spicykvnt

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

Deia

@Quest Abandoner & @MacabreFox

---

Deia wore a lingering smirk as she took hold of the bosmer's bone flask. The texture a familiar thing, smooth yet weathered, ridges of age worn against it's surface. A comfort in her claw like grasp. The scent of the offering reached her nose, it exhaled out it's acrid steam from the rim, fermented beyond all reason. Her lips curled with the insult of it, and yet part of her was darkly amused by the audacity of the childlike bosmer who had handed it her way. The flask was hers now, whether she would drink it or not. "Perhaps this can melt the lock?" She said after a spell of silence illuminated by the eyes that may have been feeling morbidly curious about what would happen should she drink it.

She might have spoken more, but her interest had slipped elsewhere.

Verena.

She had been so quiet before, diminutive even. An afterthought in her games with Isai. Still, she was indeed those things but she had risen to at least some action. Not enough to be dangerous, not yet, but something crawled under Deia's skin, cold and hot all at once. Some kind of irritation that begged her to scratch and peel back; she moved forward in a quick fashion yet she appeared to still. A spectral figure in the flickering torchlight.

She watched as a pink hue danced across the slant of Verena's cheek before withering away just as quick. Deia came closer than comfort allowed and her fingers drifted beside the woman's curls. Not a grip, not a tug... Simply a touch, and yet she had laced it with a hint of possession.

The scent of roses struck her like a whisper from something long since dead. The watercolour wash of memories from years ago. She had cast herself out from those memories now, she did not belong there, the world of court and gilded rot where everything was beautiful on the surface. Pretty and still, where a woman like her could... She used to grow roses. She once was a woman who grew roses.

She let go of Verena. The useless thought of her own old self staring back at her inside her mind. She watched Verena's hair fall gently back over her shoulder and then she stepped back, a hunger rising in her throat. Not for flesh, or rotmeth, or for the cruel amusement. This was hunger for the sky. The soil. The untamed air outside.

Deia turned. Slamming against the bars. "Let me out!"

"Let me out," she hissed again at the guards. Her voice serrated, lashing through the air to them, as foul as the rotmeth in her hand. When they ignored her. When they simply stared back, she turned on the others in the cage, that heat in her chest a dark rally. The silence of denial fanning the fire in her chest.

All of them, sitting and waiting and chatting. She growled low, and her mouth twisted into a jagged shape. "Well?" The lilt in her voice was thin and wicked "Do you all intend to share campfire stories and rot?" she demanded, barely able to veil her impatient disgust.

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

Deia

@Spoopy Scary & @LC

---

If she was wine on the turn to vinegar, Isai was a fine wine not yet fully aged. Unfinished. A boy dressed in a man’s confidence. Let him think himself clever and I shall dance beyond his reach. Deia tilted her head, listening, absorbing him. Her stare softened with the curiosity that sparked at the edges and brought on a storm cloud of hush while she replayed his woven words in her mind. "Such a pretty little thing, this Esquire of Cheydinhal." In her mind, the Khajiit's accusation of his flirtation frayed around, a game. A game.

A breathy chuckle ghosted from her lips and she lifted a hand to catch his presented wrist in a grip that was far too gentle. She turned his palm up and let her eyes flicker over it as though reading a divination, then pressed her own palm to it. Her touch was fleeting, a whisper of something electric; Static. Restrained but present. A singular arc that greeted him, slipping between her skin to his. A caress with teeth. "Deia," she answered with her fingers uncoiling and drawing away. "Just Deia."

Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, she lifted her same hand to the bars.A game.

The scent of metal grew stronger like a sourness in the cell. A flicker of violet curled around her fingers and ran down the iron of the bar like spilled ink, restrained again. They groaned beneath her touch and vibrated. The filth on them was seared away in an instant. A set of blue, jagged shadows emitted within the cell momentarily. Deia watched Isai from the corner of her eye. "Now, this..." she let her fingers glide along the bars, a wicked static shuddering in her wake, "is a tongue that can turn locks." As if to further her point she moved her face to the bars exhaling a warm breath against them. Gathered energy still pulsed and her tongue flicked out for just a taste at first. A hiss of contact. A jolt. A sharp, snapping thrill that danced from her mouth down the column of her spine. Then she pressed into it fully.

Her body jerked and her breath snapped in a sharp, electric gasp at the voltage that bit back, sharp and raw. And gods, she laughed at it. Her eyes fluttered with the sting, a breathy broken thing that had been cracked open with delight. The taste of storm lingered on her lips and she sighed; dreamy and satiated. Whatever anxiety her spell had caused the guards to have, had now been turned to instant disgust.

"I could eat him," she mused, glancing at the Khajiit after a pained silence. The Khajiit who had brought himself over to sitting. "He is well spiced, don't you think?" she toyed as the air shifted in the cell again. A game. Sniffing at Isai, she grinned. "Marinated in his importance. Sweetened just so with his honeyed words... Something foul in his belly from the ceiling." She would think of the way Kiffar had broken his own cell. Effortless as anything, yet sat now with little more than idle gazing. Just watching. "A creature that unchains itself and stays caged,” she mused playfully, tilting her head to let her tongue run slow over her teeth. "Tell me great cat, do you watch to judge? To enjoy the sight of me eating? Or for the sight of our sweet, sweet Esquire being devoured?"

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

Deia

---

The air in the cell was thick with the absence of wind. The familiar and safe cold breath of the storm-wife had been strangled away; leaving only an uncomfortably warm stillness. Sweat, piss, and despair all clung to the damp stone walls like a sickness, and certainly not like the decay that Deia longed for. The sweet and cloying kind. The kind that brought about the hunger for the ruin of flesh, the kind that lured you in.... No, this was just foul and sterile. Unworthy of burial, even. She stretched a finger forward, her muscle memory guiding out a shape on the floor, a rune - traced through the damp - but everything under her touch was dead. Just rock and stone. Cold and cold and cold. Something in Deia's stomach twisted and she pressed the flat of her palm down, grasping her nails at it, willing it to give; for it to be torn apart like carrion. Her teeth bared at it's unyeilding resistance to her.

Her thin hand lifted to her chest and she dragged it over the fabric of her cloak and across her tender collarbones. Pain bloomed beneath her touch, pulses of it that brought back something of memory to her. A brawl. A fight. Flesh between her teeth. A taste of blood. But then nothing... A snarl curled at the edged of her lips. Who dared to cage her for this? She lifted her head slowly as strands of wild curls spilled over her eyes, held together by little more than a twisted strip of leather that was barely hanging on. Her gaze was sharp and feral in its calculation. Who amongst her was dangerous? Who then was useful, and who was wearing a perfume of courage to mask a stench of weakness?

Elsewhere down here, someone nursed a newly reattached finger. His pale and drawn face took her attention and she smirked. Perhaps that was me she thought to herself, letting the glee of it slither through her mind and settle there. And just as suddenly as that glee had come, it was gone and she sighed. Letting her weight sink back against the wall. Then, she laughed. A soft, breathy thing at first.

“Ahhhhh…” she purred at last, voice stretching through space and silence like a blade unsheathed.

A finger lifted, curling slightly, dragging through the air as she surveyed her fellow prisoners one by one. Argonians, Khajit, and 'Mer. Oh my. "Tell me, little birds…" she murmured, tone dripping in curiosity. "Which one of you is clever enough to get us out of here?"

It was the lilt of a well-trained voice that snapped her to its attention. Oiled with diplomacy and an illusion of control. She banished a scoff from sounding by biting her tongue inside of her mouth. Oh but this is rich.... She watched him as a hawk might. Unblinking and amused. His lacquered and honeyed words would not be his salvation - no matter how much he wanted the woman beside him to believe him. She swallowed his facade of certainty whole. Deia pointed again, this time at the shit-drinker himself.

"You." Her amusement was sharp.

"What cleverness do you have for us?" she asked, her finger turning then with a flick to the woman now. "Little doveling. Do you believe that your knight here is clever enough to unmake the walls that hold us? Do you think that his tongue can turn the lock?" Flickering torchlight caught the edges of her smirk; and the faintest glint of her teeth.

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

The Crone

Deia / Dhalia
39
The Crone
Nord

---

Appearance:
It can be seen that she was beautiful once, but Deia has grown thin, gaunt, and wild. There are echoes of things that consumed her etched across her being. Her hands are restless. Fingers always moving to trace unseen symbols in the air and across her limbs when she speaks. Her hair, once kept neat in the schools of High Rock and her courts, has since grown wild, long, and into curls. Her thin body is crisscrossed with scars. Her hands, her arms, her throat… Some were earned in battle, others carved there by her own blade and will in moments of ritualistic fervour.

There is a phantom elegance to the way she moves, her affluent upbringing existing still in her soul and she draws on it now in her new life. She has a habit of tilting her head when listening, as if she is catching voices no one else can hear. Thing unheard and unseen, a wisp of something from the other side. When she speaks, her voice is smooth until it isn't. Until her mania slips through in a burst of chilling laughter, her lips curled just a little too wide. The serpent ready to strike.

Personality:
Deia prays in the shadows with her teeth bared and jaw clenched, hands gripped around a blade. To her, faith is devotion carved into flesh and screamed into the harsh and rotten void. When she speaks of her gods, there is a gleam in her eyes that is wide and fevered.

When silence lingers too long, she fills it with laughter that blooms into something high and unhinged and frightening. She laughs at things that shouldn’t be funny. At sorrow, at regret, and at the trembling in a fearful voice. Fear delights her. She especially delights in other’s unease and in the way a man will flinch when she recites prayers not meant for his ears.

Deia still wears talismans of bone and feather hidden beneath her cloaks, still mutters old prayers to gods most fear to name. But beneath it all, buried under the weight she carries there is still something fragile, something that aches in the quiet moments when she remembers what was taken, what was done to her, what she lost. She does not speak of love, but it is her deepest wound that has never closed. She does not weep. Her grief lives and feeds on her rage. It propels her forward, bringing lucidity from her madness enough to disguise herself in the city streets now.

There is still fear that she is too far gone from humanity, that she will never attain a state of being recogniseable to the children who are searching for her. Not only will she live having had her children stolen - but that they will reject her as a thing of the wild, a creature, a monster. There are fleeting moments that something human from the past flickers behind her dull eyes and slips through and out of the madness. Something broken and bleeding.

But then she laughs, and it is gone again.

Background:
Skyrim’s chill was in her bones long before she was old enough to name it. Born to a Nord father and a Breton mother. Dhalia carried their two differing worlds in her veins. Unyeilding spirit of the north, and the thrum of magic in her breath. Having demonstrated affinity, she was sent westward, to High Rock and to the Mages Guild halls where they refined her wild talent. She devoured the secrets of the school of Destruction, binding herself to the fury of Kyne.

When her time came, she was welcomed in Cyrodiil courts as an advisory mage, where she served high born families. It suited her well, and she took to her position as a serpent among the wolves, astute to the politics. It didnt take long for them to whisper in contempt of her. They spun their stories of her seduction and sorcery; rumours of a woman who let too many hands touch her skin, took too many men and women alike to her bed. A witch who took what she wanted without asking. The gods do not grant mercy to a Maiden like that.

Such whispers of her indulgences turned to scandal and soon, undeniable proof swelled beneath her robes. Twins conceived in secrecy, their father highborn, bound to duty, and to his wife. Dahlia was hidden away, back over the border to Skyrim to hide the scandal. When her twins were born, she was poisoned by the very guards who had escorted her. Just like that, she was cast into the dark, taken far from the small town she had been imprisoned in, and left bleeding and broken. Mother for a day. She had been cast out and left for the wilds to consume her.

But the Reach does not waste what still breathes.

Reachmen found her among the briars, half buried in snow as a grieving, screaming spirit too stubborn to pass and too full of primordial rage to die. They took her in, reshaping her in their image, unmaking the woman of courts and remaking her as something wild. Their old magic was carved into her skin, bled into her bones until she spoke in tongues she did not understand. Namira whispered to her through her grief in words of rot and decay until she buried and burned her name and Dahlia was stripped away. Deia emerged - baptised in her antlered mask and crown of death, beneath a bleeding moon.

They called her sister. She let them. The wild life of ritual drowned her own. Her pain and grief was forgotten. Her past was gone. Or so she told herself.

It was the wind that brought the memories back. She heard them in her dreams, in the rustling of trees, in the flow of the rivers and streams, in the rain. In her rituals, the gods told her they were alive and raised by another. They needed her. The Reach could not hold her any more. She escaped the wilds with Kyne’s breath in her lungs. Stealing Namira’s hunger, folding it into herself.

And so she traveled across the border. A Crone trying to wear the skin and disguise of a woman closer to cosmopolitan than she had been for many years. To ignore her inclinations to the wild ways of the time she had spent in celebration of the rot, decay, and abundant life. She had to relearn manners and the ways of an invisible, mindless, godless life in the pursuit of her children.

Manners which were promptly lost when following a lead led her to a brawl... And led her to sinking her teeth into an unsuspecting arm. In defense, of course....

Skills:
Alchemy – Deia can craft deadly poisons from fungi, nightshade, and human /animal remains by smearing them on her blade. She is not above brewing hallucinogenic elixirs that bring her closer to her gods, particularly in her journey to find her children. Believing this communication to be paramount to her mission.
Blade – Primarily a mage, Deia is no stranger to carving symbols into flesh with her ritual dagger, whether it is her own or someone elses... She fights with swift, brutal precision, aiming for arteries and weak spots if cornered, and she does try not to be cornered...

Magic
Destruction – Her primary school of magic, she specialises in Lightning and Storm spells.
Lightning Bolt, Shocking Burst, Lightning Grasp.

Mysticism – The school of things unheard and unseen.
Detect Life, Soul Trap, Minor Dispel.

Conjuration – Having spent years among the Reachmen, she has learned minor conjuration.
Summon Ghost, Bound Dagger, Turn Undead.

Equipment:
Personal
A plain, hooded outfit which covers much of her skin, thin gloves, footwraps.
A silk sash around her waist.

Lockbox
Pouches of bone, herbs, and dirt.
Empty glass vials.
Saltpeter.
A ritual Reachman dagger.
A bloodied cloth.

Ambition:
Retribution and redemption. To reclaim her fragile humanity she once knew, to become the mother her children deserve while punishing those who abandoned her, and stole them from her.

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadows of Oblivion

The Crone

Deia / Dhalia
39
The Crone
Nord

---

Appearance:
It can be seen that she was beautiful once, but Deia has grown thin, gaunt, and wild. There are echoes of things that consumed her etched across her being. Her hands are restless. Fingers always moving to trace unseen symbols in the air and across her limbs when she speaks. Her hair, once kept neat in the schools of High Rock and her courts, has since grown wild, long, and into curls. Her thin body is crisscrossed with scars. Her hands, her arms, her throat… Some were earned in battle, others carved there by her own blade and will in moments of ritualistic fervour.

There is a phantom elegance to the way she moves, her affluent upbringing existing still in her soul and she draws on it now in her new life. She has a habit of tilting her head when listening, as if she is catching voices no one else can hear. Thing unheard and unseen, a wisp of something from the other side. When she speaks, her voice is smooth until it isn't. Until her mania slips through in a burst of chilling laughter, her lips curled just a little too wide. The serpent ready to strike.

Personality:
Deia prays in the shadows with her teeth bared and jaw clenched, hands gripped around a blade. To her, faith is devotion carved into flesh and screamed into the harsh and rotten void. When she speaks of her gods, there is a gleam in her eyes that is wide and fevered.

When silence lingers too long, she fills it with laughter that blooms into something high and unhinged and frightening. She laughs at things that shouldn’t be funny. At sorrow, at regret, and at the trembling in a fearful voice. Fear delights her. She especially delights in other’s unease and in the way a man will flinch when she recites prayers not meant for his ears.

Deia still wears talismans of bone and feather hidden beneath her cloaks, still mutters old prayers to gods most fear to name. But beneath it all, buried under the weight she carries there is still something fragile, something that aches in the quiet moments when she remembers what was taken, what was done to her, what she lost. She does not speak of love, but it is her deepest wound that has never closed. She does not weep. Her grief lives and feeds on her rage. It propels her forward, bringing lucidity from her madness enough to disguise herself in the city streets now.

There is still fear that she is too far gone from humanity, that she will never attain a state of being recogniseable to the children who are searching for her. Not only will she live having had her children stolen - but that they will reject her as a thing of the wild, a creature, a monster. There are fleeting moments that something human from the past flickers behind her dull eyes and slips through and out of the madness. Something broken and bleeding.

But then she laughs, and it is gone again.

Background:
Skyrim’s chill was in her bones long before she was old enough to name it. Born to a Nord father and a Breton mother. Dhalia carried their two differing worlds in her veins. Unyeilding spirit of the north, and the thrum of magic in her breath. Having demonstrated affinity, she was sent westward, to High Rock and to the Mages Guild halls where they refined her wild talent. She devoured the secrets of the school of Destruction, binding herself to the fury of Kyne.

When her time came, she was welcomed in Cyrodiil courts as an advisory mage, where she served high born families. It suited her well, and she took to her position as a serpent among the wolves, astute to the politics. It didnt take long for them to whisper in contempt of her. They spun their stories of her seduction and sorcery; rumours of a woman who let too many hands touch her skin, took too many men and women alike to her bed. A witch who took what she wanted without asking. The gods do not grant mercy to a Maiden like that.

Such whispers of her indulgences turned to scandal and soon, undeniable proof swelled beneath her robes. Twins conceived in secrecy, their father highborn, bound to duty, and to his wife. Dahlia was hidden away, back over the border to Skyrim to hide the scandal. When her twins were born, she was poisoned by the very guards who had escorted her. Just like that, she was cast into the dark, taken far from the small town she had been imprisoned in, and left bleeding and broken. Mother for a day. She had been cast out and left for the wilds to consume her.

But the Reach does not waste what still breathes.

Reachmen found her among the briars, half buried in snow as a grieving, screaming spirit too stubborn to pass and too full of primordial rage to die. They took her in, reshaping her in their image, unmaking the woman of courts and remaking her as something wild. Their old magic was carved into her skin, bled into her bones until she spoke in tongues she did not understand. Namira whispered to her through her grief in words of rot and decay until she buried and burned her name and Dahlia was stripped away. Deia emerged - baptised in her antlered mask and crown of death, beneath a bleeding moon.

They called her sister. She let them. The wild life of ritual drowned her own. Her pain and grief was forgotten. Her past was gone. Or so she told herself.

It was the wind that brought the memories back. She heard them in her dreams, in the rustling of trees, in the flow of the rivers and streams, in the rain. In her rituals, the gods told her they were alive and raised by another. They needed her. The Reach could not hold her any more. She escaped the wilds with Kyne’s breath in her lungs. Stealing Namira’s hunger, folding it into herself.

And so she traveled across the border. A Crone trying to wear the skin and disguise of a woman closer to cosmopolitan than she had been for many years. To ignore her inclinations to the wild ways of the time she had spent in celebration of the rot, decay, and abundant life. She had to relearn manners and the ways of an invisible, mindless, godless life in the pursuit of her children.

Manners which were promptly lost when following a lead led her to a brawl... And led her to sinking her teeth into an unsuspecting arm. In defense, of course....

Skills:
Alchemy – Deia can craft deadly poisons from fungi, nightshade, and human /animal remains by smearing them on her blade. She is not above brewing hallucinogenic elixirs that bring her closer to her gods, particularly in her journey to find her children. Believing this communication to be paramount to her mission.
Blade – Primarily a mage, Deia is no stranger to carving symbols into flesh with her ritual dagger, whether it is her own or someone elses... She fights with swift, brutal precision, aiming for arteries and weak spots if cornered, and she does try not to be cornered...

Magic
Destruction – Her primary school of magic, she specialises in Lightning and Storm spells.
Lightning Bolt, Shocking Burst, Lightning Grasp.

Mysticism – The school of things unheard and unseen.
Detect Life, Soul Trap, Minor Dispel.

Conjuration – Having spent years among the Reachmen, she has learned minor conjuration.
Summon Ghost, Bound Dagger, Turn Undead.

Equipment:
Personal
A plain, hooded outfit which covers much of her skin, thin gloves, footwraps.
A silk sash around her waist.

Lockbox
Pouches of bone, herbs, and dirt.
Empty glass vials.
Saltpeter.
A ritual Reachman dagger.
A bloodied cloth.

Ambition:
Retribution and redemption. To reclaim her fragile humanity she once knew, to become the mother her children deserve while punishing those who abandoned her, and stole them from her.

Spicy's Interest Check

---

I'm looking for committed roleplay partners for small, long term games.

The Important Stuff

About Me: I am based in Australia and available at UTC+8 time and work a full time job (Mon-Fri).

Level: I like to write at a high-casual/advanced level - please go check out my profile for any of my posts in my current roleplays if that helps you! I would like a partner to also write at least at a similar level to me. For the sake of maintaining momentum I am happy to accept 3-5 paragraph posts.

Post Frequency: Life happens and life/work etc is always more important than RPG - but I am looking for people who can commit to our project for a long time. If you can only post once a week or once a fortnight, that's fine by me - let's just make that clear and set expectations that work for the both of us from the start.

Romance: I love writing romance, it's fantastic! That said, it has to be about characters for me - I'm not a fan of written in love interests and I prefer to see chemistry play out before committing in game to romance. Worth noting also, I'm Spicy by name, not nature; I'm not interested in writing smut.

---

Why am I looking? Well - I guess because I'm a poor GM, but I love writing rich stories with lots of characters and world building. I love crafting a story, planning, and executing great ideas into fantastic writing. If you're like this too, and are interested in rolling as more than one character, playing as NPC's, and developing a story from beginning to end - then get in touch, either here or by PM.

---

Genres I Love:

Science Fiction
Science Fantasy
High Fantasy
Horror
Slice of Life
Mystery
Superhero

Fandoms I Adore:

The Witcher
The Elder Scrolls
Mass Effect

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

---

_{Location: Portland}

Human #5.061: How Can I Make It OK?

---

_{Interaction(s): --}

Previously: Interlude

Still-quiet dawn crept in on velvet feet across the streets of Portland. A fragile light painting long strokes of gold and rose. Cleo rolled forward letting her skates whisper over the cracked asphalt, the emptiness of the road unfolding ahead of her, ready to be discovered. Her arms lifted, elbows loose, wrists fluid. Drifting over the road, passing and swaying across the painted lines as the symphonies heard only in the wires of her headphones threaded through her.

She twisted her ankle just so; allowing her body to spin in a slow, deliberate pirouette, allowing the world around her to bleed and blur into indistinct hues. The sprawl of the city rendered into a watercolor dream.

Manny and Lucas still slept while the haze of the night continued to linger in her veins, warm but sour. Buzz from the wine she’d drank into the night with Violet and Daisy. The wine she’d drank a little too fast - hoping that the rich body of the pinot noir would ease up the awkwardness between them all. The empath had been the first to drift to bed, but the first to rise and slip out into the morning, snatching up her skates to escape.

She hummed as she pushed forward, moving her arms fluidly with the music. With no interference around her, there was a brief moment of feeling free and light - like a bird.

Wings

Haven’s ruined wings ripped into her mind again mercilessly. Feathers torn from sinew, blood running in glistening rivulets, rising like smoke into the air. Garnet pools of memory churned within her, wine turned bile, until the taste of last night's wine clawed at the back of her throat, the colour of it too strikingly familiar to the stains that had seeped into the silk of her cream dress, staining it to ruins.

She tore to a halt by a patch of grass and caught her breath. Her breath came hard and ragged, and she leaned forward, bracing against the bark of a tree. Her visions came again, sharp-edged and relentless. Grotesque snapshots; ribbons of blood, the sound of flesh ripping, bones breaking, terrified screaming.

Cleo gripped at the earth.

“Stop, stop, stop,” she spoke in a broken whisper. Raising her hand again to rub against her heart instinctively.

When would it stop?

---

There was a peace to be found sat on the grass bare foot. The world had gentled, at least on the surface. Cleo sat free of her skates with her hoody beneath her - the cold air taking away the frightened heat from her skin. She allowed her eyes to close as she remained cross legged. Exhaling away as much of the visions as she could while scouring her mind for softer things—fleeting glimpses of warmth, laughter, a flicker of sunlight across a kitchen table that she danced around—but they felt thin. Faded photographs held up to the light.

“Cleo?”

The voice startled her. Soft and familiar, but still edged with recent estrangement, as though she was getting used to the cadence all over again. She opened her eyes and tilted her head upward, squinting against filtered sunlight to see Chaney standing above her. His hair was an unruly tumble of blond, his expression caught between worry and exhaustion - cheeks flushed red.

Chaney was no stranger to her peculiarities and whimsy, nor to the meditations she often drifted into with Manny. Still, the sight of her, motionless in the morning stillness, had stopped him mid-run.

“You’re up early,” he added, stretching his arms above his head, catching back his breath. “The others up?”

“Not when I left,” Cleo said, forcing a smile. “I just needed… space. Air.”

“Yeah,” Chaney nodded, his face shadowed. “Me too.” He lowered himself onto the grass beside her, watching her carefully. “You okay?”

The question lingered between them and pressed uncomfortably against the silence. At last, she exhaled, shaking her head. “Nah,” she answered simply. The nonchalant honesty felt strangely like relief, like more than the meditation could have soothed. “Are you?”

Chaney’s frown deepened. “We should’ve fucking been there,” he said, his voice tight with regret.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Cleo replied quickly, her hand reaching out to touch his. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

But Chaney pulled his hand back, clenching it into a fist that sparked faintly with electricity. The arcs moved across his knuckles, small and furious. “Shit,” he muttered, shaking the energy away. “Y'know Nick? Nick was my lab partner. He… he didn’t make it. He was my friend.” His voice cracked, and then he erupted, balled fists shaking at his sides as he stepped into the light. “I didn’t even get to—” He stopped.

He turned back to Cleo, an imploring and darkened expression that erased the sunlight from his features for a moment. “Show me.”

Her breath caught. “Show you what?” she asked, though the answer was already there between them.

He’ll never unknow.

“Please.” His voice cracked again as he knelt back down, desperation softening the edges of his anger, his eyes pleading, his posture begging. “I need to know.”

Cleo’s instincts screamed against it, but the weight of his grief was insistent, pulling at her resolve. She closed her eyes, a tear slipping free as her fingers moved, weaving the air until a bubble of energy formed between her palms.

He’ll never unknow.

It quivered and warped. Dark and unstable, its surface flecked with veins of red—like cracks in glass. She pushed it forward, her heart already aching with the regret of what she was about to share - the shape of her regret followed, glittering and gleaming in shades of dark green, a celestial bruise moving toward the man.

He’ll never unknow.

The bubble touched Chaney’s chest and burst with a splash and he gasped—a sharp, guttural sound that tore itself from his throat. It all hit him hard and fast - like a shower of bullets, cold and unrelenting. Everything and everything and everything. Fear roiled in his stomach, rising until it gripped his chest like two clawed fists in his lungs, burying any chance of him breathing again. The interpreted sounds came next: screams, the groan of the roof collapsing in, the wet, awful thud of bodies. The crack and shatter of ice forming from nowhere. The silence inside the waves of it. The sound of words that would never be spoken by the bodies suspended inside. The snuffing out of heartbeats.

He’ll never unknow.

His eyes widened, staring into nothing as the scents followed—sulfur, iron, spilled champagne, sweat, the acrid dust of ruined foundations.

He’ll never unknow.

He punched the grass beneath him and clenched it, the soil bunching up under his short nails. Sparks of his electricity surged outward, scorching the earth in singular currents. But it didn’t stop the next wave. An entire eclipse of deep, suffocating, despair. In those seconds, he was drawn so unwillingly into the crushing gravity of a void so absolute that it felt like the blackness there would swallow him whole, forever.

The connection broke and his jaw slackened, his breath ragged as the memory receded, leaving only a corrosive residue in his chest. He couldn’t unsee it, couldn’t unfeel the endless nothingness that had stared back at him.

In a surge of raw emotion, he turned to Cleo, pulling her into a fierce embrace. His electricity hummed faintly across her skin, and his eyes, glowing yellow, shimmered with tears.

“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed as his voice broke against her shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry.”

---

The sun climbed higher, painting the clear blue sky in bright daylight now, leaving only faint grey smudges of rain clouds to cling to the farthest horizon’s edge. Chaney finally broke the silence, his voice steadier, even if still subdued. “So… the Foundation, huh? You’re really sure that’s what you all want?”

“Mmhmm,” Cleo murmured as her eyes closed once more. “There’s so much I still need to learn,” she added softly, but final. “But first, we’re doing a wee visit—seeing everyone.”

Chaney shifted–keeping a deliberate distance from the woman. Whether out of unease or some instinctual need to stay beyond the reach of her psionic energy. “Is… is that a good idea?” he asked while uncertainty threaded through his words.

Cleo’s eyes flickered open, her brows knitting together in faint confusion. “Why wouldn’t it be? We miss you. The three of us. A lot.”

Chaney studied her reaction and a realisation flickered behind his eyes that he was glad he was far enough from her to keep it to himself. It was like she was refusing to face the last weeks of Team Eclipse. Or maybe she just didn’t want to dwell on it. Either way, he let the thought pass.

“We miss you guys too,” he admitted quietly, eventually. He returned his focus to the grass beneath his hands and plucked a blade from the earth, twisting it idly between his thumb and forefinger. “Why don’t we head back?” Chaney offered after a time, rising to his feet and brushing the dirt from his hands. “I can grab us some coffee?”

Cleo smiled faintly, a dreamy edge to her expression as if the morning had finally softened something inside her.“Alright.” She smiled. “I’ll stay for a couple more minutes. See you back there?”

“Yeah,” Chaney nodded, his movements still restless as he stretched, trying to shake off what he’d felt. The memory clung to him; like sweat that seeped beneath the skin. It prickled in his veins, refusing to leave him be, tattooed forever.
He turned back before leaving, his expression thoughtful. “By the way…” he began, his voice quieter now, almost hesitant. “That voice… in the memory. Who is it?”

Cleo blinked, her brow furrowing. “What voice?” she asked, her head tilting.

“The one that calls your name,” Chaney said, the faintest hint of recognition of it in his own mind, just out of reach.

Cleo stared at him. “What are you talking about?” she said softly, though her voice betrayed her unease.

He didn’t wait for an answer, sensing her confusion - sensing something that pushed him back; and so he only glanced at her for a moment longer, his brow knitting with concern and apprehension, then turned and jogged off toward the distant tree line.

Cleo sat frozen. Clawing back through her memories for an echo of it.

She didn’t remember any voice.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

---

_{Location: the void, the air}

Human #5.052: Interlude

---

_{Interaction(s): --}

Previously: Third Contact

An eraser-tipped pencil ticked-ticked-ticked against the woodgrain of a desk, an impatient harmony to the wall clock’s sluggish and torturously slow march. The second hand seemed only to drag forward, every motion a small eternity. Cleo’s crystalline blue eyes flicked upward, drawn to the ticking face as though willing it to rush through the minutes faster.

“Miss Boyd,” came the professor's voice, clipped and stern, cutting through the air like a blade.

“Aye?” the red-head blurted, then winced. “I mean—yes, sir?”

A ripple of chuckles followed and passed through the classroom, quickly stifled by the professor’s pointed glare. He folded his arms, his shadow stretching the length of the room under a flickering overhead light. “We’re waiting for you.”

Her eyes darted downward. On the desk before her lay the apparatus, a steampunk thing of brass and steel. At its heart, suspended in a claw-like clamp; a single red apple, its skin shiny, fresh, and crisp even under the dim light, even against the shadow of the professor. It held still, even if the room did seem to sway. Cleo frowned, her nose crinkling.

“Um…”

The professor exhaled audibly, the sound heavy with disappointment. “This is transmutation, Miss Boyd. Your assignment is to turn the apple into an olive.”

She felt the weight of their gazes then—every other student in the room, their eyes sharp and expectant, like predators waiting for the slightest misstep. Her pulse quickened, each beat a drum in her ears.

“Right, right…” she murmured.

She extended her hands over the apple, her fingertips trembling slightly. “Ilom avar, voli ari melov,” she intoned, the words strange and otherworldly, their cadence not entirely her own. “Lomira veal…”

Between her palms and the apple, a gloaming shadow began to form through twists and churns, dark and luminous at once, a storm contained within the fragile boundary of a gleaming bubble. The air thickened, charged with static. The bubble pushed toward her apple, its surface writhing with the growing nothing living within.

The first crack of thunder echoed through the room, and the scent of cinnamon bloomed, heady and sharp followed by a spray of caramel that erupted from the bubble, sizzling as it struck the desk.

“Contain it, Miss Boyd!” the professor barked, but his voice felt distant, muffled by the growing roar, her direction and proximity to the growing abyss turned and shifted until she couldn’t make sense of her own equilibrium. "Can you not even do a simple spell?"

“Amio vril, aviro mel! Velira omil, avar voli, melov!” she chanted, her voice rising and lilting; slipping and splitting into a polyphonic melody that she couldn’t place or recognise as her own - something else, something found. The words poured from her as if pulled from some deep, forgotten place. The now opened and cracked lid of Pandora’s box.

The storm swelled uncontrollably and its darkness devoured the light while the room trembled, buckling with the weightlessness and pressure of it. Desks skittered across the floor, their legs screeching against the tiles. The bubble expanded; its edges rising against the walls like a ravenous tide.

Inside the storm, Cleo was weightless too. Suspended in the gravity of strange, colourful clouds that drew her drifting through the void, soaking through her clothes with their heavy rain as she was pulled through the oppressive silence which was broken only by an eventual low, guttural growl that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. At the heart of it all was the apple; shiny, fresh, and crisp. Pristine but for a single bite now taken from its bleeding flesh.

And beyond it, in the deep black, two yellow-orange eyes opened. They glimmered like smouldering coals, unblinking, their gaze heavy and knowing. A low rumble built beneath her, a sound ancient and unearthly vibrated then through the marrow of her bones.
The eyes blinked with a chiming sound that rang out like distant bells.

Then everything fractured. The darkness collapsed inward-

Cleo jolted awake, her head smacking against the cold window of the airplane cabin. The bright and cold world returned in pieces—harsh overhead lights, the hum of the engines, the cramped economy seat with its fraying fabric. Her seatbelt pressed tight against her stomach, anchoring her back to reality.

“Christ,” she muttered, wiping at her face with trembling hands. The dream was already slipping from her grasp. “That was bloody strange,” she whispered. The turbulence rattled once more, a faint echo of the storm in her mind. Above her, the seatbelt light blinked off.

Cleo sighed and glanced to her left. Lucas and Manny were fast asleep, their faces serene, untouched by the chaos that lingered in her veins. She rubbed her temples, her voice low and bitter. “I hate flying,” she cursed with a sigh, wrapping her trembling arms around herself.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

---

_{Location: The Beach - Dundas Islands, Pacific Ocean}

Human #5.14: How Does It Feel

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_{Interaction(s): --}

Previously: White Rabbit

The ring.

Cleo looked at it as it briefly changed hands, glinting in the firelight, and then to Lucas at her side. Nudging him lightly at his elbow. We need it, she thought to herself, willing the thought, the image of it to Lucas. If he could touch it… Who knew what secrets bound within the band might come undone from it.

No. She thought, drawing her gaze back to the fire, closing her eyes quickly, clamping them shut, Her hands pressed into the sand, knuckles whitening as the tension built, rising like a storm, fast and violent. The grief, the anger - all of it, a circle that swirled and moved, heaved and tore at her. Her jaw clenched and she twitched at her neck. Defenses crumbling against it, each raised voice a knife in the dark that pierced at her walls.

_{“I’m going to find Alyssa. She sent that thing away, and condemned Amma to whatever Hell with it. She’s going to tell me what she did, and then she’s going to send me there too. Or I’ll find my own way. Or I’ll die trying. Or all damn three!”}

”But don’t storm the gates of Hell alone, because I...”

”“Now? I’m one of the team, now?”

Words ebbed in and out in her focus to keep it all away. “Stop,” she whispered through gritted teeth. Gil’s simmering rage met her where she sat, his grief stroked at her own and sparked a feeling that was going to act of its own. Her skin shimmered a dull red aura as a low hum of rage vibrated beneath her skin. Her mind reached, scraping for calm, for stillness, for beauty

But everything was stained, with the touch of the nothingness that she had gazed upon on the night of the dance. “Stop,” she repeated, only slightly louder, bringing a hand to the side of her face as an ache came over her - pounding against her skull.

"Not now..." she whispered again, a plea to herself. Her focus faltered, unwillingly drawn back into the conversation, the storm of voices swirling around her.

_{"The only justice, Kruger, is that you're alone. Hyperion and his children are dead and gone. There's no more Pacific Royal, no more Blackjack. You've burned everything to the ground. No one loves you."}

That did it.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

Two days after the incident at P.R.C.U., Callum Boyd arrived at Dundas Island, intent on retrieving his sister. He had never even left Scotland before, and now he found himself in this strange place, a place that could have stolen Cleo from him.

Unlike his sister, and unlike their mother, there wasn’t a trace of hyperhuman in him. He was just a man. No powers, no gifts—just a brother.

The rain fell like a punishment, relentless, the sky split open and his umbrella was a futile shield against it. He moved with purpose, each step heavy, burdened, through the grey haze, toward the Lutra dorms where they said she’d be. Everything felt sharp and apprehension clung to him the way the rain held to the fabric of his coat.

At the glass entrance, Callum paused, catching sight of his own reflection. A man in unfamiliar land stared back at him, the man unfamiliar too. A long peacoat, polished shoes, a beard trimmed with neat precision. It struck him then how far he had come from the wild youth he once was. The reckless boy who had wanted nothing more than to escape the suffocating walls of school, now grown into a teacher that he would have once despised. Made miserable with bad behaviour. Punished. Life’s cruel humor. He sighed, shaking off the rain from his umbrella, leaving it behind as he stepped into the building.

When he reached Cleo’s door, he pushed it open, bracing himself. But what greeted him was not the sight he expected. He had imagined her already packed, ready to leave. Instead, she was moving frantically around the room, her movements jittery and filled with a kind of restless energy. “Cleo?” His voice was barely a whisper, careful, as if afraid that speaking too loudly might shatter whatever fragile thing held her, barely upright.

At the sound of her brother’s voice, Cleo crossed the room in a breath, wrapping her arms tightly around him. There was no hesitation, just a flood of relief. She held on as though she’d been drowning, her breath hitching as tears broke free. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, the words trembling; interlaced with laughter and sorrow. There was a strange and small joy in her eyes. Bubbles rose from her shoulders, delicate, glowing, shimmering pink. A manifestation of the joy that had evaded her for days now.

“What’s all this?” Callum asked, wrapping his arm around her, holding her close as if to shield her from whatever storm still raged inside her. “I thought you’d be packing by now.”

“I…” She hesitated, her voice guarded as she pulled back. “I’m just meditating. On something,” she added, the words a fragile shield, paper thin. There was something more beneath it, something unspoken, but Callum did not immediately press. For now, they were together. And for now, that was enough.

Callum moved quietly around the room, his eyes scanning for any sign of packed boxes, but there was nothing. “Cleo…” He didn’t want to push her, didn’t want to dredge up to talk about whatever could have claimed her that night, but the relief he felt in seeing her alive was only half the battle. “Y’are… leaving, right?” His voice was tentative, as if he feared the answer. “You’re coming with me?”

She glanced away, biting her lip. “I don’t… I don’t think I’m ready,” she admitted, the words fragile, as if saying them aloud might break something between them. “There’s more I need to learn, Callum. Something... important.”

He frowned, his confusion clear. “Like what?”

Cleo hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Something happened at the dance. I saw something—something I never imagined. And… I think it’s going to lead me to helping Mam.”

“What do you mean?” His voice hardened, the disbelief rising as he tried to understand.

“I saw… a hell.” Her eyes widened as the memory gripped her.

Callum sighed. His brow knitted and furrowed in frustration, he didn't understand.

“No, I didn’t see it,” she shook her head. “Not with my eyes, anyway.” Her hand moved to her chest. “I felt it,” she continued, her voice unsteady. Even to speak of it brought back its gravity to pull at her.

He did not jump to doubting her, instead, he softened his posture and let himself sit at the edge of her bed as she moved about the room again. She could rarely ever be still. He allowed her the space, giving her the moment and his safety. He was just a man, no powers as ethereal as hers. He was just her brother too. “You felt that, and it’s made you want to stay?”

“You don’t find it strange, Callum? Mam’s stories about other realms, creatures, demons—” She paused. “What if they weren’t made up? What if she was right? What if the answers to getting her back are here?”

“Cleo, no. I don’t find it strange.” Callum cut her off at last, shaking his head. His voice was suddenly hard, sharp with concern. “She wasnae in her right mind, and you know that. That’s what Eilidh said. Her psionic… Stuff, it, got to her.”

“But what if she was? What if what she saw was real?” Cleo’s voice crackled with desperation “What if I can find her, Callum? We don’t know the extent of her gifts, what if she’s out there?”

“No!” His voice rose, more forceful now, fear mingling with his own desperation. “We know where she is. She’s…” He sighed, standing up. Exasperated. “She’s not the same. And Da’ left. I’m not about to lose you too, not in some place that almost killed you already. I want you to come home. Please.”

Cleo shook her head, her eyes burning with her conviction that she just wished he could understand. “You don’t get it. I felt something, Callum. Something real, more real than we can comprehend, and I’ve been touched by it.”

“Cleo… Please don’t chase-” He started again, softer this time, but she wouldn’t let him finish.

“I’m supposed to know this, Callum. I have to learn more. This is part of me, part of what I’m meant to do.”

Callum stood still, the fight draining from him as he sighed, his eyes softening with the weight of his own helplessness “I could have lost you,” he whispered. “When I heard what happened, I thought I already had.” He stood still. Wrestling with his own helplessness. Was this how her trauma had manifested? Her curiosity reaching back into the dark unknown, seeking out something he could never understand? Alice and her White Rabbit. He stared beyond and into the middle distance of the room, wondering himself of these horrors that lingered just beyond the veil, the dark places his sister seemed determined upon; he couldn’t follow her there.

He was just a man, just her brother, and powerless against what held her.

---

_{Location: The Beach - Dundas Islands, Pacific Ocean}

Human #5.07: White Rabbit

---

_{Interaction(s): --}

Previously: I Know the End

Callum had taken whatever had brought her to smile back with him.

The Cleo that sat on the beach, in the bonfire circle, was a different Cleo. One who had been alone again. His visit had been brief. Too brief, and now she sat and stared at the flames. She had wrapped an oversized cardigan around herself; her hair sat in two messy space buns, stray strands dancing in the wind, her gaze fixed on the flames.

The bonfire crackled, but the warmth was distant as if it was meant for someone else. There was no joy here, no laughter. Whatever passed for happiness had long since left these shores. From every side of fire the heaviness was weighing her down, turning the very ground into something unsafe. Like it would open and suck her down into it. Nobody here was happy. Happiness didn’t live here.

Manny spoke first, his words and tone soft.

She had thought so much about her own. There was still so much she didn’t know. So much she had yet still to understand. The ocean of her own questions threatened to pull her under. She thought of Lucas, of Manny—familiar faces among the remains of what was left of Blackjack. They had been thrown together in the midst of the events, but they didn’t know each other. Those in Blackjack were bound to each other, just as she had been to Eclipse.

And yet, Cleo knew so much of Amma. The phantom that had lingered on the edges of each of her dreams since, waiting for her in the dark. As she let her eyes trail the wreckage of Blackjack, she felt the reflections of Amma in each of them. A stirring.

"I'm... going to join the Foundation," she said quietly, her voice barely more than a whisper against the crackling fire.