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It's late, but red foxes are crepuscular, and Fox is nocturnal. She's been doing a lot of Important Work lately, which for a fox means popping back and forth to the Ukraine while also doing a lot of work here. She and Vasya have been working on their new farm in the Ukraine, which seems to be an important thing for Vasya. (See also, using now the Ukranian form of his name -- Vasya -- and shedding other Russo-cosplaying parts of his identity.)
So when Lux arrives -- one assumes they told Fox they were coming -- she's fussing over her pigeon loft. She just finished cleaning it out, and refreshing the water, and shakes her hands, magically shedding any Matter which remains on said hands. Wizards, man.
Lux appears out of thin air, as they usually do, though Fox may have that instinctive magic tingle, a sign of something living is nearby, a signature she's well familiar with by now. And then suddenly Lux is just there, hanging from the balcony above her's, swinging back and forth from the ledge. "Fox," they greet, voice dreamy and distant, but fond. They swing a moment, then let go, landing with eerie grace on the railing of her balcony, balancing on it without even a wobble.
"Hey gorgeous," Fox greets, turning to look up at Lux where they appear, sitting up there on the roof like they just do. It doesn't seem to bother her, or even surprise her. Fox's friends are just like that. She turns her face up toward them and makes kissy faces at them, absently smoothing her tank top over her stomach. "It's a beautiful night tonight."
They hop down from the railing, leaning over to give her a smooch on the lips. "It is." They lean back, letting out a long yawn, arms stretching over their head. "I had an interesting day of dreams. Thank you for your help, by the way."
She takes the kiss happily, leaning in and wrapping their arms around Lux's waist as they stretch their arms up over their head. "You always have interesting dreams," Fox posits, adding, "Lots of people have been, recently." A small frown, there, and her nose wrinkles up slightly. A patpat on Lux's back and she lets go, straightening up again. "Oh, always," she agrees. "You want something to drink?"
Their hands drop from the stretch to ruffle and pet into her hair affectionately. "Mmm... A drink would be nice. Something sweet and strong."
"Have other people talked to you of their dreams?"
"So just like you?" Fox answers, padding off toward the kitchen. From there, she yells back over her shoulder, "I have some of this local berry liquor stuff that Vasya brought back from Ukraine? It's like... the moonshine of schnapps, but it's good." Pap pap pap and back she comes. "Um... a little bit? Not really. Like, I kinda heard from Vorpal a little bit and I know Vasya did a lot of work with... coins and divination and stuff." A vague flip of one hand.
"Oooh, that does sound good." They find somewhere to perch, legs swinging idly. "Coins... Did he?" They frown thoughtfully. "I'll have to pick at Vasya's mind about what he's uncovered. Vorpal too." They accept the drink, taking a sip--then makes a delighted sound and swallows down more. "This is good."
A little nod of her head, as if that's totally normal. "Yeah, coins are like, Vasya's thing. When he proposed to me, do you remember, he like... threw one of his big silver coins in the air, and then he used Lyudmila -- his gun, which is a magical tool for him -- and shot a hole through it, and I made it into a ring. So when he does divination, it's coins, usually." Fox slings herself onto one of the lounge chairs on the balcony. "Right? I'm so loving getting to go to the farmer's markets in Ukraine."
"...Huh. Hm. A silver coin?" they muse, taking another sip, their thoughts drifting. "I thought the pistol might be him..."
Her forehead wrinkles up, and her head tips to the side. "Yeah. Silver is a whole... thing for Acanthus. Copper is for Thyrsus. All kinds of correspondences like that, sacred symbolism." Fox shrugs a bit again. Also it rains and the wind blows and the sun rises in the east. Things it doesn't occur to Fox to necessarily say out loud because it's just... you know. When you're a big fancy wizard, you forget. "Pistol?"
"The dreams. There were... a lot of images. Symbols." They wiggle fingers through the air slowly, like they were rolling an invisible coin over their knuckles. "There's a silver coin, rising into the air, tumbling end over end. Then falling, still turning. But I also saw a silver pistol, spitting fire and water."
She nods thoughtfully, hopping up to snag the bottle from Lux and take a swallow of it. Fox savors it, grinning broadly; the moonlight catches her sharp little vulpine teeth. She passes the bottle back, and ticks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Can I -- open a link?" She taps her temple.
They hesitate, but just a beat, before nodding. They trusted Fox to poke within their mind, and not poke further than needed. "Mhmm. Feel free."
She sits back down on the edge of the lounger now, perching rather than, well, lounging. And she does just sneak in on the edge of Lux's mind, only as far as she needs to. First, Fox shows Lux a memory of a silver coin -- old, heavy, a solid coin with the relief almost worn off on both sides. Next, a pistol -- largely generic save for the handle, inlaid with elaborate silver and Cyrillic lettering. "Familiar at all?" she asks aloud.
Lux tips their head, brows pinched as the memories not their own fill their head. "...Yes, the coin is his. I can't be sure about the pistol, though. The pistol was being pointed at me--well, not me, but that's the angle I saw it from. Hard to say if it is or not." Another sip. "But I would imagine the pistol represents someone else, since the coin is--well, him."
She frowns a little bit. "It would be a coin, I would guess. He's always been the Boy With A Coin." Fox scuffs her bare foot against the balcony. "Yeah, maybe," a pause. "Is it always a person?"
"Not always." They lounge back, slumping into their seat. "One of the images is a whole Freehold--the one down in Lancaster. I don't think they are... involved directly, in the sense of... hm... planning anything nefarious, though. Perhaps victims as well. Perhaps just tied up in all of our fates, somehow." Another sip. "Me and Jack are in the dreams, though. And another Lost--one I doubt you've met. He's an owl, most of the time."
"Oh, and that... tree of yours."
"I would like to meet an owl," Fox posits. "I like owls. Even though they are mouth-poopers." This is said with the genuine thoughtfulness of someone tendering a Great Truth. Owls are mouth-poopers, it's true. "Hmm. Yeah. Fate does get... tangly. The more I learn about it, the more of a headache it gives me. I learned a way to make sure that I'm headed toward the right future, because of the girls -- " She pauses. "The Tree?"
Then Lux just smiles warmly in understanding at the mention of the Right Path and Girls. They had been happy for her, of course, over joyed at the news, though very much in a children??? what the fuck do you do with CHILDREN?? sort of way. "The... tree. The one that was almost destroyed?"
When future you tells you that in the future where you're winning against the eternal evil keeping humanity hostage, you have these children, then you, you know, have the children. Though Fox did seem pretty happy about the whole thing. "Oh," Fox says quietly. "Yeah, I was afraid you meant the Tree. I mean. Not that it wouldn't be significant, of course it would be significant, it's the Tree, of course it would be -- " A pause. "Tell me."
"I don't know much other than what I've already told you," they reply apologetically. "I saw blood spilling, pooling around the roots of a tree. Your Tree. The blood was... full of pain. Not spilt willingly. I don't know who's blood it is exactly, but its not anyone I care for. Which rules out... at least most of the Lost population and... well, you. And Aaron." (edited)
She chews on her lower lip a little bit, frowning. It's not exactly a positive image. "To my knowledge," Fox offers, "no one's ever deliberately spilled someone else's blood on the Tree. But there's a lot of -- " A pause, there. "My mother -- my... Balm. Who just left us." She absently wrings her hands together; it's still not easy to talk about Balm in her absence. In something that isn't death but is functionally no different to Fox; it isn't death but they're apartments in the same block, tenants of the same landlord. The Pax Arcana ain't nothing to fuck with, much like Wu Tang Clan. "The Children of the Tree come out of ... many different struggles, many different genocides. Balm's village, in the South Pacific? It burned in 1938." The corners of her mouth twitch a little bit. "It may simply be some sort of acknowledgement of, I guess, how we came to be?"
"But then again." A vague shrug.
"Maybe." They listen, head tipped to the side. "I can dive back into my dreams tonight and try to pick apart more truths. I could try to figure out if that is the case. Or if it's a sign of some danger to come."
"Though..." They consider. "That may be the case. It seems like a good majority of these images were ways to... identify something, or someone."
"I didn't know about that, obviously--I just guessed that it was your tree since I knew that was a very important tree."
"No, no, I didn't expect you to know. It's not like we go around saying, 'hey, by the way, I know we put out this whole community and hope thing, but this is actually a reaction to the slaughter of the people who originally lived here, eff why eye." Fox's smile is rueful. "And I think that would be good, yeah. Whatever you can find will help. Even if it's something about our history, that doesn't mean it isn't also a sign of danger to come, or connected to something that... poses a danger to us."
They nod, sipping at their drink as they think for a moment. "Does the image of a giant eye mean anything to you?"
There's a long, long silence. "... do you have more context for that, or just... a giant eye?" Fox blinks a few times. "It's important."
Their hips wiggle as they dig into their jeans pocket, pulling out a phone. Some poking, and they show Fox a picture of a painting: 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.
"I painted this months ago, after a very vivid dream I had. When I exited my dream, it felt like... hm... I was passing through an eye the size of the world. I was briefly swallowed up by it's vast pupil."
It isn't the eye that Fox focuses on first when they lean over to look at Lux's phone. Her forehead wrinkles up, and she softly says, 'hunh,' and turns her head, whistling. "Agoston!" she calls. A second later, "I know you're in the living room, don't be a shit. Come out here, please."
A handful of seconds later, a husky materializes inside the doorway out to the balcony where Fox and Lux are sitting. Lux has one of Vasya's bottles of local blackberry liquor, bought at a Ukranian farmer's market. The husky familiar pads out quietly and sits down next to Fox, fixing Lux with his sharp, blue-eyed gaze. And yes, they've seen this dog before. "What," the husky grunts.
"This -- is Agoston. He was Balm's familiar. Now he's mine."
She adds, "We'll get to the eye, but... " a vague wave toward Lux's phone and then to the husky with the same hand.
The nice thing about having a matter master for a spouse is that you never have to smell like a Ukrainian wheat farmer unless you really want to. In fact, if it weren't for the beard? There's not a whole lot to denote much of a change in Vasya on this side of the Atlantic ocean. Except maybe he's more dressed down and casual. Jeans and hoodies, mostly.
He saunters into the ridiculous flat from the lift, which makes his arrival uncharacteristically well announced. Ding. Out steps LL Bean cover Vasya, with eyes like a cement truck driver near the Jersey City pier. He'd be cozy while not thinking twice, you know? "Naika?"
Lux blinks, staring at the husky in surprise. "...Huh. I was going to ask if you knew someone with a husky. I guess that answers that. Yes--the husky was in the dream, too. It was just... laying there, though. Not doing anything."
Lux looks up as Vasya walks into the flat, lifting fingers to wiggle-wave in his direction. "Hiii."
"Apparently you were in my best friend's dream," Fox offers to Agoston, reaching to scratch between the ears of the husky familiar. Her phone pings, and she frowns at her screen. "I'mma invite Jackie over. She just texted. And! Bonus! She's never been here." She mutters at her screen, "... I'll call ahead... to the lobby... don't try to break in... Z's wards are very good and you're not a registered guest." And send.
All of that happens and then the door to the elevator dings open and Fox perks up like a puppy that just heard the treats bag crinkle. No one tell her she reacts to Vasya like a dog chasing down its person, it would terribly insult her vulpine dignity. All the same, she pops to her feet and chirrups, "Out here, baby!" before scampering off to greet him. "Lux is here! We're talking about the dream things. And Jackie is coming, too."
If they're outside, he's stopping for a cigar and a match. He doesn't get to lighting it until he's not indoors, however, and even then he's certain to have it lit before reaching the missus and stooping to give her a peck. "Hello, you two. Ah. Should I get my rig?" He makes little finger typing motions at his forearm.
It is... work. To pass as mortal. She has advantages- breathing, for one- but the fact remains that she has to invent reactions, and then delay them, all while avoiding the movements of a modern Japanese horror monster. She doesn't have to do it for long, but for those few moments, she comes off somewhat like the White Witch, hands tucked into sleeves as her movements carry her smoothly into the lift. Only after it closes does she drop her arms in too-sleek fluidity, her face relaxing into placed calm that... doesn't quite reach her eyes. Those are stressed. Unsteady. Dancing between anger and concern as she ascends to the penthouse.
"Oh, cool. We can just get it all out, then." They smile at Vasya, lifting their glass to him. "Grats on the future-babies, by the way." (edited)
"I mean, it couldn't hurt, I don't think? But we were just talking." Fox says this when she's jumped up to wrap her arms around Vasya's neck and her legs around his waist, as is her rite and custom. Yes, she will get her peck, and a second one, too, before letting go. The box from downstairs buzzes, and she smooches Vasya one more time, swatting him on the butt as she runs off to tell security that they can let the weird lady into the elevator. Then? She waits for their other guest. Let Vasya handle the baby talk on his own. (She's so generous.)
"Future babies are absolutely the worst kind of babies to have," Vasya complains with slavic good cheer, "so of course we are having two of them." He throws up his hands in a 'what can you do' manner before breaking into a grin and answering the toast with a salute of the cigar. He heads back inside briefly, returning out of his hoodie and wearing just his undershirt and a wrist strapped computer on his left arm. He's already poking at it to bring up some information when he returns to the balcony. His super brain is no longer in cheat mode constantly, so he needs notes now.
The lift dings, and Vorpal steps out. It's easier, ironically, for Fox and Vasya to see how strung out and stressed she is. To Lux, she's just as ink-black shadow as ever- to them, they can see the circles under her eyes. She hasn't slept, and her eyes are haunted. For a moment, her hand rests on Sigknifr's hilt through her coat- and then she realizes it is, and it juxtaposes with- something, and she laughs quietly.
There's no humor in it.
"Fox. Vasya. Thank you for having me. Lux. Glad to see you're alright. You've been on my mind a while."
They grin in amusement. "I can't wait to meet them. Eventually." They take another swig from their glass, finger-wiggle-waving at Vorpal as she comes onto the balcony. Though their grin dims a bit. "Have I? Hm... Are you okay?"
She touches Jackie's shoulder, leaning up to kiss her cheek in greeting. The Thyrsus doesn't seem threatened by the touch to the knife's hilt, as if she's entirely unbothered, perhaps, or feels very certain that either Jackie wouldn't hurt her, or she wouldn't allow herself to be hurt. Whatever the case, she's unfussed. "There's food and drinks in the fridge, but it belongs to everybody else and you can't have any," Fox informs Vorpal with a sternness ameliorated slightly by the way the corners of her mouth pull up a little bit. "It does take some of the argument out of picking names when you're told what they will be," she chimes in, heading back out toward the balcony and apparently certain Vorpal will follow.
"She's overlooking the obvious fact that she could choose to have two boys and name them Franz and Ferdinand. It's not a prophesy if I tell you the future wants you to do things and you just go along with it. If anything, you're colluding with your former self to make me think this was all my idea." It all does make a certain sort of sense, and so he spends a moment or two squinting at her in accusation to see how guilty she looks at the end of it. A good metric, typically.
"In any event, I have my notes and I'm quite ready to compare them." He pads on back to a spot convenient to the trio and ... sits down criss cross applesauce like some kind of god damned hippie. But he still has his cigar, so classy hippie question mark?
Jackie melts down a bit to lean into Fox's kiss, returning a delicate brush of the lips to her cheek as well. She does, indeed, follow to the balcony, and pauses at Lux's inquiry. "You have. And I am not. Not at all. I made a Token knife that doesn't want to reveal what it does, I've been staring at the dream slivers that keep cropping up and I feel like I've barely made any progress at all, and on top of all that, I'm about ninety-seven percent sure my Huntsman hired some sort of Vampire Ghost to try to assassinate me. One of her minions turned some poor fucking kid and she tried to make me kill Ylva and Artie. I- overreacted. So I'm a fucking mess and I feel like I'm spinning my wheels without any progress at all.
But maybe we can make some tonight. That'd be- something." She nods to Vasya, indicating her willingness- maybe even eagerness- to try to hammer out some sort of truths from those slivers. (edited)
Lux frowns, sitting up straighter, expression going more serious. "Shit, Jackie... Sit down, breathe a moment. You're safe here." They reach out to rest a hand on her arm, if allowed. "That's awful."
Fox considers that for a moment, that side note about possibility and colluding with one's past self. "That does sound like something I'd do," she finally admits, "but your hypothesis doesn't hold up to the idea that I would have conspired to convince you to name one of our children, a girl who will spend at least part of her young life in suburban Philadelphia, Lyudmila." Ha HA! She says this as if it is absolute proof positive of her case: she did not conspire with Future Fox on kid names.
The news from Jackie makes Fox blink repeatedly, some of the terms bringing only confusion and others just making her look worried. She bumps her head against Jackie's arm, then insinuates herself into Vasya's lap, dropping her head onto his shoulder just so. It's Lux's reaction that has them lifting her head from Vasya's shoulder and blinking again.
Vasya admittedly only understood a small portion of that, but context clues have informed him he should be making consolation gestures at this point. "I am sorry that happened to you. Perhaps I can help to alleviate some of your issues. Your magic doesn't really operate the way ours does, but I'm fairly decent at ferreting out key words and magic gestures and secret codes and the like." He's tapping at his wrist screen a bit as he says this, as though preparing somehow in this way to assist.
He concludes that to take Fox into his lap. A better fate, surely. "Philadelphia is fill of anarchists and commies and people reading Ibram X Kendi. She will be the coolest child on the playground." He says this with the firm insistence of both an ardent patriotic Ukrainian and a man who is wrong.
"Lyudmila is an excellent name. If the Resident Evil franchise keeps on long enough, she can always call herself Mila and claim she was named after the redhead," Jackie offers in a particularly weak attempt at a joke.
She leans into the nuzzle from Fox, melts down to the ground beside Lux, and nods gratefully to Vasya. "If you would. I am concerned because the art of crafting a Token is- not precise. I chose the item carefully to attempt to give it enough of an association with metaphysical severances that it might be able to sever the Silver Cords securing folx like me to our Keepers- but I cannot be sure what it does unless I activate it blindly, and not necessarily even then- and I would still be bound to pay whatever cost it demands for its power. Which is potent." She thumbs over the jadetsugi blade's hilt under her coat. "I can provide it for your perusal whenever you are comfortable with such."
"As for our collective efforts to puzzle through the dreams... I have done my best to add my insights to yours, but yours were- extremely insightful. Impressed does not begin to cover what you discovered. The only additions I could offer seem obvious to me. I would not be surprised if others considered them." She tilts her head back and thinks.
"First, the sliver with the coin. The position and action of the coin is pertinent. I know you realized its connection to you, and possibly yours. The coin flipping and falling is a representation of flux. It will fall- but could be caught, dropped, land heads or tails- and left to its own devices, chances are even. But in the right hands, it could be tilted, or even assured."
Lux is, of course, allowed to touch her arm. She is not afraid of those present. It might be an easy enough conclusion that she might be scaring herself for some reason.
Lux drops their hand after a moment, then leans back in their chair. For now, they seem happy to listen and try to gleam the information that is new to them. They look towards Vasya, curious for his information.
"This is the knife you made out of the slivers of the sword that you took off of the body of the Seer that attacked your people, the one pretending to be an Interfector?" Fox perhaps prompts, perhaps inserts information which Jackie didn't offer the first time around. "The one you made by taking the shards of that sword, which you said you checked and made sure it had no magical properties, and putting it into the Hedge, a psychoactive fae realm between here and your Arcadia, and leaving it there totally unsupervised until it turned into this jade knife which you are carrying around with you?"
She isn't talking about the kids' names anymore, and is instead looking at her fingers, absently picking at her broken nails.
"Yes, that's exactly the one," Vorpal responds mildly.
Lux's brows slooowly climb.
"Yes, please, give me that knife precisely. That sounds like exactly the type of knife I want." Vasya makes little grabby hands motions at the knife, but only in jest. Never grab a knife! He does reach out for it, however. "I'll see what I can do. It will either be a matter of some consideration or I'll be useless. But at least you'll have an answer on that count."
He pauses to queue up the report with all the cobbled together notes of the various people he's been chatting with, plugged into the work he's done, and holds it out for Lux. "I realized fairly early on this was speaking to specific people, and others would know specifics I lacked. So that if I could fill in the generalities, I might better know who to reach out to. I can't say for certain that the purpose of this was to ... bring us to gether in some sense? But it has certainly had that benefit."
Once Lux has had at least some time to read his screen he notes, "Do you have visitor's access to the Lodge computer labs, Lux? I have a better database set up in there, and it's as secure as the Free Council can make it. So. Pretty secure. You're welcome to look over all the information I have on the topic."
Vorpal glances at Lux and ducks her head slightly, reverting to some more childish responses with her Clarity eroding at the edges. She's not losing her sanity yet, but it might be a near thing. "I wanted to try to find a way to free the other Helldivers. Nothing that I know of will do it, so I figured I needed to make something that would." starts to produce the knife as requested, but pauses and hesitate a moment. "Before I remove it. I reiterate again that I have not detected magic of any sort besides Fae upon this item, but Artie did try to talk to it and review its memories of it's last three owners. The first was me. The second was the Interfake-tor. And the third he described as a titanic eye clad in robes on one of several golden thrones taller than worlds. It was a memory, but he said it looked at him. I don't think that's indicative of any extra danger. Everything put together, I think those were the Thrones the Seers... uh. See. I dunno if "giant evil eyeball" adds any perspective to our understandings, but. If that changes your mind about examining the blade, I can keep it hidden."
She tries to refocus on the topic of dreams, but she looks a bit like a scolded child. "The notes I can add are that the sliver about the tree fed by blood- I talked to Fox about that. We're pretty sure it- well, it seems obvious, but it's probably the Children's tree. My assessment added that the tree roots run deep, under the earth, under the world. A living thing built on death. Something foundational.
"And if you figure out what the Autumn Court has to do with it... I'd like to know. I don't understand what we have to do with the Tree, and I'm worried we might have been involved in the atrocities that led to the Children's organization... but I would rather know than not know."
"I have more, but I'm trying not to dominate the conversation. I want to ramble and that is not a polite thing."
Lux leans over, skimming over the wall of text slowly, brows knit a bit in focus.
"Alright. Very interesting. But yes, I do know what some of the things are already. The tree with blood is indeed the Children's Tree." They nod. Then they point to Line 4. "This is me." The neon green plume. "This is Jack." Line 10, the charcoal scribbles. "And this--this is Budihe, Jackie." Pointing to line 13 now. The Owl. "I assume that he is the connection to the Autumn Court, somehow. But whether that is the only connection..." They shrug.
"And this is the Red Rose Freehold." Pointing to Line 7, the red rose petals. "I know that they're not plotting against us, at least. So either victims or... just have their fates tied up in this somehow."
"Or it could be the Autumn courtiers in Red Rose involved, specifically."
When Jackie speaks, Fox focuses in on one bit. "... Hey, Lux, babe? Can you, uh... can you show Jackie the painting you just showed me, the one you did a little while ago?" She reaches out her hand and gestures slightly, calling Agoston over, and starts to pet between the husky familiar's ears as he rests by Vasya's knee.
"You were asking me a question about what I knew about a giant eye, in context," she continues, looking at Lux. "One of the... Exarchs. The ... former people... who are holding this reality hostage? Its Ministry -- the organization of Seers that report to it -- is the Panopticon. It is called The Eye. Also known as -- among many other names -- the Four-fold Watcher, The All-Seeing, and the Queen of Mirrors." Her shoulders shift, and one gets the idea that if she were Catholic, she might cross herself here. Saying the names of Exarchs out loud is not a Happy Fun Time. "You know that all-seeing eye that's on the dollar bill? Kinda like that. An eye on a throne. Watching everything." She bites her lower lip. "Well. I guess we know the dead bitch's Ministry."
Lux lifts their phone to show Jackie a picture of a painting: A canvas is quickly filled with smudged blobs of paint, frantic streaky brush marks, forming a silver 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.
As they do, they listen to Fox, frowning very deeply.
Vasya looks pleased at Lux's elucidation of some missing facts, each detail earning them an approving nod from the Acanthus. He seems satisfied, an expression that wears easy on him. "That's not really my wheelhouse. In fact, if it isn't about the Seers of the Throne and battling the Exarchs, I have to admit I don't really have much space in here for it any longer."
But Fox scoops him to the big reveal. He goes from looking pleased to proud. He points at her and nods his head in agreement, adding for emphasis, "I hate them. They're very bad people. Very bad, bad people." A pause. "So. I think if you're really keen, I can set you up a time bubble and you can experiment in there and if you accidentally cut off your head I can oopsie-daisy you back to rights and tell you what happened." Vasya's smile is probably not reassuring.
"Still trying to process the idea that the Panopticon owned your knife. We really ought to scour it for resonance and then fling it into the sun, if I'm being honest. But that's the old me talking. And he was a dick." (edited)
"But a very nice dick," Fox mumbles into his shoulder. Fox.
"She knows I'm Ukrainian," Vasya replies.
"Well... I saw this eye in my dream," Lux says uncertainly, looking between Fox and Vasya. "Do you think its possible this Exarch thing is behind all these twists of fate? I..." They hesitate. "My Keeper... is also called the The Queen of Mirrors."
Jackie leans in to see the picture, comfortable shoulder to shoulder with Lux to see clearly, and flicks her eyes to Agoston as she sees what's been created. Her eyes catch on the silver arrow, flowing into black, and flick back behind it, curious if there's a streak or line of silver behind it- intact or broken. "A silver arrow. A... husky," she says glancing to Agoston again. "The streaks seem emblematic of some sort of magic or energy, but it could also be electricity. The massive Eye does seem to fit the theming we've been discussing."
She stills a bit to hear the name of Lux's Keeper. "Maybe that's the connection. Why you're singled out in that sliver?" She pauses, and offers, "Mine is called the Stone Haunter. I don't expect it lines up, but no need for secrets."
"Other slivers I got insight on were the green glowdust drifting onto a translucent hand. Reminded me of Diamond- the one that's- was it a Legacy, Fox, that you called it?- that's part of the myconid legacy. That probably connects to the mushroom mycelium digging into the earth. How, I dunno, but.
I saw the silver pistol spitting fire and water. I studied the memory, and found that the silver pistol spits both fire and water: things held in tension. Unintended consequences. Silver is an important symbol."
She falls quiet for a moment. "That's all I pieced together. It's not much, but maybe it'll help."
"When I stub my toe I thank God I am alive and curse this being," Vasya explains to Lux, invoking the idioms of his people. "In that order. This being is why milk goes bad and you all can't have ranked choice voting. And I am only kind of making that up. From all that your people have said to me about the things that hunt you? You know exactly what these beings are, in a sense. How. All consuming their presence can be. The way they subsume people. Ruin lives. It's repulsive."
Vasya wags his cigar away and eases Fox out of his lap, needing both some space figuratively and quite literally in order to do some explaining. "I carry the silver gun." Vasya reaches behind his back and draws his silver plated pistol. A custom job, obviously, but quite mundane for all that. "Unintended consequences is the name of my sex tape."
With that all said he dusts off his jeans and turns towards Lux. "If there is a connection between your Queen of Mirrors and our own, then that might explain a dream I had quite some time back. In a lot of. very uncomfortable ways. I know you all travel in dreams, but do you reach into the collective unconscious? You can travel from dreamer to dreamer but can you travel from dreamer to dream to Ur-Dream to Ur-Concept?"
"Agoston used to be my mother's familiar. My magical mother. The Elder of the Children of the Tree," explains Fox. "When Balm... left us... Agoston came to live with me." The husky warbles softly, a sad little sound, and noses at Fox's hand. more pets plz
"A Legacy, yes. We shape our souls to refine who we are and how we ... bring magic into the world." She absently chews on her lower lip with her sharp teeth. Blood wells up, then the wound heals within seconds. Goddamned Orphans. "Diamond's is unique."
"I... looked into my own past, before I came here. I tried to find out what had happened, what I had done, to draw me into all of this. I saw snapshots of things, not just one thing. Little things, it seemed, at the time... But I saw that eye--and I saw The City, where I was remade... watching me. Pulling strings of Fate... Can an Exarch also be a True Fae?" Lux frowns, a hand pressing to their chest, fingers curling in there. Looking... disturbed.
They look up to Vasya, brows creased. "In a sense? I'm able to enter a dreamer's dream directly. Then I could choose to exit onto the Dreaming Roads. Which is... sort of the collective unconciousness? Everyone who dreams, they form a bastian around their dreams, along the Dreaming Roads. I walk it often." They hesitate. "...Me walking the Dreaming Roads, was one of the snippets I saw. One of the tugs of Fate."
When Vasya moves her out of their lap, Fox just crawls onto Agoston's back, treating their familiar like a big furry rug. Agoston doesn't seem to mind, either: Fox just lays on said back, staring off into space and petting his side while using him as a giant pillow.
Vasya doesn't look particularly happy about what Lux shares, but it does put some things in their proper places. "What a time for me to not be drinking," he laments before taking a puff of his cigar in consolation.
He spends the time he's explaining all this scratching his eyebrow with the thumbnail of his cigar hand, looking both pained and tired all at the same time. "I don't know if they're the same thing per se, but they sure do rhyme. And in a cosmic sense, why wouldn't an entity ally itself with a like minded totalitarian in a subset of what it considers its fiefdom? They all consider creation their little sandbox, and so long as we play in it by their rules, they're happy. Even, I can imagine, other totalitarian hellish nightmare beings. Think of it like hold a universe in the palm of your hand. An infinite universe in a little glass ball. The god of it is no less a god, and the universe is no less in your hand, you see. I'm not making sense."
He stops and tries again.
"I think I walked your Dreaming Roads. I don't-- I have ideas how and why that might have been and how I could test it, but if my hunch is correct it's because I wanted something that was down that road far enough. And at the time, it seemed to be that you wanted to get to me too. I don't know if it was about something else, but it seems we've been dreaming towards each other for some time now. And I'd like to do so with purpose again soon."
And finally. "This is a lot to process."
"You can actually start on the Dreaming Roads, if you want. You gotta go through the Gate of Horn to pull that off, though, which means wandering the Hedge until you find one of the reflected paths to cross over. You can't reshape the Hedge there, but it's still The Hedge, winding between every dream. I don't know if you could get all the way to- the Ur-Dreamer or their dream. I'm not sure... what... that..."
She's quiet a moment. "... actually. Maybe... that's possible. I know you can end up a lot of places. The sorts of places you'd pretty much need to be a Helldiver to have a hope to return from. Stand in a breaking Bastion and you can be flung to any wild number of places, and if you walk far enough into the Dreaming Roads...maybe. There's tales- like the sort you hear from your crazy adoptive uncle who's Wyrder than you and only wakes up every third night- that you can reach Places. I know of a couple. Realms of the dead, for instance. Or the Primordial Dream, which - I believe - is where the Fae make their Huntsmen. There's others- Lux, do you remember any more?"
Her hands work nervously over the smooth patchwork jade of the knife she hesitated to hand to Vasya before she shared what she knew. He hasn't reached again yet. So she holds it in her lap.
Lux stares at Vasya for a moment, then takes a breath. "Okay. Well... I could enter your dreams, if you wanted? Seems the easiest way to bring our dreams together."
They look to Jackie, nodding along. "There's rumors of Old Arcadia and The Living World, too."
"I also can dive back into my dreams tonight and ask more questions of the Dream. See if we can uncover more truths. If either of you have ideas for questions I could ask? They would need to be yes or no questions."
That piques the slav's interest, "Old Arcadia? What's that?"
"You can drink if you want to, nobody's stopping you," Fox offers, and then she picks her head up and looks at Vasya, then at Lux, when Vasya sounds interested in particular in a certain thing.
"Its... hm..." Their head tilts. "This is all theory, of course... But some believe that the Huntsmen--the entities that Gentry use to hunt and recapture us--are the indigenous inhabitants of Arcadia. And the Gentry just... showed up and enslaved them. If that is the case, than Old Arcadia is believed to be a part of Arcadia that remains in tact, as it originally was, where only the Huntsmen live--freely."
"Oh. Yeah, that- makes sense. I mixed that up with the Primordial Dream. Sorry for the misinfo," Jackie offers. "I'm- honestly still really new to the whole book knowledge stuff. I mostly cheat and enchant my book to help me when I need to look something up. Didn't mean to lead anyone the wrong way." Her thumb rolls slowly over the rounded handle of the knife.
"It's not exactly common knowledge," Lux reassures. So Winter bullshit, probably.
"Mm. That's relieving." A bit. Her ego's still stinging a bit from Artie snapping at her about things she should have known better about as an Autumn. This feels like more of the same, just without someone else twisting the knife.
"When we're finished discussing all this, Vasya. I'd like to take you up on your offer. I worry that if it does what I hope, I will not be able to ascertain- but if it does not, I might be able to. And hopefully determine the cost it demands. If you can truly wind me back, I would gratefully accept the offer."
"Your cosmology and our own aren't entirely dissimilar, and I suppose the semiotics of it all is rather secondary to the function of enabling dream travel. So. Yes, Lux, I think we should do that. Because I think what I accidentally did was follow one of my divinitary leadings down a dream road. Sometimes I lay these guidings on myself that will enable me to confront problems or further events in my life organically, but obviously. I think I did that to myself, only I lacked the language to understand what I was being shown. And I think if we travel them again-- together --I can find what I saw before. Perhaps. And follow it. Perhaps."
Vasya's acquired a bit of manic energy. A tension really. Not all of this is sitting well with him. "I should warn you, however, that I believe the dream may be connected to the abduction... enslavement... and. Uh. Repurposing. Of. Human. Um. Human. Uh. Of people. They make people into Amazon Alexas." He winces through a half smile at that.
"...The Eye does?" They frown.
Now there, Fox's head snaps back up from the back of the familiar. Her fingers dig deep into the husky's fur, and the light from inside the apartment catches her eyes the way a wild animal's are caught. The eyeshine flashes, and she bares her teeth. A low, rattling snarl, her eyes unfocused. "Fucking Grigori."
Jackie's expression blanches. She remembers. "The mummies. Not even people anymore. Everything person scrubbed away. Deleted. Replaced by- receivers. They ramble. I sincerely pray you never encounter those poor bastards, Lux. Nobody deserves that fate, and nobody should ever have to perceive it." She thinks a moment. "People hollowed out to make Seer Tokens. That's what they are."
She thinks a moment longer. "Vasya. You asked about an Ur-Dreamer, an Ur-Dream. I'm not so certain about the Dreamer, but Ur refers to... the most essential, or distilled, or first, right? An Ur-Dream would be the dream that contains the pieces that make up all the other dreams, right?" She glances at Lux, who can probably see where she's going with this, then back to Vasya. "That sounds like the Living World. It's called that because everything there is- like... animist. Not just animated, animist. And I do mean everything. Not just the stuff is Beings, but the ideas and concepts and themes. You could- maybe get there from the Dreaming Roads, but like all the other... Tangents. You'd be going off-road, essentially. Dangerous doesn't really start to cover it."
"Yes. In our reckoning of cosmology one can rise from one's own dreaming mind, into the collective unconscious and into the slumbering mind of the cosmos itself. Into the dreams of the stars and the infinite night. Beyond which lies the Abyss, and beyond that the... you know. Our eden. Our perfect place. But the point is, it's a straight metaphorical line. One can, and I emphasize the metaphor, walk from one's dream to heaven and back again in a moment. There's nothing logically or rationally inconsistent with that concept as we understand the world," Vasya explains, returning to Fox's side again to pet at her hair. Grigori are nasty business.
"In any case. I can peer into the future and see what might happen if you were to try to use the knife. Shall I?" (edited)
The low, rattling sound of Fox growling is unusual, to be certain, but she calms down when Vasya comes to pet her hair, and then splutters when Agoston cranes his head around to lick her face. Sometimes he talks, sometimes he just acts like a dog. She lets her eyes half-lid and shoves her head against Vasya's hand. Grigori is a big upset.
Lux stares intently at Vasya, eyes gleaming and almost glowing for a beat with hunger for adventure and power and knowledge. To walk parts of the Dream where none--or at least not many--had walked before. "...I'll go with you. But before I do, I should step into my own dreams and... try to confirm whether or not The Eye and The City are the same entity. If so... Me going with you could make it even more dangerous. I... carry inside me a fragment of the Queen of Mirror's light."
Jackie abruptly looks sick to her stomach. And that's saying a lot for someone who's baseline emoting level is approximately . Her eyes flick back and forth. "Oh. Oh, nonono that's what it meant about the listening mummies. They're- they're not Hollow, they're either- denied their dreams or they can only dream. They've either had the part of them that dreams tuned to something else at the cost of their dreams, or been trapped inside that part.
That's.... that's so much worse."
She pulls out of her horror for a moment to nod briefly. "No, that makes sense. The Hedge is like that. Learn to navigate it and you can travel incredible distances in tiny moments. So that further tracks that the path you're describing may well be the same as we know it."
Jackie does, after a moment, nod to Vasya. "Aye. I'd like to do that. I'm not sure how specific you can get with the time you look to- I don't suppose you could deliberately target something as precise as viewing a moment I strike a Silver Cord while holding it, can you?" She rubs the back of her head. "It's fine if not. I'm just nervous about striking a cord and- hurting the one bound to it if I don't understand what it does first."
Her eyes flick to Lux as well. A flicker of that excitement is in Jackie's own eyes- but it's weighed down. Or maybe simply measured.
Dreams are terrifying places to be.
"I can. If there's an reality where you'd have tried something like that by now, and there is surely. So. Give me a moment." Vasya does some poking at his wrist console again, pauses to do some more scritching at Fox's ear, and then pokes some more. Incongruously he pulls out his pistol again, holds it in his hand just so, and resumes poking at his wrist console as though that helps somehow. "Now. Give me a moment, if you would?"
Lux falls quiet as the conversation shifts to the knife. They look lost in their thoughts, only half listening now, and... drinking a lot more from their bottle of booze.
Jackie leans over to nudge her shoulder into her friend's. "It's a fascinating idea, isn't it? Travelling to different worlds. Exploring conceptual realms and crazy places like that. You two might be making history if you walk those roads together."
(The friend is Lux btw.)
"It... is fascinating. Dangerously fascinating." They smile dreamily, brain still drifting half-elsewhere. "Seems like the soft of place someone could get lost in." (edited)
Fox goes quiet now. She has been placated.
"People do. The trick with time is that it's all relative, you see. So while you are flying between stars at the speed of thought to outsiders, you experience it as though it's real. Eternities contained in jars, remember. So, on occasion, solitary travelers and those who are incautious do get lost out there. Their mind are stripped away and they become ... ghosts of a sort, I suppose is the best analogy." Vasya's shoulders shrug mildly as he continues his poking and prodding at his controls. He's frowning, that's probably fine though.
After a bit more prodding and grumbling he concludes his work and glances up at the others, as though puzzled why they're still there. Time, you know. Experientially weird stuff. "Oh."
He reorients himself back to the now and relates, "Your knife will cut literally anything, apparently. Cut a silver thread and the Gentry will know immediately and you may go insane. I'm not sure on the specifics, but if you felt like trying it out at some point, I can try to make that safe for you. See just how hard it hits, and so on. But. Anyway." He is glancing between his wedding ring and the knife. Things the better of trying it, and hands the knife back gingerly. "You'll want to keep that sheathed in antimatter, or something."
Jackie blinks a few times. A few more. Then a quiet murmur. In Spanish. "Dios mío. Cuando me propuse destilar el concepto de "indemnización", no esperaba que funcionara tan bien." My god. When I set out to distill the concept of "severance", I did not expect it to work so well. She takes the knife back carefully, quietly reassuring. "It is alright. It must be activated, and I know the ways to do that. Feed it Glamour- or wield it in my own bloody off-hand. Outside of that, it is simply a very fast knife."
Long pause.
"I think."
Longer pause. "Anything." Slow breath in, slow breath out. "I would definitely like to try it out... but not now. I am... bruised all over, sanity-wise. This is Not The Time to gamble with my sanity. Doubly so with the concept of Separation."
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