Home 26: Rooms to let, fifty cents

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Krayger nods and heads out to find Koshal. The squire is at the crossbow range but promptly finishes his set to have a pleasant visit with his Uncle. Nothing is particularly amiss aside from Koshal's steed being a bit more friendly with his uncle than he remembers.
And indeed Krayger does nothing particularly different that night either. He goes through his usual nightly routine and heads to bed, simply remembering that he's supposed to meet Leah somehow. Hopefully he has pants on in his dreams. And something sharp, if things get serious.

[Shadowcaller]

Dreaming of Fey

"Great." Jaahlyn smiles widely. "And I think that should be enough dreaming for today too..."

((And we can end the scene there.))

[Recaiden]

Unfortunately, Krayger is soon to be disappointed.
The dream starts normally enough, but soon he finds himself at the top of a long staircase; as long as five normal flights, and sized for a minotaur.
And by the time he gets to the bottom, and enters a cave filled with flickering shadows, he's naked and unarmed.

A whispering voice calls out "Come further." while another cries "Turn back!".
You know, you could just not worry about this fey stuff. It could get worse rather than better by messing with it, right?

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

Krayger does not fear caves. And he is never quite unarmed. Though it’s been ages since he actually used his horns for something, hasn’t it?
Without a comment, merely a shrug of his shoulders and his near-black wings Krayger continues into the cave unperturbed.

[Recaiden]

The whispers fall silent, and at the far end of the cave, Krayger finds two things:
One, a set of supplies - racks of clothing, tables of gear, trays of food.
Secondly, an archway leading to a far longer set of stairs.
This, he knows, is the last easy place to turn back.

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

Oh, perhaps Leah left these here for him? He doesn't see anyone else trying to take credit for this.
Still, he gets the nagging feeling that he should not be greedy with what has been left to him. Taking too much feels wrong. So he takes only one item from each table: rugged pants, a stout waraxe, and a pouch of nuts for the road.
He does not take the escape door, instead choosing to advance.

[Recaiden]

Perhaps. Or it could have been something else, who'll be back for these supplies at any moment.

The way forward is long, but not hard. 600 steps down, down, down, until suddenly, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and Krayger is surrounded by the towering trees of the forest, looming all around, contorted into strange and haunting shapes by the growth of ages. There is no stairway tunnel back behind him.

And finally, Leah is here, leaning against a tree-trunk, waiting for Krayger to arrive. She's wearing one of her checkered shirts and jacket, but a more splendid crown than when she was awake, her sunglasses a perfect mirror bright, and she does have her gun slung over her back.
"Good, you made it. Well, look at you."
A winged minotaur, that's new.

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

Krayger smiles, instinctively straightening his back. Maybe he didn't need to wear his formal shirts around Leah if she does appreciate him shirtless.
"Alright, so what's the plan? Do we have to get somewhere?" he asks Leah. He admit he is mostly unclear on what they're doing here.

[Recaiden]

"Hah, but, actually look at yourself." Leah instructs, smiling.
"We need to get out of the woods, first." She straightens up and points, off to the south, before springing away from the tree.

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

Krayger looks down at himself, confused. Six fingers, two hooves, horns, hair and wings. Seems like everything accounted for to him.
He's looking intently so much that he almost misses Leah springing away. Luckily she wasn't trying to be quiet about it. He hurries after her. At least he's somewhat at home dodging trees and running. Krayger would assume her legs mean she needs to watch out for thin spaces like him. But cats are liquid so maybe she can squeeze better than a bull like him can.
"So what's in that direction?" he asks her.

[Recaiden]

"Not the forest." It's metaphorically important to leave the woods. "Now, there's cities and rivers, deserts and crags, but that's not important."

She pauses, having just slid liquidly through two narrowly placed trees.
"Do you remember why you're here?"

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

Krayger nods having to go around the trees Leah so deftly squeezes through.
"You told me we were here so that I might properly understand that which I have acquired."
He pauses.
"But I don't really know what that means." he admits.

[Recaiden]

"Well, what have you acquired recently? Even things you think that you understand perfectly well."
Leah asks.

There's an increasing amount of faint sounds of animals out in the forest, wingbeats, cawing, low hooting calls, etc.

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

”It was a piece of a title. You called it the Eye of the Bird. It was from a bird so that makes sense, I suppose.” Krayger remembers as they go.
He’s also fairly sure the Prince said the phrase but that span of time is fuzzy in his memory.

[Recaiden]

"I think it's the other way around. It's a bird because it's called the Eye of the Bird."
And there are quite a few birds in the branches watching Krayger by now.

"Think it through, what do you remember about it?"

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

Krayger looks up at the trees, thinking.
"It was huge and dark. A storm followed it around at all times. It drove people to madness and anger and passion. It wasn't immune to bullets." he says simply. He glances at the birds. How odd.

[Recaiden]

"And which of those are true of you too?"
There's a path visible from where they've walked now. An archway of trees, branches heavy with birds, stretching away towards the light. Leah ignores it.

[Deathkeeper]

[Dreaming of Birds]

Krayger eyes the archway of birds but chooses to ignore it if his guide is.
"Ah. Well. Mostly just the last one, really." He's pretty normal sized, doesn't shoot lightning, and hasn't driven anyone to throw wild parties or duels simply by existing.
Though he can't technically prove that last one.

[Recaiden]

Leah sees no need to confirm this commonality. Why would Krayger be immune to bullets?
"And what do you remember about you, that's different from the eye?"

There's the rustling of a thousand wings as the birds take flight from their easily-trodden tunnel.

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

Krayger genuinely doesn't fathom where she's going with this.
"I'm not a giant bird, there isn't a storm following me at all times, I don't cause intense emotional responses to people merely by proximity, and I didn't get killed an absorbed by a freaky royal?
Also we're mostly different colors."
But that should all mostly be obvious? The shard hasn't really had any obvious effects yet.

[Recaiden]

"Krayger, does any of that matter to you? No, it's all things you aren't. A title isn't just a title, it's part of who you are. An answer to who you are."
Would he know if it had brought about any obvious effects?

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

Well, Krayger sort of gets this angle even if he isn't entirely sure where it's going.
"I'm a mercenary and an uncle. A fighter and a builder. A minotaur and a junior mage." he stop to think.
"And mostly brown." Is that a better answer for her?

[Morty]

[Dreaming of Birds]

There is something else in the dream. Something foreign, coming neither from Krayger nor Leah. It moves among the trees, its bright light shining through. From this distance, it seems serpentine in shape, surrounded by a corona of light. It's headed in headed in their direction and with it it's bringing a strange ambience. This is a dream, so of course nothing here is quite real. But this presence exists on a different layer of reality. It's coming from somewhere forever gone.

[Recaiden]

"Would it really matter if you weren't brown? Say if you were dyed a nice red?" As Leah suggests it, Krayger's fur should change color.

"Oh, but we have a visitor."
Not just someone dreaming,nor a figment of the dream. Something from somewhere categorically else. She points to the light.
"Be careful."

[bc56]

Suburban Street

Crash!

Someone is blasted through a bay window into an idyllic suburbs house. The victim, as he climbs mostly unharmed out of the wreckage, is clad entirely in turquoise power armor with a Greco-Roman style, a bright shield of light affixed to his left forearm.
The reason for his situation floats just outside the building. A blurry, solid black figure in the shape of a man, with glowing red eyes hovers menacingly above the street outside. As the blue hero recovers, the dark figure points, a ray of crimson energy streaking out from its fingertip and exploding where the hero was a moment ago, before he activated rocket boots to jump clear of the attack.
Hopefully, nobody's in that house right now. Other civilians are cowering in their homes to watch the conflict, or they're rushing to get into their cars and flee before things get worse. Usually, supers don't come this far outside Inside proper.

[Rebonack]

[Suburban Street]

Khannie was walking home because she had been grounded after getting lost Outside.

She was allowed to go to school and either stay there after hours to study (since Inari's is one of the safest places around) or come straight back home.

No going off on adventures by herself.

If she was going anywhere, Jace and Zebes would accompany her.

This time around, she was doing nothing more spectacular than just walking to her house from the nearby Riftline station. And in spite of how mundane this was, in spite of having walked exactly this route hundreds of times before, she encounters trouble.

Super-trouble.

Her eyes widen when she spies a figure in powered armor getting tossed through a house's wall, sending wood shrapnel flying everywhere. She recognizes him instantly.

"Hoplite?" the human girl mutters.

She had met him at Skyside back when she still had Grandpaw Koi's gift. It was only a few years ago, but when you're twelve a few years is a long time. She hadn't heard anything about him in quite a while on the TV or any of the super hero tracking websites so she was kind of worried. But then all of sudden he was back! She had found a few threads on a website that you're supposed to be 13 or older to sign up for speculating about what happened to him. She even found a few old ones on Ghost. Apparently supers came and went a whole lot in the Nexus.

Khannie, like the brave little fool she is, moves closer and hides behind a shrub to watch the battle.

"It's loud what's going-"

"Sssshhh!" Khannie hisses, shoving Maridia back into her pack as she peeks through the leaves.

This bad guy looks really tough. But Hoplite is doing pretty good? She probably shouldn't Transform... But she really wants to help, too! What could she do? Maybe if she...

Khannie mutters a few magic words, raises her hands with palms facing perpendicular and fingers crooked, then pushes them together with a quiet clap.

The shadow of a nearby telephone pole peels off the ground, suddenly gaining depth and aims to lash around the black figure's face to obscure his sight. It's only an illusion, albeit an illusion with visual and tactile elements. It'll behave is if it were an actual physical object rather than a phantasm.

[Deathkeeper]

Dreaming of Birds

"I was red for over a year. You saw me picking up Koshal for Thankmas, remember?" He doesn't really object to being made red again. It's a dream anyway. Unless Leah picked a particularly odd shade of red.
Their conversation is interrupted, however. Krayger puts a hand to the axe at his belt.
"What are we working with, here?" he asks.

[bc56]

Suburban Street

The dark figure ignores the grasping arms, moving through them as if it's not there. Seemingly unconcerned, it fires another blast at Hoplite, managing to torch a decorative yew bush but again missing the hero. He fires back, a brilliant blast of blue-white light searing a hole straight through the dark figure's chest...
Which promptly fills back in as if nothing had happened. The figure descends, landing lightly on the grass. Silently, it raises its finger for another attack.

[Rebonack]

[Suburban Street]

It phased through her grab!

Which is rude.

Granted, Khannie did that sort of thing all the time as Ghost. She can't be certain, but it might work sort of like how her insubstantial ability used to? If it does, she can think of a few ways to bypass it! Her ability to phase wasn't automatic, she had to think about it. Which meant catching her by surprise was the best bet, as the few knocks she got around the head attested. But then again-

-she watches the energy blast tear through the inky entity and hole fill itself right back in-

-it doesn't seem like there's much to hit in there.

Khannie wracks her brain. There are a couple possibilities. This thing might be insubstantial like she was. An actual ghost. OR it might have actual solid parts hidden inside its body and the spooky black shadow is a projection to obscure whatever might be inside. If it's the second one then what they need is some kind of wide-ranging attack that might catch whatever is inside the thing.

Seeing the entity pointing at Hoplite again, Khannie makes a tugging motion from her hiding spot, darkness rapidly congealing as a pitch-black wire-frame that resolves into a rock wall in front of the shadow, quite likely blocking its explosive beam point blank. Unable to endure that kind of punishment, the illusion dissipates, but likely not before causing the shadow's own projectile to explode right in its face.

"Beans," Khannie sort-of-swears. That wasn't what she was aiming for but it might work.

[bc56]

Suburban Street
The blast explodes in the figure's face, throwing it backwards and apparently melting much of its front, until it reforms almost immediately afterwards. Without even looking around for a source of the mysterious wall, it steps back and prepares for more attacks. Hoplite rushes towards it, creating a spear of light to stab at the entity, but it shifts, a dark sword crackling red energy appearing in its hand to parry the attack and respond in kind, deflected off Hoplite's shield.