Tourniquet. (Cian)

[Seodai]

It was with a gentle compassion that Seodai stepped into such mayhem, the sound of thunder at its inception somehow forming in the recesses of Seodai's mind and exploding outwards. The bony confines of his skull refused to let go of the noise, though, and the deafening, debilitating sound was almost paralyzing. Seodai was completely unaware of the blessed fortune of the bed beneath him as he slumped, helpless, his fingers lost in his own hair, clawing helplessly at the misery. The light came next, but it didn't make sense. It made his eyes ache, closed as they were. He couldn't escape it, and then the noise almost made sense. Words streaming along, meaning nothing, yet weighing and pricking as if they did. Seodai might have cried out, but he couldn't hear it. He could only feel. The shattering roar, hilighted by dancing lights, the hands somehow clinging, somehow failing. And then it waned. Not all at once, not in a breath, but gradually - as if it were bleeding out of him, just as his own red blood had done far too often. It left him feeling dizzy and unsteady, as if it were his very essence he had lost. And then his senses had returned, with gritty sand and cool waters, the rattle of his own cough. A voice, calling his name. It was disembodied at first, distant. But the second call sounded real, sounded present, and Seodai opened his eyes for the first time since his damned kiss. "Noc?" Seodai's brow was furrowed, his eyes squinted as if he had just awoken from the darkest night into the peak of day. Was it real? Any of it? He coughed again, for no apparent reason, and then lifted his arm. His hand seemed strangely his, strangely not. Disconnected, and yet somehow the epitome of his entire self as he sought to touch the handsome, unadorned face. "Noc? Where'd they go?"

[Caelum]

"Inside of us," Cian answered even as the Denvali's hand touched his face. Rak'keli's kiss was vanished, no swirling lines representing the goddess of healing's winged serpents glinting in the sick dim. His eyebrows nettled and byre colored eyes were dark and unreadable as he reached down, a few rocks skittering across the sand beneath his boots, and hauled the younger man up. There was no pulsing fever in his grip, no pallor to his countenance. He seemed hale, but broodful while looking Seodai over from crown to toe. "You aren't supposed to be here," he said finally. "How in Aquiras' name did you get here?" Frustration was crumbling edge of his words, something that could have been either fear or anger contained in the syllables. The healer stepped back, the stone face of the cliff looming behind, and shoved both hands through the tangle of hair. There were no gnosis marks visible on them anymore either. All along the bay, the tide crunched and crashed its way close and closer.

[Seodai]

As if everything in the past five minutes weren't unsettling enough, what with all sense of reality crumbling and this strange dream washing in upon him, Seodai found something else to be unnerved about. It was the slight falter in Noc's voice, the slight intonation of fear and exasperation. Somehow Noc being here was not comforting, not when he was treating Seodai as if it were he who had somehow fucked this all up, invaded upon some world that made sense to him. "What?!" Standing upright, Seo did not feel quite as dizzy any longer. He lifted a hand to scratch just above his left elbow, bright eyes diverting from the apparently upset healer to take in the unnatural surroundings. "Where is here, Noc?" It looked familiar. Denval looming just over there, except it was unlit against the hulking mountains where it crouched. The cliff face, the shore. But, at the same time, nothing looked the same. Nothing was right.

[Caelum]

"Kenash," the healer said and as though his voice cradled the potency the universe, the world around them stirred and began to change. It started with a crack on the distant shore of Denval proper, night dark waters surging up with a resounding clap to chomp down on the careful arrangement of the Quay and swallow it whole. Marsh grasses and shoots of cattails unnatural to this clime popped through the rocks even as they crumbled into amniotic mud and river silt sand. The black shadows of Denval's skyline shrunk so swiftly it was as if they were yanked down through the mountains that flattened beneath the weight of a giant's steps shortly thereafter. A fresh wind built out of the south and the west, coursing across newly forming land that was veined with creek beds and cypress copses with what might have been the glow of an encampment or a city much, much farther from what had been a familiar shore. The breeze bore strange, intoxicating scents, some unidentifiable to a young man such as Seodai who had been born and breathed in Denval's edge of the world alone. "Magnolia," Cian breathed, fingers loosening their grip in his hair and spine straightening. What had been bare feet somehow became boots, high and heavily buckled, slogging through the shallows to halt at Seodai's side while the healer observed the cycling landscape. "Shrimpers," he almost laughed, but the sound caught in the back of his throat against a lump of an old desperation. He extended a hand toward where the bay had been and a new ocean choked with different waters rocked a high masted, heavy rigged fleet creaking their way up a river that had never before been. Not here. Not in Denval. Beside them the sea cliff rolled back and a pearl fog pussy footed in, tangling itself around the verdant undergrowth blanketing an oddly spiky, gloss leaved forest fresh to Seodai's eyes. "This is my dream," the healer was saying, words so soft as to near be lost beneath the musical blanket of the tide. "My memory. Not your's. Have you been hiding a thing from me, Seodai? Does Nysel know your mind?" His face turned toward Seodai and it was younger than it had been mere minutes in the past. Cian's age had always been indeterminate, his appearance anywhere between late twenties to late forties for a human man. Mostly, people estimated him to be in the hazy middle of it somewhere; but now, oh, now he was young, maybe even younger than Seodai himself, with the shadow of a beard and an alien cut to his clothing. "It's about to get bad," he warned, but he sounded resigned as if this hour, this dream -- nightmare? -- was all too familiar a bedfellow. "It would be best if you woke up now."

[Seodai]

Seodai, born a wrinkly, flushed, wailing thing, had only ever tasted of Denvali air. The whole of the world as he comprehended it existed in those familiar cliffs, those ruins. When it all began to fall, to fold in on itself in utter destruction, even if it was the rebirth of something altogether different, Seodai felt a wave of panic wash over him. Afraid to leave Denval proper? Not really. Not under the right circumstances. Terrified to see Denval fall, even in the morphing of shape and color, the blending of reality and reverie? Absolutely. "Cian," Seodai muttered lowly, a complaint, a plea. By the time Seodai returned his gaze to his companion in this, he found that even Noc had not remained unchanged. He was young, fresh-faced, closer to a peer to Seodai now, than an elder. Seo blinked, unnerved that the one thing he erroneously expected to make sense ... well, didn't. "A dream? Nysel? No, I mean. What? Noc..." The water lapping at their feet. Water, all the same, but not his water. A fleet the likes of which certainly didn't belong in Denval, in rivers and shores that had usurped his own. The silky fog rolling daylight in with it's approach, the very blades of vegetation around them. Everything was different, wrong. foreign. "Noc, I don't know how to wake up," Seo observed dryly. Seodai had felt lucid in dreams before, but never like this. Never conversationally with someone he had only just touched, just soothed, just shared his last waking moment with. His mind was rattling with skeptical disbelief at the content of this strange dream, this foreign world his mind was apparently trapped in. It was his first taste of the world at large, really, even if he was somehow inside Noc's mind to view it. Curiosity demanded he seek clarification. "What're you dreaming, Noc? Where is this? What gets bad?"

[Caelum]

“A bad night. A bad.. The whole the world gets bad,” Cian spoke with words that stretched at the walls of themselves and seeped through the cracks of their syllables, drizzling a hollow faced fear across the air. There was a shadow of dread welling behind his eyes as they met Seodai’s and his hands reached out, grasping Seo’s with cold fingers. The muscles in his arm tightened and he bent his elbow, suddenly tugging backwards while muddy water splashed up to splatter and soak their pants. “Try,” Cian urged as marsh grasses flattened beneath their fumbling feet, boot heels sliding on the sodden bank. The baying of a hound cracked across the night, backhanding the quiet with an eerie howl. “Try,” the healer said again while a runnel of blood beaded at his hairline to begin crawling down his cheek. In Leth’s light it flowed into the pattern of what Rak’keli’s gnosis would form outside of dreams or maybe just later, in the future when whatever this awful yesterday was finally laid to rest. Cian was not the only one who in the green shadows of the forest with the bellow of blood hounds ricocheting off the stars fledged a bastard notice of a god. A crooked backed design fractured across Seodai’s right hand, the one attached to the arm Cian was still gripping. It shimmered in moon patterns and seemed to melt in the flesh, bearing with it an surge of power to shoot through Seodai’s skeleton with all the crackling intensity of concentrated possibility. It felt, quite simply, like power Seodai could direct and waited, restless and cagey, inside of him. It was not a breath too soon for the tree line splintered beneath the rush of hounds barrelling toward them and the water behind erupted beneath the impact of something heavy and unmeant.

[Seodai]

Seodai had only ever felt something similar to the simmering energy inside of him once in his life, and that had been when he had received Bala's kiss. It was almost heady, like a drug. A once in a lifetime sensation that so many people never got to experience. And, as luck would have it, he was in a situation that made enjoying it impossible. He knew intuitively that the baying of those hounds was not a good thing, not a good sign. He couldn't begin to decipher why Noc was bleeding, but the sight of the blood was enough to divert his gaze. Seodai and blood were not the best of friends. "Noc," Seo hissed, in near panic. He curled the fingers into which the surge of power had gone, but he did not understand. He couldn't even imagine how to try. And so, desperately, he just thought. He thought of waking up. With worry, he thought of Noc's feverish frame, the tonic he had taken. He thought of the messy room in which Noc had slept. And he tried to want it. Really, he did. As the baying hounds sounded closer still, approaching threat. Seodai was not a hero. He had no false pretensions, no great urge to protect and serve. Not like Talen. Not like so many Denvali. Simply another way he was a failure. But, here, he almost felt the weight of responsibility in the simple words, the encouragement Noc had given him to try. "Maybe we should run," he said at last, when he could see the bouncing frame of the dogs. They were close enough to see. Noc had a terrible expression on his face, one that felt entirely unhelpful to Seodai, and so he gave his companion a great shove and began to do just that. To run. Along the beach, with the ugly waves and the unwelcoming surf. He ran, badgering Cian along all the way. Even so, he could hear them, feel them behind him. The raised voices of the owners who ultimately had to accompany animals such as these. Seodai didn't look back. He didn't need to in order to know that they were about to lose this race. Just when he could feel the nip of powerful jaws at his heel, he fell. Flailing arms inevitably brought Noc down too, so that the healers frame fell heavily atop his own. And, with a leap, the hounds were loosed to attack. Their jaws were open, their eyes glazed with the pleasure of capturing their prey. They would kill him. Cian Noc would be ripped to shreds atop him. Seodai recognized that truth with a sinking feeling of falling into the inevitable. Somehow, he knew that Noc was their prey and he was only in the wrong place, at the wrong time. But, however sensible that might be, he couldn't let it happen. He wouldn't. With a desperate, inner push, Seodai shouted. "No!" And, without even realizing what he was doing, without grace or any real control over his efforts, he lifted one hand to stop the hounds. That hand, the one Noc had touched, wiped away the face of the beast closest them as if it were a mistake in a painting. The timbre of his voice lifted over the frozen moment, and then shattered it like glass. Sprinkling shards fell down around them like ice, like a bitter rain. And then, it was raining. Noc still lay ungracefully atop him, but the pressing threat of death was gone. They were in a place much lovelier. A garden, with carefully manicured vegetation that Seodai might have admired under different circumstances. A house hovered to their right, at the other end of the verdant stretch. Seodai struggled to sit up, as Noc did the same. And then, just behind him, over the healer's shoulder, Seodai saw her. Someone young, and beautiful. With pretty features and these green eyes that had the power to arrest him. "Who's she?" Seodai regretted his words. He regretted it to the depths of his being, because as Noc turned to glance, he could feel the recognition in his companion. And, worst of all? The bad dream he had vanquished with his wishing surged back to life. He had crossed his wires somehow, so that the hounds were present again. Too present. Bounding through the yard more quickly than either of them could have moved. In a breath there was a scream, a feminine cry that cracked the air like thunder with the lightning that illuminated the grotesque scene. Then she had fallen, and there was blood. Always blood, everywhere. Staining her pretty dress, dripping into wet grass. "Oh gods, no," Seodai croaked wretchedly. He could feel Noc coiling to move, to run towards the beasts, but he knew he couldn't let him. And so Seodai launched himself at the healer, wrapping his arms so tightly around Noc's neck and shoulders that he crushed that beautiful face into his chest. He shut his eyes tightly, helplessly. When he opened them, the garden was gone. So too, was the rain. The house, the bloody dress, and the big green eyes. Instead he found a more familiar scene. Or, a partially familiar one. The architecture suggested that they were inside a greenhouse. His greenhouse, on the shores of Denval. Everything he loved about the place was there, but something was amiss. Instead of the reflective glass, the walls were decorated in an almost ostentatious, gaudy array. It looked like a temple, except for the rows of potted plants that filled the space. And there was a shattered piece of terra cotta, a once glowing plant destroyed. He had done that. Seodai had stolen that plant, that beloved thing, from his Uncle. His own childish ignorance had caused that pain. But if they were here, on this night, that meant Bala would come. Bala came on this night. In the distance, Seodai heard the hounds. "Petch it, Noc. What did you do? Why are they coming?"

[Caelum]

The shape of the dream swelled and thinned beneath Seodai’s hands, the clay of it having been dredged from the unforgetting chavi of both their souls. The residue of back firing gnosis and the diluted spill of Denvali blood had dampened it, but what foot, mortal or divine, continued pressing the pedal to turn and turn and turn them remained a mystery. It knocked them to the feet of the healer’s lost beloved and hauled them backwards through dead garden paths into desperate asylum in a temple he had known well once upon a younger year. The farm boy’s wits and care were what kept the clay of their chavi from collapsing to unmanageable ruin. Barely. Just barely. It was more than could be said for the phantom hounded healer, however; and that, in the end, was actually a great deal altogether. “Nothing,” Cian whispered while fighting to get his knees beneath him. They slid against the age weathered floor, smeared with the blood of a girl torn apart by the tragedy and tribulation of a massive hunt. “I did nothing, Seo,” he repeated with a gulp. A hand snagged at Seo’s sleeve as he found his legs at last, carrying the both of them to their feet. He maintained his hold once there, incapable in this moment of letting go. Daylight punched through high, needled windows to filter through the abundance of plant life and dye the air emerald and fragrant. It seemed too peaceful and holy a place for a nightmare with its offerings of snaking ash incense and beaten copper bowls brimming with what appeared to be both wine and water. There lay an altar with a rust stained cloth, tattered lace hem fluttering in the window’s breeze. The scent of something thick and metallic was suddenly thick. Regardless, the baying of the hounds carried on. “There is a door. There is always a door,” he muttered fast, a fragile veneer of calm overlaying his increasing anxiety. “When one can go in, one can go out. This is not Hai. I am not in Hai. We are not in Hai. This is a dream and dreams have exits. Exits…” He spun a circle, sweeping the temple interior with his eyes as if within its warm bricks he might find a crack in the walls of the dream. From beyond the massive oak heart doors in the temple’s eastern most corner the sound of claws scrabbling against paving stones echoed. The baying turned to furious barks and Cian turned damned eyes back on Seodai. Black epiphany streaked through them. “Forgive me,” he said. “You have to wake up.” A wicked curved blade flashed, razor steel hissing against the leather of a scabbard that might not have been there before. Or, perhaps, the mere idea of Cian Noc wearing a sword belt was so preposterous that Seodai’s senses had refused to process and accept it. The line of the healer’s body strummed into that of a warrior’s and he moved too quick for time to follow. The sword spitted Seodai’s heart before it had another chance to beat. The nightmare exploded, over ripe, a thousand voices singing off key and phantom hands scrambling, scrabbling over them both before losing their grip and flailing into a miasma of streaming light. Once the chaos faded, once the transition from dreaming world to waking one dimmed, Seodai found himself sprawled across the healer’s bed. The moon was rising through the window and Cian lay quiet and still beside him. His fever was broken, but he remained asleep.

[Seodai]

Seodai had, as of late, come to appreciate Leth more and more. The silvery streams of his smile, the guard he kept over them as they slept. He had come to appreciate the possibility he created; the chance to see Lysander in all of his glory, positively glowing with his Father's light. Now, though, Seodai's eyelids felt heavy as they lifted to regard the cool of night. When he had soothed Noc's brow with damp cloth, when he had kissed him to check for fever, Syna had been in control. How long had they been lost in that wasteland of dreams? For all that Noc was snoozing peacefully beside of him, Seodai felt unwell. He was hot and clammy, as if he had stolen the fever away from the healer, and gooseflesh raised upon his skin. His heart was pounding furiously, but oh how very glad he was to feel it's wild throb. Noc had killed him! There was an incredulous sort of disbelief that accompanied that knowledge. They needed to escape, he knew, but really? With uneven breathing, Seodai pushed himself to a sitting position. The night air was cool, quiet. He rubbed at his eyes, feeling more weary for his sleep than he had before it had stolen him away. He turned his gaze back, at last, to the healer. His breathing seemed even, his face relaxed. Seodai ran his fingers along brow and cheek, chasing hints of fever. There was none. Noc was cool to the touch, and no longer damp from the sweat of the burning inside of him. Seodai thought to leave him there, like that. Resting, peaceful. But, a nagging notion planted itself in his mind and wouldn't be removed. What if Cian was still stuck? Seodai was awake, but he had died. The notion of dreamhounds attacking Noc mercilessly shook the young farmer, and he was forced to act. He curled his fingers around Noc's shoulders and gently shook him. "Cian... Cian, you need to wake up, too."

[Caelum]

Wakeupwakeupwakeup. The healer's eyes fluttered before opening, eyelids rising with a breath as deep as the dreams they had been thrown into by unseen hands. The moment he did his heartbeat picked up its pace, galloping and scattered; and though he was looking right at the now familiar lines of Seodai’s sun kissed face, it would seem by the tell of his expression that he had expected someone – or thing – else. “Fuck,” he pronounced eloquently, rasping and out of breath as if he had been sprinting along the shores of some forgotten city rather than lying safe in his own bed. “Seo…” And he shoved up to his elbows, tangles of hair spilling into his eyes. There was a smear of blood at his mouth, not one missed from the farmer’s previous injuries. No. This blood had not been before. “I’m sorry. Are you.. You’re alright?” He gave him a searching look.