come_sailaway | it's a war in there [March OTA, including memshare]

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it's a war in there [March OTA, including memshare]

Who: Cassandra de Rolo & those visiting her memories / OTA
When: March
Where: Around the Serena Eterna; also Whitestone, at various points in the past
What: Things are beginning to crack
Warnings: Game-typical angst; in memshares, murder, torture, vampirism, mindfuckery both magical and mundane, and potentially noncon/dubcon; other warnings to be added in reply headers as needed

A. you're just like them, you're unprepared

Cassandra's noticed the cracks, of course. Before she brushes against one, they seem alarming and inexplicable; are they a trick, a trap, a sign that this whole little artificial plane is starting to come apart?

(The thought she barely lets herself contemplate: a way out?)

After her first few encounters with them, the nature of them seems more apparent -- although there's no guarantee they aren't also any of her previous thoughts. The first time her own memories double on her, with faces she knows from here appearing in them, she locks herself in her cabin's bathroom and curls up on the floor of the shower, arms wrapped around her knees, struggling not to begin screaming for fear that she might never stop.

[This prompt is for interacting with Cassandra in the present setting! Feel free to run into her anywhere on board, either before or after memshares begin, or PM/ping me on discord to discuss a more specific prompt.]

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B. cause you don't know the terrain

Several cracks about the ship, as it turns out, lead to a world called Exandria and a little city-state called Whitestone. Those who tumble into them will encounter a younger Cassandra at some point in her past.

[Specific pre-discussed prompts are below! If you would like a different one, see the plotting post here or PM/ping me to discuss.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Erin shrugs her wings. "I fell into my adopted sister's memory for two years and got back shaved seconds later. I'm used to distorted time, so like...I'm not particularly worried about that aspect. Entering one door and leaving another weeks later or before I actually entered the first one used to be part of my day job. Besides..."

"...Who knows when I'll ever get another chance to see Whitestone?"

"I ..." Cassandra stares at her helplessly for a long moment, and then pulls in a shaky breath and lets it out slowly. Looks down at her coffee as though she's just remembered it's there, and takes a long drink.

"I don't know what to make of you," she says, very low. "You ... if what you're saying is true, you've known me for half a year and I've known you for barely an hour. You appear out of nowhere, you kill the most terrifying person I've ever known in a blink, you -- you get a sign from my family's god --"

Her voice tries to rise, and she drags it back down level.

"I need sleep and a clear head before I make any decision about ... what to do next, about you. But you'll stay the rest of the night?"

"I'll stay," Erin promises in a soft voice. She's not sure how to feel about Pelor picking up the phone for her either, but that's...a later problem. A much later problem. "...Don't feel pressured to be familiar with me. I don't expect anything, and I won't. I know I'm a stranger to you now. Just...try to take it more seriously the next time I imply you don't want to know something, yeah?"

Cassandra meets her eyes, unflinching. "I take your meaning," she says, "and I appreciate it, but I would always rather know."

It's mostly quiet after that, the conversation limping a little and turning to smaller things, as they finish the coffee and the plate of sweet rolls. A second guard in Cassandra's livery, a tall woman with muscular arms and hair drawn back in a tight bun, comes in about an hour to relieve Kynan; shortly thereafter, a pair of housemaids show up to take Erin to a guest room. Cassandra asks them if there's any word from her brother or from Vasselheim. There doesn't seem to be.

The guest room is sparsely but comfortably furnished, with a feather bed of generous size (and no sign of pearls or hammocks anywhere). The younger of the two housemaids, who gives her name as Roslyn, tells Erin that she can come down to the kitchen for breakfast at any hour, but she's to sleep as late as she likes -- it's well past midnight by now, after all.

Cassandra herself doesn't wake until close to ten in the morning, and makes her way downstairs in a gown of soft gray wool with her hair pulled back in the hastiest of twists. She would like the chance to wake slowly, but she's already taking reports and hearing news in her corner of the dining hall.

Surprise Cass, Erin rises at seven come hell or high water, though she'd warned the servants not to touch her clothes or herself ("If I wake suddenly it'll be swinging, you're not getting paid enough for that."). She doesn't want to act like she's got free reign of the castle so Erin wanders into the dining hall to request 'something light and sweet', clad in her returned Mantle. She also asks for coffee and if anyone might be able to provide her with reading on the history of Whitestone.

The end result is she's been at this table for a bit more than two hours now, absentmindedly devastating Cassandra's pantry while she reads with the kind of hyper focus that Erin hasn't felt since she was thirteen. One thick volume is already done with, and she's more than halfway through another.

Erin looks...happy. She doesn't notice Cass enter and she definitely hasn't noticed that the maids have taken to bringing progressively larger dishes to see when Erin notices.

"How long have you been up?" Cassandra asks, making sure to put herself within Erin's line of sight before speaking. She's smiling; it's a complicated smile, amusement and interest and curiosity layered over a cautious kind of liking, blended uneasily with determination.

Cass's courtesy is well spent; if Erin had been holding her coffee when she jolts like this that adorable librarian would have to kill her. As it stands she looks up with a sheepish grin, blushing lightly. "Three hours, give or take? I've got early habits." Beat. "And chronic insomnia. You sleep well? I was just waiting for break -"

Erin's bird eyes slide down to the table.

There is a long moment.

"Lasses," Erin says slowly, "at least tell me someone just won money."

The two maids currently at the table exchange glances before looking back at her. One sighs solemnly. "No, miss. Chef Malba overheard the betting and made us stop."

"Good thing too," mutters the other, rueful, "or I'd be out three silver."

Cassandra presses her lips together, but there's laughter dancing in her eyes.

"Y'all just let me do this to your poor chef??" Erin slumps back in her chair in a daze and the worst bit is she honestly could probably still eat. Grazing her way through all this so far and also finally feeling able to relax...well, the thing about those relaxing years in Ruby and Crabb's memories is that they ended in her going right back to the extremely stressful ship. "I hope their food being appreciated helps! Fuckin'..."

Remembering her book, Erin slides a bookmark into it and gets the pile of books as far from the food as possible.

"Oh, he's delighted," the first maid assures her earnestly. "He says anyone who's this hungry needs to be sure to get enough, and that's his job."

Cassandra smiles. "Please tell him I commend him on his duty, and I'll take griddle cakes if there's any batter left, whatever he's serving otherwise."

"Yes, Lady," they say in ragged unison, bobbing a pair of curtseys, and head back for the kitchen. Cassandra takes the seat opposite Erin, folding her hands on the table.

"What've you been reading?" she asks, nodding at the books.

"I asked for some books on the history of Whitestone!" Erin looks excited as hell about it too. "I'm gonna have to shake someone down for lessons on how money works here to understand some of it but it's been fascinating."

She'll need those lessons if she takes up merc work too. Erin finds her coffee empty and starts sugaring the cup again; this poor sugar bowl has been devastated.

"I do hope I'm not keeping you from anything. Castles on my world are uh...outdated, technologically, so I'm not the most familiar with how much work they take to maintain politically."

"I have a little time," Cassandra says. "My council is handling things right now -- they'll send a runner if I'm needed, but everyone is very insistent that I take some time to recover from yesterday's shock. I ... feel they may be right."

She sighs. "The past several days I've been running in all directions, trying to prepare for the Briarwoods making an assault on Whitestone -- and when they made their move, it was something none of us had predicted. I don't quite know what to do now. Except wait for word from Vox Machina, or from anyone who could tell us what's happening there now."

"Well," Erin muses. "If there's nothing to do but wait, maybe I should shake you down to see the town? Staying cooped up won't do any good either way, right?"

"... You make a sound argument," Cassandra says, in a tone of half-grudging concession, with a laugh dancing in her eyes.

Her breakfast arrives about then, a tall stack of griddle cakes studded with blackberries, accompanied by a pot of tea, a crock of honey, an orange sliced into wedges, and a side plate of fried ham and eggs. It's Roslyn who sets down the tray, saying "Chef Malba's compliments, my lady, and he hopes your appetite is good this morning."

Cassandra eyes the offering with a kind of resigned amusement. "He and Arla think I haven't been eating enough," she says to Erin. "And they're not shy about letting me know it."

That gets a raised eyebrow. "Maybe they're right," Erin teases. "I don't just eat like this because I've got the metabolism of an angry shrew, swordfighting really takes it out of a girl."

But she's only got eyes for Cass now, that comfortable and faintly lovestruck look dawning on Erin's face again. It's a wonder that she's remembering her coffee.

Cassandra chuckles at that, and starts in on her breakfast as Roslyn asks if Erin's sure she doesn't want any more.

Partly to mollify the concerns of her head steward and chief cook, partly because she really hasn't been eating enough lately and it's catching up with her, and partly because they're really excellent griddle cakes, it doesn't take long for Cassandra to make considerable inroads into her breakfast. It's somewhere halfway through that her mind puts together two or three different things Erin has said with the look on her face just now.

Oh, she hears herself think very clearly, you meant together.

(She's paused in mid-motion, scooping up a bite of egg, and she stays like that for another moment.)

"...Love," absolutely no self awareness in this girl. "Something urgent just hit you?"

Yes, and she called her love before, didn't she? In the cavern, over Delilah's body --

(Strangely, perhaps, the feeling is closest to panic. How is this possible; what do I do with this; no one ever gave me a map for this road.)

"Not urgent," she manages to say, almost smoothly. "Rather belated, in fact. It's all right. You wanted to go down to the city? Are you still interested in visiting the temple of Pelor?"

"If it won't put you to trouble," Erin demurs, absolutely ready to just bask in the glorious radiance of Cass being happy, and at ease, and among people she can love without reservation. "...Any kind of trouble, I dunno how much explaining you'd have to do about why you're wandering around town with the tall sword lady."

"Well, the nice thing about that," and she's smiling again, "is that there are only a few people who might have some right to demand explanations of me, and they already know. But also I don't think it would go amiss to tell people that you're a stranger from another plane, visiting ours briefly, and that you provided invaluable assistance and may have saved my life ...?"

Something in her voice softens at that, involuntarily.

"Planes...right, right, y'all have other realities packaged in." A beat. "I say, like mine doesn't. Yeah, it's technically correct, the best kind of correct. I won't cause trouble, my lady."

It's the little teasing way she says it, like she does on the ship; the voice of someone who knows how to say it right and is saying 'my lady' wrong on purpose.

Here, that tone gets a slight raised eyebrow from Cassandra, as though wondering whether she's being mocked -- and letting it be known that she's wondering, but not taking offense.

"Very well. Let me finish my breakfast, and we can go down shortly thereafter. -- Do you ride, or shall I have a carriage ready?"

"I haven't seen a living house that wasn't a monster in fifteen years. Carriage please."

The Hedge! It sucks.

Cassandra takes a moment to try to imagine what monster horses must look like, but ends up shaking her head and sending a runner to order a carriage made ready, before tackling her breakfast again.

By the time she's done, another messenger has arrived to confirm the carriage is prepared, and she gestures Erin to come along with her. Yet another guard in her livery falls in behind them as they leave the dining hall, a heavyset person with their hair in tight braids against their head; as they make for the main entry hall, a young man in the undifferentiated castle livery jogs beside them as Cassandra rattles off a few instructions about where they're going and who's to send for her under what circumstances. (The foremost notify me at once circumstance is any word at all from Vasselheim or from Vox Machina.)

The carriage is simple, ornamented only by the de Rolo crest that Erin has seen before on the cover of a certain book; the seats inside are leather, comfortably padded. Cassandra watches Erin most of the way down the road from the castle, waiting for the moment when she spots it: a truly enormous tree, its leafy limbs spreading high above the roofs of the town in the valley below.

Cass you live in a reality with so many monster horses. Nightmares! Kelpies! What the fuck did your parents even pay Anders for?

Erin looks in awe and wonder at Whitestone, completely at ease with coming off as a country rube. But when the great tree comes into sight it audibly takes her breath away.

It says something of how much better she feels about herself around Cass that the thought never crosses her mind that she should stay away from such a sacred thing. Instead, without knowing she's speaking, Erin whispers: "The paintings didn't do it justice. She's glorious."

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Cut to morning?

Sure!

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