Shards of Self (Alric, Open)

[Wrenmae]

Winter 56, 511 AV

Tick

Tock

Above him, the gears of some unimaginably massive clock churned. Wrenmae stood on a wheel, moving in incremental but measured paces along the bronze pole it hung from. Every piece necessary, every gear in place. Personally, Wrenmae couldn't tell anyone about the inner mechanism of a clock. His expertise extended only to sundials and the passage of the sun over the earth. All of this was new to him, the stuttering gears of automation loud and clanking, abominable and discordant.

He was alone, at least at first, here in this strange nightmare of gears and metal. He wore the simple white tunic he'd fallen asleep in, billowing with air he didn't feel. Below him, the abyss yawned lazily, open like a silent maw, awaiting its food rather than proactively seeking it. The storyteller edged away from that drop, one hand on the cold comfort of the pole. This was a dream, it had to be. Nothing so conceivably maniacal could possibly exist.

Seizing, grinding.

The entirety of the inner mechanisms came to rest. With the sound of metal tearing, pieces of the nightmarish world spun into the abyss, hurled suddenly from their axis by some unseen inner explosion. No longer did the insides keep time, only screeched in the absence of purpose, the lament of the forgotten.

Shadows made themselves known, figures that crouched on different precipices of the ruined gears. One, a child, clung to the toothed edge of a gear hanging precariously. His face was grave, weak as always and gaunt. Above him, gargoyleish and perfectly balanced on a diagonal pole, Weaver crouched and watched the events unfold, mirth drifting along his shadowed face, the wide brimmed had hiding all but the smile.

Above them all, on a throne of twisted metal, Shroud propped up his head on a gentle fist. The cloak of shadows around him licked across the seat and drifted out behind it, roiling, alive. His pale face watched Wrenmae with inscrutably dispassion...no one else held his attention.

The four were gathered, the shards of Wrenmae now in free floating war for control of his actions.

Shroud appeared to be winning.

"Here we are again," Shroud spoke, his voice filling the void where the ticking once was.

"Always such a pleasure," Weaver quickly quipped, grinning.

"Do you remember..." The child started, his voice scarcely more than a whisper,

"No," Wrenmae interrupted, "What do you want?"

"We are not alone," Shroud revealed, closing his eyes and sitting back on the throne, "Our discussions can wait."

"I do so love company," Weaver asserted, scuttling along the pole like some garishly dressed monkey, "I ponder the wonder of if they brought a story."

"We should be so lucky," the child muttered, "Anything to drowned out your voice."

But Wrenmae didn't respond to them, his eyes were to the twisted landscape around him. Who else could come? Who else would? What manner of intruder trespassed on this council with himself?

[Etrius]

Darkness. Silence. Stillness. Peace.

All of this was shattered with the crash of metal against metal and the grinding of gears against gears.

Aroused by the cold of the hard metal surface he was laying on, Etrius opened his eyes to meet a figure staring down at him with an annoyed sneer on his face.

"About damn time." The loud, high-pitched, cold whisper played across his ears, sending a violent shiver down his spine. Etrius was all too familiar with this voice. What was even more frightening, was that he was familiar with the face with which the voice had decided to manifest. Etrius was staring at a mirror image of himself, only... the image was ... inverted. It was pale as a ghost, everything from the figure's hair to his skin to the clothes he had donned. All white, except for the figure's eyes. Staring down at him with bright blue irises and whites as dark as pitch. This was Him.

Standing, Etrius voiced his own displeasure. "Where'd you drag me to this time? Still trying to take over my body?"

The figure scowled. "I thought this was your fault!" His face contorted into a smile. "Normally, yes I would be all too happy to take the reins for a while but, seeing as this isn't my doing" He gestured toward the landscape of twisted metal around them "there's not really much I can do. Besides, if we fought now, we would be vulnerable to attack from that thing."

Etrius turned to where He had pointed. There was another figure, this one staring with dull, glowing orange eyes. It also took on Etrius' form, though it was more shape than silhouette. Trails of shadow rose up from around it, almost as if the darkness itself wanted to run away. This was It.

It stood. Silent. Motionless. Hating all and being hated by all. It did not speak, but only slowly tilted It's head, gesturing toward the black abyss, toward other figures that were very far away. Unable to make out who they were, Etrius looked back toward It. "What, you expect us to go over there?"

As if in answer to his question, the world around them shifted and blurred, like it would if one was to pass by at a very fast speed. The gear the trio were standing on was suddenly connected to the gear on which one of the other figures was standing. The world around them settled. Etrius and his counterparts were left to converse with the members of the group they had been forced to join.

[Alric Wilmot]

Alric opened his eyes blearily, at first unaware of his sleep. However, as he studied the unnatural landscape, he seemed to innately know. He was dreaming, and in this dream, some very strange things were happening. He was on a floating metal disk, a mirror to his side, despite there being no walls for it to hang. Alric was lying on the disk, not wanting to get up, sleep still seemed to cling to his eyes. The horrid reality of the aftermath of the winter crisis Alvadas went through was still burnt into his eyes. Oh, what he wouldn't give for a dreamless sleep. To think of nothing, to know nothing, to care about nothing... He had changed amongst the chaos and death that had flooded Ionu's city. He cared little of control and mastery, he cared little about everything. He had learned, finally, who his mother was. The revelation was a more of a burden than he had realized. Kinneas, it was revealed, was his half-brother. Normally that would have been welcome news. It was less welcome when Alric had found his body amongst the debris. The strange place he was in, however, did not seem to want him to lay about in self-pity. A cacophonous Tik-Tok noise assaulted his ears. Alric got up, but only out of severe annoyance and curiosity. As he got up, he stumbled toward the edge of the disk, to peer over and see what he may. What he saw, made his mouth gape open. The disk that he was on, was attached to a massive pendulum, that seemed even larger than the Temple of Ionu. Below the pendulum, however, was something of even greater interest. Wrenmae, his foster-brother, was standing on a floor far below the pendulum. As Alric peered down to the dream-Wrenmae, for he certainly wasn't the real one, he heard a tapping. The tapping was as if someone were tapping on a window pane, but it came from the mirror. Alric walked towards it, and looked at it curiously. From within, he could see his reflection walking towards him as he walked toward it. Then, suddenly, he realized it was not him in the mirror. Though it did seem to look like him. But it had no face, nothing but smooth skin was where his face should be. He reached up to his face, and panicked as he realized with dread that he had no facial features. "Calm down, it's okay. I'm right here." Alric jumped as a voice came from the mirror. He peered into it, trying to see if what his reflection that had said something. But how could it? It had no mouth. But, then again, he had no eyes... "Down here." Alric looked near the bottom of the mirror, and on the floor was his face. Wait, no. That wasn't right, it was not his face. It was the mask he had worn since childhood. The mask that was given to him by Kinneas when he was but a small child. It was the mask he had lost in the fight to save Alvadas. It spoke again, "Please get me out of here! I want to be where I belong!" Alric didn't even think, he reached into the mirror and grabbed his old mask, his old face. He pulled, but the mask wouldn't come out of the mirror. Alric tried again, and again, and again. Finally, in frustration, he punched the mirror as hard as he could, and shattered it. That, was a mistake. As the mirror shattered, so did the rest of the world. The gears that had surrounded him, the disk that held him aloft, all of it seemed to crash and destroy itself before his eyes... if he even had eyes, that is. Alric fell, and fell, but he did not seem to reach the bottom. It was an odd sensation, especially since he knew the bottom was much closer than this. Finally he hit the floor, but it didn't seem to hurt. Or, really, do any damage at all. He rubbed his eyes at the strangeness of it all, before he realized that once again he had eyes to rub. He felt his face, and realized all of his features were back, if they were even actually gone in the first place. "...Anything to drown out your voice." Alric slowly moved his head towards the source of the noise, and walked over. Completely forgetting that he had fallen from nearly 100 feet in the air.