Snippet #2439466

Whether or not any of them got that much sleep overnight, the sun rose at the same time it usually did the next morning, and from the sounds of the captain breaking camp, they were rather expected to rise with it. If anything, the conditions had grown worse over the dark hours, the murmur of the voices in song growing louder, though perhaps in their heads rather than their ears. To Gwendolyn, they sang of years past, happiness she’d forgotten, almost as if beckoning her forward to receive it once again. It was a strange feeling—she knew, logically, that there was no getting it back. Her father was dead, Sven was still with her, the crew were on the ship, and Artorias… he was somebody else now. What she was able to keep of those times was still with her, and the rest was lost to her forever. She was trying to be mature enough to accept that, though it wasn’t always easy, and her little display on the army cruiser earlier might have made the point elegantly enough.

So she wanted it all back. Her friends and her family the way they were. Who didn’t occasionally wish to regain what they’d lost? But there was no use pining, so why did those voices tempt her so much even so? It was hard to say, exactly. She didn’t like it a bit, but among the other trials of this forest, that sort of just figured. She glanced over the camp, noting that Lohengrin, having risen with the sun as she had, was looking rather the worse for wear. He hadn’t been forced all the way into his animal shape (whatever it was) as Percy had, but he wasn’t looking swell, either. She couldn’t decide, personally, if it was grotesque or strangely beautiful, the way the scales blended with his skin like that. Then again, she’d always had a strange aesthetic sense, so there it was.

He caught her glance, and raised the ridge of skin that had used to be his eyebrow, as if in challenge. She grinned and shrugged, and he rolled his eyes. Well, that was more or less normal. Maybe they’d make it out of this without any horribly-lingering trauma, after all. She supposed that, for the moment, all she could do was hope. Scientists were not as a rule very religious people, and Gwen couldn’t say she believed in any gods, but if she did, she’d be praying, too.

Sven had awoken, perhaps, earliest of all. He wasn't sure what had been worse; sleeping with all of those whispers or suffering them while awake. He'd been quiet enough not to wake anyone, busying himself with his pack. Checking the contents, zipping up what needed to be put away and counting off the spices and preserves he'd used last night while cooking. The pot had already been cleaned and put away, tucked under a rough blanket at the bottom of his knapsack (he hadn't expected there to be leftovers, after all). After counting them for the umpteenth time, the Lieutenant rocked back on his heels and pulled the straps tighter. Faith is all we need, she'd said. Like it really meant something. What had that gotten her? Nowhere good. No amount of well-wishing could bring her back—nothing he could do about it, so why did he feel so guilty?

The forest was to blame. Every single memory seemed to drag itself out of the underbrush, painting unpleasant pictures behind his eyelids. He wanted to rub them away, but every sorry attempt to brush them off only brightened the colors; composed so vividly, so impossibly bright.

He almost missed the desert. There was an emptiness there, and a comfortable silence that drowned out his thoughts. He'd only been thinking of the sweltering heat back then, and the fact that there were blue-eyed orcs and a large, slavering troll advancing on them. This place, with whatever stinking magic it held, was far too silent. Quiet enough for his memories to intrude on him, as if it were an unwelcome guest kicking up dirty shoes through his kitchen. The siren-song drumming through his ears (or his heart, perhaps) had grown louder and far more persistent. Of course he wanted her back. Of course he wanted to rip through time, and somehow know what his brother had been planning in order to stop him dead in his tracks. It was painful enough remembering how they'd played as boys, with wooden sticks, whooping and hollering. Pretending to be big goddamn heroes. He pressed his hand to his chest, willing it to stop. No amount of brute strength could salve those wounds.

Breathing deeply through his nose, Sven dropped his hand and looked out over the campsite. They were already beginning to stir, gathering up their things. Gwendolyn was awake, seemingly lost in thought. Despite the temptation to go to her and ask what was wrong—what was on her mind, Sven knew better. He knew that look well enough. It was the same one she wore when visiting his gravestone. He rubbed his eyes, and glanced over his meaty fist. Lohengrin was awake, as well. Still looking mighty serpentine. He had to admit... it suited him.

It was sudden, one moment spent quietly as the morning suns rose above the horizon, the next filled with the laborious breath of a stranger on the edge of camp. It was unclear on when he arrived, whether or not the ones who stirred overlooked him, or he had just arrived. He had appeared without a sound, and even then his tongue worked as if trying to conjure some forgotten words. Nothing came out of his mouth but breath as speech was slow to return. Everything was sluggish, painted in hues of black and white splashed with colors. He was confused, frustrated, and most poignantly, afraid. His mouth worked faster and faster, trying to force the words to his tongue. He had been good at them days ago, but now the most simple of actions eluded him. It took all the willpower he had left to not go bounding back into the forest.

"Mer... Mercy," He whispered before dropping to his knees in a heap. What was left of Percy had returned. He still wore the antlers of a stag, yet that was not the only thing. His face was more angular and shallow than before, his nose had a darker discoloration giving it a snout like appearance. Where his two ears should have been protuded two furry deer ears, pushed back against his head and twitching in fear. But the most unsettling feature was his eyes. One contained a blue-green iris, subtly different from its default color but the other was larger in scale and completely brown like a deer's. Most of the clothing he wore was ripped and shredded, and the flesh underneath scratched.

He huddled himself clutching at his knees for fear of letting go, afraid to move even an inch. It took all of his humanity to not give into the forest's song and shift back into a stag and leave, this time perhaps forever. The whispering forest played havoc on his mind, toyed with his insecurities, and baited the animal that lay under the surface. He could try to close his large ears but he could still hear the murmur of the forest. He wanted to go to someone, but he couldn't find the strength. He couldn't fight this alone, he needed someone, he needed an anchor to keep him from losing himself to the forest. He needed someone to guide him back.

"H-help," he grunted.

Dio had woken that morning one of the more well-rested of the group. She'd collapsed into a relatively peaceful slumber after her large burst of magic the night before, sleeping through the night without interruption. The price she paid for this was waking with a growling stomach, which grumpily reminded her every fifteen seconds or so that she had chosen not to eat any dinner the night before. To appease it, she had begun munching on the fruit she'd brought back to camp, whatever was left that the others hadn't wanted. It wasn't a very well rounded breakfast, but it gave her stomach something to do, at least.

She had just started in on another of the peach-like fruits when Percy made his return, and Dio certainly did not overlook this. Dropping the food, she rose quickly and walked quickly over to where he had chosen to sit, resisting the urge to jog or run. She wanted to help, of course, but he was obviously a bit skittish while in the forest, and any number of things could probably set him off. Shocking him would no doubt be one of those, so Dio resisted the urge to give him a squeeze on the shoulder, or an outright hug, because that would end badly for everyone.

"Percy?" she tried tentatively, wondering what he needed when he said help. "It's Dio. It's good to see you. We were worried. We thought you might have left for good." Maybe the others hadn't thought that, but Dio had, and it had worried her. She mirrored the way he was sitting somewhat, though she didn't seem as tense. The idea was to keep herself from shocking him, and that meant making herself small, and keeping her hands to herself.

"Get him up," Theon said from the edge of camp. Judging by the state of his eyes, he hadn't slept very peacefully at all through the night. The scryer was geared up and ready to leave, and obviously not in a good mood. When was he ever in a good mood? "Whatever's fucking with our heads isn't going to stop until it gets an axe in the skull, so let's stop wasting time and go kill the fucking thing." There was a look in his eye that Dio did not like at all, but she couldn't place it. He looked violent this morning. More violent than usual, that was.

"Percy needs help," Dio protested, not moving an inch. "We can't move right now. Not until he's better. Just look at him." Theon looked at Percy, huddled and terrified on the ground, and appeared unmoved.

The Lieutenant, too, had moved away from his somber perch, abandoning his knapsack. He tried mirroring Dio's soft footsteps as best he could, teetering at an uncomfortable lumber. She could not touch him, for fear of replaying what had happened the other night, but Sven had at least one arm capable of gentility. Compared to Dio, he knew he was a poor substitute for tender-spoken words and comfort, but he would try his best. Putting aside Theon's heightened aggressiveness, and clear annoyance—he was correct, as well. They needed to leave this place, or find the cause and destroy it. However, Sven ignored his brusque demand, leveling him with slanted eyes. Now was not the time.

He wrapped his meaty arm around the boy's slender shoulders, blinking uncertainly. He would not let him go. If there was something he did know about, it was frightened animals. Cornered things that were too afraid, too jumpy, too predatory in nature, to do anything but flee or lash out. Animals were far easier to understand than humans. He hummed low in his throat, and called out to him, “Percy.” He repeated his name again. “You found us, ya. Safe, Percy. Safe here. Old King Alsont, you were saying about. You never told Dio that story.” Familiarity, it seemed, always worked with animals, so why couldn't it work with Percy?

"Dio..." Percy repeated, pushing a palm into his shifted eye. He tried to force the shift back through brute strength, but it wasn't budging. His ears twitched in frustration but he didn't remove his hand from his face. He didn't want the others to see that, nor did he want to see them through it. He shuddered and twitched heavily before putting on a weak smile and a hesitant nod. "Not... Gone yet," Percy stumbled over his words, but still spoke. He had to speak, anything to keep the wild animal at bay. He had to do anything and everything he could to not allow the animal free reign over his mind again. It had wrested control days ago, when he bolted from the group. Ever since then, he wasn't Percy, not so much as he was a wild animal. He'd never had trouble shifting between forms, not before coming to the forest. Here, the song didn't sing to him, but the feral nature that waited beneath the surface.

Theon spoke, Percy's one human eye darted toward him and glared. He did not like the tone in his voice, and whatever part of the animal remained caught wind of the man's unspoken feelings. Whatever the animal would have done was moot, because it did nothing but irritate Percy. It caused him to fight all that much harder. He'd show the man, he'd show him. He was stronger than that. Percy shook his head violently at Dio's next words. "Told you... Not gone," The words still fumbled out of his mouth, and they felt heavy on his tongue. Unfamiliar even, and that hurt him. He knew he used to be good at words, he could talk with the best of him, but now he could barely force a coherent sentence together. Old Kings above, he hated this forest.

The touch on his shoulders caused him to tense, but he let pass without any other action. It was Sven, and out of everyone he trusted the man the most to never let go. He wouldn't allow Percy to escape without a fight, and that remembrance settled Percy's wild soul. He was... Safe. They wouldn't let him run away again. The knowledge that he didn't have enough strength to fight it himself stung, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was still intelligent enough to understand that he needed these people, else risk grazing out in the forest for the rest of his life. "Alsont. Young. Intelligent. Strong. An iron will," Percy said, remembering the tale he had told Sven on the deck of the Elysium. As he spoke, his natural green coloration began to return to his shifted eye. Even so, Percy wished he has some of that will he spoke of.

"Maybe... The whole story. Later," Percy promised with another forced smile.

“That’s the spirit,” Gwen said, moving to Percy’s other side and helping Sven lift him up and set him back on his feet. Not that Sven needed help doing any such thing, but she figured it might at least ground Percy a little more. She wasn’t really a nature girl—she didn’t know a whole lot about animals. But Percy was a person, not just an animal, so she figured she could at least try and help out the person-bit. Those, she did know a thing or two about. “There now—those eyes, I do recognize,” she said, her grin a little more wan than usual, but definitely still present. She pressed one of the fruits from the previous night into his palm.

“Eat. I’ll carry your stuff for a while.” He seemed to have retained the majority of his belongings from his run off into the forest, and she was most relieved to note that the key was still present. Sliding his pack off his back, she hoisted it onto her own, staggering a bit under the extra weight, but waving it off as funny rather than troubling. She could handle it for long enough for him to get his bearing. That was what captains did. It was what friends did, too, and she liked to think she was capable of being both.

“Kethyrian, can you do anything for him? We really can’t afford to stay here much longer.” Though he’d put it, typically, in a ruder-than-necessary fashion, Theon was right. They had to get to the bottom of this—before it got to the bottom of them and scraped out all the guts worth having.

Kethy, who thus far had kept mostly to herself during this rather awkward spectacle of… whatever on Albion was going on, cocked her head to the side at the question. Normally, the answer would be obvious enough—what did they keep her around for, if not doing something about situations like this one? It certainly wasn’t her charming personality. Like the scryer, she was here because she was useful, not because she would be winning any awards for congeniality. But a day and a night in the forest had mostly drained her; she was running on the dregs of her own magic. Even so… she approached, picking her way carefully over the plant life she was still generating at alarming rates, and placed the back of her hand against Percy’s forehead.

She wasn’t really the kind of person to bother asking permission for such a thing, and frankly if it bothered him, he was too touchy and needed to learn to deal with things of this nature anyway. Perhaps there was some irony in the fact that she thought so, perhaps not. He looked ill, but did not appear to be running a fever, nor did a simple diagnostic check reveal that he was doing as poorly as she was in terms of allergic reaction. Actually, his vitals were quite hale, but like the rest of them, his magic was going haywire. “Doctor’s advice?” she asked rhetorically. “Get him the hell out of the forest before he goes feral or something. Barring that…” she paused a moment, dredging up the resources for at least a bit of a boost, though more than anything, she was trying to apply bits of her magic to block his, so that maybe it wouldn’t eat at him quite so badly. Since they were from opposite schools, she had a feeling it might work at least a little, but it was all she could do at any rate.

Straightening, she shook her head. “That’s all I have. Our best option right now is to keep moving. The sooner we find whatever’s here for us to find, the sooner we can be done with it.” And she was really looking forward to that part. "I agree," Percy added quickly. He then turned toward Sven and asked, "Can I... Borrow this?" He asked, tugging on the man's arm. Percy didn't trust himself to walk straight.

The Lieutenant stood like a tower, immovable. He appreciated Gwendolyn's help, gathering up Percy between them. Perhaps, more from a fatherly standpoint then anything else, though it no longer surprised him. If anyone was in need of anything or was in any sort of danger: she would be there, bearing down on them with an affection that tethered them into her own circle. To be surrounded by so many kindred spirits, while he simply was not, made him feel awkward. All things considered, he wasn't a bad guy, but he'd done things in his life that kept him apart. Had he acted out on the unpleasantness he felt inside, much like Theon and Lohengrin seemed to do, things may have been easier for him. Suffering quietly, she liked to tell him, was the suckers way out of things. Funny lady with a sailors mouth. Surrounding himself with these types of people, and acting the silent guardian, was the least he could do, and performing any kind of duty, it seemed, had become his purpose.

He watched as daffodils and tulips curled up from beneath Kethyrian's feet. Wondered absently if the forest was a means of showing what kind of people they really were. With him; an angry beast, prone to bouts he could barely control. Truly, a feeble metal-man who clung to ghosts, unwilling to live for himself. Gwendolyn with her longing, desperately missing what she could not bring back and Percy, struggling and somewhat broken. A mess of nerves and curiosity, seconds away from disappearing into the woods that plagued them. Theon and Vivian exploding like fireworks, clashing against themselves, and everyone else, too. Lohengrin—scaled, not-so-cold and getting closer still to his truth. Electric, and fearful of herself. Dio's moral compass was admirable, as was her selflessness, but still afraid of what she might do. Mordecai with all of his whirring gears, barely holding himself together to keep himself from hurting anyone. The act in itself was the most telling of his nature, his kindness. Lastly, Kethyrian with her brusque, slender fingers, pressed to Percy's forehead. A healer who did not really like people, but chose such a position anyway. Maybe the flowers signified something as well.

He bobbed his head in agreement. They were right. The only thing they could do now was press on, now that Percy was able to walk. Get the hell out of the woods, kill whatever was sinking its teeth into them, or find what they were looking for and leave the damn place. No need for anymore words. Gwendolyn and Theon would lead them, and he would follow. Percy's voice pulled his attention back towards the ground, accompanied by a light tug on his arm. Borrow this—Sven's furrowed brows softened, as did his solemn expression. It was all he could offer, always. “Of course.”