come_sailaway | wake me up when September ends [OTA + closed prompts]

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wake me up when September ends [OTA + closed prompts]

Who: Cassandra de Rolo, OTA + closed prompts
When: September
Where: Around the Serena Eterna
What: Flowers and their curious effects
Warnings: Game-typical angst; further content warnings in headers as they come up. The prompts below are occurring in no particular order over the course of the month.

1. summer has come and passed; the innocent can never last

Vivid purple-blue and yellow pansies nod at her from where they've twined up the banister along the stairwell, almost brushing her shoulder as she hurries by.

Later -- well, Cassandra isn't in large crowds very often these days, is she? But someone at the buffet on this particular morning may overhear the murmur you don't need more than one slice; someone in just the right part of the Promenade a little later may overhear there's a clear path to the stairwell if he comes this way; someone passing by Sundries in the next five minutes may overhear still need to talk to Valdis about the gun.

2. ring out the bells again, like we did when spring began

In a corner of the library there's a spreading cluster of the tiny white flowers of baby's breath, looking sweet and harmless.

On a comfortable chair not very far from that point is a pile of cloth that might, on closer study, resolve itself into a dark grey skirt, a white blouse, a blue and grey patterned waistcoat, and a leather belt with a bag attached on one side and a sheathed rapier on the other. The pile is oddly arranged, as though the person wearing the clothes had vanished from inside them while still sitting there; as though to support this image, a pair of sturdy brown boots is on the floor in front of the chair.

On top of the pile is a two-inch-tall Cassandra, bundled in in the stiff and voluminous folds of a dainty silk handkerchief, struggling to press buttons on a phone that is now bigger than she is.

(The screen currently reads ERIN ITS CA)

[Note: this prompt is not closed to Erin! Anyone is welcome to happen upon tiny Cass while she's trying to text.]

3. drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are [closed to Phil]

A patch of poppies has sprung up on the rooftop that's one of the Serena's highest points, where few can climb. With the number of passengers that can fly, that's less a guarantee than it might be, but Cassandra still seeks solitude up there every so often -- and today, that means she falls asleep there, with vivid red petals pooled around her dark head.

In the dream she's twelve again, lined up with her brothers and sisters in their finery, excited about the visiting strangers and the welcome feast that's about to begin.

4. seven years have gone so fast

Wildcard! If you want to talk to Cassandra at a point where she is not affected by flower nonsense, feel free. Message me here or on discord if you'd like an individual prompt.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sometimes he wishes he had certain modern amenities like Xanax again. It's an absent thought he has while he tries to shove it down, the feeling that makes his heart thud a little too hard and fast and his breath come too faintly. Red, it's red, it's--he knows red-not-red. He knows red-not-red. Differently, faintly, but it lives beneath his nail beds, in the back of his nose, the gums between his teeth. It lives above his hands and in his broken, clouded eye. Something's not right. It's all right.

When dessert comes out, his first thought is what a shame that little Cassandra was sent away before she could even grab one thing from the plates, but something more pressing has him by the neck. So though he excuses himself as well and picks up a little plate of a cream cake as he does (something about... something, it suffices), it's Anders who he pursues first, following the trail of his steps down the hall.

"Professor Anders," he calls from behind. "There's something strange going on. Those Briarwood folks... something's off. You feel it too, right? Should we tell the Lord and Lady?"

The older man turns, startled and -- is that a flicker of irritation in his face? No, surely not.

"Off? I'm not sure I know what you mean, Master Connors. Foreign folk, to be sure, but perfectly civilized for all that." A hearty chuckle. "Tell the Lord and Lady? Why bless me, what would we tell them?"

"I don't... know."

He's been a colleague of Professor Anders for years. Not many, sure; three is a paltry number in the face of his lifespan, but three years still matters, and Anders has come to be someone he trusts. If he doesn't sense anything, then...

Phil wilts a little, backs down a little. What could he say? What's worth interrupting the feast between the nobles of Castle Whitestone and their honored guests? Just because the air in there has been making him feel suffocated all night?

"It's more than just their being foreign. I mean, look at me." He gestures to himself, to his wings. "Yes, they've been perfectly polite, but I think something's really wrong, Professor. I keep..."

I keep looking at them and I keep tasting copper in my mouth. I keep feeling the air part just above my skin.

"... or maybe I'm just coming down with something. But I'm not feeling feverish, and I ate all the same things you did."

As Phil speaks, Anders's face shifts slowly from a good-natured smile into a thoughtful frown. He has, after all, known Master Connors for three years now; they've worked together, eaten together, talked philosophy and natural history. It would be odd indeed if he were to dismiss the man's concerns out of hand.

"If you feel that strongly about it," he says slowly, "then perhaps there's something to it. Perhaps you should go back to the hall, and keep a close eye on our guests. Speak a word to Lord de Rolo, or to young Lord Julius perhaps, if you should see anything ... notable."

That seems to do it. Phil's mouth presses into a worried line, but he nods, placated. He's very good at seeing, after all (even as something hot seems to grow when he accepts, like smoke filling the room, like a droning growing louder).

"Very well. I'll keep an open eye and ear, and if I see something, you'll know as well. Good night, Professor Anders."

And he turns around, walking back towards the feast.

"Good night, Master Connors," says Anders's voice behind him, smiling again. "I'm sure I will."

(A droning, growing louder; a high insistent alarm, just out of hearing.)

Back in the hall the hum of conversation is bright as the candlelight, as the manservant with the wine moves around the high table again, glancing up (a touch sharply?) as Phil reenters the room. Lady de Rolo is leaning forward to admire a pendant held forth by Lady Briarwood, with young Whitney craning her neck to see as well; Vesper is deep in discussion of Dwendalian literature with Lord Briarwood and Chancellor Archibald; Julius is holding out the platter of pastries while his father lingers over a selection.

Phil takes his seat and the double doors swing open again, with a sound like a gust of wind through a narrow crack and an odd layered thud, and the two ceremonial de Rolo guardsmen flanking the doors sway as though pushed by that wind. One of the guards -- Hewlett, of course Phil knows his name, he knows everybody here -- has enough time to gulp out a wordless cry before he falls, clutching at the crossbow bolt in his chest. The other, Cassel, collapses without a sound, and by that time the armed figures are boiling into the room, weapons drawn.

Lord Frederick de Rolo starts to his feet and lurches forward, eyes abruptly wide with two distinct levels of horror, catching himself on the table. His hand knocks against his green-stemmed wineglass and it topples, spinning down to the floor as slowly as a snowflake, shattering with a pure ringing sound; pale dessert wine splatters on the floor, carrying the faintest trail of something darker.

The bubble bursts. The balloon pops. The last flake falls that sends the avalanche coming down, and then the world is ending.

Beyond the horror of two of his friends dying immediately in front of him, Phil's first thought is oh, God, the kids.

He jumps to his feet and draws a sword from another world, the wires of Bad Penny (of Erin Peters) clasping his palm. He jumps with a beat of his wings. Phil is in the air in a moment, and it takes very little to send him towards the high table where he immediately dives for the Lady Briarwood.

He has never taken a life before, but in this attempt, he doesn't hesitate.

In the first seconds of the assault, nobody else has yet thought to turn directly on the Briarwoods, who are sitting calmly at the high table -- even as the few men of their entourage in the hall also rise, drawing weapons and turning on their hosts.

The rest of the de Rolos have started up in shock, seemingly all affected by the same drugged slowness as Frederick. Lady Johanna, fumbling for her dress rapier with one hand, braces on the back of her heavy chair with the other; Percy pulls back from the table, falls to one knee and clutches at his head; Vesper screams for her father as he struggles to rise. Whitney freezes in her chair; Oliver pulls at her arm futilely. Julius lifts the heavy fruit platter and throws it full in the face of the man coming at him with a naked blade, slowing him only briefly.

All this goes by in the five or six seconds it takes Phil to dive through the air, sword in hand. Lady Briarwood lifts her head to see him coming, and lifts her hand and points a finger at him, lips moving --

A sickly black bolt of energy stabs forth from the tip of her finger, and impacts with terrible cold in the center of Phil's chest.

He wouldn't have turned so immediately on them if they hadn't been so clearly wrong in this place--more than just holes bored through the warmth of Whitestone, he now recognizes them as pests, as ticks, as parasites. Queens to a nest.

It's far too late to try and dodge. The bolt lances straight through his lungs and pierces his heart, and the needle-frost that grows there punctures both in an instant, stealing away his scream. He drops out of the air with a dull, nauseating crack when he hits the stone. The sound of his neck snapping echoes through his skull, a feeling as familiar as

RINNG

( the sound coming at him like a train, )

RINNG

( he wakes up )

RINNG

( not to the poppies, )

RINNG

... but to a castle he once knew, on a winter evening, the main dining hall bright with banners and evergreen boughs and countless lit candles. Lord Frederick and Lady Johanna are seated at the high table, with all seven children in their best clothes, and a few of the higher-ranked members of their court. Chancellor Archibald Desnay and Professor Byron Anders are further down the way. (Something's wrong.)

And also at the table, smiling and talking animatedly with their hosts, are two strangers; two guests. The Lord and Lady Briarwood. The woman's velvety laughter rises at something Julius has said, as a liveried serving man circles around her to pour wine, and all the candles on the table flicker as though in a chill wind.

Phil has the table in a white-knuckled grip, staring straight ahead at nothing at all.

Edited 2023-09-13 14:52 (UTC)

"You all right, Connors?" asks the elven woman next to him -- Bekah, a minor cleric of Erathis and one of the court's healers. Her tone's casual, but the look she's giving him is keen.

The candles in their high silver holders have barely begun to burn down.

No response.

Master Connors always had some especially odd eccentricities, to be expected of a stranger from no place anyone has heard of or can go to, but perhaps chiefly concerning among them was his tendency to jump at seemingly innocuous things—6 AM wake-ups, certain wisps of conversations about blizzards and closed roads, peering over edges of the castle roof. Not that nobody had ever heard of a trauma response before or strange triggers, but… whatever it was, he never spoke of it. It was easy enough with how rarely anything happened. (But they did happen, sometimes.)

He swallows and shuts his eyes. He can’t get any words out. Can’t move his tongue or separate his clenched teeth. He’s shaking like he were sitting outside in the snow, and his breath comes out thick with diamond dust.

(No. No. No. No. No.)

Edited 2023-09-14 14:09 (UTC)

"Good gods, man, you're shaking --" Bekah turns in her seat to face him, reaches out to take his wrist, fingertips over the pulse point.

"What's the matter?" It's Rego, one of the chancellor's secretaries, leaning forward across the table. His dwarven partner Selden frowns worriedly at Phil and reaches for a bottle on the table, saying "Here, give him some wine."

No one seems to notice the frost on his breath, any more than they do the dark pulses in the air, the screams just out of hearing.

Something is pushed against his lips--no no no no no no no no leave him alone leave him alone, Phil gasps and shakes them off and all but runs from the room down a hall, some hall.

But he can still hear it. Every lick of conversation, every clatter of dishes, every laugh from Lady Johanna and every comment from Vesper and the factoids brought up by Anders, all the same. Is he losing his mind or is it really happening again? Phil grasps at his chest where only minutes ago it had burst. Nothing ever left a mark. He can't trust anything but his own mind. If it's convinced it's real then it's real. It's real. It's real. It's real. It's real. No one will ever believe you.

Up at the high table, Master Connors's rapid exit is noticed, but not with any great worry; this isn't a sufficiently formal dinner that one person slipping out of the room is a terrible breach of protocol. Lady Johanna says a quiet word to the next server who comes up to the table, and someone will go looking for Connors in a little while if he doesn't return, just to see he's all right.

Twelve-year-old Cassandra twists around in her seat to look at the double doors where he's gone, frowning. Something ... is something wrong? Something's wrong. Maybe she should go after him?

But then Whitney hisses at her to straighten up and sit properly, and the unease recedes in the wake of indignation, and the dinner proceeds uninterrupted. Until the candles are burned halfway down, and the clock is striking the half-hour, and it's time again for Cassandra and Ludwig to make their goodbyes and go up to bed. Except that Cassandra already knows she isn't going to bed; she's going to slip on a dark dressing gown over her blue silk and sneak up to the minstrel's gallery overlooking the hall. You can see everything from up there.

(The older Cassandra, the one who's dreaming, struggles as always to make her younger self do something else, anything else. There's no way to change anything. This is how it always goes, because this is how it went.)

A servant finds him still in the hall, frozen and curled up tight. It takes some skillful coaxing, but he relaxes. Eventually. Sort of. It's suggested that maybe he should retire to his quarters for the night--no one would shame him for it--but. No. No, he should go back.

So he does, to a room full of smoke that only he can smell and that grows thicker by the hour. Selden, still fussing, offers wine again. He takes it. Someone... he's got to talk to someone, he thinks, as he nurses his drink. Again, again, again, again... he can't do this again. Something. Something's got to give this time. He can't just endure like he did last time, can he? A forever of... what was it? Something terrible is going to happen. Something...

Dessert is being brought in, platters of cream cakes and cut fruit and a bottle of Whitestone snow mead, and Professor Anders excuses himself as well, pleading a need to wake early tomorrow with a clear head. No one pays him any more mind than they do the children, as he slips out of the room. Phil gets up without a word and pursues him down the hall.

"Professor," he calls sharply, after some distance. "Something's wrong."

The older man turns, startled and -- is that a flicker of irritation in his face?

"Wrong?" The irritation is wiped clear in favor of a sort of hearty concern. "I'm not sure I know what you mean, Master Connors. Are you feeling quite all right?"

(Smoke, and chill wind, and red-tinged darkness.)

A flicker of irritation. So many flickers, snatches of things he can feel but not touch.

“No, I’m not. I feel terrible. I think—“

No one will believe you.

“… I have this awful feeling that something’s going to happen. I think it’s the guests.” The feathers on his wings raise as he talks, as he puts to words the dread that’s always behind him and can never turn to see. Something’s going to happen—why can’t he remember? Didn’t it just happen? “We should tell the Lord and Lady.”

"Tell the Lord and Lady?" This time (this time? what...?) his tone is less jovial and more mildly bemused. "Why bless me, what would we tell them?"

There's something ... irritation. The impatience of a man with something urgent to do elsewhere, forced to deal politely with an interruption, and covering with a veneer that will pass for friendly courtesy at first glance. A kind of impatience that Phil Connors was once extremely familiar with, as it happens. Thanks for watching --

"Though if you feel that strongly about it ... perhaps you should go back to the hall, and keep a close eye on our guests."

He's...

That's not the bearing of someone who's just in a hurry to go to bed. Not Anders. He's impatient. He's busy. He knows what busy looks like on Anders.

"... No," he says, low. "No, I've got to tell someone. Now. Won't you come? What errands do you have at this hour, Professor? Is it more important than delivering a warning?"

Anders's eyebrows draw down in a thoughtful frown, and he studies Phil for a moment or two. And decides, evidently, that it would be odd indeed if he were to dismiss the man's concerns out of hand.

"Very well," he says at last in a different tone of voice. "Back to the hall, then. I'll accompany you." He gestures an invitation to take the lead.

And as Phil turns away, there's no more warning than the faintest whisper of cloth at his right, on his blind side, before the hand closes over his mouth and the knife goes into his lung.

The hand is unnecessary, as it turns out. People think you’d scream. They always do in stories, in movies, but Phil had heard it from a Korean War vet once—that when you’re struck in the back like that, even if it hadn’t immediately pierced his lung—that you don’t make a sound. It knocks all the wind from you. You just drop like a sack of bricks and disappear.

Phil quietly hits the stone, still scrabbling at the floor while his chest fills with blood.

Edited 2023-09-15 14:06 (UTC)

"Idiot," says Anders's voice behind and above him, cold and dismissive and harried, already turning away.

The last pieces are tumbling into place for their final configuration. In the dining hall, the sweets and the wine are passed around, and one particular serving man exchanges a quick glance with one particular guardsman as he pours. In the deserted minstrel gallery overhead, little Cassandra settles in her spot just above the high table, contentedly watching. At a side gate, one man in de Rolo livery quietly pulls another into the shadows, as Anders releases the bolt and swings the door wide, and darkness pours in.

The first distant reverberations of many, many boots on stone are sounding when the last of Phil's consciousness drains away into --

-- into a castle he once knew, on a winter evening, the main dining hall bright with banners and evergreen boughs and countless lit candles.

Phil lurches with a gasp, coughing violently and desperate for breath as his throat and mouth are freed of blood and his muscles allowed to do more than twitch. Bad form for a feast. At least he's adjusted enough to coming back from violent death to have enough wherewithal to cover his mouth partway through.

Lord Frederick and Lady Johanna are seated at the high table, with all seven children in their best clothes, and a few of the higher-ranked members of their court. Chancellor Archibald Desnay and Professor Byron Anders are further down the way. (Something's wrong. Looking at Professor Anders, he seems to burn a hole in the veil of Whitestone's warmth, but--why? He never seemed like that before.)

All the candles on the table flicker as though in a chill wind, and he feels cold.

--

He has the wine again.

--

When Anders excuses himself, pleading a need to wake early tomorrow with a clear head, Phil follows him. He intends to speak, right until he notices that the way he's moving isn't the manner of one who is done for the day and wants to lie down. He's busy. And something is so very off, so Phil hangs back and stops following, and starts tracking.

Anders doesn't seem to hear him following; he strides down the corridors, more visibly hurried once he's well away from the dining hall, purposeful and anticipatory.

Phil has lived in Castle Whitestone long enough to know its many ins and outs and turnings -- though perhaps not all of them, as very few who live there now know all of them. Of the publicly known entrances to the castle, there is the front gate that faces the main road down to the city, the back gate that leads onto the enclosed courtyard, and several side gates that are less often used, though always guarded both inside and out. It's one of the latter that Anders approaches, and as the two indoor guards turn towards him, he lifts a hand and gestures at one of them. "Ah, Warrick. Deal with your partner for me, would you?"

The guard's eyes visibly blur for a moment as the Dominate spell hits, and without a pause he turns and drives a crushing blow into his partner's throat, catching him as he falls.

"Well done," says Anders, "now get him out of the way," and he steps closer and draws a key from his belt, busying himself at the lock.

Phil flinches and stifles a choke as Weisner falls. And then Warrick--

Fuck. Hide. Hide where? He's only stealthy in motion--a side hall, that'll have to do, he's over six feet with wings to boot, he's not small. He darts off into a narrow side corridor, begging nobody looks, begging to God, to Pelor, to anybody that it's enough.

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cw death

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ongoing cw for lots of murder

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