aionlogs | [CLOSED]

To Matt's gaze, Xishen appears as if out of invisibility. His eyes strain in the dim, catching on the motes of gold and slowly adjusting to take in the rest of her. In his own Achamoth-approved grays and blacks, Matt feels like an apprentice storm cloud. A paltry wisp of the dark she seems to wear like a second skin.

As soon as he's pieced together that she's here, Xishen's walking past him.

"Oh, ah--"

Matt turns in place to follow her back out.

"Right. Lead the way."

He has so many questions. Where are we going? Why me? What's in your bag? But he figures these things will make themselves clear on the sooner end of later.

She leads him out into the darkened hall, heading towards a nearby doorway, with a series of sigils carved into its center. It could almost be taken as a jail cell, as she presses her palm against the sigils, unlocked by some kind of sorcery specific to her. A soft golden glow passes through the marking before the door swings open.

If it's a cell, there's no prisoner at the moment. Instead, there is a ring built into the floor, surrounding a patch of dirt. An Aion portal, based by the energies swirling above it.

"I'm going to close the door behind us, so we aren't followed," she says, and a moment later she's making some arcane gesture at the door, which causes it to swing shut. "This portal is one of mine. It'll take us where we need to go."

And with that, she passes through.

On the other side of the portal is a cavernous underground space that Matt will find familiar. It's the very same throne room that all of them were locked up in, back during their arrival. It's cleared out now, with nothing but scattered vestiges of the people that had been held captive there: bits of charcoal and ash from campfires, a torn fabric made absolutely filthy with black ichor, bloodstains on the floor.

Xishen stares out as it as she waits for Matt to arrive.

Matt nods at Xishen's explanation, though he can't help but wonder who in the Citadel would be following them. He supposes if he stopped to ask himself Matt, can you trust everybody here, his self-answer would be a resounding no. He just hadn't imagined Xishen might share his opinion.

Stepping through the portal brings him to a familiar sight. The cavern looks just as it did when Matt saw it last, right down to its battle scars. It's strange--though what did he expect? A janitorial staff to come through in the interim? Matt's gaze slides to Xishen as he draws up next to her.

She glances at him to confirm he's present, and then heads towards the ritual circle inside which she once made a woman melt into shadow. It seems as if she's already spent some time cleaning the area of debris, as the lines of the carving are as clear and precise as they ever were. There is a broom still resting off to the side, along with some dirty rags.

"I want your help casting a scrying spell," she says. She reaches into her bag, and pulls out a lump that's been wrapped in cloth. She carefully unwraps it, eventually exposing what appears to be a porcelain hand, with long, clawed fingers. One finger is missing, apparently having been broken off at some point.

"On this," she says, lifting it up for him to see.

Oh ... kay.

Matt blinks as he takes in the strange artifact. At least, that's how it strikes him on first glance, its lines and texture just alien enough to read as not-a-hand. As he contemplates it, he wonders--who does he know with claws? He can't remember any of the Pleroma he saw up close having anything like that.

"Okay," he murmurs, nodding thoughtfully. His expression sharpens as he lifts his gaze to Xishen. "If that's been like ... affected by Innocence energy ... I'm not totally sure what that'll do to the spell, if anything. But I can give it a try."

A dainty pause.

"Do you need me to work with that circle? It's probably quicker if I just do my own."

Xishen stares at him.

"...I'm asking for your help to do the ritual," she says, after a beat. "Not for you to do it yourself. I'll be leading and, yes, we do need to use the circle."

She exhales and steps over its threshold, moving towards the eye-shaped marking in the center. With a flick of her hand, the various nodes of the circle shimmer with a faint golden light.

"You aren't the only witch in the Citadel."

For a second, Matt's eyes narrow. If he were the kind of person who could disguise his emotions, he definitely wouldn't let a look like that slip out, but the best he can do is bury emotions he senses are inconvenient before he's cognizant of having them. The piece of him that feels like a disfavored younger sibling wants to say, Maybe a little more upfront explanation would have helped.

Instead, he spends a moment breathing. Feels his heartbeat slow, and the set of his shoulders soften.

"In that case," he says, "I'll do my best to follow you. I don't ..."

A moment's pause, as he realizes he's stumbled into uncertain territory.

"I haven't cast with other people. Very much. So just, if I'm not doing something right, it's not on purpose."

"That's alright," she says. For all the friction that was seemingly there a moment ago, she doesn't look that concerned about it now. Matt is agreeing to help, so any misplaced glares are ignored for the time being. "I haven't worked with another Aion for a long time, either. And, honestly... I'm not really sure if this will work."

She makes it to the middle of the circle and places the petrified hand at the center of the eye, sitting cross-legged on one side of it. She beckons Matt over.

"This hand was broken off the petrified body of one of the Pleroma, during the plague in Venera. I don't know if, in sympathetic magic terms, it will read as being connected to the Pleroma who lost it, or the Innocence creature who turned it to stone in the first place." She lifts her shoulders. "I'm hoping for the latter."

"Aions usually don't leave a body behind when they are dissipated. That this hand is still here... it's interesting, to say the least. It suggests to me that it's more rooted the magic of the infection itself than its victim."

Matt is, at least, attuned enough to bodies in space to go where Xishen directs him. He frowns at the clawed hand, gaze lingering on the eye at the center of the circle. A very similar eye is embedded in his own palm. Matt wonders if that's part of reason he's been chosen to assist on this.

"That's kind of what I was thinking," he admits. "In terms of not being sure how the petrification would affect a scry." He's gonna skip right over Aions 'usually' doing anything when they're dissipated. "The other possibility that occurs to me is that ... if there are other Legacy beings out there currently, and their magic has significant commonalities or overlap, you could wind up detecting one of them rather than the Innocence."

He shouldn't be surprised that Xishen wants to find it, given all the anguish it's caused. He thinks of Amos saying, in Amos' unvarnished way, that he wants to kill it, and hopes that's not what Xishen wants with the thing.

Xishen contemplates that briefly and then shakes her head.

"I don't think there are. At least, not in the way you might be thinking." She meets his gaze across the severed hand. "Legacies aren't... a phenomenon that extends beyond the people that embody them. Do you have... star signs where you're from? It's like that, but more literal."

She lifts her shoulders.

"It's not like the Solios star sign is a god or creature with a will of its own. It's just a bunch of people with similar traits. Does that make sense?"

"We have tons of star signs where I'm from," Matt notes ruefully. A moment later, he corrects himself, "Had. Though they didn't have a huge amount of bearing on my practice."

Still, it's a point of reference he understands. Matt considers the potential implications, thinking back to Venera. The way the contagion spread, the blame placed on the Aions--specifically the Pleroma, in the Regent's case, Aions in general according to some Venerans.

"So this entity manifested because of the Aions from the corresponding Legacy?" he says. "I mean, that kind of thing might've been classified as a kind of tulpa--born out of psychic energy, shaped by mental focus, but then sort of detaching from its creator and acting independently."

"It's possible," Xishen admits. "An Aion's power can develop in so many directions... there are few things entirely off limits, I think. It could be the creation of an Innocent, or some corruption of an Innocent's spiritual power, yes."

She sighs, placing her hand over the bit of porcelain laying between them.

"I'd like to know, one way or another. No matter what it is, I think it's been enough to hold the Regent's attention during Inoseri for some time now. This is just the first time anything has slipped out."

She reaches into her bag and starts pulls out an athame.

"...How do you usually scry for something?"

Matt nods, a slight grimace on his face as he turns that over. It's one thing to say that nothing's off-limits; kind of another to see a manifestation of the principle in action, crowned with numberless wings.

Not above using blood in spellcasting, his own or from the butcher, he's not particularly unnerved by the production of a blade. He does focus up slightly, though. Matt spares only a thought for the fact that nothing's emerged during Inoseri before, for the Regent's attention on the matter--and files that away for later. For now, there's spells afoot.

"Well ... here, I've used some herbs and plants that correspond with divination and psychic powers generally. Or at least, they're the closest analogues I can find to what I would've used back home." Matt rustles in his satchel and comes up with a few sprigs of dried leaves and flowers. "And they're nice to have. But so far what really matters seems to be setting up the right configuration of sigils, focusing, and--"

Achieving a demi-meditative sensual state, letting energy flow with his breath.

"--Letting the body part do most of the work."

"Right," Xishen murmurs, not really seemingly to know what he means by that last part. "Well, set up any herbs or sigls you need. I'll work with this circle... hopefully in tandem."

Once he's ready, she cuts one side of her hand, squeezing the blood onto the inscriptions below. The blood seems to be absorbed into them, flowing through the lines like ink gradually fleshing out a greater image. The motes of golden light around her seem to multiply, flickering about with a more frenzied energy than before.

"By the blood of the Martyr..."

Matt will feel the energy of the spell building around them, something tickling at his shard as it does.

Matt's lips quirk, amused despite himself.

"A crash course in syncretism," he notes. "Well, just let me know if I put anything in the wrong spot."

He spends a few moments surveying the circle before he actually sets anything down. His breath catches gently. Then lines of golden light begin to limn themselves across the configuration, shaping to Matt's favored sigils: some based on Sanskrit, some Solomonic. He unfurls his map of Horos, marking it with chalk in a few key spots, and sets it down. The dried plants end up going on the 'spokes' of the circle, placed within two triangles and one smaller circle. The gold lines are a bit ashier than he's used to, shot through with hints of gray, but it's been like that ever since he got his powers back.

He's not surprised by the way Xishen's blood seems to animate the inscriptions on the cavern floor; he recalls that well enough from the last time he was here. He is surprised when his shard reacts to the barometric changes in the air. It feels much more sensitive than Matt's accustomed to, even with a spell being cast right under him. Still, they seem to be off to the races, so Matt focuses on breathing--on letting the bright ribbon of power at the base of his belly rise like vapor, light and heat. Something Xishen can shape to follow the intention of the spell.

Edited (oops the MAP) 2022-07-12 14:33 (UTC)

Ultimately, they seem compatible enough to make things work. Xishen accommodates the energy Matt is putting forth, channeling it into the circle beneath them; to Matt, it will feel as if a gateway to a higher realm is splitting open beneath them, leaving them to dangle above a swirling infinity. Xishen doesn't seem surprised, moving with the energy as she cuts sigils into the air around her.

There flickering sensations sneak their way into his mind's eye, as if leaking from that gate they now sit upon. For a moment, he will even feel its presence... a fragment of that blinding light, that depthless peace.

As he does, the energy he wields his magic with is being sucked from his body at a rapid pace. A moment later, Xishen seems to lose control over the spell, the circle beneath them sputtering with light. The metaphorical gateway snaps shut, leaving them both gasping with exertion.

"Fuck!" Xishen declares a moment later. She pries her dagger from her hand, where the hilt has apparently singed her skin.

Matt's missed swirling infinities, honestly. There's still a taste of it when he casts spells, a wistful glimpse through a door into the heart of things. But Howl was right, that first day they emerged from the cavern: It's not the same. The cosmic pulse is darker than it was, its vistas narrower. In this moment, Matt feels like he'd risk anything--bodily annihilation, madness--just to see more.

But all too soon, the moment passes. He can sense something starting to go--if not wrong, then spinning into a new tempo, one that runs downhill faster than he can think about stopping it. Matt's heart starts beating faster; his breath comes quicker; the blood pounds in his veins in service to--

That?

Matt's on the cusp of naming the Innocence in his mind. But then the gate slams shut, the energy released from its purpose. Through the blood beating in his ears, Matt hears Xishen swear.

Did it ... work? It doesn't feel like it worked. Matt's gaze dips abruptly to the map before returning to Xishen's face. He can taste should we try it again on his tongue.

"Are you okay?" he asks breathlessly.

"I'm fine," Xishen says quickly, rubbing the palm of her hand. She's frowning down at the hand, at the circle, as if calculating how it went wrong. "I thought it'd be enough, but... this circle takes a lot to power it. More than just a regular Aion."

She's clearly less than satisfied with just letting it drop, gears turning behind her eyes.

"If I was stronger with the Kenoma... maybe..." She stares downward for a few more moments, before her eyes shift to meet his look. "Did you feel it too? It seemed like we were almost there."

Matt nods.

"I did, yeah." He's still getting his breath back, but meanwhile, the gears in his mind keep turning. "It makes sense that it ... would want to protect itself. I guess it has some kinda means of doing that."

Part of him wants to suggest trying his own version of a scrying spell--it strikes him as more lo-fi than Xishen's, and therefore maybe less taxing--but he imagines they'd run into the same issue. And she raises another interesting rumple.

"Is it something you can address with more spellcasters? Or ... how do you get stronger with the Kenoma?"

She hesitates, and for a moment there's a flash of actual vulnerability on her face.

"I... don't think I can. Get stronger."

She falls silent again, starting into space. She looks at her dagger again, and then back to him. There is a spark of something in her eyes.

"...How much do you want to make this work?"

Matt has tried to keep his distance from Xishen. He's done that since they met. But for the first time, he wonders if the expression on her face that he's always failed to read might be sadness.

He nods slowly. He can't really make sense of what she's said--if Aion powers are so limitless, why would she be stuck?--but at least he can acknowledge it. The question she asks stumps him in a different way. How much does he want to make this (the only thing he's ever been good at, the only place he's ever belonged, the source of all his ecstasy and nearly all his purpose) work? Only as much as he wants to breathe air.

For a moment, Matt turns the question over. He watches Xishen's face.

"Enough to bleed for it," he answers, eventually. His words quiet and evenly measured. "Give years off my life. Sweat, sleep, layers of sanity ... whatever it takes, I want to make it work."

'It' being this particular spell, but also magic in general. Matt doesn't see this desire as being in conflict with the Kenoma's imperative; if anything, getting better at magic is the only path he sees towards helping. It's the only way he's ever been useful to anyone.

Xishen is silent, a confused half smile coming to her face. She doesn't seem to know what to make of that.

"Really? I didn't know you were that invested in this particular mystery."

She clearly wasn't expecting that level of dedication towards a random magical errand she asked him on. She seems to want to hear more of his thoughts on it before offering whatever she was going to offer.

"Well ..."

Matt looks more than a little sheepish. As is often the way, what's going on inside of his head doesn't seem to translate well to people outside it.

"I guess, without knowing that much about these entities apart from the fact that the Innocence really messed people up, on a pretty large scale ... it's more like. Everything's connected. The kind of sympathetic magic I've been practicing ... with Ciel ... that has implications for this spell, but it also has all kinds of applications--things you can do if you have a piece of someone. And if I can get better at casting one type of spell here, I can get better at other kinds."

"I see..."

She contemplates that just long enough that the silence hangs. With a trace of reluctance, she offers:

"Well, I can cut you a deal. If you're really willing to give up everything you said you would."

She turns her blade over in her hand, staring down at it. There are still smudges of blood on its surface.

"I have... a power. I can... convert sacrifice in magic. Personal sacrifice." Her dark gaze flutters up to him again. "The more it hurts to lose, the stronger the result will become."

Matt says, "Oh."

As a few things click into place, most of which occurred in this very cavern. He considers the offer--this time, with a more self-conscious sense that his thoughts probably aren't translating to words very well.

"And this power you have ... would power this particular spell, but afterwards I'd be back where I was in terms of--my own, I don't know, Kenoma journey. Is that right?"

Right on the heels of that question comes the one of arguably more consequence:

"How much do you think this will take? I use my own blood in spells sometimes, and I'm used to being pretty sleep-deprived from school, so I don't know if that factors."

"I don't know," she says, shaking her head slightly. "I won't know how much it's worth to you until you give it to me. Maybe it'd be temporary, maybe it could translate into something permanent. All I can say is that if it's something you usually wouldn't miss, it won't do that much, relatively speaking."

She shrugs a shoulder.

"I do know that giving years off your life probably won't work. You're essentially immortal, now."

"... Oh," Matt says, with a flicker of uncomfortable familiarity. Right. And come to think, he doesn't need to sleep much now either.

Well, he hates that!

"What about ..." He looks himself over, gaze landing on the back of his hand. The one whose palm bears the Visionary's symbol. "A fingernail? That feels like the process of losing it would be pretty seriously unpleasant. I could go up to a finger."

All he knows is not the pinky. That one you really need for making the whole opposable-thumb thing work.

Her expression is sympathetic, but firm on one thing:

"I can't decide for you," she says. "I can only take what you want to give me. I don't know how much it'll take to accomplish this, either. I've never done it before."

Matt nods.

And he considers--

The pain of losing a fingernail, or a finger. How he might live with it after (pretty easily), and what that says about the odds of success (hmm). The ease with which he sank into the Innocence, and saw others do the same, lulled by its snowbank of serenity.

He thinks about how shitty it would be to go through losing a fingernail only for the spell not to work. He thinks about taking someone's face in both hands to kiss them, of using both hands to hold them, to bring them pleasure. He thinks of meditative hours spent braiding bits of string or leather, of preparing herbs for a new spell he's excited to try.

"Hand," he decides, holding out the left one. The right is his dominant hand, which might be better, but it's the one with the Visionary mark. "That feels symmetrical. And I'd miss it."

He flicks Xishen a quick, small smile.

"I promise I won't be mad at you."

She seems a bit surprised, to hear it go from a fingernail, to a finger, to a hand. He brow furrows, as if with a weight pressing down on her. Regardless, she made the the offer, and she will stand by it.

"If that's what you want," she says softly. She reaches out to accept his sacrifice, her dagger in her other hand. Its blade tints black, becoming hard to perceive with eyesight alone. "I'll do my best to honor your sacrifice."

She brings the edge to one side of his wrist, where the joint is, hoping to make a cleaner cut, to leave the bone of his forearm undamaged.

"By the blood of the Martyr, I accept your sacrifice."

In one swift moment, she cuts, severing his hand irrevocably from his body. Matt will feel the flood of magic that it represents spill across them in the same moment the blood does.

For a long time afterwards, Matt's clearest memory of this moment will be Xishen's face. The look of surprise, of ... disappointment, maybe.

But the moment passes. Then there's only a flash of darkness in the dark, and startlingly bright blood, and his hand looking eerie, unutterably wrong as it lies on the cavern floor. Like the ghost of itself. Matt thinks something not entirely cogent enough to be--

Oh God oh fuck oh fuck what the fuck did I do

--but that's the general gist. At least until his moment of adrenaline is swallowed by magic and howling pain. It's a pain that feels vicious, animate, as if it's a living being whose aim is to annihilate not just his hand but his entire self, down to the very core of him. Matt's too paralyzed from the searing hurt to try to stop the flow of blood. He's started moaning fuck, fuck without his brain's permission. It's only after the first wave of pain that his decade of breathing exercises kick in, automatic, and he starts to drag in air on a shuddering count. It doesn't help. If anything does, it's the magic--the familiar flow. Something he could drown in. Matt tries to drown out the pain in the swell of occult energy.

The power unleashed is potent and wild, as if in response to his pain, but Xishen knows how to handle it. Catching his severed hand, she holds it between her palms, channeling the weight of the sacrifice through her. The flesh of the hand seems to unwind, flesh, muscles, and bone unfurling as it returns to its base components, and then into pure energy. She presses it into the circle around them, and once more the gate opens, wider than ever before.

Again, there is opposition, but the power of his sacrifice has become a blade of enlightenment, of defiance, of transgression in the face of stagnancy. Xishen wields it against the heavens, and knowledge spills forth.

Beneath them swirls infinity and above them heaven unfolds. It's above that the visage of the Innocence appears, an image of its swirling wings entering their minds, its form shifting as if slowly awakening. They have its attention, and Matt's mind will fill with white. Oneness catches him in its embrace, an omniscient knowledge of all that there is all that there will be: a brightness of life at the center, and a dark decay that has burned outward from it, on the verge of swallowing all.

In this overwhelming knowing he recognizes fragments of the home he lost in that rot, blackened and rigid with death.

Though he will not fully remember the details in the aftermath, the weight of it will remain, the understanding of the sheer scope of that destruction lingering in this thoughts. Just as he achieves that understanding, another presence comes upon him.

"Begone."

It's the wings of the Innocent, battering him away from that light, that Oneness. He does not belong there, it conveys to him. He is a bearer of darkness, the bringer of death.

Begone, begone, begone, begone- !

As the Innocence pushes him downwards, forces him from heaven, he will recognize the tethers holding it to the living world. Two bright lights, and several more of more fragile shades, one of which is rooted in the same darkness that he is. Above him, the Innocence coils around the spirits of Her beloved, Her sanctified.

He wakes from the vision by being very literally slammed against the stone of the circle he and Xishen sit upon. Xishen falls in the some moment, the gate snapping shut.

Matt has experienced spiritual ecstasy before, or something kissing-close to it. Something that blazes with rightness, a sense that one is an infinitesimal dot in the sheer vast of existence, time and space unfurling endlessly in all directions--but no less essential for that. No less miraculous for occupying one fraction's fraction of the cosmic symphony.

This feeling is not quite that ecstasy, but it shares some things in common. The dagger-flash of insight. The winged, soaring sense of transcending limits that were never real to begin with. Later, he won't be able to think of the brightness without conjuring an equal and opposite dark. Rot will linger in his mind like a bad aftertaste. Later he'll wonder, Do we have to kill them to stop this thing? What else might be whispering itself into being through an umbilical link to other Aions? To him? (Later he'll remember watching his hand fucking unravel.)

Now, pain is surging back too loud for his brain to get around it. Matt cries out as his back hits stone, the sound twisting and sharpening as agony flares through his left elbow. The pain is actually slightly less bad than it was a few moments ago, thanks to the onset of shock, but Matt is not in a state of mind to appreciate that.

"Fuck," he whimpers, staring at the ceiling. "Fuck, ff--what--?"

Kaeya's scarf has half-slithered from his neck. Dimly, Matt realizes, I probably shouldn't bleed out, and jerks the scarf free. His attempt to one-handedly wrap up his wrist is spastic, the pressure not really sufficient, but he's doing his best before he passes out.

Xishen stirs, groaning. As she pushes herself back to her knees, she sees the blood Matt has been losing, as if remembering it for a second time.

"Wait-"

She fumbles, grabbing her dagger from the ground where it fell. Taking it in her left hand, she rams it into her own thigh, while in same moment reaching to place her hand on Matt's severed wrist. A flood of vitality pours from her fingers, in the same moment she emits a shaking gasp.

The bleeding will begin to slow, a bit of the pain numbing. It isn't a one stop fix, but it will be enough to prevent him from dying. She makes a guttural sound, pulling out of the knife.

Matt gasps in turn, as if the touch between them closes a circuit of breath as well as magic. A wheel of blood and pain.

After a moment, he determines he isn't teetering on the verge of oblivion (derogatory). The pain has quieted to a dull roar instead of an all-consuming fire. Matt breathes in, counting consciously this time, and holds the breath at the top of his inhale. He loses some of his evenness as he breathes out, wincing as fresh pain makes itself felt.

He doesn't seem inclined to get up just yet. But he turns his head to try and catch Xishen's gaze.

"Did you see that?" he says. "Did you see ... her? Where is she?"

"I saw... a woman..."

She trails off after that, getting lost in her own thoughts regarding the subject. Maybe the visions they saw weren't exactly the same. She slowly starts trying to pick herself up.

"I think... 'where' might be complicated... for someone like that."

[CLOSED]

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cw for anybody reading along at home: gore!

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