Logs:Eyes of the Mask: Chasing The Arrow

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Content Warning

Weird symbols, whispers and echoes.

Cast

Lux and Spider as ST

Setting

Lux's Bastion

Log

Lux knows dreams. The Winter spends a lot of time divining the future in them, looking for clues that they can pass on to the Winter Queen, to their fellow courtiers, ways to protect the people and places and institutions they love, belong in, belong to, care about...

It's easier to be somewhere that Lux can generally control their environment, too, let's be honest. Dreams, for a Lost, are an understandable home turf. Their feet stay on the ground (or fly through the air, maybe, too, if that's what they want,) but the point is...

Tonight, the familiar landscape of Lux's dream unfolds before them, whatever that landscape may be. A strange feeling settles across their shoulders as they slip into slumber, though, almost like a heavy blanket pressing gently down. A metallic taste rests on the back of their tongue -- no, not quite a taste. Just ... some sort of feeling. Something important. Something strange.

Lux's dreams are ever-changing, but mostly... they look like a city. Not quite The City--this one is cleaner, brighter, full of over-saturated color and signs of life. Everything lit up in neon, chrome and glass reflecting it back onto it's self like a giant never ending Hall of Mirrors from a fair. Buildings spiral and lean whimsically, without care to physics, creating the best paths to run and parkour through, each path never quite the same as the last.

Here, Lux is all color and light. They land lightly on top of a building, staring out over the endless urban landscape, frowning thoughtfully to themself. Something off, hm? At first they just look over the sprawling buildings, neon signs, and lit up billboards, looking for any sign of something that feels... foreign. Something that they don't immediately recognize as their own mind's creation.

It takes a moment, but Lux feels rather than sees the way that the echoes in this city have redoubled. An echo, and then a second, weaker echo. Their light landing on the building comes with a soft thump of sneakers on chrome, an echoing thump from the sleek glass building across the street, and then... somewhere else, more distant, barely audible:

thump

Their head tilts curiously, listening to the echoes fading away into the distance. "Hello there," they murmur to themself, voice sounding digital and warbling mechanically. They step closer to the edge of the building... then simply step off of it, letting themselves fall-slide down the smooth surface of the building--which curves the lower they go, forming the world's largest and most mind-breaking slide. They go flying off the end, zoooming through the air, landing on top of another building--then taking off running from rooftop to rooftop, occasionally running sideways along walls, and leaping with no fear of falling. Moving like a laser light across the city, following the echoing thump.

They follow the sound, flying through the air with the ease of someone in, well, their own dreams.

As they take a leap that bounds toward the source of the sound, the rushing sound of a thousand whispers dopplers past their ear: the brightest source of light in all their dreams comes rushing just behind it, a golden arrow streaking across the sky, brilliant and bright, chased by streaks of white and blue.

"What--" they gasp in surprise, twisting mid-air towards the whispers--then their eyes go wide as they watch the arrow streak across the sky. Their own light flickers white-blue-gold quickly, as their gaze remains fixed on the arrow, unable to look away from it.

They stop flying, hovering mid-air, making a sweeping motion around them. All at once the city grows quiet, all music and car horns and laughing going still, and lights dimming--better to let those whispers be heard, and the arrow followed. Off they go again, after the whispers and arrows, zooming through the now eerily silent city.

The arrow streaks across the sky, carried by its own strange screaming, the sound not of an arrow loosed but echoing like a bullet in flight across the sleek landscape of glass and chrome.

Lux knows what lies in this direction: the exit from their Bastion to the Dreaming Roads comes up quickly here. The arrow grows brighter and brighter.

On one of the buildings Lux passes, a massive Husky lays alone with its chin on its paws, shimmering like a mirage. Lux catches only a glimpse of it -- facing toward that brightest light as they are -- before it flickers once, twice, and is gone.

A husky? Their brows crease as they struggle to recall anyone they know who owns a husky--but that's a detail to remember for later. Their attention remains focused on the arrow, chasing it across the sky with leap after leap.

Their eyes narrow towards the exit growing closer and closer... Leaving the dream and stepping onto the Dreaming Roads would be risky... But something was leading them there. Something important. If the arrow disappears through, they'll follow.

The arrow disappears through, right on schedule. Just as Lux knew that it would, somehow. That weight on their shoulders feels somehow heavier now. It's not a real weight, though.

The feeling of a metaphor is something Lux knows but will later have difficulty actually describing. How does one explain a mental weight with a physical sensation attached to it? A sort of strange knowledge that one feels a metaphor? That weird metallic taste on the back of the tongue again, rattling in Lux's teeth.

Silver. Yes. Silver.

The entrance to the Dreaming Road opens, and just as Lux passes through, they realize they are passing through the pupil of an eye the size of the world. Bigger than a city. Bigger than The City. The eye's giant pupil swallows them, and they pass through.

Then they stand on a thorny road, and all is quiet. The arrow is gone. The eye does not see them.

It's so quiet.

Lux lands shakily on their feet after leaping through the exit, through... that. Their eyes are wide, two round yellow beams as they look up and down the Dreaming Roads quickly.

"What the fuck was that," they murmur under their breath, hands rubbing over their arms to soothe the goosebumps.

They don't immediately go back into their dreams, instead looking over the Dreaming Roads--searching for any nearby Bastions, footprints, more flickers of light? Was the arrow trying to lead them somewhere further than here, or is this the end of this... strange message?

The echo has ceased, the message -- whatever it was -- seems to be over, or almost so, perhaps. Their own footprints on the dust of the Dreaming Roads draw their eye, and that perpetual weight gets a little heavier still, and then evaporates like water on hot pavement.

Whatever it was, it's over now.

With another shudder, then step back and off of the thorns, back into the safety of their bastian.

Unless something else weird suddenly appears, they will wake themselves up. Time to paint. A canvas is quickly filled with smudged blobs of paint, frantic streaky brush marks, forming a golden arrow wreathed with blue and white streaks. A husky laying underneath, it and the arrow wreathed in silver that bleeds into black, the outter edges of the canvas forming the giant eye.