[Open] The Mark of the Herald

[thewatchers]

Mark of the Herald Part I
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Despite certain disruptive events and ominous visions in the preceding month, August is seemingly still free of any problems.

That’s quick to change, however. Starting from the third of the month, strange, circular marks begin to appear on human students around the school - and, indeed, humans around the world. Those affected begin to feel incurably drowsy, something that no magical or mundane solution can seem to cure or relieve; eventually, they’ll fall asleep entirely, whether they want to or not, and enter a state of magical stasis. Not even nonhumans are immune, though whether they’re marked seems to be much more erratic.

Those who remain awake or are otherwise spared by the mark are free to do as they wish - the Academy won’t ask them to do more than keep themselves safe. But where each marked person falls in slumber, a portal will form; a strange tear in reality, offering glimpses of a surreal, nightmarish plane that differs vastly from individual to individual. One thing is certain; the cause of a victim’s seemingly endless sleep and these portals are linked somehow, and the only way to find out exactly how is to go through...and the only ones capable of doing so are those who are still awake.

This log can be used as a catch-all for event-related threads. The information for this event is here.

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[spelleton]

Nothing ever comes out might be true for things born of this dream, but he's a visitor. If nothing else, that might let him be extricated, when all else fails.

He'd prefer to get himself out, of course. But there's nothing wrong with having a little bit of belief.

He waits a moment longer, and then steps into the seething darkness. He doesn't know exactly what he'll find there, in the depths of Rex's dreams, but he has a feeling he won't like it.

[heromedal]

The thickness of the tar-like substance slows the descent and blocks all sight. Not that it matters to Ekkehardt, it doesn't drown those who enter it or sear their eyeballs out. It's just suffocatingly claustrophobic, hot and dark, the song coming from all directions.

It takes several minutes of walking down the steep incline to reach point where the tar stops, acting as a seal across the top of the crevice, like an insidious scab over a wound that never really heals. Once past the membrane, it's a familiar and probably unwelcome site. The place of Helen's death, filled with cracked open cars and corpses. The unfamiliar part that many of those corpses are fresh and a lot of them are recognisable. Several are Ekkehardt himself, as well as other Daybreak attendees and staff.

And Ekkehardt arrives just in time to see Rex killing another. Adelaide, it looks like. Wielding a blackened version of the enormous sword of his mother, he drops into view, driving it through her, with his right hand whilst his left is limb as if broken or dislocated. All his weight on his right side, like his left leg doesn't work quite so well. It's not an injury. It's an imitation of Helen's fighting style and proof Rex is fighting his hardest. A second thrust puts the sword almost to the hilt into the ground, more of that black stuff oozing out like the world is bleeding.

"Another one so soon?" Turning his head, Rex seems as unperturbed as ever he does, hair hanging wetly over his face and dripping that black slime. "Oh well. Sooner or later it's all the same."

The giant blade comes out, held in one hand over his shoulder, his loose posture somehow still radiating danger.

[spelleton]

"You'll have to clarify what you mean by 'another one'," Ekkehardt says calmly, glancing only briefly at his apparent several corpses. Unlike Rex, he's trying to be as innocuous as possible.

Even in a dream, he'd rather not fight Rex. Actually, it might deal more damage to his subconscious perception this way. He's not entirely sure about how this all works (and he doesn't like that much, either).

"Do you intend to spend all your time down here?"

[heromedal]

Rex just tips his head towards the corpses that litter the crevice. Apparently he's been killing them since he got here. Ekkehardt is just 'another one.' All his paranoid worst-case scenarios about enemies lurking everywhere with the faces of friends are in his head. But that's where they are right now.

The question though gets a baffled look to appear on Rex's face. The sort that people get only when the question itself makes no sense. Ekkehardt may have well asked if Rex meant to spend all his time with his head attached. There's no other option. There isn't anywhere but here, this splinter in the world where he's lived for 13 years.

"Enough meaningless words. I tire of this," he says in a voice which could not more earnestly express the sentiment. Just another enemy, just another kill, just another day. He doesn't want to see whatever trick this one is pulling. Quicker to sever his head and be done with it. The move he pulls is an Arany Style one that Ekkehardt may have even seen cleave 8 men in one blow. He leans back in an extremely unnatural posture, the sword arm rising and his opposite tipping. In ballet, it's called Cambré.

There's well-practised poise, and every apparent opening it gives is a trap. When he swings, it's with his whole body. Twisting right from the ankle, all the way through his hips, shoulders, elbow, wrist. He practically throws the sword at him but goes along for the ride as a leap. His left arm stays limp as to not accidentally provide balance when the entire style revolves around commanding the unruly momentum caused by imbalance.

[spelleton]

He remembers this move vividly, as he does most things he'd witnessed Helen actually do in person. It means he doesn't bother to move anywhere but away from the arc of the swing he can follow, though Rex's leap and reach mean that even with Ekkehardt's speed and reflexes, he barely avoids being beheaded.

(Not that being beheaded would stop him. It hasn't before. But, if Rex's multiple dead dream versions of him are any indication, he might not remember that, or perhaps he doesn't know it.)

The blade nicks his throat in a way that would have bitten into the major artery there, if he was alive. But he's not, so it does little. He claps his hand over the disruption regardless, partially out of habit to keep up his imitation of life and partially because this is a dream, so phantom pain is a little more real.

"If fighting is how you spend all your time, it's no wonder you're so exhausted."

He'd say you can't possibly enjoy it, but he's certainly seen that Rex enjoys fighting. This is something different, deeper.

[heromedal]

It's certainly the wisest choice, to back away. Courageous warriors see the enormous arc and lax left side and try to move there to counter, but Ekkehardt must have seen the way the move ends- with Rex on one knee, with all that wild, uncontrollable force turned into a stab at the lefthand blindspot. It'd be right in the heart of someone trying to slip around to the supposed weakspot. He's caught out a few of the imitation Ekkehardt's he's been facing with that one.

"There isn't anything else." Not just there isn't anything else to spend his time on. There simply isn't anything else to life than fighting. It's all he can remember anymore. He's stopped trying to remember what it was like before being here, in this abyss where anything that was not a painful battle died. In the same way that in this dream Rex can't comprehend a world outside, he can't understand Ekkehardt's meaning here either. It's a different tact taken than the others, which at least slows Rex down. Makes him think about his next move a little more. Get up on his feet instead of moving into the next terrifying move taught to him by perhaps the fiercest warrior who ever lived. "All of you... always trying to fool me with your words. It will never be enough. You'll never trick me into..."

It takes a moment for him to even conclude what the trick might be, before latching onto Ekkehardt's own words.

"Stopping fighting. Everyone always wants to defang me. Because they want to sabotage me, use me, destroy me... It doesn't matter. The only way to receive my teeth is a bite." The next attack is another of those unusual unbalanced ones that Helen had to use. Laying his sword across his shoulder and essentially falling making it into an intensely heavy downward swing, as all his body weight is added to the sword, spraying stone from the impact. Only catching himself at the last moment. "No one will accept a rabid dog!"

[spelleton]

The only way to receive his teeth is a bite, is it? Well, he doesn't fear pain or death, even in a dream. He's been tormented at the hands of worse.

He doesn't dodge this oncoming strike, though he knows Rex's strength is likely comparative to his mother's. He doesn't so much as flinch; he just watches Rex, his gaze level and calm, as the blow goes straight through him, inexorable, unstoppable.

You're not an animal to be put down, he almost says, but he likes dogs. To kill them, even though they suffer, is still its own kind of tragedy.

[heromedal]

The acceptance of the incoming blow triggers something in Rex. He tries to stop it, slamming his left foot down from its limp position attempting to haul back his upper body and stop the swing. He proves that he is not as strong as Helen, who even with one arm could have diverted the swing or stopped it dead. Rex may have well been trying to stop a freight train with his bare hands. If he had his precious medal, perhaps- but in the dream, it's far away and forgotten.

As such he cleaves Ekkhardt clean in two, his body bent like a bow as he attempts to hold back his own attack. But the Arany Style was made to be unstoppable.

Immediately after his blade becomes lodged three feet into the ground, Rex releases his grip on the handle. The blackened tar that it's covered in never hinders his grip, but it does leave a pair of handprints on his face.

[spelleton]

It doesn't hurt as much as he thought, but then, he's never let himself be cleaved in two in reality, so he doesn't have much of a reference frame for how it might feel in a dream.

He's not exactly sure how it goes from here, either. Should he collapse, or sit down, or something? It feels unnatural, but everything about this is unnatural.

"Well, as you can see, not everyone feels hostility towards you." It seems a strange thing to say after you've been practically cut in half, but it is what it is.

[heromedal]

Rex releases some Bulgarian profanity when he hears Ekkehardt's voice, but it's followed by Hungarian. Bulgarian is the language of Rex's brain. Hungarian, the language his mother spoke to him in, sung to him in, raised him in, that's the language of his heart. Ekkehardt likely has no idea that Rex is exclaiming 'you're alive!' but it continues to come out as a babble of Hungarian, gesticulating as he tries to work out what just happened.

[spelleton]

Ekkehardt doesn't have much of a grasp on Hungarian, but the shock is clear enough. He just sighs, stepping away from the blade, willing his body to piece itself back together the way he'd do it in life. Bones set back into place, bandages secure them, and apart from his sliced-apart clothing he might as well be intact.

"I suppose you're more than old enough to know now, so I might as well show you," he says, after a moment. He doesn't even have to think to dispel his glamour; it crumbles away completely, to reveal nothing but bone beneath. He rubs at his shoulder where he was hit.

"Being dead has its benefits, especially around edged weapons. So you did me no harm."