featherduster | ( sheep ) ic inbox

[ Gross........... but he doesn't try to rub it off or anything ]

Don't worry about it. What's the worst he can do to me in here?

[tilts his head]

Kill you.

[ Flaps a hand ]

It's a dream. I'll be fine.

[grips his upper arm, with painful urgency]

Treat it like it's not.

[ Pauses ]

Why?

Because if you're trying to stop this, you are interfering with a contract, not a dream.

... Alright. I'll be careful.

[swallows

then nods towards the east library wall. there's a door visible past the shelves. was that always there? who knows]

[ Squeezes Charon's elbow for a second -- doesn't want to grab a hand that's crumbling away ]

I'm sorry. I'll do what I can.

[ Off through the new door!! ]

[he is in a small inn room. it is nondescript, furnished in the impersonal way most inn rooms are. there is a great deal of what seems very much like dried blood on the floor, even if it's greyscale like the rest.

there is a knife on the table.

there is one door out. it's not the one he came through.

the curtains over the small single window are drawn, but the light flickers through them strangely.]

[ Looks kinda like sketchy demon summoning behavior in here idk!

He actually goes to the window first, pulling back the drapes to peer outside. Still gray and crumbling? ]

[still grey and--mm

remember how in the library the view was of burned down city blocks. well this one shows probably the same city blocks but now actively on fire. cool]

[ Cool!

He lets the drape fall over the window again, turning back to the table. Are there any runes or candles or otherwise occult shit lying around here? ]

[the knife itself looks pretty occult! it looks very old and there's writing carved into the blade he can't understand. there's also the edge of a metal bowl just poking out from under the bed -- if he pulls that out, the grey blood in it is still liquid.]

[ OF COURSE IT DOES!!!! He picks up the dagger, and assuming nothing buckwild happens when he does so, pockets it. If this is Charon's blood, then in some morbid way he's getting the impression it will be good to have. ]

[he gets a memory --

you're holding your bleeding hands over the bowl, breathing slow and deliberate, trying to ignore the pain you're unaccustomed to, the smell of smoke and burning flesh coming in through the walls, the distant screams, the queasiness of your own stomach and conscience. you need as much blood as you can get, right now in the time of the summoning, to give the ones you absolutely don't want him to touch.

'if he comes,' Julian ~~Silverberg~~'s centuries-old instructions had said. you know, with certainty and a measure of arrogance, that the demon will come to you, if he came to your grandfather. whether you can sufficiently protect and leash him is another matter, but you're going to have to.

stout heart, quail not. you're committed to the course now.

-- but he can pocket the knife afterwards.]

[ NO WONDER THIS MAN IS SO BLASE ABOUT SUMMONING DEMONS EVERY WEEK. GOOD FUCKING LORD.

He pauses there for a moment to get his "fuck this shitty goblin demon" feelings under control before heading for the other door. ]

[he’s got the cred!

the door brings him out into…a hallway. he recognizes it under the lack of colour. it’s the same one everyone started in within Charon’s subconscious, where all the windows on one side are curtained heavily and the other side of the hall is lined with bedroom doors.

at one end is the way to the rest of the mansion.

he may recollect that there was another door on the other end.]

[ . . . Huh.

Well, a dream is a slightly different thing, he figures.

Eyeing the bedroom doors first -- are the doorframes still beat to all hell? ]

[all of the doors appear to be splattered with blood. the one he's next to is open a crack; the others are tightly closed.]

[ Dude. That better be ward blood and not trauma blood.

Cautiously pushes the cracked door open and peers inside. ]

[it's random splatter and not deliberate symbols, so almost certainly trauma blood.

but! inside is a child's bedroom of sorts, a little spare and without much decor, but otherwise fitting with the rest of the mansion's fancy build.

there is a five-year-old redheaded child sprawled on his stomach on the bed, reading a book. unlike the rest of this place, he's in full colour. he glances up when the door opens.]

[ OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Ok calm down Minuet. It might be the brother just wait a second. ]

Oh...

[that tiny unsmiling frown is DEFINITELY the brother he actually knows]

Who are you?

Me? Oh, I'm just--

[ HOW DOES HE EXPLAIN ]

Nobody special. [ nailed it ] Just a drifter who got himself a little lost, it looks like!

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