kenoslogs | The Seeds of Unrest, Phase Two 🌱

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The Seeds of Unrest, Phase Two 🌱

UPROOTED

Time has not been kind thus far, and the future will be no kinder.

The slow passage of days to weeks has seen both cities increasingly ravaged by the untamed growth of the enlarging roots. Their size is enough to uproot buildings by their foundations, if not bisect them entirely where they push through unfettered. In the worst-hit areas, entire blocks are left abandoned - if even standing at all, displacing families and leaving businesses in ruins.

Cetina and Kathova have been in near constant contact with Bearers via Communion, feeding them information about which areas to focus their lifesaving efforts. Yima’s Manor and the Seat of the Tribune - despite their closeness to the Trees - have been fortified by your leaders and act as a base of operations for each respective faction. You will be able to return to either to find sanctuary from the chaos beyond, but the innumerable civilians are not so lucky.

Bearers are tasked with rescue and recovery efforts and requested to assist hands on the ground with taking refugees to temporary shelters. Survivors must be dug out of the debris. Those who are capable of healing will be enlisted to assist at hospitals and triage centers. Supplies must be gathered and harvested from areas that are collapsed and too dangerous for civilians to navigate. If you are feeling generous, you can go on search and rescue missions, as many people are considered missing in both Highstorm and Springstar. Some areas are completely cut off to regular foot traffic by the massive, winding roots bearing countless Blight-blooms. Citizens are succumbing to the Blight flower’s effects persistent from phase one with more and more frequency.

While both cities slowly succumb to a deepening catastrophe, the situation worsens.

STIRRING STORMS

As the days pass, inexplicable and unnatural weather occurrences will randomly plague both cities. They can last as long as a full day or as little as an hour before dissolving entirely.

Flurries: this snow is tainted by the Blight, making the snowfall look like ash. Any organic matter it touches will be affected by reopening wounds, re-infection of illnesses, or re-experiencing injuries that may have healed over years ago.
Thunderstorms: these storms carry a frigid rainfall and heavy cloud cover, making already difficult-to-navigate disaster zones harder to clear. As each thunder bellow crashes overhead, you might swear you hear a familiar voice reaching out to you in the fading rumble… one that sends a message - either from the future or past.
Fog: dense clouds of thick, freezing fog will roll in randomly, making visibility even more precarious. In your search for survivors - or your companions, you may find yourself coming face to face with someone else, instead: a version of yourself (or a companion) from another timeline. You may also hear your own voice calling out to you from within the fog, attempting to beckon you further into the mist.
General Note: Exposure to any of the above weather patterns will increase your Blight infection.

THE BLIGHT COMES FOR ALL

As if it were not enough to see the cities that have become your salvation at the end of the Timestream falling to collapse and ruin, the Bearers will slowly begin to realize their previous immunity to the Blight is eroding. They will begin to show symptoms of infection that increase into May’s event. ( For more information on the effects of the Blight and purification methods, please see the OOC Summary. )

Now that their last bastion - the Bearers - are just as much in harm’s way as everyone else, the populous’s efforts to formulate a temporary stop-gap solution are being rushed to completion. Time is not on anyone’s side. They will continue to work with those who have been kind enough to volunteer their resources and brilliant minds - collecting materials and attempting to figure out a way to avert their otherwise inevitable destiny.

ORDERS

Orders from your leaders will come as soon as infections among the Bearers have been confirmed.

🌙 YIMA will stress for all Zenite Bearers to prioritize their well-being and to avoid unnecessary exposure, to manage their symptoms as much as possible. They must fight for their own survival to bring in the birth of a new universe - and their lives are too precious to risk. Beyond that, she asks them to save what they can of their people and their most critical structures with the understanding that hard choices may be necessary.

🌞 CYRUS will implore all Meridian Bearers to prioritize the general population's lives and turn their efforts to save as much of Springstar as they can. He will note that Bearers have ways to help keep one another from suffering too much contagion and to coordinate their usages appropriately, to keep one another safe, and watch their backs.

ANOTHER EN-TREE-TY

The Tree of Life continues to sicken, yet - thankfully - the progression of the Blight is slow. Still, Bearers will find themselves occasionally compelled to take a moment to sit beneath its boughs and vibrant leaves, even as some begin to show signs of discoloration and rot. Any characters who sit with the Tree with the purple leaf they found on their person after phase one will find it warming to the touch, its veins laced with gold. This effect will be even more effective if taken into the cavernous roots beneath the Tree! While this may fill you with a temporary sense of calm, it doesn't seem to have any other effects... yet still, you are compelled, if not curious.

The Tree has offered you this gift for a reason. Perhaps you will find its use before long.

...As long as you - and Kenos - survive long enough to discover it.

CODING

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Over the course of the night, it seems Hayame's pride had cracked enough to use a blanket. But the blanket doesn't disguise how her heavy body shivers with cold, or how shallow her breath seems compared to the previous day. The hand that had been simply stiff the previous day is curled protectively at her breast, half hidden by the other. And if she knew how to laugh... perhaps she would laugh. Perhaps if she knew how to laugh she would not want to weep instead.]

Rejoice.

[The bitterness (the shame) in her voice is unmistakable, even though it comes out quietly, from a half-locked jaw.]

You were the one between us who proved correct.

I'm not rejoicing.

[He says that flatly, moving to sit down next to the mattress by her side to get a better look at her. He had hoped she was right and he was just being overly paranoid, hoped that she just overexerted herself and rest would fix it in the night with enough sleep. Now there's a very real possibility that if they do nothing...

No. He won't let that happen.

Claude reaches out and places a hand over hers, offering a little warmth to how icy-cold she is to the touch. No doubt she'll despise him for it, but he has to help.]

Come on. Take out your Shard, and let's get you fixed up.

[She can't even jerk her hand away. She shivers instead, jaw clenched to keep her sharp teeth from chattering. Beneath his hand, her more severely afflicted hand is growing dark from unnatural frostbite, only really knowing his touch because she can see it. How she must look now, having gambled with her pride and lost. She almost can't bear to look him in the eyes, knowing the disgust or pity that must be in them.]

Do you think... I will show you where it is?

[She swallows, so ready to think that others are trying to dig out her weaknesses and expose them to the light.]

Turn... your head...

[If she did look, she'd find worry over anything like disgust or pity. And, perhaps, a little disappointment, though not for the reasons she might first suppose.]

Even now, you don't trust me.

[It's a statement, not a question. But he's not in any position to judge anyone when it comes to trust, so he does as she asks, releasing her hand and turning his face away.]

[It is hard for her to trust what she sees there. She's looking for how her stable master would look at her, how the humans of her world would look at her. She still is. She doesn't know how she's supposed to not to.]

Half of this faction... treats me no better than an enemy.

[She knows it's an exaggeration, but she doesn't care. It's how she feels, when she walks among the shard-bearers. When she opens her mouth to join their discussions.]

And you want me to trust you... because we are Meridian together?

[Hers isn't a statement. It's a genuine question.

As he looks away, he'll hear the slow, painstaking sound of clothing rustling. She despises using magic, even to "pull" her shard from her body.]

I want you to trust me because you already have, and I've shown you that same trust in return.

[Multiple times, Hayame could have cut Claude's throat in his sleep if she wanted to. Certainly, many have tried. Likewise, he could have hurt her too while he guard was down, but he never has.]

Here's my Shard. [While she struggles with hers, he reaches to the nape of his neck, and extracts his Shard, which he usually is able to hide behind the collar of his clothing. It's a golden colour, shaped like a crescent moon.]

You can do with that knowledge what you will, but I don't think you're my enemy.

[He says they have trusted each other before, and that’s not incorrect. She had trusted him enough before, enough to sleep in his presence once, twice, thrice now. But sleeping and showing someone where your solidified soul rested…

He just does it. He simply shames her with his open declaration, and she cannot even accuse him of… what can she accuse him of? Stupidity? Foolishness? He says he does not consider her an enemy… he had even declared her a friend once, though he had done so not minutes after admitting to acting one way while feeling another, so how-

Hayame did not have friends. She never had. She did not need such things. Even if she’d wanted them-

There are no sounds of clothing rustling anymore.]

Why?

[She hadn’t treated him differently, but he hadn’t turned his vitriol on her, insulted her, or maligned her to the rest of their faction (that she knew of).

Was it really so strong a thing? Just knowing what it was like to be the outsider.]

Because I want to help.

[Which sounds simple enough, but it isn't quite. Hearing the rustling has stopped, he decides to meet her gaze again.]

Maybe you don't feel like the other Meridian will ever accept you. But in my world, you would have a place. [Vague enough, so he elaborates--] I was a leader in my world. And my dream was to change everything, so that no one would feel like others look down on them for who or what they are. That they'd be accepted without any precondition, without feeling like they have to hide away or change just to survive...

[He trails off, offers his golden Shard to her in the palm of his hand.] Maybe it sounds naive, or unrealistic. I know. But if you don't believe in me, then you might as well take this thing and smash it against the wall. Because if I can't convince you, then I'm never going to achieve my dream.

[How foolish that line seems. So simple, so pointless. So what if he were a leader of men where he came from? What did it matter if she would have a place in his world, when she was what she was in her own? Who could change everything, who could make it so there weren't those lesser in the world?

Who could make it so that a lone jinba didn't feel isolated by the racial and societal differences between her and the other shardbearers? Who could make it so that an honor-bound one did not burn with bitterness and hatred over every insult and derision directed her way when she opened her mouth in public forum to speak her mind?

Surely no one.

But he turns back and holds out his shard to her, his very soul, and invites her to do what she will with it. To just smash it, if she wanted to. Hayame hates that she is laying down in this moment, too weak to sit up. Her stiffened, Blight-bitten fingers had managed to undo her shirt but had been stymied by the much tighter knots holding the binding of her breasts, and yet she does not yell at him or slap his face away, like she had at the masquerade.

She's staring at his shard. At the trust being laid out for her mercy right in front of her. The life being entrusted to her, without reservation, as if he thought she was worthy of it and was actually willing to show it in a way that couldn't be denied. After a long, long moment... slowly... slowly, not even just because she is sickened and grown frail... her hand leaves her clothing to curl stiffly around his shard. Despite the clumsiness of her stricken body, the numbness in her extremities... the touch is carefully light. It could be called delicate.

With her other, slightly still deft hand, she manages to finally undo the knot on her binding, tugging on a wrap job so vicious it seemed as if she were intent on smothering any part of her that was a woman. One tug, two, and there is a glimpse of stifled bosom swelling as she breathes in, her fingers delve between the cloth strips...

From just below and between her breasts she pulls a sharp, arrowhead-shaped shard from her body, one with a crack running through it, deep and painful. A shard which she deposits in her palm beside the golden crescent.]

[This is perhaps the hardest thing Claude has ever done. For someone who once described himself as the embodiment of distrust, to put his life in someone else's hands -- literally -- is excruciating. Or perhaps that's just instinctive revulsion to the Blight, and the coldness of Hayame's skin, but he doesn't betray his discomfort except for the way his hands tighten slightly into fists.

He then watches as she extracts her shard, bound and hidden away like so much of herself. He's concerned by its cracked appearance, but he doesn't comment. His own shard, despite its moonlike shape, has warmth more akin to the sun, already a slight balm to the frostbite eating away at her.]

Okay... Now for the next step. One sec. [He gets up to return to his room. Even the slight, brief distance from his Shard is painful on its own, and his jaw is set tight and voice subtly strained when he returns carrying a sheathed hunting knife.]

One drop of blood each, right? Shall I do the honours?

[Hayame has only allowed one other to see where her shard was, but it had not been because she'd been willing. A certain god of war had seen the sharp obsidian glistening against her skin in the Hall of Mirrors, when her injuries had left her clothing rent and torn, but she had not pulled it from her body. She had not laid it beside his. She has avoided letting anyone see or touch or know for so long but now...

If she doesn't, the Blight will take her before she can even know if she'll ever make it back to her world. Before she can even try to give up her life to right the wrongs she has done. Those things that she sometimes thinks, no matter how hard she struggles...

His shard is warm in her palm. Her eyes close when he stands to retrieve a weapon more suitable to the task than her own much longer blade, and her fingers curl around the shards as if she still had the strength in her to protect them. She doesn't open her eyes again until she hears him return, and even then... it takes her a moment to focus on him. A swallow makes its way down her throat. Will he be able to feel her, invade her... ? She feels so vulnerable, and she doesn't know if it's just because she's sick, because her shard is out, or-]

... Do it.

All right. Here goes.

[His eyes move from her to unsheathing his blade. He uses the knifepoint to make a tiny prick on the pad of his index finger, and as the blood begins to bead, he lets it drop onto Hayame's shard. It's absorbed through the crack in the arrowhead, and begins to crystallise inside the shard. Realising it seems to be working, he pricks Hayame's finger next, although she probably can't even feel that tiny nick as it begins to bleed.

The last thing to do is to maintain contact with her. So he sets the knife aside, and takes her free, desperately cold hand in his. Now to wait, and hope it works.]

[She can feel it- his blood inside of her shard. Inside of her. It settles somewhere inside of her, and this time when she shivers... it isn't because she's cold. But there's no stopping now. She may not feel it, but she sees it when blood blossoms on the tip of her finger... and she manages to curl the digit just enough to smear the crimson on the golden crescent of Claude's shard.

He touches her hand so easily. It shames her even now, after all of this. It would almost be easier if he looked at her like she expected, but the condemnation is all in her own head. She can't find it on his face, or in his eyes, and this time... she has his shard in her hand. She can't doubt how he feels with it there.

Gradually, the Blight-frosted color begins to fade from her fingers, which start to curl and twitch as feeling returns, and her breathing begins to ease.]

[Claude feels Hayame's blood enter his shard too, and her Blight along with it. It feels unnaturally cold and wrong, and that wrongness seeps into his being, though not enough that it will overcome him. As Hayame slowly returns to normal, though, he can feel his own vitality beginning to wane, strength leaving his limbs, and his face takes on a drained pallor. That doesn't stop him from smiling as he realises she's recovering, though.]

Hey, it's working... How do you feel?

[The question is gentle. She's probably still stewing on this being a humiliation or -- something -- but he doesn't think of it in those terms at all. If anything, he looks genuinely relieved.]

[She can't doubt what he's feeling when his shard is in her hand. Even though she wants to, even though she undoubtedly would have fallen back on her instinct to doubt and distrust otherwise... there is no denying it when she's touching his soul. He's relieved, and she cannot find anything lurking behind it.

Hayame waits until she is sure, until the color and numbness has largely faded from her fingers before she finally answers,]

... Better.

[The exhaustion lingers, she had barely slept, yet still... better. She can actually feel the physical weight of his shard in her hand now, not just the mental weight. She would be in his debt, now, he has "saved" her... and it chafes, but-]

... and you?

If you're good, then I'm good.

[Which is a blatant lie, when he can't hide much of anything from her right now, but he doesn't mean it literally. Rather, if she's recovering, he's reassured all this will have been worth it. The Blight siphoning from her and into him has also made being held by her a lot less unpleasant now, too.]

I'll just take the mother of all naps later and I'll be good to go.

[Though it takes more effort than it should, Hayame slowly manages to drag her upper half off the mattress and into a “sit”, her forelegs curling and tail whipping once beneath the blanket. Slow. Fine, she could go slow for now-]

You would try to lie to me, now of all times?

[Even though she’s grown accustomed (sort of) to how flippant and careless seeming he was with his words, Hayame refuses to let him gloss over the fact that, somehow, he has taken some of her illness into his body. Into his shard- the same one lying still warm like sunshine in her palm as such a contrast to the snowy frost of her own.]

Really, I'm just tired, that's all.

[He still holds her hand as she sits up, wanting to make sure the process completes fully before he lets go. Still, he'd glad her strength is returning, even slowly.]

So, it's not really a lie. If I get sick, I'll find someone to help.

[She doesn’t seem to begrudge his hand- or rather, she is too exhausted herself to be as ashamed over how lewd it is, that lingering touch. She forgets, too, about the loosened binding on her breasts and her general disheveled appearance, her long black mane tousled and unkept from “sleep”. It was hard to care about her body when the soul was parted from it.

And how she hated it- the reminder that they were reduced to hunks of rock. That the body she’d trained so hard, the only thing in her life that had even almost been her own… was just some shell now. That even as a shell the shape of it kept her apart from so many others.]

… and then the cycle will continue.

[Is that how they’re supposed to survive? Just passing the Blight from one to another? Her gaze falls back down to the shards in her unheld hand, to the bit of blood that had been absorbed. It is clearer in his golden hued crescent- the drop of crimson that had come from her. Would it linger? Was there some foul payment yet to be extracted?

Her thumb rubs gently over the surface of the golden shard, as if just trying to make sure she couldn’t just wipe that drop of blood away.]

[Claude doesn't mind how dishevelled she looks, and the thought simply crosses his mind that she looks as beautiful as ever. He's sure he looks not much better with his unruly curly hair still fully in Bedhead Mode before he tames it for the day, and his half-buttoned shirt rumpled. He really did just roll out of bed (or rather, the chair he slept in for lack of a bed) and went to check on Hayame first thing.]

Yeah. But it's a cycle that buys us more ti-- me...?

[His thought stutters and cuts off when he realises she's touching his shard. Of course, the blood has long since sunk into the shard and crystallised. What he's left with is something that feels... surprisingly gentle, for her. He never expected her to treat any part of him, much less his soul, with such care, when he was sure he tended to do little more than make her angry.

He swallows and continues.]

I mean, it's better than the alternative.

[The alternative. The one where they all just slowly die of the Blight one by one, all because the leaders of Zenith and Meridian just had to send people to that gods damned frozen island. Hayame almost curses them aloud, nearly expresses a lack of hope (again), but instead…

She rubs her thumb once more over the golden crescent. There’s no coming out for her blood now, though, and she looks upon the two shards in her hand with a somewhat unreadable expression before she finally moved that hand to winnow her fingers between the collapsing bindings to refix the arrowhead-like obsidian one between her breasts. Once it is back where is belongs (as if there was anything natural about them having shards at all)…]

You were a fool to offer me this like you did.

[She holds his out to him, palm up.]

[She touches his shard a second time, and he can't hide the full-body shiver it gives him, but it's still not unpleasant. Just... unfamiliar. He trusts her, and he knows for certain now that she won't hurt him.

Well, with anything other than words, anyway. He laughs a little to try to hide how uncharacteristically flustered he feels, carefully taking his shard and holding it up to the light, the red clearly visible now tinged in the gold.]

If being a fool means saving your life, I'll take that as some very high praise.

[He reaches to the back of his neck, puts the shard back in its place. Even such a small gesture feels like it takes a lot more effort than normal, his tired limbs aching with the movement.]

[That is definitively not what those words were intended to be, and yet of course he says them. She cannot even be surprised any longer. Hayame does watch him replace the shard closely, though.]

And now that you have saved it, what do you demand of me?

[She wonders if he will say something noble, as if she owed him nothing- even though surely they both knew that was not true. It was why she was so selective in the first place… over who might offer her help. To take it was to incur debt.

And she did not wish to be in anyone’s debt. Not anymore.]

Ooh, the great Hayame owing me a favour?

[He's usually the type to think of the advantage he can gain over others, but in this case, it truly hadn't occurred to him until she said it. She's not a rival or an enemy, just as he'd said, so he was unlikely to think of her in those terms.

But if it will help her feel like the exchange is more equal...]

How about the next time I need help, I'll call on you, and we'll consider the debt repaid. [He realises even as he says it that it's a suspiciously broad statement, so he elaborates.] Don't worry, it won't be anything like making you risk your life for me, since that would kind of defeat the purpose of today.

[The look on her face when he calls her "the great Hayame"... He had claimed that there were times when he could be serious when she'd accused him of never being it before, but he tests her every time. (That... and it just seems like mockery, to do it when she lays before him so residually weak.)]

... Let it be so.

[A favor. An offer to aid him, in whatever he might need. She can agree to that.

And now that it is done and decided... she twists from the "waist" and begins to roll her heavy lower half over to the other side of the mattress, clearing space closer to him.]

Edited 2023-05-05 14:05 (UTC)

The Seeds of Unrest, Phase Two 🌱

STIRRING STORMS

ORDERS

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