[Lucien gets an indignant ear tug for that--once he's close enough.
The staff looks more mechanical than it does fantastical, but the results are pretty much the same. A pronged housing, like a ring, on a stick. Just gotta shove the diamond in.]
Be careful, please. Don't touch it.
[He leaves Lucien's side to stand instead in front of his own locker. There isn't really any reluctance to open the door; the Core can't do anything untouched, so it's fine. Sitting--no, hovering, twisting and turning, living, inside the locker is an organic prism. It pulses, stirred from slumber, and small electrical currents hop across Viktor's hand, through the leg of his pants.
The humming song from the night before rises in Lucien's mind again, louder this time.]
[ this is so fucked up and insanely attractive of him. listen, he thinks viktor is a very nice boy and him being moral and stuff is a good thing to lucien weirdly enough but god the fucked up little scientist thing really does it for him. he is sooooooo strange and it is hot.
he'll take a couple steps towards it, just observing, but he's at least barely smart enough to not reach out and touch it like he was warned. he'll watch the electrical pulse for a moment, tilting his head. ]
Viktor is staring intently at the gyrating prism. Lucien can stare at it, too. In fact, it seems to beg him to stare at it. The glow from the heart of it swells, swells, swells into the full of Lucien's vision. His head aches suddenly, and his vision teeters inward, dizzying.
The glow ebbs, and he's left with a spiraling descent into a void of space from where the ethereal hum of the arcane is coming. A tapestry of organic webbing crisscrosses all around him, leaving him standing? floating? falling? in a vast ocean of primal magic. The air is metallic, like pennies--like blood, and the energized space makes Lucien's hair stand on end.
Lucien blinks, and then he's in a narrow, large, too-posh hallway. Rich. Elaborate. A young woman is walking briskly ahead of him, her arms around a journal. She's talking to herself:]
"Viktor, I've been working on a... private project for a couple of weeks now..." Mm, no. "Viktor, I've been working on this for a year now" ... "Viktor, I was hoping you might take a look at something I've been working on"...
[ a sensation that should be more unfamiliar than it is, but instead just rings an echoing mirror of a vision he's had again and again - the pattern, the pattern, the pattern. and he half expects a whisper, a berating any moment for hiding for so long. red eyes calling back the void. he barely notices when the scene changes and he's somewhere else. hallucinations aren't exactly new either.
the woman is new though. he's not so totally lost in his head that he doesn't remember what the memory experience is like - but it does take him by surprise. he'd thought this was over.
he'll follow close behind then. he doubts there will be any good in attempting to stop her? what has already happened, has already happened. ]
The whispering of the Core is behind him. The young woman keeps walking. She's cute and mundane, sweet. She's having an entire ordeal trying to figure out how to get Viktor's attention once she gets where she's going. Probably to Viktor. She takes out a set of large, heavy keys so she can get into the next door.
The organic spiderweb of void flickers in, obscuring Lucien's vision, and when it vanishes again in the span of those half seconds, Lucien is now seated on a stool in front of a work table. Every ounce of his clothes has been discarded to the floor on the right. In front of him are two scalpels and hovering in front of him is a matrix, each side of the many pyramids that make it up etched with runes of the arcane. It's already started to learn, to evolve, to turn twisted with lifeblood.
The Shimmer is gone, Lucien finds, and the anxious rise in his throat turns quickly to stubborn desperation. He exchanges the empty vial with the scalpel. The thought of dying hurts more than cutting into his thin flesh--all over the arms, the chest.
It's time.
The next step in becoming cosmic, glorious. Whole. Alive. It will work. It will work. It can fix the perpetually aching back and pelvis like it fixed the leg. The Core wakes under Lucien's hand as it reaches out, flourishing with the same energy as what was in the void.
What is the price of having a life? Another life? Pay the price.]
[ everything old is new, and everything new is old. there's a rising sense of panic as he hears (hears?) the voice, calling. panic, and fear and anger. how fucking dare it address him now, after all this. if they're looking for lucien tavelle, that's not supposed to be him right now. if he presses forward into the memory, then they won't see.
the only way forward is through. the blink into the next part of the scene is easily accepted, dream logic works as you'd expect. it will work, because the only option is for it to work. he is tired of picking up the pieces. the dream of ████████ will make all things whole again, starting with him. of course it makes sense to reach out, make the trade. an easy one, considering he's spent so much of his life already trading blood for power.
It's Sky, clinging to Lucien, having not even hesitated to race in to help, not a single ounce of hesitation. It's Sky, blown into nothing but ash, expelled even beyond Oblivion as if she never even existed, the taste of her in the air like chalk in Lucien's mouth. How strange, how someone, how an actual person can be reduced to such an insignificant, tiny state.
The ash grows a pair of wings, rounded on the corners; butterflies which flit away. A voice calls out for him, pulling the curtain of memory aside to reveal the crochet of the odd void again. Familiar. A voice thick with blood, but wrapped around amusement.] Lucien. [Brevyn's voice.] Lucien? [Then as the voice becomes clearer,
it's a bit softer, has an accent behind it.]
...Lucien?
[When Lucien opens his eyes, Viktor is standing there looking at him, worried, having shifted the staff to his left hand. The right one is poised, reaching out, but not touching Lucien just yet, as if waiting to see if Lucien will finally focus.
Behind Viktor, the Core does a tantalizing little dance.]
[ it is, it is ash. it's the ash of Sky and the ash of Aeor and the ash of-- the journal has been burned, but strangely he feels the phantom press of it now against his chest. oddly warm in contrast to the frigid, biting cold of Eiselcross. searing like scalpel cuts into the skin. Brevyn's hands pushing the book against him. Sky's hands around his arm and trying and failing to pull him back. a glaive twisting in his chest as the ribs crack beneath it. the price of a ticket. a life for a life for a life.
his eyes dart around wildly for a moment, first at Viktor and then at the Core, and then back to Viktor, face hot and flushed and panicked. tense like a rabbit about to run, or a snake about to strike. ]
[ the first touch on his shoulder seems to make him flinch as if he expects it to hurt - to burn to like every other thought he's just had, but he doesn't move away. the red eye on the side of lucien's under viktor's hand slides across the skin away from his touch. ]
I heard them-- I saw ... [ he keeps trailing off, which isn't helpful, but he doesn't quite know what to say yet. scrubbing a hand over his face, across his eyes, a sharp intake. he's muttering to himself which probably isn't a great sign, but he is known to have arguments with himself a lot. ]
Your memory, I think.
[ viktor had described what happened to sky, but seeing is always a bit different than hearing about something. ]
[The start and stopping, the muttering, doesn't seem to bother Viktor much. He understands. He gives Lucien time.
His expression tumbles into something pensive, and then quickly apologetic.] I'm sorry... [This again? Isn't one week enough? He thought... He thought Lucien had been spared such grievances. He thought... maybe it could have been a better one than what it seems to have been. But his life was always a long list of misfortunes, wasn't it?
The same sort of sorry is in the way his thumb brushes Lucien's jaw.]
You don't have to stay... if you don't want. I'll get it in the housing.
[ A thought floats through his head. a woman's voice, haughty and assured. `You say that now because you are young and scarred only by tragedies not of your own making. Greatness inevitably requires action, and action begets mistakes.` he sets his jaw and shakes his head. It's not like he wants Viktor to start apologizing for ... what? exactly? getting his memories shared against his will? everyone does that.
Besides, he's not going to let that rotten cube of magic win their little battle of wills here. that's what that was, wasn't it? it feels pointed. like it was trying to rattle him on purpose. one by one, the eyes start to flare up and he makes a bit of a face as he watches the walls shimmer and crack through with flesh with the true sight, the chatter of every mind nearby starting to whisper at his ear, but the anti-magic will kick into life after a moment. ]
[He stands there for half a moment and looks into Lucien's face, studying it in the curious way he would often do before.
Yes. Love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress.
The eyes begin to glow, and he kisses Lucien quickly on the corner of the mouth before turning around out of the way and sidling up parallel, shoulder to shoulder, waiting.
The Hex Core is blasted by Lucien's beautiful breasts, and it becomes suddenly frozen in place. The outer spines of it undulate, but it ceases its endless turning, and the light within grows dim and winks out. Viktor waits for a long moment, and then he steps forward toward the locker cautiously. When he gets to it, he hesitantly, ever so slowly, reaches out with his right hand to nervously tap the very edge of it once. The Eye evaporates the glow and energy to his hand (and leg, beneath the pants) as it passes through, but he isn't bothered by it.
The Core does little more than ripple at the extremities.]
[ he's still clearly agitated - sometimes his eyes can be hard to track with the red-on-red of the iris but he's flicking between looking back at Viktor and the Hex Core itself. it's still beautiful, but many deadly things are. What are the chances he ends up like Sky did? nothing but ash and regrets? but Viktor had asked him to trust, and that's what he's chosen to do. taking a breath out after the kiss, concentrating on the eyes instead.
he's always more than a little smug when the anti-magic works, tilting his head and giving viktor a grin. shifting in place to cock a hip and put his hand on it, the red eye on his chest glowing brightly, but staying where he is so he doesn't move the field. he can probably see the boundaries of it because the air outside of it shimmers slightly at the edges. ]
Might want to hurry. Who knows how long it'll work, and I don't think it likes me much.
He gives Lucien a firm nod of understanding, and then lifts the prison end of the staff. The naughty blood magic prism gets the pear wriggler. He props the staff close, then sort of... bats the inert prism into the open end. It gets wedged between the prongs, but with it immobile in the anti-magic cone, he's able to bop it down into the cage of the staff.
This cone is probably so fucking big, but whatever, he steps back and out of the edge of it with the trapped Core, switching the staff to his right hand. As soon as it leaves the field, it whirls hungrily to life again, the glow swelling awake in the center of it. Magical energy hops in little currents up and down the metal of the staff, colliding with the ones from Viktor's hand and fizzling out into the air.
[ well he has a right to be cocky i spent some time googling anti-magic field and every post about it is reddit bros SO ANGRY the only counter to it is "send in a guy with a good old non-magical knife" so all hail the 8th level spell. anti-magic field: it's some bullshit!
he'll turn the eyes off then, tilting his head and watching carefully, following the streaks of magic energy. ]
[Hmmmm. He ponders the snorb by peering up at the Core as it loops and wiggles inside of its cage. Like Lucien, he's not... entirely sure how to feel about something like it.]
I don't know... I know it's extremely dangerous, but... I don't think... it's evil. It just... learns. It evolves based on what it absorbs. In the wrong hands, it could be used for terrible things.
[ you can tell he's feeling more normal this week because the cheeky bastardry comes so naturally now. ]
As I've said, I have placed my trust in you and your understanding of this thing, and I believe entirely in your ability to solve the problem. But the nagging voice of the part of myself you so begged for me to listen to compels me to ask: if it learns from what it absorbs, is feeding it nine distinctly insane and malevolent mage ghosts going to be ... a good idea?
[Get out of here with that logic, he is running on desperation and love only.]
Well, the Core does seem to... [He trails off with a somewhat forlorn frown.] I don't think... they would necessarily survive transmutation with the Core, but their essence, their... power... probably would become integrated into the Core's learning.
So it would follow the same sort of rules. Not evil, but... could potentially be dangerous if in the wrong hands.
[ he pauses, and then goes to pull the amulet off from around his neck, holding it out. the little vial of blood in the middle sloshes around. ]
Could try with a smaller piece of it first. See what it does with it. That has the power of the Mind Rend in it, which I clearly don't need now that I can do it on my own again.
Otherwise, you should hold onto it. Good for you to have a defense of some kind, and it doesn't require any aiming. Just a touch and a thought.
[He looks startled and surprised at the offered amulet. He keeps glancing back and forth between it and Lucien much like Lucien had been doing with him and the Core.
He ventures over, but only to sort of touch it gently in Lucien's hand. Touched, but unsure if Lucien is making the right decision giving it up.]
I thought... you were the one who said it was dangerous to just give away your blood?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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The staff looks more mechanical than it does fantastical, but the results are pretty much the same. A pronged housing, like a ring, on a stick. Just gotta shove the diamond in.]
Be careful, please. Don't touch it.
[He leaves Lucien's side to stand instead in front of his own locker. There isn't really any reluctance to open the door; the Core can't do anything untouched, so it's fine. Sitting--no, hovering, twisting and turning, living, inside the locker is an organic prism. It pulses, stirred from slumber, and small electrical currents hop across Viktor's hand, through the leg of his pants.
The humming song from the night before rises in Lucien's mind again, louder this time.]
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he'll take a couple steps towards it, just observing, but he's at least barely smart enough to not reach out and touch it like he was warned. he'll watch the electrical pulse for a moment, tilting his head. ]
Shall I?
[ turn it off, he means. ]
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Viktor is staring intently at the gyrating prism. Lucien can stare at it, too. In fact, it seems to beg him to stare at it. The glow from the heart of it swells, swells, swells into the full of Lucien's vision. His head aches suddenly, and his vision teeters inward, dizzying.
The glow ebbs, and he's left with a spiraling descent into a void of space from where the ethereal hum of the arcane is coming. A tapestry of organic webbing crisscrosses all around him, leaving him standing? floating? falling? in a vast ocean of primal magic. The air is metallic, like pennies--like blood, and the energized space makes Lucien's hair stand on end.
Lucien blinks, and then he's in a narrow, large, too-posh hallway. Rich. Elaborate. A young woman is walking briskly ahead of him, her arms around a journal. She's talking to herself:]
"Viktor, I've been working on a... private project for a couple of weeks now..." Mm, no. "Viktor, I've been working on this for a year now" ... "Viktor, I was hoping you might take a look at something I've been working on"...
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the woman is new though. he's not so totally lost in his head that he doesn't remember what the memory experience is like - but it does take him by surprise. he'd thought this was over.
he'll follow close behind then. he doubts there will be any good in attempting to stop her? what has already happened, has already happened. ]
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where?WHERE?where?WHERE?where?where?where?whERe?WHEREAREYOU?
The whispering of the Core is behind him. The young woman keeps walking. She's cute and mundane, sweet. She's having an entire ordeal trying to figure out how to get Viktor's attention once she gets where she's going. Probably to Viktor. She takes out a set of large, heavy keys so she can get into the next door.
The organic spiderweb of void flickers in, obscuring Lucien's vision, and when it vanishes again in the span of those half seconds, Lucien is now seated on a stool in front of a work table. Every ounce of his clothes has been discarded to the floor on the right. In front of him are two scalpels and hovering in front of him is a matrix, each side of the many pyramids that make it up etched with runes of the arcane. It's already started to learn, to evolve, to turn twisted with lifeblood.
The Shimmer is gone, Lucien finds, and the anxious rise in his throat turns quickly to stubborn desperation. He exchanges the empty vial with the scalpel. The thought of dying hurts more than cutting into his thin flesh--all over the arms, the chest.
It's time.
The next step in becoming cosmic, glorious. Whole. Alive. It will work. It will work. It can fix the perpetually aching back and pelvis like it fixed the leg. The Core wakes under Lucien's hand as it reaches out, flourishing with the same energy as what was in the void.
What is the price of having a life? Another life? Pay the price.]
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the only way forward is through. the blink into the next part of the scene is easily accepted, dream logic works as you'd expect. it will work, because the only option is for it to work. he is tired of picking up the pieces. the dream of ████████ will make all things whole again, starting with him. of course it makes sense to reach out, make the trade. an easy one, considering he's spent so much of his life already trading blood for power.
he knows the price of a ticket. ]
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That's the price of a ticket.
It's Sky, clinging to Lucien, having not even hesitated to race in to help, not a single ounce of hesitation. It's Sky, blown into nothing but ash, expelled even beyond Oblivion as if she never even existed, the taste of her in the air like chalk in Lucien's mouth. How strange, how someone, how an actual person can be reduced to such an insignificant, tiny state.
The ash grows a pair of wings, rounded on the corners; butterflies which flit away. A voice calls out for him, pulling the curtain of memory aside to reveal the crochet of the odd void again. Familiar. A voice thick with blood, but wrapped around amusement.] Lucien. [Brevyn's voice.] Lucien? [Then as the voice becomes clearer,
it's a bit softer, has an accent behind it.]
...Lucien?
[When Lucien opens his eyes, Viktor is standing there looking at him, worried, having shifted the staff to his left hand. The right one is poised, reaching out, but not touching Lucien just yet, as if waiting to see if Lucien will finally focus.
Behind Viktor, the Core does a tantalizing little dance.]
Are you alright?
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his eyes dart around wildly for a moment, first at Viktor and then at the Core, and then back to Viktor, face hot and flushed and panicked. tense like a rabbit about to run, or a snake about to strike. ]
Did you-- ... ?
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His hand finally darts out, tender, touching Lucien's shoulder first--it's him--before rising to stoke his neck while he steps closer.]
It's me. We're here. Are you alright...? What happened? Your face is so warm, Lucien.
[His first thought is the Core made Lucien ill.]
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I heard them-- I saw ... [ he keeps trailing off, which isn't helpful, but he doesn't quite know what to say yet. scrubbing a hand over his face, across his eyes, a sharp intake. he's muttering to himself which probably isn't a great sign, but he is known to have arguments with himself a lot. ]
Your memory, I think.
[ viktor had described what happened to sky, but seeing is always a bit different than hearing about something. ]
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His expression tumbles into something pensive, and then quickly apologetic.] I'm sorry... [This again? Isn't one week enough? He thought... He thought Lucien had been spared such grievances. He thought... maybe it could have been a better one than what it seems to have been. But his life was always a long list of misfortunes, wasn't it?
The same sort of sorry is in the way his thumb brushes Lucien's jaw.]
You don't have to stay... if you don't want. I'll get it in the housing.
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[ A thought floats through his head. a woman's voice, haughty and assured. `You say that now because you are young and scarred only by tragedies not of your own making. Greatness inevitably requires action, and action begets mistakes.` he sets his jaw and shakes his head. It's not like he wants Viktor to start apologizing for ... what? exactly? getting his memories shared against his will? everyone does that.
Besides, he's not going to let that rotten cube of magic win their little battle of wills here. that's what that was, wasn't it? it feels pointed. like it was trying to rattle him on purpose. one by one, the eyes start to flare up and he makes a bit of a face as he watches the walls shimmer and crack through with flesh with the true sight, the chatter of every mind nearby starting to whisper at his ear, but the anti-magic will kick into life after a moment. ]
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Yes. Love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress.
The eyes begin to glow, and he kisses Lucien quickly on the corner of the mouth before turning around out of the way and sidling up parallel, shoulder to shoulder, waiting.
The Hex Core is blasted by Lucien's beautiful breasts, and it becomes suddenly frozen in place. The outer spines of it undulate, but it ceases its endless turning, and the light within grows dim and winks out. Viktor waits for a long moment, and then he steps forward toward the locker cautiously. When he gets to it, he hesitantly, ever so slowly, reaches out with his right hand to nervously tap the very edge of it once. The Eye evaporates the glow and energy to his hand (and leg, beneath the pants) as it passes through, but he isn't bothered by it.
The Core does little more than ripple at the extremities.]
...It worked.
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he's always more than a little smug when the anti-magic works, tilting his head and giving viktor a grin. shifting in place to cock a hip and put his hand on it, the red eye on his chest glowing brightly, but staying where he is so he doesn't move the field. he can probably see the boundaries of it because the air outside of it shimmers slightly at the edges. ]
Might want to hurry. Who knows how long it'll work, and I don't think it likes me much.
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He gives Lucien a firm nod of understanding, and then lifts the prison end of the staff. The naughty blood magic prism gets the pear wriggler. He props the staff close, then sort of... bats the inert prism into the open end. It gets wedged between the prongs, but with it immobile in the anti-magic cone, he's able to bop it down into the cage of the staff.
This cone is probably so fucking big, but whatever, he steps back and out of the edge of it with the trapped Core, switching the staff to his right hand. As soon as it leaves the field, it whirls hungrily to life again, the glow swelling awake in the center of it. Magical energy hops in little currents up and down the metal of the staff, colliding with the ones from Viktor's hand and fizzling out into the air.
But the Core stays!]
Incredible...
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he'll turn the eyes off then, tilting his head and watching carefully, following the streaks of magic energy. ]
Everything you dreamed of?
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I don't know... I know it's extremely dangerous, but... I don't think... it's evil. It just... learns. It evolves based on what it absorbs. In the wrong hands, it could be used for terrible things.
...But I do think it's amazing.
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...Yes, Lucien?
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As I've said, I have placed my trust in you and your understanding of this thing, and I believe entirely in your ability to solve the problem. But the nagging voice of the part of myself you so begged for me to listen to compels me to ask: if it learns from what it absorbs, is feeding it nine distinctly insane and malevolent mage ghosts going to be ... a good idea?
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Well, the Core does seem to... [He trails off with a somewhat forlorn frown.] I don't think... they would necessarily survive transmutation with the Core, but their essence, their... power... probably would become integrated into the Core's learning.
So it would follow the same sort of rules. Not evil, but... could potentially be dangerous if in the wrong hands.
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Could try with a smaller piece of it first. See what it does with it. That has the power of the Mind Rend in it, which I clearly don't need now that I can do it on my own again.
Otherwise, you should hold onto it. Good for you to have a defense of some kind, and it doesn't require any aiming. Just a touch and a thought.
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He ventures over, but only to sort of touch it gently in Lucien's hand. Touched, but unsure if Lucien is making the right decision giving it up.]
I thought... you were the one who said it was dangerous to just give away your blood?
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he'll push it forward more insistently. ]
Yes, well, it is dangerous. You're going to do god's knows what with it. [ ... ] I told you that I trust you. I'm yours to do with as you wish.
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Don't make it sound like I'm going to feed you to a hag.
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