Open Dangerous Illusions

[Adelaide Sitai]

7th Summer 515AV
Gold Beach
Early morning
Stormy Weather

"I've got to get away. I've got to... got to..." Adelaide waved away the grey ghost-like figure trying to sell her an umbrella. She didn't need an umbrella. It wasn't raining.

Damn - Gold Beach was petching crowded, full of faded, grey figures, all trying to sell her things. She didn't want any cake either. She wasn't hungry and she didn't trust the pale, white cake that the ghost was holding in his hand. They were here because they knew about the day before, Adelaide knew. That morning, she had woken up in her bed, her uncle sitting at the foot of it, telling her that she was lucky that she had recovered so quickly with only a fever but that, unfortunately, her father had already died by the time they'd pulled him from the room. Liars! Adelaide knew that her father was not dead. Of course, she had to escape. The rhythmic, tribal drumming in her head was painful to her, but she knew, if she could just get to the sea, she'd be able to swim away from the ghosts - and from the liars.

"Mother of mine," she sang lowly, reaching her hands to the sky, "I am glad that you watch over me. You make sure I am well, that I have food, that I have rest, that I have...."

Adelaide pushed away another ghost, this time wearing a bright pink hat. Ha! What a silly thing for a ghost to wear!

"Father of mine! Where are you? Where are you? Where are you where are you where are you where are you!" the young woman sang a little louder, "Where? Where? Where! Where! are you? are you? Where are you? You! You! You! You! You!"

At that point, Adelaide stumbled slightly on the sand. She stood back up again, arms outstretched in front of her as though she were sleepwalking, then keeled over forwards. It was then that the idea struck her.

"Father?" she started digging into the sand, furiously, with both her hands, "Father! I'm coming. They told me you were dead. They've obviously just buried you alive. But, don't worry! I'm getting you out of there! I'm..."

There was a crash of thunder and lightning and Adelaide looked up with a start as a mist descended over her mind.

"What?! Where am I?"

Adelaide looked around her wildly. All the figures were walking away and she suddenly realised that she was soaking wet. What was she doing on the beach? How had she gotten there? She'd been kidnapped! She must have been. Only, she had to get to the sea. She had to swim away from the Kidnappers. Obviously, the liars had kidnapped her so that she wouldn't find out the truth about her father. Find out where they'd kept him.

"Mother of mine," she sang again, holding her arms up as though she were in prayer, on either side of her head, palms up to the open heavens and still kneeling on the wet sand, "Guide my hands. Find me a portal unto the sea."

She was overtaken by a sudden burst of heat that filled up her entire body and the world in front of her all turned a rosy pink. Adelaide had the impression that it stopped raining and the sun was shining. She started crawling along the sand on her hands and knees, laughing merrily and singing an old song that her nursemaid used to sing to get her to sleep as a toddler.

"Oh my baby my lovely little baby
your daddy's in the cotton field working for your food.
Singing toora loora toora loora bye bye
do you want the moon to play with
or the stars to run away with
they'll come if you don't cry
singing toora loora toora loora bye bye in your mummy's arms you're peeping and soon you'll be a sleeping singing toora loora toora loora bye."

As she approached the sea, Adelaide pulled off her cloak and left it on the sand. Every metre, she pulled off another piece of clothing, until she was at the sea, wearing nothing but her linen undergarments. She'd swim better if she was untouched by mortal possessions. That was what the spirits had told her.

[Rayala]

Rayala had really only just arrived in the city that day, entering just as the gate had opened when night had passed by. She was tired from the long trip, but she also didn't want to sit around in some house someplace. She had been sitting for far too long on that wagon with far too many for her taste. Including that old bat who kept giving her dirty looks. She shouldn't hit her when she had the chance. So, raining or not, she was determined to take a walk around the city. It worked out, too, that there were few people out and about in the rain, it let her see so much more without worrying about someone telling her she shouldn't be in some section of the city.

Somehow she had ended up finding one of the beaches. She glanced around with big eyes, pushing her wet hair out of her face with an honest smile. It looked...surprisingly nice. She could only imagine how it would appear in the sunlight with Syna's rays hitting the water and sand alike. The waves coming gently to the golden sand, instead of the harsher ones caused by the storm. It would likely make for a peaceful scene. Perfect for those with more art skill than herself.

It didn't take long for her to spot....something....through the rain. Raya narrowed her eyes, blinking once she realized it was a woman. A woman moving about erratically and calling out to someone. Either she was simply mad or on something. She watched the woman from a safe distance for a while, until she dropped to her knees, the sound muffled by the storm sounded like singing.

"Oh please don't," Rayala muttered to herself, crossing her arms as the woman crawled towards the water. Maybe she would stop and Raya wouldn't have to at least act like she cared. She looked around, hoping maybe someone else would show up, but soon looked back to the woman, just in time to see she had discarded most of her clothes. She pressed her lips together, keeping back a slur of expletives, before running over towards the woman. Once she was close enough, she would reach down to try and grab hold of her upper arm. "Lady, ya want yourself dead?," she yelled over the storm.

[Estrellir Konrath]

OOCThe overdosed, the foreigner and the drunk... this could be fun.


While a man had died surrounded by his candles two plantations over, Estrellir had spent an entire night in blissful ignorance of his death and its mysterious circumstances. Her mind was covered in a pleasant haze that cushioned her thoughts and took the edge off her eternal musings of politics, intrigue and power. Calmed down by alcohol in her blood, the Konti felt something akin to satisfaction for no particular reason.

She’d been drinking and gambling away small change at Towery’s for most of the night. On a night like this, Estrellir preferred the rough and honest charm of the cheap casino to the more expensive Pavilléon. Despite her relations and business, she typically didn’t have any money to spend. Last but not least, she liked to mingle with the lower classes every now and then, studying their mannerisms, their speech and social behavior. Everything she learned fed into her work, teaching her how to move among all kinds of people as if she belonged. Even so, she was drinking rum on the rocks rather than Towery’s ale, a terrible concoction that certainly wasn’t supplied by the Draer.

Originally, she’d planned to crash in her bureau, having kept Mell instead of sending her on to Boldvine. However, when she got up and wobbled outside, the Konti managed to miss the bridge connecting Blade Island to tiny Fire Island. Instead she walked on, only noticing the mistake three islands over. By then her white locks, originally braided and wound around her head, were looking considerably messier and the sleeves of her white blouse, already short, had been rolled up over her shoulders.

When the voice reached her ears, her webbed hand froze in her pocket (where it’d been fingering a smooth pebble the size of a toddler’s fist) and violet eyes narrowed. Pushing back a sweaty lock, Estrellir tried to spot the singer. Thunder was rolling over the sweet melody every now and then. Blinking against painfully white lightning, she finally noticed two figures farther down the beach. One of them seemed to be walking into the water, shedding clothes on the way, and the other was hurrying towards her. Approaching, she thought there was something familiar about the swaying dark hair and wide gestures of the first person.

It hit her out of the blue. Following instinct rather than logic and reason, Estrellir almost stumbled, cursed her lethargic feet and broke into a run. Splashing through shallow water, boots and all, she reached Adelaide a breath or two after Rayala did. Another round of thunder allowed her to catch her breath and push back silvery hair. “Adelaide, what a surprise! Were you planning to refresh yourself before the storm hit? It doesn’t seem like such a good idea now.”

Still breathing heavily, Estrellir laid a webbed hand on the Sitai’s other shoulder. “Why don’t we go somewhere else? I don’t fancy being blown out to sea, what do you think?” Licking her dry lips, she tried to lead Adelaide away from the water with the help of the other woman. Her clouded mind still didn’t fully grasp the situation, but Adelaide appeared to be in a bad mood – odd even for her. Swimming among thunder and lightning wouldn’t do her any good.

[Adelaide Sitai]

"Lady, ya want yourself dead?"

Adelaide flinched as she heard the voice. Then she looked up at the speaker, aghast.

"My, what a big head you have!"

Adelaide's eyes possibly widened even further than they already were for, truly, from her point of view, she was now looking at a young woman with a hugely bulbous head, a head in danger of popping, that was possibly full of some sort of gas and would lift its owner up towards Leth. Poor woman, thought Adelaide, she was very pretty, really. It was a shame her head was so large.

“Adelaide, what a surprise! Were you planning to refresh yourself before the storm hit? It doesn’t seem like such a good idea now.”

"Storm? What storm?" the young Sitai mumbled, completely bemused by the suggestion.

Adelaide looked up at the sky, which was blue - and Syna's rays were shining down on the bulbous head of the woman in front of her. But how did the woman know her name? Adelaide did not recall telling her, and had never met her before. Of course, she had no awareness of the fact that it wasn't the stranger who had spoken at all, but rather a silver-haired Konti who she knew far better.

"Go away." she said finally, "The spirits have told me that if I just keep swimming, I'll discover where they have hidden my father."

Just at that moment, another wave of fog descended over Adelaide's mind, coincidentally at exactly the same moment that a wave of water came crashing down over her head.

"I... I... Where am I?" the young woman looked around, perplexed, "Who are you?" she looked up at the two women... no, four women, confused as they pulled her away from the sea. Suddenly, she was certain of only one thing - that she had two arms and two legs. All the other details were blurry. But why were they blurry? It felt like something in her head was trying to make its way through the fog, and her head pounded, again like Taloban drums. What had happened?

Searching for a memory, for something to say, to establish who she was and where she was in her mind, she desperately shook her head, as though there were a wasp flying close to her. Forgetting why she was doing this, she even start batting at an invisible wasp. She was sure that she could hear a buzzing sound.

"Lady, ya want yourself dead?" she said this out loud, as something came to her, but who had said that and when? And why?

"I know a lady who died," Adelaide started singing quietly, then there was a sudden crescendo as her voice went a little higher, higher than she was used to, "I know a lady who lived in an old well," Well? Now, what rhymed with 'well'. Adelaide continued, inventing furiously.

"She owned a blue hat with a silver bell,
One day, the well started filling back up with water.
The Locals told the Lady to run but she just roared with laughter.
'I've lived in this well for nigh on twenty years,' said she,
'And a little bit of water doesn't frighten me.'
But when the neighbours next went to check on her,
They found that she had gone to meet her maker."

Finally, a memory had popped up out of the fog, and Adelaide stopped singing. Rather she looked away nervously and stood up. Candles. She remembered candles.

"There was a room full of candles. And smoke. It was not a nice room." The young woman didn't even realise she was speaking aloud, "I think something bad happened. I was going to blow out the candles, but the candles told me not to."

[Rayala]

Rayala blinked at the woman's words on her head size. Last she checked, her head was perfectly normal. Even if the exclamation briefly threw her off, it answered an unspoken question she had: whoever this woman was, she was drunk or high. At least she highly doubted anyone inflicted with madness would see people with odd sized heads. Instead of replying, Raya had only continued to try and bring the woman away from the water, though stopped at the voice breaking through the storm.

She looked up to see a pale haired woman addressing the drugged woman. Adelaide, she repeated silently to herself, making a quick note of the woman's name. She gave a quick smile to the woman who had come over to help, still grasping onto one of Adelaide's arms to try and ease her further from the waves, though the smile fell into a frown at the woman's words on the storm, or lack there of in her mind. "You really don't see or feel a storm? Remind me to ask wherever you got what you got," she muttered, sounding half impressed and half as if she thought the woman had made some mistake. While she was curious as to what she had drank, inhaled, or otherwise ingested, she couldn't quite fathom why someone wouldn't have someone watching them after a potent dosage. Then again, Kenash was definitely different from her own home.

When Adelaide spoke of spirits, Rayala looked up to the silver haired woman. "You know her. She...she doesn't normally see spirits, right? Or does she usually do...whatever this is?," she asked. She had dismissed the thought of madness, but she hadn't quite dismissed the thought of magic with the mention of spirits. This thought had her tense noticeably, though she kept her expression fairly neutral as she waited for an answer. Though she didn't dwell on that long due to Adelaide seeming to come to some sort of lucidity. She only gave a reassuring smile, looking to the other woman questioningly. It was likely she would have more experience with this sort of thing. Unless she only knew Adelaide in passing, of course.

Of course, as suddenly as it had come, the clarity of thought was gone again.

A sigh escaped her when Adelaide began speaking and then singing of all things. "Well, there goes the chance it was wearin' off...ah...you know what she's blabberin' on about?," she turned to the light haired woman, a look of hopeless confusion on her face. "Or at least where she lives?"

[Estrellir Konrath]

Despite her words, Adelaide didn’t turn around, but continued to address the other girl. Bewildered, Estrellir tilted her head and in fact almost tripped over the fellow Dynast in a clumsy attempt to attract her attention. Mumbling about heads and spirits? Holding on to her shoulder, the Konti tried to figure out what she was talking about.

Then a wave caught them, several buckets of chilly salt water. Sighing, Estrellir dragged Adelaide further up the shore. Her white braids, already messy, were completely ruined now, her clothes dripping wet and boots likely beyond repair. Salt water, why did it always have to be salt water? “Goddamn sea should stay out of our swamp…” When visiting Towery’s, the Konti tended to pick up colorful language – a fact that she would’ve noticed much sooner if not for the liquor in her veins.

Fortunately Adelaide didn’t resist when they led her away from the water and up the sandy shore. Grinning, Estrellir shook her head at the human girl. “Spirits? As far as I know, that’s a first. She has quite a few other interesting pastimes, but spirits…” Something about the idea intrigued her and the explanation faded into a thoughtful hum.

Suddenly Adelaide broke into song, spinning words from an earlier remark. Shaky and limping, the melody still had an ominous ring to it. Estrellir wanted her to stop. Could she tell a Sitai to shut up? What would Atia say? Oh, but she knew all too well… “Such bad rhyme, my dear,” she muttered eventually, not content with saying nothing after all. “A room with candles? I wonder… Was there anything else in the room? Other people? Better make a song out of that. I mean, who would live in a well?”

The human girl seemed more and more confused. That and her words caused Estrellir to laugh out loud. Laughing and laughing, she had to grab Adelaide’s shoulder in order not to roll around in the damp sand. After calming down, she still had tears in her violet eyes. “Well well well, let’s see… This, my dear, is Adelaide Sitai. I, just for the record, am Estrellir Konrath. And who might we have the pleasure of meeting on this auspicious morning?”

Over their heads, thunder rumbled again and swallowed a good part of her words. It was quite obvious, however, how she emphasized their Dynasty names and what that was supposed to mean. Despite Adelaide’s delusions and despite the slur in her words, they were still Dynasts.

[Adelaide Sitai]

“A room with candles? I wonder… Was there anything else in the room? Other people? Better make a song out of that. I mean, who would live in a well?”

The room... Adelaide shook her head violently. Oh god, the room! Suddenly Adelaide objected to the two women being anywhere near her.

"Go away. Petch off." she yelled, flailing wildly before melting back into a puddle. She felt she was a puddle, a softly humming puddle of metal. She looked to the women to tell them, singing sadly, if not very well, with great operatic peaks, "I am a puddle. I am of metal. I am a metal puddle, humming. Humming. Humming. Humming. Humming. Bee. Bee. Humming bee! Humming bee! Bee! Bee! B? B? B flat.... B FLAAAT." She hummed slightly, not quite in b flat, "B FLAT! B FLAAAT! Bat. Bats. Bats flying around the room," Adelaide's voice started to go higher, a shrill soprano, "White bats with red eyes, wisps of smoke around a smoky room. Oh god, the room! Full of candles. Candles...."

Adelaide's voice tailed off and she collapsed to the floor, cross-legged, sobbing slightly.

"And it used to be SUCH a NICE room!"

Oh petch - why couldn't her thoughts form? All thoughts were spinning around and around her head like fast birds, swooping and shrieking as the little people in her head held their butterfly nets aloft in a vain attempt to catch them. One little red and curly-haired girl was spinning around in a white dress, almost comical in her failure to capture any thoughts in her golden butterfly net with a golden rod, different to the other little people with their brown nets and wooden rods.
Then a tall sandy-haired man that looked exactly like her childhood tutor, Flynn, caught a wisp of purple smoke in his bet and Adelaide remembered the body. Her father's body was ash. All ash... all smoke. Smoke rising from his mouth. Two dark eyes flashed in her head, a flash that seemed to escape through her own eyes. She looked down at her hands and between her fingers, she imagined that she could see fistfuls of her father's dark hair. With terror, the young woman shrieked.

She couldn't speak. She couldn't speak. Suddenly, she recognised Estrellir and grabbed at her arm, ready to tell her, ready to ask her to explain, but the words weren't coming out of her mouth. Desperately, she looked up at Estrellir as her mouth opened and shut like a fish. Again and again, she tried. Please, please help me, the young woman's eyes implored. Adelaide opened her mouth an shut her mouth, then did so again, until finally, she just let out a low, hollow scream that didn't quite resonate around the beach and simultaneously picked up a stray twig on the beach.

On the sand, she started to draw candle after candle. Rectangles and flames. Rectangles and flames. Rectangles and flames. Rectangles and flames. She took a moment to see if Estrellir understood, then shook her head and looked back down at the ground. Frantically, she drew a larger rectangle around all the candles, and then a skull on each of the individual candles. At first, the skulls were misshapen but, by her seventh candle, they looked less like upside down pears and more like they could conceivably be skulls.

Again, Adelaide looked back up at Estrellir.

[Estrellir Konrath]

Apparently the Sitai girl didn’t take well to questions. Suddenly she was yelling and flailing, so Estrellir let her go and stumbled back a few steps. Her pale face began to twist into a mask of irritation as she hissed a few words. “Don’t be rude to me! You can go be rude to your slaves or even your family, I don’t care. But I don… don’t have to listen to that!”

Shaking her head, she looked around as if about to choose a direction in which to escape from the woman’s company. Eventually she stayed though as soft words and a melody had her ensnared once again. Metal puddles? Chrome hearts, perhaps. Never rusted. Then the voice rose and rose, shrill in the Konti’s ears. By Akajia, her heart was already pounding. “Stop it!” she snapped towards the end of the monologue, rolling her eyes, and covered her ears with her hands for good measure. The sobbing escaped her at first, but the fact that Adelaide had melted down in the sand didn’t.

And then she screamed. Estrellir curled into herself, almost kneeling in the sand, clutching at her head to keep it from splitting. She felt like screaming herself, instead she pressed her lips together and screwed her eyes shut. After a tick, she even began rocking back and forth… back and forth. Wet, shivering… and sick. She wanted everything to stop, there and then. She wanted to disappear.

The silence. Had it actually worked, had her wish been granted? The Konti was afraid to open her eyes… until her arm was grabbed and yanked at, forcing a startled cry from her throat. She whirled around and tried to wrench free, but something in Adelaide, whether it was the drug or the shock induced by fresh memory, lent her incredible strength. “Let me… go! Come on, what is it now?”

After a few ticks of tugging and twisting, Estrellir gave up and flung herself into the sand besides Adelaide. If the other Dynast wanted to play in the sand like a mute child, fine! She crossed her arms, huffed and watched as lines turned into shapes. Candles, of course. So many candles. “Yes… yes… lots of candles in a room, you already mentioned… what’s that? They smelled like pear? Well, how uncomfortable… Oh, wait, that one looks different. They smelled like… skulls? My dear, are you sure…”

Suddenly the coin dropped. Estrellir sighed, trying to stifle a laugh. “So the candles were poisoned, yes? Poor dear…” Leaning forward, she pulled Adelaide into a clumsy hug. On some level, she knew why the Sitai was shocked, that compassion was in order, but she still couldn’t help but grin when the other woman wasn’t looking. It happened all the time, after all. Roland had gone in style, true, but he wasn’t the first nor would he be the last. It was just silly… so silly…