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Vasha goes to sleep, like everyone else in the world, right? Vasha dreams, just like everyone else in the world, even if sometimes he might prefer not to. Mind Masters have control over their dreams, mostly, but Acanthus also get plagued by Fate, so...
Wherever Vasha falls asleep, in whatever state his mind is in, he finds himself drifting, as if underwater, through darkness. In the distance off to his left, a subtle glow of light, as one might see a city just over the horizon. In the distance off to his right, the sibilant whispers of a hundred voices passing secrets. And here he is, between them.
"I must be dreaming in French," he thinks aloud, "so much bleak metaphor."
His dream form is younger than he is now, more like an otter and less like a seal. Sleek and quick, deadly and smooth. Peak performance, and all that.
He drifts nearer the whispers, confident in his ability to exist outside the perception even of his eidolons.
The metaphors don't answer, which perhaps makes them even more French for that.
Drifting nearer the whispers brings the sound of those whispers and velvet brushing against itself. The world remains formless, a sort of primordial void, in which only the distant whispers and that velvet susurration -- and him -- exist.
Impressive work, considering. comes a snippet of speech.
... just a union man. answers another voice -- a different voice? The same voice. They don't seem to notice him, though, who can tell with voices that have no bodies?
A distant buzzing sound, from the direction of the glow now behind him.
He has nothing but time, to his mind. Master of his domain, quite literally, and in more than one sense at that. He watches in the direction of the glow as he continues to drop eaves on his subconscious until he's bored of it.
And while he loiters, he begins forming a palm full of potentia into the likeness of his Lyudmila, a silver plated semi-automatic pistol. Never hurts to be prepared.
The buzzing comes with a sense -- even before he turns to face the glow -- of brightness.
The first thing which happens is something silver whistles past him, very very fast indeed, as the whispers (apparently unaware) continue to talk, whatever it is, exactly, that they're saying, or if they're indeed saying anything at all.
I have some talents for divination, one voice says, and another answers, or maybe the same one continues after a stuttering break, the mutability of the space-time continuum and the non-linear nature of time.
curious for the lecture, perhaps the same voice or maybe another, rising out of the mass of whispers like the whitecap on the breaking edge of a wave before disappearing again.
Following the silver thing which whistles past so quickly, a pulsing ball of light arcs, as if leaping from unseen point to unseen point, and then pauses somewhere very far above Vasha. 'Above' is relative, as all things in dreams. Whatever the light is, though, it doesn't seem to see him. And now the voices change, and the only thing he hears is a somehow metallic-sounding, tinny voice, edged with the buzz of neon:
the light would like to know your location
the light would like to know your location
the light would like to know your location
"Is that you, kid? You know, I figured I could drag you in here, but I didn't think you'd be into it." Vasha gestures about at his rather analog brain. Not much to interest he whom Vasha assumes he's speaking to.
"Fine, fine. Hineni and all that." Vasha introduces his piece onto the game board by dropping his cloak and assuming an active role. He still moves with the confidence of a mind master in his own head, however.
As soon as he says here I am and drops his cloak? The ball of light flashes three different colors -- red yellow green -- all neon-bright, and zooms down to him with the sort of preternatural sense of movement that pilots describe when talking about UFOs. Whatever it is, whatever it might represent, it zips around in dreams just as easily as he does, or --
-- maybe even more so.
Tough to say.
the light would like to know your location, it warbles cheerfully. No longer a whisper, now an autotuned little song. the light would like to know your location, golden arrow golden arrow, the light would like to know your location, follow, follow, follow
"Best you're getting is where I am pretending to be. Secret lair, and all that as befits my idiom." Vasha says this as he manifests a proper pack of German smokes and a lighter. He takes a drag and winds up dressed in his rifle company captain's uniform, a rifle strapped across his chest. He looks annoyed, behind his goggles.
"Besides. I'm done following. Tell me about a place and I might decide to let you show me the way, however." He falls into step, just the same. Because he's him.
The light buzzes. Not negative, exactly, so much as it's a does not compute sound. Whatever Vasha just said does not really make sense to it. the light would like to know your location, golden arrow golden bullet golden boy it repeats, variations on a theme.
But then the light expands quite suddenly, and illustratively, washing over him and his goggle-covered eyes. No more dark nothing. The smoke from his cigarette curls upward, brushing against the thorns which edge the path on which he stands. An ever-moonlit sky arcs overhead, and the road on which he stands arcs through sparkling meadows and over jagged, tooth-like rocks. The gravel underfoot crunches under the heel of his boot, and the murmuring whispers return, but this time too far away to truly hear. In the far, far distance, a hound bays, and somehow its cry sounds both like a silver chime and the scream of a bullet burning through the air.
Somehow, he knows, the moon here never moves, and the sun never rises.
The Acanthus can feel the weight of the hand of Serendipity, cool and firm, briefly pressed against the small of his back, affirming his location. Fate like a touch to his spine, there and gone.
"Cyka blyat," he complains when the world around him resolves into something unfamiliar. He slings his rifle properly, readies the weapon, and begins to do what his garb suggests. Recon. Find soft ground, green grasses. Helps to move quieter. Cross dry ground and streams now and then to throw off any trackers. The usual precautions he'd take if he had eighty men behind him.
Not that he does.
The minute he complains, the sometimes-trees seem to turn toward him, not aggressive, just... curious, perhaps. The Mind Master quickly becomes aware that everything here behaves like that. The entire landscape? Psychoactive. The gravel seems to cuddle the soles of his shoes the more he tries to get away from it. The grass sings happily when he steps on it, which doesn't really help with the quiet. Within a few breaths he sees the first of the thorned walls which start to define a path driving toward where the moon hangs over the earth. A soft scrap of fabric drifts in the air, caught on a vicious thorn, fluttering beige and indistinct between the Acanthus and the sky.
He pauses.
"Oh." Slavic understatement achieves a new extreme as Vasha does the unfortunate math. "Well. Nice weather for it."
He resumes humping up the rise, picking his way best he can through the landscape, muttering apologies to the items his passing annoys. Tourists.
The silver coin drops, as it were, and the landscape leans in a little bit as if waiting for his reaction. Or perhaps that's just his imagination. Here, who could tell the difference?
He crests the rise, and the path dead-ends, a cul-de-sac ahead. In the cul-de-sac of thorns, a pile of -- something? -- cloth? the same cloth as before? -- lies in a pile. The spiky bushes hum softly to themselves, a low buzzing, which may be the silver-dart bees slipping through their branches.
Willing himself beneath the world's notice once more, Vasha picks his way through the terrain, heading for the pile of cloth rather directly. Being led around by fate offers one a great deal of unearned confidence.
And here, in this cul-de-sac in the psychotropic landscape to which his dreams and Serendipity have led him, Vasha finds a soft pile of unbleached linen, cut into long, bandage-like strips, discarded like a caterpillar's cocoon. Soft grey dust lies settled on the cloth, and a single dove-grey feather laying next to the pile fades from view as he approaches; whether it stopped existing or just can't be seen anymore? Well. That's the question, to be sure.
The world goes still, like a movie paused.
That's not terribly unusual. After all, time and he are in an open relationship. It doesn't trouble him much. He simply pauses long enough to make certain he's gleaned the pertinent details, and then begins backing off towards the rise again. Time to find the way home.
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