitting down on one of them.
"A couple of entities have gotten the jump on me, but my halo has already healed all damage they did."
The angel glances at the chairs, which are too small to fit it.
"Doorwarden, huh? Hello then. My name is Gesserith Edmund. I'm a planeswalker. I broke in here to get Kilik out. I'm a Broker, I do lawyer stuff." He dusts off his coat and takes a seat. "What exactly do you do?"
"No thank you," he declines. "Though I'll take some coffee if you have some on hand. Is there any way you can bring us out of Duskmourn? And can you keep in contact after that?"
He returns to his cave, it’s the closest thing to a home he has after all. Even though he has never truly felt like he belonged there. Staying at the orphanage could put the children in danger, which is something it wants to avoid at all costs, and it’s not like there’s many other places he can go either.
He pauses just in the entrance, completely exhausted in a way nothing he tried has been able to fix. Reaching out to people takes energy he hasn’t been able to find lately.
Maybe that’s why the loneliness has been settling in so deeply, why even thinking about his friends hurts so much. It doesn’t help that he is constantly forced to see them get in danger without any way to help either.
He snaps back to reality as he slams into a door that wasn’t there before, carved from a smooth dark material similar to wood yet visibly still something different. Its surface has been inlaid with a delicately crafted moth motif.
What stands out to him most though, is that the door exists in all five spacial dimensions, which also explains how he slammed into it. It was placed here for him.
Kilik exhales slowly, something he learned to do by watching the people around them. Of course he recognizes it. The stupid thing fused into his hand made sure of that, making him completely unable to avoid the endless noise of the network, no matter how badly he wants to. Duskmourn has been brought up quite a lot there, the plane that makes you face your worst nightmares.
His fingers curl slightly as he just stands and stares at the door. The noise of the recording plays trough its head again, she always seems to come out feeling better somehow. Maybe the same could be true for him?
His halo shivers as he reaches for the doorhandle, it's weirdly warm to the touch. When he opens it he sees someone kicking a humanoid figure curled up on the ground. The person notices kilik and yells something he doesn't understand before running away.
They need to be punished.
He sends his last message and steps trough the door. The constant throbbing of information coming from its left hand immediately quits.
Oh how he missed this silence. He can finally think again.
He thinks he needs to punish the murderer.
It doesn't take long for him to catch up, not even a second. He rises into the air above them as the figure cowars beneath him.
He summons his lance and readies a smite, a bright white light channeling into the weapon, yet something grabs his ankle before he can strike the murderer down.
And pulls him down.
Hard.
The figure that had been lying on the ground moments earlier now clutches his leg with surprising strenght.
The impact rattles the floorboards.
For a moment Kilik just lies there, halo flickering softly above him as it tries to figure out what is going on.
Slowly the shadowy figure pushes themselves upright. Something about their movements seems odd but he can't quite figure out what exactly.
Bruises mark their face, contrasting heavily against their pale face and their bright smile.
"You made the wrong choice" they say, their voice seemingly coming from somewhere behind Kilik.
Kilik quickly gets up, dragging the figure behind him and turns around to where the sound came from.
Nothing.
He looks back down at the figure.
Nothing.
He tries to find the man he chased earlier.
Gone.
Kilarotoralik's grip tightens around his lance as the sudden quiet truly settles in.
He crudely tapes a stopwatch to the interior of the elevator shaft. The wall in the bond goes up. He thinks to himself, "Not a word. Not a thought. Not a single indication. As far as anyone knows, I'm out on business. I am bringing him home." The Door stands before him. Moths carefully engraved. The feeling of fear permeating his bones. He grabs the handle and twists. It doesn't budge. He yanks and moves it around. Still no movement.
He summons Lightbane. He carefully maneuvers the hook of it into a small gap in the Door. He channels Th'ich'che's powers, void tendrils grasping the Door, wrapping around both the Door and the elevator shaft. He pushes just a little, then just a little more, and then breaks the door open, just like a crowbar. He takes one final look at his locket before stepping through the Door.
A forest. He thinks. Inside, outside, hard to tell. The snapping of branches echoes through the trees. The windows and doors floating at all angles makes it hard to focus on the shifting movement on the horizon. He walks forward, meeting—
"— running for what feels like months. Damn razorkin. Persistent little shits," Lake bemoans. They twirl some sort of large energized knife in their hands. "Not too many, but our resources are thin. If you're willing, we—"
—sinks into the flesh of the once-sane. A thunder pistol is drawn, jamming at the worst possible moment before a candelabra comes down on the thing's neck. Gesserith turns around, wiping the blood off his blade. "That's it. We won. You all won." He chuckles—
—crackles under the night sky. "I'm looking for an angel," he states. "I have my ways of tracking him but it helps if you have at least some idea where to start. Large, blue, beyond our dimension, big lance, anything?"
"Wouldn't you know it," Lake replies, "We've had reports of something foreign like that wandering around. We can make an expedition for it tomorrow. But for now, we—"
—around them. Ground continuously shifting beneath their feet. The trees themselves wrapping themselves around the party. Great drapes seemed to move behind the trees. In a pattern. A mask slowly emerged, far above their heads. Hands grasping the trunks as it stepped—
—snapping bones as they fell to the floor. Running was no use. Weapons forged from the House left marks, but nothing strong enough. The horror continued its feast. Gesserith launched Lightbane at its face, causing the thing to reel back. He followed it up with more stabs as he was able to mount it, chaining it to the floor with lashes of pure darkness. Lake gazes up in pure shock and horror. "GESSERITH! WHAT ARE YOU—"
—thrummed even stronger than ever before. Whatever had been wrong before, it was sated now. "It's done," he says. "The angel. Where is the angel?"
Lake throws him some sort of tracker. "This should show nearby things. If we're on the right track, that should help you. Go. We'll never forget this." They smile as they turn back towards the battlefield and begin—
—clasped around a throat. "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE." Lake struggled to get the words out of their mouth. Claws tearing at Gesserith's arms, digging into his flesh. Teeth aching to taste just another bite of flesh. "THE DEVOURING FATHER HAS NO USE FOR ONE LIKE YOU-" The blade opens, stabbing into their neck. They choke on their own blood, just for a moment, until the wound properly takes hold. Gesserith gets up, and brings Lightbane down onto—
—so long. How does this place even work? Last time at least made some sense. He flips down his layered glasses, picking up the faintest trace of Halo. He was so tired. He needed to be done, fast. He follows it, leading to what looked like a fragment of a weapon. Bright. Strong. Kilik's. He casts a short spell, and suddenly his vision is bright with the traces of his mark. He presses—
—through the window. "Kilik?" "Beezy?" That's it. That's him. He can see the faintest light. He calls Lightbane and begins relentlessly smashing through the window. After what felt like hours, a small crack. No bigger than a coin. He closes his fist. What must be done. He plunges his hand through the window, glass shattering to the—
—lands with more of a thud than he would have liked. "KILIK!" he shouts. "KILIK! DON'T! STAY BACK!" He runs full speed at the Xerexian, praying that this wouldn't be the end for the both of them. "IT'S NOT REAL!"
As Kilik stands on the edge of the door, it stops at the Broker's yelling.
"Oh this one is a bit more realistic, not sure how I'm supposed to be scared of Gesserith though." He mumbles to himself, which is still loud enough for the broker to hear, as they ready its lance.
As the lance turns to face him, Lightbane disappears and he puts his hands up. "NONONONONONONO WAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT! It's me! Gesserith! For real!" He scrambles to come up with a good excuse. "Uh, uhm, you hate me, you want to kill me, you're engaged to the person I'm bonded with, I fucked everything up to high hell, uhhhhhHHHH Biilzie! Biilzie sent me here! She uh, oh angels what's something specific, uhh... she's best friends with my daughter! She hangs out at my apartment. A lot actually." He stops panicking. "You know, she's still hiding why. Why do I keep letting her...?" he trails off.
"There was no sending," he admits. "I came here on my own. No one knows. I didn't want to cause panic, I didn't want to waste time. It was dangerous and reckless and a stupid idea, I know. But I'm the one who didn't tell Koda until it was too late, so now I'm the one fixing my mistake." He opens his palms, showing nothing. "I promise you, I'm here to bring you back. And then, you go back, you tell everyone that a survivor group saved you, I get nothing, and we're all okay. End of the day. Everyone lives."
"We move. Fast. I shouldn't even be here. It didn't want me back. I forced my way in here. I recommend we get started, before bad things start happening." He adjusts his clothes and checks the scanner. "We're clear. Let's go."
He summons Lightbane, barely holding it upright. "Alright. We get through whatever this knocking is, and then we're home free. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please just let this be the last thing."
The door opens inwards, shining a bright light into the hallway as it does.
Leaning slightly against the other side of the frame stands a relatively short woman. Lavender hair falls neatly around her shoulders. Pale antlers curve upward, smooth and symmetrical. Round glasses rest on her nose, one of the lenses being tinted considerably darker than the other.
She is dressed formally, a structured coat in muted tones falls elegantly along her form. Subtle patterns run along the fabric, faintly luminous and somewhat resembling constellations in the sky.
Once their eyes become used to the bright light they see that behind her isn't a hallway like there was before the door opened, but a room.
The walls are smooth and pale, with various lines seemingly hand drawn on to them to form a crude map. A single desk stands further within, the objects on it neatly arranged.
His eyes are rapidly scanning the new being before him. The room behind them. The antlers aren't exactly putting him at ease. He doesn't move his weapon away. "Frankly, no one knows I'm here, and I want to keep it that way. Now if you would kindly explain who you are and how you can help us get out, that would be lovely." A shield is brought up, covering the majority of Gesserith's torso. "If you don't, then we don't have another choice other than considering you a threat."
"You can consider me whatever you'd like," she says calmly, "it doesn't change where you are."
She briefly looks past them, down the hallway where they came from.
Something seems to shift there, making her look worried for about a split second before going back to her neutral expression.
"You're not particularly close to leaving without me." She taps her knuckles on the doorframe.
"If you want to go, it's this way" she gestures inward, towards the room behind her.
She doesn't look at the lance. The light gathering around its edges reflects faintly in her glasses.
"You shouldn't." There is no hesitation in her answer.
A door seems to open in the hallway.
"You don't need to trust me right now," she elaborates, "just understand I am basically your only option. I can explain things once you step trough."
She taps her knuckles against the doorframe again, this time a bit more nervously.
"We're already getting more time to talk than usual. The last few people duskmourn inter-"
Her sentence is interrupted by a figure coming trough the door in the hallway. It resembles a human merged with machinery, with large purple metal wings. Not unlike FRG-NUL-47.
He makes an executive decision. "As are we." He grabs Kilik's arm and drags him through the door and out of this damned House. He can deal with Kilik beating him up later, the objective must be secured now or never.
She waves her hand as they pass trough, making the door disappear right as the FRG unit is about to reach it.
The room they enter is about the same one as they saw from the hallway, except the walls now have various shelves with objects from across several planes on them. After the door disappeared, this room has no exit.
"You made the right call." they say as they snap their fingers, conjuring three chairs and sitting down on one of them.
"A couple of entities have gotten the jump on me, but my halo has already healed all damage they did."
The angel glances at the chairs, which are too small to fit it.
"Doorwarden, huh? Hello then. My name is Gesserith Edmund. I'm a planeswalker. I broke in here to get Kilik out. I'm a Broker, I do lawyer stuff." He dusts off his coat and takes a seat. "What exactly do you do?"
He returns to his cave, it’s the closest thing to a home he has after all. Even though he has never truly felt like he belonged there. Staying at the orphanage could put the children in danger, which is something it wants to avoid at all costs, and it’s not like there’s many other places he can go either.
He pauses just in the entrance, completely exhausted in a way nothing he tried has been able to fix. Reaching out to people takes energy he hasn’t been able to find lately.
Maybe that’s why the loneliness has been settling in so deeply, why even thinking about his friends hurts so much. It doesn’t help that he is constantly forced to see them get in danger without any way to help either.
He snaps back to reality as he slams into a door that wasn’t there before, carved from a smooth dark material similar to wood yet visibly still something different. Its surface has been inlaid with a delicately crafted moth motif.
What stands out to him most though, is that the door exists in all five spacial dimensions, which also explains how he slammed into it. It was placed here for him.
Kilik exhales slowly, something he learned to do by watching the people around them. Of course he recognizes it. The stupid thing fused into his hand made sure of that, making him completely unable to avoid the endless noise of the network, no matter how badly he wants to. Duskmourn has been brought up quite a lot there, the plane that makes you face your worst nightmares.
His fingers curl slightly as he just stands and stares at the door. The noise of the recording plays trough its head again, she always seems to come out feeling better somehow. Maybe the same could be true for him?
His halo shivers as he reaches for the doorhandle, it's weirdly warm to the touch. When he opens it he sees someone kicking a humanoid figure curled up on the ground. The person notices kilik and yells something he doesn't understand before running away.
They need to be punished.
He sends his last message and steps trough the door. The constant throbbing of information coming from its left hand immediately quits.
Oh how he missed this silence. He can finally think again.
He thinks he needs to punish the murderer.
It doesn't take long for him to catch up, not even a second. He rises into the air above them as the figure cowars beneath him.
He summons his lance and readies a smite, a bright white light channeling into the weapon, yet something grabs his ankle before he can strike the murderer down.
And pulls him down.
Hard.
The figure that had been lying on the ground moments earlier now clutches his leg with surprising strenght.
The impact rattles the floorboards.
For a moment Kilik just lies there, halo flickering softly above him as it tries to figure out what is going on.
Slowly the shadowy figure pushes themselves upright. Something about their movements seems odd but he can't quite figure out what exactly.
Bruises mark their face, contrasting heavily against their pale face and their bright smile.
"You made the wrong choice" they say, their voice seemingly coming from somewhere behind Kilik.
Kilik quickly gets up, dragging the figure behind him and turns around to where the sound came from.
Nothing.
He looks back down at the figure.
Nothing.
He tries to find the man he chased earlier.
Gone.
Kilarotoralik's grip tightens around his lance as the sudden quiet truly settles in.
He crudely tapes a stopwatch to the interior of the elevator shaft. The wall in the bond goes up. He thinks to himself, "Not a word. Not a thought. Not a single indication. As far as anyone knows, I'm out on business. I am bringing him home." The Door stands before him. Moths carefully engraved. The feeling of fear permeating his bones. He grabs the handle and twists. It doesn't budge. He yanks and moves it around. Still no movement.
He summons Lightbane. He carefully maneuvers the hook of it into a small gap in the Door. He channels Th'ich'che's powers, void tendrils grasping the Door, wrapping around both the Door and the elevator shaft. He pushes just a little, then just a little more, and then breaks the door open, just like a crowbar. He takes one final look at his locket before stepping through the Door.
A forest. He thinks. Inside, outside, hard to tell. The snapping of branches echoes through the trees. The windows and doors floating at all angles makes it hard to focus on the shifting movement on the horizon. He walks forward, meeting—
"— running for what feels like months. Damn razorkin. Persistent little shits," Lake bemoans. They twirl some sort of large energized knife in their hands. "Not too many, but our resources are thin. If you're willing, we—"
—sinks into the flesh of the once-sane. A thunder pistol is drawn, jamming at the worst possible moment before a candelabra comes down on the thing's neck. Gesserith turns around, wiping the blood off his blade. "That's it. We won. You all won." He chuckles—
—crackles under the night sky. "I'm looking for an angel," he states. "I have my ways of tracking him but it helps if you have at least some idea where to start. Large, blue, beyond our dimension, big lance, anything?"
"Wouldn't you know it," Lake replies, "We've had reports of something foreign like that wandering around. We can make an expedition for it tomorrow. But for now, we—"
—around them. Ground continuously shifting beneath their feet. The trees themselves wrapping themselves around the party. Great drapes seemed to move behind the trees. In a pattern. A mask slowly emerged, far above their heads. Hands grasping the trunks as it stepped—
—snapping bones as they fell to the floor. Running was no use. Weapons forged from the House left marks, but nothing strong enough. The horror continued its feast. Gesserith launched Lightbane at its face, causing the thing to reel back. He followed it up with more stabs as he was able to mount it, chaining it to the floor with lashes of pure darkness. Lake gazes up in pure shock and horror. "GESSERITH! WHAT ARE YOU—"
—thrummed even stronger than ever before. Whatever had been wrong before, it was sated now. "It's done," he says. "The angel. Where is the angel?"
Lake throws him some sort of tracker. "This should show nearby things. If we're on the right track, that should help you. Go. We'll never forget this." They smile as they turn back towards the battlefield and begin—
—clasped around a throat. "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE." Lake struggled to get the words out of their mouth. Claws tearing at Gesserith's arms, digging into his flesh. Teeth aching to taste just another bite of flesh. "THE DEVOURING FATHER HAS NO USE FOR ONE LIKE YOU-" The blade opens, stabbing into their neck. They choke on their own blood, just for a moment, until the wound properly takes hold. Gesserith gets up, and brings Lightbane down onto—
—so long. How does this place even work? Last time at least made some sense. He flips down his layered glasses, picking up the faintest trace of Halo. He was so tired. He needed to be done, fast. He follows it, leading to what looked like a fragment of a weapon. Bright. Strong. Kilik's. He casts a short spell, and suddenly his vision is bright with the traces of his mark. He presses—
—through the window. "Kilik?" "Beezy?" That's it. That's him. He can see the faintest light. He calls Lightbane and begins relentlessly smashing through the window. After what felt like hours, a small crack. No bigger than a coin. He closes his fist. What must be done. He plunges his hand through the window, glass shattering to the—
—lands with more of a thud than he would have liked. "KILIK!" he shouts. "KILIK! DON'T! STAY BACK!" He runs full speed at the Xerexian, praying that this wouldn't be the end for the both of them. "IT'S NOT REAL!"
As Kilik stands on the edge of the door, it stops at the Broker's yelling.
"Oh this one is a bit more realistic, not sure how I'm supposed to be scared of Gesserith though." He mumbles to himself, which is still loud enough for the broker to hear, as they ready its lance.
As the lance turns to face him, Lightbane disappears and he puts his hands up. "NONONONONONONO WAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT! It's me! Gesserith! For real!" He scrambles to come up with a good excuse. "Uh, uhm, you hate me, you want to kill me, you're engaged to the person I'm bonded with, I fucked everything up to high hell, uhhhhhHHHH Biilzie! Biilzie sent me here! She uh, oh angels what's something specific, uhh... she's best friends with my daughter! She hangs out at my apartment. A lot actually." He stops panicking. "You know, she's still hiding why. Why do I keep letting her...?" he trails off.
"There was no sending," he admits. "I came here on my own. No one knows. I didn't want to cause panic, I didn't want to waste time. It was dangerous and reckless and a stupid idea, I know. But I'm the one who didn't tell Koda until it was too late, so now I'm the one fixing my mistake." He opens his palms, showing nothing. "I promise you, I'm here to bring you back. And then, you go back, you tell everyone that a survivor group saved you, I get nothing, and we're all okay. End of the day. Everyone lives."
"We move. Fast. I shouldn't even be here. It didn't want me back. I forced my way in here. I recommend we get started, before bad things start happening." He adjusts his clothes and checks the scanner. "We're clear. Let's go."
He summons Lightbane, barely holding it upright. "Alright. We get through whatever this knocking is, and then we're home free. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please just let this be the last thing."
The door opens inwards, shining a bright light into the hallway as it does.
Leaning slightly against the other side of the frame stands a relatively short woman. Lavender hair falls neatly around her shoulders. Pale antlers curve upward, smooth and symmetrical. Round glasses rest on her nose, one of the lenses being tinted considerably darker than the other.
She is dressed formally, a structured coat in muted tones falls elegantly along her form. Subtle patterns run along the fabric, faintly luminous and somewhat resembling constellations in the sky.
Once their eyes become used to the bright light they see that behind her isn't a hallway like there was before the door opened, but a room.
The walls are smooth and pale, with various lines seemingly hand drawn on to them to form a crude map. A single desk stands further within, the objects on it neatly arranged.
His eyes are rapidly scanning the new being before him. The room behind them. The antlers aren't exactly putting him at ease. He doesn't move his weapon away. "Frankly, no one knows I'm here, and I want to keep it that way. Now if you would kindly explain who you are and how you can help us get out, that would be lovely." A shield is brought up, covering the majority of Gesserith's torso. "If you don't, then we don't have another choice other than considering you a threat."
"You can consider me whatever you'd like," she says calmly, "it doesn't change where you are."
She briefly looks past them, down the hallway where they came from.
Something seems to shift there, making her look worried for about a split second before going back to her neutral expression.
"You're not particularly close to leaving without me." She taps her knuckles on the doorframe.
"If you want to go, it's this way" she gestures inward, towards the room behind her.
She doesn't look at the lance. The light gathering around its edges reflects faintly in her glasses.
"You shouldn't." There is no hesitation in her answer.
A door seems to open in the hallway.
"You don't need to trust me right now," she elaborates, "just understand I am basically your only option. I can explain things once you step trough."
She taps her knuckles against the doorframe again, this time a bit more nervously.
"We're already getting more time to talk than usual. The last few people duskmourn inter-"
Her sentence is interrupted by a figure coming trough the door in the hallway. It resembles a human merged with machinery, with large purple metal wings. Not unlike FRG-NUL-47.
He makes an executive decision. "As are we." He grabs Kilik's arm and drags him through the door and out of this damned House. He can deal with Kilik beating him up later, the objective must be secured now or never.
She waves her hand as they pass trough, making the door disappear right as the FRG unit is about to reach it.
The room they enter is about the same one as they saw from the hallway, except the walls now have various shelves with objects from across several planes on them. After the door disappeared, this room has no exit.
"You made the right call." they say as they snap their fingers, conjuring three chairs and sitting down on one of them.
"A couple of entities have gotten the jump on me, but my halo has already healed all damage they did."
The angel glances at the chairs, which are too small to fit it.
He returns to his cave, it’s the closest thing to a home he has after all. Even though he has never truly felt like he belonged there. Staying at the orphanage could put the children in danger, which is something it wants to avoid at all costs, and it’s not like there’s many other places he can go either.
He pauses just in the entrance, completely exhausted in a way nothing he tried has been able to fix. Reaching out to people takes energy he hasn’t been able to find lately.
Maybe that’s why the loneliness has been settling in so deeply, why even thinking about his friends hurts so much. It doesn’t help that he is constantly forced to see them get in danger without any way to help either.
He snaps back to reality as he slams into a door that wasn’t there before, carved from a smooth dark material similar to wood yet visibly still something different. Its surface has been inlaid with a delicately crafted moth motif.
What stands out to him most though, is that the door exists in all five spacial dimensions, which also explains how he slammed into it. It was placed here for him.
Kilik exhales slowly, something he learned to do by watching the people around them. Of course he recognizes it. The stupid thing fused into his hand made sure of that, making him completely unable to avoid the endless noise of the network, no matter how badly he wants to. Duskmourn has been brought up quite a lot there, the plane that makes you face your worst nightmares.
His fingers curl slightly as he just stands and stares at the door. The noise of the recording plays trough its head again, she always seems to come out feeling better somehow. Maybe the same could be true for him?
His halo shivers as he reaches for the doorhandle, it's weirdly warm to the touch. When he opens it he sees someone kicking a humanoid figure curled up on the ground. The person notices kilik and yells something he doesn't understand before running away.
They need to be punished.
He sends his last message and steps trough the door. The constant throbbing of information coming from its left hand immediately quits.
Oh how he missed this silence. He can finally think again.
He thinks he needs to punish the murderer.
It doesn't take long for him to catch up, not even a second. He rises into the air above them as the figure cowars beneath him.
He summons his lance and readies a smite, a bright white light channeling into the weapon, yet something grabs his ankle before he can strike the murderer down.
And pulls him down.
Hard.
The figure that had been lying on the ground moments earlier now clutches his leg with surprising strenght.
The impact rattles the floorboards.
For a moment Kilik just lies there, halo flickering softly above him as it tries to figure out what is going on.
Slowly the shadowy figure pushes themselves upright. Something about their movements seems odd but he can't quite figure out what exactly.
Bruises mark their face, contrasting heavily against their pale face and their bright smile.
"You made the wrong choice" they say, their voice seemingly coming from somewhere behind Kilik.
Kilik quickly gets up, dragging the figure behind him and turns around to where the sound came from.
Nothing.
He looks back down at the figure.
Nothing.
He tries to find the man he chased earlier.
Gone.
Kilarotoralik's grip tightens around his lance as the sudden quiet truly settles in.
He crudely tapes a stopwatch to the interior of the elevator shaft. The wall in the bond goes up. He thinks to himself, "Not a word. Not a thought. Not a single indication. As far as anyone knows, I'm out on business. I am bringing him home." The Door stands before him. Moths carefully engraved. The feeling of fear permeating his bones. He grabs the handle and twists. It doesn't budge. He yanks and moves it around. Still no movement.
He summons Lightbane. He carefully maneuvers the hook of it into a small gap in the Door. He channels Th'ich'che's powers, void tendrils grasping the Door, wrapping around both the Door and the elevator shaft. He pushes just a little, then just a little more, and then breaks the door open, just like a crowbar. He takes one final look at his locket before stepping through the Door.
A forest. He thinks. Inside, outside, hard to tell. The snapping of branches echoes through the trees. The windows and doors floating at all angles makes it hard to focus on the shifting movement on the horizon. He walks forward, meeting—
"— running for what feels like months. Damn razorkin. Persistent little shits," Lake bemoans. They twirl some sort of large energized knife in their hands. "Not too many, but our resources are thin. If you're willing, we—"
—sinks into the flesh of the once-sane. A thunder pistol is drawn, jamming at the worst possible moment before a candelabra comes down on the thing's neck. Gesserith turns around, wiping the blood off his blade. "That's it. We won. You all won." He chuckles—
—crackles under the night sky. "I'm looking for an angel," he states. "I have my ways of tracking him but it helps if you have at least some idea where to start. Large, blue, beyond our dimension, big lance, anything?"
"Wouldn't you know it," Lake replies, "We've had reports of something foreign like that wandering around. We can make an expedition for it tomorrow. But for now, we—"
—around them. Ground continuously shifting beneath their feet. The trees themselves wrapping themselves around the party. Great drapes seemed to move behind the trees. In a pattern. A mask slowly emerged, far above their heads. Hands grasping the trunks as it stepped—
—snapping bones as they fell to the floor. Running was no use. Weapons forged from the House left marks, but nothing strong enough. The horror continued its feast. Gesserith launched Lightbane at its face, causing the thing to reel back. He followed it up with more stabs as he was able to mount it, chaining it to the floor with lashes of pure darkness. Lake gazes up in pure shock and horror. "GESSERITH! WHAT ARE YOU—"
—thrummed even stronger than ever before. Whatever had been wrong before, it was sated now. "It's done," he says. "The angel. Where is the angel?"
Lake throws him some sort of tracker. "This should show nearby things. If we're on the right track, that should help you. Go. We'll never forget this." They smile as they turn back towards the battlefield and begin—
—clasped around a throat. "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE." Lake struggled to get the words out of their mouth. Claws tearing at Gesserith's arms, digging into his flesh. Teeth aching to taste just another bite of flesh. "THE DEVOURING FATHER HAS NO USE FOR ONE LIKE YOU-" The blade opens, stabbing into their neck. They choke on their own blood, just for a moment, until the wound properly takes hold. Gesserith gets up, and brings Lightbane down onto—
—so long. How does this place even work? Last time at least made some sense. He flips down his layered glasses, picking up the faintest trace of Halo. He was so tired. He needed to be done, fast. He follows it, leading to what looked like a fragment of a weapon. Bright. Strong. Kilik's. He casts a short spell, and suddenly his vision is bright with the traces of his mark. He presses—
—through the window. "Kilik?" "Beezy?" That's it. That's him. He can see the faintest light. He calls Lightbane and begins relentlessly smashing through the window. After what felt like hours, a small crack. No bigger than a coin. He closes his fist. What must be done. He plunges his hand through the window, glass shattering to the—
—lands with more of a thud than he would have liked. "KILIK!" he shouts. "KILIK! DON'T! STAY BACK!" He runs full speed at the Xerexian, praying that this wouldn't be the end for the both of them. "IT'S NOT REAL!"
As Kilik stands on the edge of the door, it stops at the Broker's yelling.
"Oh this one is a bit more realistic, not sure how I'm supposed to be scared of Gesserith though." He mumbles to himself, which is still loud enough for the broker to hear, as they ready its lance.
As the lance turns to face him, Lightbane disappears and he puts his hands up. "NONONONONONONO WAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT! It's me! Gesserith! For real!" He scrambles to come up with a good excuse. "Uh, uhm, you hate me, you want to kill me, you're engaged to the person I'm bonded with, I fucked everything up to high hell, uhhhhhHHHH Biilzie! Biilzie sent me here! She uh, oh angels what's something specific, uhh... she's best friends with my daughter! She hangs out at my apartment. A lot actually." He stops panicking. "You know, she's still hiding why. Why do I keep letting her...?" he trails off.
"There was no sending," he admits. "I came here on my own. No one knows. I didn't want to cause panic, I didn't want to waste time. It was dangerous and reckless and a stupid idea, I know. But I'm the one who didn't tell Koda until it was too late, so now I'm the one fixing my mistake." He opens his palms, showing nothing. "I promise you, I'm here to bring you back. And then, you go back, you tell everyone that a survivor group saved you, I get nothing, and we're all okay. End of the day. Everyone lives."
"We move. Fast. I shouldn't even be here. It didn't want me back. I forced my way in here. I recommend we get started, before bad things start happening." He adjusts his clothes and checks the scanner. "We're clear. Let's go."
He summons Lightbane, barely holding it upright. "Alright. We get through whatever this knocking is, and then we're home free. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please just let this be the last thing."
The door opens inwards, shining a bright light into the hallway as it does.
Leaning slightly against the other side of the frame stands a relatively short woman. Lavender hair falls neatly around her shoulders. Pale antlers curve upward, smooth and symmetrical. Round glasses rest on her nose, one of the lenses being tinted considerably darker than the other.
She is dressed formally, a structured coat in muted tones falls elegantly along her form. Subtle patterns run along the fabric, faintly luminous and somewhat resembling constellations in the sky.
Once their eyes become used to the bright light they see that behind her isn't a hallway like there was before the door opened, but a room.
The walls are smooth and pale, with various lines seemingly hand drawn on to them to form a crude map. A single desk stands further within, the objects on it neatly arranged.
His eyes are rapidly scanning the new being before him. The room behind them. The antlers aren't exactly putting him at ease. He doesn't move his weapon away. "Frankly, no one knows I'm here, and I want to keep it that way. Now if you would kindly explain who you are and how you can help us get out, that would be lovely." A shield is brought up, covering the majority of Gesserith's torso. "If you don't, then we don't have another choice other than considering you a threat."
"You can consider me whatever you'd like," she says calmly, "it doesn't change where you are."
She briefly looks past them, down the hallway where they came from.
Something seems to shift there, making her look worried for about a split second before going back to her neutral expression.
"You're not particularly close to leaving without me." She taps her knuckles on the doorframe.
"If you want to go, it's this way" she gestures inward, towards the room behind her.
She doesn't look at the lance. The light gathering around its edges reflects faintly in her glasses.
"You shouldn't." There is no hesitation in her answer.
A door seems to open in the hallway.
"You don't need to trust me right now," she elaborates, "just understand I am basically your only option. I can explain things once you step trough."
She taps her knuckles against the doorframe again, this time a bit more nervously.
"We're already getting more time to talk than usual. The last few people duskmourn inter-"
Her sentence is interrupted by a figure coming trough the door in the hallway. It resembles a human merged with machinery, with large purple metal wings. Not unlike FRG-NUL-47.
He makes an executive decision. "As are we." He grabs Kilik's arm and drags him through the door and out of this damned House. He can deal with Kilik beating him up later, the objective must be secured now or never.
She waves her hand as they pass trough, making the door disappear right as the FRG unit is about to reach it.
The room they enter is about the same one as they saw from the hallway, except the walls now have various shelves with objects from across several planes on them. After the door disappeared, this room has no exit.
"You made the right call." they say as they snap their fingers, conjuring three chairs and sitting down on one of them.
He returns to his cave, it’s the closest thing to a home he has after all. Even though he has never truly felt like he belonged there. Staying at the orphanage could put the children in danger, which is something it wants to avoid at all costs, and it’s not like there’s many other places he can go either.
He pauses just in the entrance, completely exhausted in a way nothing he tried has been able to fix. Reaching out to people takes energy he hasn’t been able to find lately.
Maybe that’s why the loneliness has been settling in so deeply, why even thinking about his friends hurts so much. It doesn’t help that he is constantly forced to see them get in danger without any way to help either.
He snaps back to reality as he slams into a door that wasn’t there before, carved from a smooth dark material similar to wood yet visibly still something different. Its surface has been inlaid with a delicately crafted moth motif.
What stands out to him most though, is that the door exists in all five spacial dimensions, which also explains how he slammed into it. It was placed here for him.
Kilik exhales slowly, something he learned to do by watching the people around them. Of course he recognizes it. The stupid thing fused into his hand made sure of that, making him completely unable to avoid the endless noise of the network, no matter how badly he wants to. Duskmourn has been brought up quite a lot there, the plane that makes you face your worst nightmares.
His fingers curl slightly as he just stands and stares at the door. The noise of the recording plays trough its head again, she always seems to come out feeling better somehow. Maybe the same could be true for him?
His halo shivers as he reaches for the doorhandle, it's weirdly warm to the touch. When he opens it he sees someone kicking a humanoid figure curled up on the ground. The person notices kilik and yells something he doesn't understand before running away.
They need to be punished.
He sends his last message and steps trough the door. The constant throbbing of information coming from its left hand immediately quits.
Oh how he missed this silence. He can finally think again.
He thinks he needs to punish the murderer.
It doesn't take long for him to catch up, not even a second. He rises into the air above them as the figure cowars beneath him.
He summons his lance and readies a smite, a bright white light channeling into the weapon, yet something grabs his ankle before he can strike the murderer down.
And pulls him down.
Hard.
The figure that had been lying on the ground moments earlier now clutches his leg with surprising strenght.
The impact rattles the floorboards.
For a moment Kilik just lies there, halo flickering softly above him as it tries to figure out what is going on.
Slowly the shadowy figure pushes themselves upright. Something about their movements seems odd but he can't quite figure out what exactly.
Bruises mark their face, contrasting heavily against their pale face and their bright smile.
"You made the wrong choice" they say, their voice seemingly coming from somewhere behind Kilik.
Kilik quickly gets up, dragging the figure behind him and turns around to where the sound came from.
Nothing.
He looks back down at the figure.
Nothing.
He tries to find the man he chased earlier.
Gone.
Kilarotoralik's grip tightens around his lance as the sudden quiet truly settles in.
He crudely tapes a stopwatch to the interior of the elevator shaft. The wall in the bond goes up. He thinks to himself, "Not a word. Not a thought. Not a single indication. As far as anyone knows, I'm out on business. I am bringing him home." The Door stands before him. Moths carefully engraved. The feeling of fear permeating his bones. He grabs the handle and twists. It doesn't budge. He yanks and moves it around. Still no movement.
He summons Lightbane. He carefully maneuvers the hook of it into a small gap in the Door. He channels Th'ich'che's powers, void tendrils grasping the Door, wrapping around both the Door and the elevator shaft. He pushes just a little, then just a little more, and then breaks the door open, just like a crowbar. He takes one final look at his locket before stepping through the Door.
A forest. He thinks. Inside, outside, hard to tell. The snapping of branches echoes through the trees. The windows and doors floating at all angles makes it hard to focus on the shifting movement on the horizon. He walks forward, meeting—
"— running for what feels like months. Damn razorkin. Persistent little shits," Lake bemoans. They twirl some sort of large energized knife in their hands. "Not too many, but our resources are thin. If you're willing, we—"
—sinks into the flesh of the once-sane. A thunder pistol is drawn, jamming at the worst possible moment before a candelabra comes down on the thing's neck. Gesserith turns around, wiping the blood off his blade. "That's it. We won. You all won." He chuckles—
—crackles under the night sky. "I'm looking for an angel," he states. "I have my ways of tracking him but it helps if you have at least some idea where to start. Large, blue, beyond our dimension, big lance, anything?"
"Wouldn't you know it," Lake replies, "We've had reports of something foreign like that wandering around. We can make an expedition for it tomorrow. But for now, we—"
—around them. Ground continuously shifting beneath their feet. The trees themselves wrapping themselves around the party. Great drapes seemed to move behind the trees. In a pattern. A mask slowly emerged, far above their heads. Hands grasping the trunks as it stepped—
—snapping bones as they fell to the floor. Running was no use. Weapons forged from the House left marks, but nothing strong enough. The horror continued its feast. Gesserith launched Lightbane at its face, causing the thing to reel back. He followed it up with more stabs as he was able to mount it, chaining it to the floor with lashes of pure darkness. Lake gazes up in pure shock and horror. "GESSERITH! WHAT ARE YOU—"
—thrummed even stronger than ever before. Whatever had been wrong before, it was sated now. "It's done," he says. "The angel. Where is the angel?"
Lake throws him some sort of tracker. "This should show nearby things. If we're on the right track, that should help you. Go. We'll never forget this." They smile as they turn back towards the battlefield and begin—
—clasped around a throat. "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE." Lake struggled to get the words out of their mouth. Claws tearing at Gesserith's arms, digging into his flesh. Teeth aching to taste just another bite of flesh. "THE DEVOURING FATHER HAS NO USE FOR ONE LIKE YOU-" The blade opens, stabbing into their neck. They choke on their own blood, just for a moment, until the wound properly takes hold. Gesserith gets up, and brings Lightbane down onto—
—so long. How does this place even work? Last time at least made some sense. He flips down his layered glasses, picking up the faintest trace of Halo. He was so tired. He needed to be done, fast. He follows it, leading to what looked like a fragment of a weapon. Bright. Strong. Kilik's. He casts a short spell, and suddenly his vision is bright with the traces of his mark. He presses—
—through the window. "Kilik?" "Beezy?" That's it. That's him. He can see the faintest light. He calls Lightbane and begins relentlessly smashing through the window. After what felt like hours, a small crack. No bigger than a coin. He closes his fist. What must be done. He plunges his hand through the window, glass shattering to the—
—lands with more of a thud than he would have liked. "KILIK!" he shouts. "KILIK! DON'T! STAY BACK!" He runs full speed at the Xerexian, praying that this wouldn't be the end for the both of them. "IT'S NOT REAL!"
As Kilik stands on the edge of the door, it stops at the Broker's yelling.
"Oh this one is a bit more realistic, not sure how I'm supposed to be scared of Gesserith though." He mumbles to himself, which is still loud enough for the broker to hear, as they ready its lance.
As the lance turns to face him, Lightbane disappears and he puts his hands up. "NONONONONONONO WAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT! It's me! Gesserith! For real!" He scrambles to come up with a good excuse. "Uh, uhm, you hate me, you want to kill me, you're engaged to the person I'm bonded with, I fucked everything up to high hell, uhhhhhHHHH Biilzie! Biilzie sent me here! She uh, oh angels what's something specific, uhh... she's best friends with my daughter! She hangs out at my apartment. A lot actually." He stops panicking. "You know, she's still hiding why. Why do I keep letting her...?" he trails off.
"There was no sending," he admits. "I came here on my own. No one knows. I didn't want to cause panic, I didn't want to waste time. It was dangerous and reckless and a stupid idea, I know. But I'm the one who didn't tell Koda until it was too late, so now I'm the one fixing my mistake." He opens his palms, showing nothing. "I promise you, I'm here to bring you back. And then, you go back, you tell everyone that a survivor group saved you, I get nothing, and we're all okay. End of the day. Everyone lives."
"We move. Fast. I shouldn't even be here. It didn't want me back. I forced my way in here. I recommend we get started, before bad things start happening." He adjusts his clothes and checks the scanner. "We're clear. Let's go."
He summons Lightbane, barely holding it upright. "Alright. We get through whatever this knocking is, and then we're home free. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please just let this be the last thing."
The door opens inwards, shining a bright light into the hallway as it does.
Leaning slightly against the other side of the frame stands a relatively short woman. Lavender hair falls neatly around her shoulders. Pale antlers curve upward, smooth and symmetrical. Round glasses rest on her nose, one of the lenses being tinted considerably darker than the other.
She is dressed formally, a structured coat in muted tones falls elegantly along her form. Subtle patterns run along the fabric, faintly luminous and somewhat resembling constellations in the sky.
Once their eyes become used to the bright light they see that behind her isn't a hallway like there was before the door opened, but a room.
The walls are smooth and pale, with various lines seemingly hand drawn on to them to form a crude map. A single desk stands further within, the objects on it neatly arranged.
His eyes are rapidly scanning the new being before him. The room behind them. The antlers aren't exactly putting him at ease. He doesn't move his weapon away. "Frankly, no one knows I'm here, and I want to keep it that way. Now if you would kindly explain who you are and how you can help us get out, that would be lovely." A shield is brought up, covering the majority of Gesserith's torso. "If you don't, then we don't have another choice other than considering you a threat."
"You can consider me whatever you'd like," she says calmly, "it doesn't change where you are."
She briefly looks past them, down the hallway where they came from.
Something seems to shift there, making her look worried for about a split second before going back to her neutral expression.
"You're not particularly close to leaving without me." She taps her knuckles on the doorframe.
"If you want to go, it's this way" she gestures inward, towards the room behind her.
She doesn't look at the lance. The light gathering around its edges reflects faintly in her glasses.
"You shouldn't." There is no hesitation in her answer.
A door seems to open in the hallway.
"You don't need to trust me right now," she elaborates, "just understand I am basically your only option. I can explain things once you step trough."
She taps her knuckles against the doorframe again, this time a bit more nervously.
"We're already getting more time to talk than usual. The last few people duskmourn inter-"
Her sentence is interrupted by a figure coming trough the door in the hallway. It resembles a human merged with machinery, with large purple metal wings. Not unlike FRG-NUL-47.
He returns to his cave, it’s the closest thing to a home he has after all. Even though he has never truly felt like he belonged there. Staying at the orphanage could put the children in danger, which is something it wants to avoid at all costs, and it’s not like there’s many other places he can go either.
He pauses just in the entrance, completely exhausted in a way nothing he tried has been able to fix. Reaching out to people takes energy he hasn’t been able to find lately.
Maybe that’s why the loneliness has been settling in so deeply, why even thinking about his friends hurts so much. It doesn’t help that he is constantly forced to see them get in danger without any way to help either.
He snaps back to reality as he slams into a door that wasn’t there before, carved from a smooth dark material similar to wood yet visibly still something different. Its surface has been inlaid with a delicately crafted moth motif.
What stands out to him most though, is that the door exists in all five spacial dimensions, which also explains how he slammed into it. It was placed here for him.
Kilik exhales slowly, something he learned to do by watching the people around them. Of course he recognizes it. The stupid thing fused into his hand made sure of that, making him completely unable to avoid the endless noise of the network, no matter how badly he wants to. Duskmourn has been brought up quite a lot there, the plane that makes you face your worst nightmares.
His fingers curl slightly as he just stands and stares at the door. The noise of the recording plays trough its head again, she always seems to come out feeling better somehow. Maybe the same could be true for him?
His halo shivers as he reaches for the doorhandle, it's weirdly warm to the touch. When he opens it he sees someone kicking a humanoid figure curled up on the ground. The person notices kilik and yells something he doesn't understand before running away.
They need to be punished.
He sends his last message and steps trough the door. The constant throbbing of information coming from its left hand immediately quits.
Oh how he missed this silence. He can finally think again.
He thinks he needs to punish the murderer.
It doesn't take long for him to catch up, not even a second. He rises into the air above them as the figure cowars beneath him.
He summons his lance and readies a smite, a bright white light channeling into the weapon, yet something grabs his ankle before he can strike the murderer down.
And pulls him down.
Hard.
The figure that had been lying on the ground moments earlier now clutches his leg with surprising strenght.
The impact rattles the floorboards.
For a moment Kilik just lies there, halo flickering softly above him as it tries to figure out what is going on.
Slowly the shadowy figure pushes themselves upright. Something about their movements seems odd but he can't quite figure out what exactly.
Bruises mark their face, contrasting heavily against their pale face and their bright smile.
"You made the wrong choice" they say, their voice seemingly coming from somewhere behind Kilik.
Kilik quickly gets up, dragging the figure behind him and turns around to where the sound came from.
Nothing.
He looks back down at the figure.
Nothing.
He tries to find the man he chased earlier.
Gone.
Kilarotoralik's grip tightens around his lance as the sudden quiet truly settles in.
He crudely tapes a stopwatch to the interior of the elevator shaft. The wall in the bond goes up. He thinks to himself, "Not a word. Not a thought. Not a single indication. As far as anyone knows, I'm out on business. I am bringing him home." The Door stands before him. Moths carefully engraved. The feeling of fear permeating his bones. He grabs the handle and twists. It doesn't budge. He yanks and moves it around. Still no movement.
He summons Lightbane. He carefully maneuvers the hook of it into a small gap in the Door. He channels Th'ich'che's powers, void tendrils grasping the Door, wrapping around both the Door and the elevator shaft. He pushes just a little, then just a little more, and then breaks the door open, just like a crowbar. He takes one final look at his locket before stepping through the Door.
A forest. He thinks. Inside, outside, hard to tell. The snapping of branches echoes through the trees. The windows and doors floating at all angles makes it hard to focus on the shifting movement on the horizon. He walks forward, meeting—
"— running for what feels like months. Damn razorkin. Persistent little shits," Lake bemoans. They twirl some sort of large energized knife in their hands. "Not too many, but our resources are thin. If you're willing, we—"
—sinks into the flesh of the once-sane. A thunder pistol is drawn, jamming at the worst possible moment before a candelabra comes down on the thing's neck. Gesserith turns around, wiping the blood off his blade. "That's it. We won. You all won." He chuckles—
—crackles under the night sky. "I'm looking for an angel," he states. "I have my ways of tracking him but it helps if you have at least some idea where to start. Large, blue, beyond our dimension, big lance, anything?"
"Wouldn't you know it," Lake replies, "We've had reports of something foreign like that wandering around. We can make an expedition for it tomorrow. But for now, we—"
—around them. Ground continuously shifting beneath their feet. The trees themselves wrapping themselves around the party. Great drapes seemed to move behind the trees. In a pattern. A mask slowly emerged, far above their heads. Hands grasping the trunks as it stepped—
—snapping bones as they fell to the floor. Running was no use. Weapons forged from the House left marks, but nothing strong enough. The horror continued its feast. Gesserith launched Lightbane at its face, causing the thing to reel back. He followed it up with more stabs as he was able to mount it, chaining it to the floor with lashes of pure darkness. Lake gazes up in pure shock and horror. "GESSERITH! WHAT ARE YOU—"
—thrummed even stronger than ever before. Whatever had been wrong before, it was sated now. "It's done," he says. "The angel. Where is the angel?"
Lake throws him some sort of tracker. "This should show nearby things. If we're on the right track, that should help you. Go. We'll never forget this." They smile as they turn back towards the battlefield and begin—
—clasped around a throat. "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE." Lake struggled to get the words out of their mouth. Claws tearing at Gesserith's arms, digging into his flesh. Teeth aching to taste just another bite of flesh. "THE DEVOURING FATHER HAS NO USE FOR ONE LIKE YOU-" The blade opens, stabbing into their neck. They choke on their own blood, just for a moment, until the wound properly takes hold. Gesserith gets up, and brings Lightbane down onto—
—so long. How does this place even work? Last time at least made some sense. He flips down his layered glasses, picking up the faintest trace of Halo. He was so tired. He needed to be done, fast. He follows it, leading to what looked like a fragment of a weapon. Bright. Strong. Kilik's. He casts a short spell, and suddenly his vision is bright with the traces of his mark. He presses—
—through the window. "Kilik?" "Beezy?" That's it. That's him. He can see the faintest light. He calls Lightbane and begins relentlessly smashing through the window. After what felt like hours, a small crack. No bigger than a coin. He closes his fist. What must be done. He plunges his hand through the window, glass shattering to the—
—lands with more of a thud than he would have liked. "KILIK!" he shouts. "KILIK! DON'T! STAY BACK!" He runs full speed at the Xerexian, praying that this wouldn't be the end for the both of them. "IT'S NOT REAL!"
As Kilik stands on the edge of the door, it stops at the Broker's yelling.
"Oh this one is a bit more realistic, not sure how I'm supposed to be scared of Gesserith though." He mumbles to himself, which is still loud enough for the broker to hear, as they ready its lance.
As the lance turns to face him, Lightbane disappears and he puts his hands up. "NONONONONONONO WAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT! It's me! Gesserith! For real!" He scrambles to come up with a good excuse. "Uh, uhm, you hate me, you want to kill me, you're engaged to the person I'm bonded with, I fucked everything up to high hell, uhhhhhHHHH Biilzie! Biilzie sent me here! She uh, oh angels what's something specific, uhh... she's best friends with my daughter! She hangs out at my apartment. A lot actually." He stops panicking. "You know, she's still hiding why. Why do I keep letting her...?" he trails off.
"There was no sending," he admits. "I came here on my own. No one knows. I didn't want to cause panic, I didn't want to waste time. It was dangerous and reckless and a stupid idea, I know. But I'm the one who didn't tell Koda until it was too late, so now I'm the one fixing my mistake." He opens his palms, showing nothing. "I promise you, I'm here to bring you back. And then, you go back, you tell everyone that a survivor group saved you, I get nothing, and we're all okay. End of the day. Everyone lives."
"We move. Fast. I shouldn't even be here. It didn't want me back. I forced my way in here. I recommend we get started, before bad things start happening." He adjusts his clothes and checks the scanner. "We're clear. Let's go."
He summons Lightbane, barely holding it upright. "Alright. We get through whatever this knocking is, and then we're home free. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please just let this be the last thing."
The door opens inwards, shining a bright light into the hallway as it does.
Leaning slightly against the other side of the frame stands a relatively short woman. Lavender hair falls neatly around her shoulders. Pale antlers curve upward, smooth and symmetrical. Round glasses rest on her nose, one of the lenses being tinted considerably darker than the other.
She is dressed formally, a structured coat in muted tones falls elegantly along her form. Subtle patterns run along the fabric, faintly luminous and somewhat resembling constellations in the sky.
Once their eyes become used to the bright light they see that behind her isn't a hallway like there was before the door opened, but a room.
The walls are smooth and pale, with various lines seemingly hand drawn on to them to form a crude map. A single desk stands further within, the objects on it neatly arranged.
His eyes are rapidly scanning the new being before him. The room behind them. The antlers aren't exactly putting him at ease. He doesn't move his weapon away. "Frankly, no one knows I'm here, and I want to keep it that way. Now if you would kindly explain who you are and how you can help us get out, that would be lovely." A shield is brought up, covering the majority of Gesserith's torso. "If you don't, then we don't have another choice other than considering you a threat."
"You can consider me whatever you'd like," she says calmly, "it doesn't change where you are."
She briefly looks past them, down the hallway where they came from.
Something seems to shift there, making her look worried for about a split second before going back to her neutral expression.
"You're not particularly close to leaving without me." She taps her knuckles on the doorframe.
"If you want to go, it's this way" she gestures inward, towards the room behind her.
He returns to his cave, it’s the closest thing to a home he has after all. Even though he has never truly felt like he belonged there. Staying at the orphanage could put the children in danger, which is something it wants to avoid at all costs, and it’s not like there’s many other places he can go either.
He pauses just in the entrance, completely exhausted in a way nothing he tried has been able to fix. Reaching out to people takes energy he hasn’t been able to find lately.
Maybe that’s why the loneliness has been settling in so deeply, why even thinking about his friends hurts so much. It doesn’t help that he is constantly forced to see them get in danger without any way to help either.
He snaps back to reality as he slams into a door that wasn’t there before, carved from a smooth dark material similar to wood yet visibly still something different. Its surface has been inlaid with a delicately crafted moth motif.
What stands out to him most though, is that the door exists in all five spacial dimensions, which also explains how he slammed into it. It was placed here for him.
Kilik exhales slowly, something he learned to do by watching the people around them. Of course he recognizes it. The stupid thing fused into his hand made sure of that, making him completely unable to avoid the endless noise of the network, no matter how badly he wants to. Duskmourn has been brought up quite a lot there, the plane that makes you face your worst nightmares.
His fingers curl slightly as he just stands and stares at the door. The noise of the recording plays trough its head again, she always seems to come out feeling better somehow. Maybe the same could be true for him?
His halo shivers as he reaches for the doorhandle, it's weirdly warm to the touch. When he opens it he sees someone kicking a humanoid figure curled up on the ground. The person notices kilik and yells something he doesn't understand before running away.
They need to be punished.
He sends his last message and steps trough the door. The constant throbbing of information coming from its left hand immediately quits.
Oh how he missed this silence. He can finally think again.
He thinks he needs to punish the murderer.
It doesn't take long for him to catch up, not even a second. He rises into the air above them as the figure cowars beneath him.
He summons his lance and readies a smite, a bright white light channeling into the weapon, yet something grabs his ankle before he can strike the murderer down.
And pulls him down.
Hard.
The figure that had been lying on the ground moments earlier now clutches his leg with surprising strenght.
The impact rattles the floorboards.
For a moment Kilik just lies there, halo flickering softly above him as it tries to figure out what is going on.
Slowly the shadowy figure pushes themselves upright. Something about their movements seems odd but he can't quite figure out what exactly.
Bruises mark their face, contrasting heavily against their pale face and their bright smile.
"You made the wrong choice" they say, their voice seemingly coming from somewhere behind Kilik.
Kilik quickly gets up, dragging the figure behind him and turns around to where the sound came from.
Nothing.
He looks back down at the figure.
Nothing.
He tries to find the man he chased earlier.
Gone.
Kilarotoralik's grip tightens around his lance as the sudden quiet truly settles in.
He crudely tapes a stopwatch to the interior of the elevator shaft. The wall in the bond goes up. He thinks to himself, "Not a word. Not a thought. Not a single indication. As far as anyone knows, I'm out on business. I am bringing him home." The Door stands before him. Moths carefully engraved. The feeling of fear permeating his bones. He grabs the handle and twists. It doesn't budge. He yanks and moves it around. Still no movement.
He summons Lightbane. He carefully maneuvers the hook of it into a small gap in the Door. He channels Th'ich'che's powers, void tendrils grasping the Door, wrapping around both the Door and the elevator shaft. He pushes just a little, then just a little more, and then breaks the door open, just like a crowbar. He takes one final look at his locket before stepping through the Door.
A forest. He thinks. Inside, outside, hard to tell. The snapping of branches echoes through the trees. The windows and doors floating at all angles makes it hard to focus on the shifting movement on the horizon. He walks forward, meeting—
"— running for what feels like months. Damn razorkin. Persistent little shits," Lake bemoans. They twirl some sort of large energized knife in their hands. "Not too many, but our resources are thin. If you're willing, we—"
—sinks into the flesh of the once-sane. A thunder pistol is drawn, jamming at the worst possible moment before a candelabra comes down on the thing's neck. Gesserith turns around, wiping the blood off his blade. "That's it. We won. You all won." He chuckles—
—crackles under the night sky. "I'm looking for an angel," he states. "I have my ways of tracking him but it helps if you have at least some idea where to start. Large, blue, beyond our dimension, big lance, anything?"
"Wouldn't you know it," Lake replies, "We've had reports of something foreign like that wandering around. We can make an expedition for it tomorrow. But for now, we—"
—around them. Ground continuously shifting beneath their feet. The trees themselves wrapping themselves around the party. Great drapes seemed to move behind the trees. In a pattern. A mask slowly emerged, far above their heads. Hands grasping the trunks as it stepped—
—snapping bones as they fell to the floor. Running was no use. Weapons forged from the House left marks, but nothing strong enough. The horror continued its feast. Gesserith launched Lightbane at its face, causing the thing to reel back. He followed it up with more stabs as he was able to mount it, chaining it to the floor with lashes of pure darkness. Lake gazes up in pure shock and horror. "GESSERITH! WHAT ARE YOU—"
—thrummed even stronger than ever before. Whatever had been wrong before, it was sated now. "It's done," he says. "The angel. Where is the angel?"
Lake throws him some sort of tracker. "This should show nearby things. If we're on the right track, that should help you. Go. We'll never forget this." They smile as they turn back towards the battlefield and begin—
—clasped around a throat. "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE." Lake struggled to get the words out of their mouth. Claws tearing at Gesserith's arms, digging into his flesh. Teeth aching to taste just another bite of flesh. "THE DEVOURING FATHER HAS NO USE FOR ONE LIKE YOU-" The blade opens, stabbing into their neck. They choke on their own blood, just for a moment, until the wound properly takes hold. Gesserith gets up, and brings Lightbane down onto—
—so long. How does this place even work? Last time at least made some sense. He flips down his layered glasses, picking up the faintest trace of Halo. He was so tired. He needed to be done, fast. He follows it, leading to what looked like a fragment of a weapon. Bright. Strong. Kilik's. He casts a short spell, and suddenly his vision is bright with the traces of his mark. He presses—
—through the window. "Kilik?" "Beezy?" That's it. That's him. He can see the faintest light. He calls Lightbane and begins relentlessly smashing through the window. After what felt like hours, a small crack. No bigger than a coin. He closes his fist. What must be done. He plunges his hand through the window, glass shattering to the—
—lands with more of a thud than he would have liked. "KILIK!" he shouts. "KILIK! DON'T! STAY BACK!" He runs full speed at the Xerexian, praying that this wouldn't be the end for the both of them. "IT'S NOT REAL!"
As Kilik stands on the edge of the door, it stops at the Broker's yelling.
"Oh this one is a bit more realistic, not sure how I'm supposed to be scared of Gesserith though." He mumbles to himself, which is still loud enough for the broker to hear, as they ready its lance.
As the lance turns to face him, Lightbane disappears and he puts his hands up. "NONONONONONONO WAITWAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT! It's me! Gesserith! For real!" He scrambles to come up with a good excuse. "Uh, uhm, you hate me, you want to kill me, you're engaged to the person I'm bonded with, I fucked everything up to high hell, uhhhhhHHHH Biilzie! Biilzie sent me here! She uh, oh angels what's something specific, uhh... she's best friends with my daughter! She hangs out at my apartment. A lot actually." He stops panicking. "You know, she's still hiding why. Why do I keep letting her...?" he trails off.
"There was no sending," he admits. "I came here on my own. No one knows. I didn't want to cause panic, I didn't want to waste time. It was dangerous and reckless and a stupid idea, I know. But I'm the one who didn't tell Koda until it was too late, so now I'm the one fixing my mistake." He opens his palms, showing nothing. "I promise you, I'm here to bring you back. And then, you go back, you tell everyone that a survivor group saved you, I get nothing, and we're all okay. End of the day. Everyone lives."
"We move. Fast. I shouldn't even be here. It didn't want me back. I forced my way in here. I recommend we get started, before bad things start happening." He adjusts his clothes and checks the scanner. "We're clear. Let's go."
He summons Lightbane, barely holding it upright. "Alright. We get through whatever this knocking is, and then we're home free. Just one more thing. Just one more thing. Please just let this be the last thing."
The door opens inwards, shining a bright light into the hallway as it does.
Leaning slightly against the other side of the frame stands a relatively short woman. Lavender hair falls neatly around her shoulders. Pale antlers curve upward, smooth and symmetrical. Round glasses rest on her nose, one of the lenses being tinted considerably darker than the other.
She is dressed formally, a structured coat in muted tones falls elegantly along her form. Subtle patterns run along the fabric, faintly luminous and somewhat resembling constellations in the sky.
Once their eyes become used to the bright light they see that behind her isn't a hallway like there was before the door opened, but a room.
The walls are smooth and pale, with various lines seemingly hand drawn on to them to form a crude map. A single desk stands further within, the objects on it neatly arranged.
vaporwave
dailybridgerton
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romaincrisis
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