howtheyshine | SPRING BREEAKKKKK;

SPRING BREEAKKKKK;

He's in the dark. He's in the dark again. A pocket of alive-darkness that he can feel the edges of, he can feel the void that waits.

Well hello there, Yellowhead. We haven't been formally introduced. I'm....

Call me Carmichael.

The laugh that bubbles through the name makes Yellow's soul creep.

You're Kayne.

A silence ripples outward from the nothing-space the voice takes up, a silence deeper than the emptiness of John's unoccupied body. Yel-- Edwin, Edwin curls in on himself, tightening into a tiny knot of spectral energy.

He said the wrong thing, he said the wrong thing, he's going to get hurt--

And how, my little poppet, did you know that.

I-I...

Actually. Know what? Doesn't matter. Sorry to pull the plug on that little experiment so abruptly, but see, I made a deal with your better half--

John!

He can't stop himself. He realizes how stupid the flare of hope is a moment later, when that oppressive empty cold bleak dead cold silent dark silent dark comes creeping back up between him and the voice of Kayne.

I made a deal with him to get him back to Arthur, which means you needed to clear the way.

Of course, I can't be bothered to babysit you.

So you've got a couple of options, here, kid.

Well, two. Which is more like one. Unless you want to go back to the Dark World, in which case--

No-- No, please, I don't care what you want, I'll do it, just--

Okay, okay, Jeeee-sus, stop groveling. It took John a few good centuries to get to that point.

Yellow goes quiet, cowed.

There's this guy I want you to meet. He's like the worst version of Arthur got all the color sucked out of it and given eternal life.

Wh... What?

Well, technically you did meet him. I guess now he gets a chance to meet you, since he's so fucking eager to lick the feet of a god.

The unhinged laughter rings in Yel-- Edwin, Edwin, Edwin's ears as he feels the world get abruptly smaller and his senses get stripped back to shadows.

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There are multiple reasons, he muses, not to burn the place to the ground. Edwin might need a living host. There might be prisoners. He double-checks the compass lens - yes, the trace of the barge's ripples in this spacetime is emanating from inside this building, not something beyond it, or some tunnels in the mountains themselves, which is a relief. Jedao does them the courtesy of knocking, once, before he opens the lock mechanism from the inside.

Edwin is tired. He's tired, and he misses being able to see. See, touch, feel the emotions of his host. The steel wall Larson put up around his mind wouldn't be enough to trap Edwin if he knew even half of what he can actually do, but he doesn't.

What he knows is that Larson lets him hear as little as possible, feel nothing at all, and today is in the room where Arthur murdered Uncle when he speaks to Edwin for the first time in hours.

"Now, then, your highness. I think it's time we start to experiment with what you're capable of influencing on this mortal plane, limited though you might currently be."

Edwin doesn't say anything, a sullen, defiant presence.

Larson's voice goes measured and even. "Your highness. I can't properly serve you if you don't acknowledge me when I speak to you."

The threat in it makes Edwin feel sick.

[...I heard you. What do you want me to do?]

Edited 2024-06-04 03:40 (UTC)

Planets have so much stuff on them. Picking out the density of flesh while skimming on the surface of a vast accretion of metal and rock is a little bit like trying to see a firefly on the surface of the sun. Edwin's ripples are all over this place, though. He follows the least dusty hallways, footsteps soundless, until he smells blood and hears a voice.

Hears voices.

He wonders if this man could hear him if he spoke in mothsong. Very possibly, and Edwin probably couldn't keep his reaction secret even if he can't. Jedao listens, draws closer.

Edited 2024-06-04 03:47 (UTC)

"You're going to call something for me. A few somethings."

Larson moves around the room, the sound of his voice getting farther away from Jedao then closer again. Somehow Edwin's answers don't change in volume regardless. "They're called Elders. Creatures of vast knowledge, loyal to the Elder Gods such as yourself."

[Why? Why do you want them?]

"We want them, highness. To help prepare the way for you, ready the halls of the Order for your arrival and share their knowledge so we can free you and your better half."

Better half, Larson keeps saying that, better half. It twists little spikes of resentment through Yellow and he's smart enough to know that's exactly what Larson is trying to do, but he can't help it.

[Why do we need help?]

"With you in such a weakened state and the taxing nature of your presence on my body, we need to make up the difference somewhere. Now, have you ever... projected yourself before? Used Arthur as an anchor and spread your being beyond him, into our material plane?"

[N... No. I can-- I can do that?]

"There's a place to start, then. You need to be able to see the sigils to summon the Elders, and given Arthur's own situation, I prefer not to share my own eyes for the purpose."

There is no need to call.

Jedao's voice, humming in subharmonic gravitational pulses, has none of John's or Edwin's strange resonances. But it is low and compelling, full of a powerful, eerie charisma that Jedao One spent four hundred years honing from a mere natural talent into a match for his own legend. It is a voice of death and temptation and power and unbearable warmth. It is a voice that sees you, knows you for exactly who you are. Jedao Two has only ever used it a few times before, only in direst need.

What weapons does he have? A young captain once asked, and his maker had replied, he can talk to you.

Jedao presses the door to the room open with a smooth mothpush, and while he hopes timing and theatrics will carry him for a little while, he keeps his focus poised to flatten Larson if he needs to.

It's impossible. That's Edwin's first thought when the comfort of Jedao's voice rolls like thunder through the room.

There's no way. No way.

But now that he can hear Jedao, Edwin can feel him, too. Real and present and thank fucking Christ, fuck, shit.

[Dad! D-dad, I'm here, I'm bound to him.]

The look on Larson's face when he turns and sees Jedao is borderline comical in its mixed wonder, annoyance, and confusion.

"Yog-Sothoth, The Lurker at the Threshold, The Opener of the Way, I am honored to stand before you and your... vessel...?"

[Who the fuck is Yog-Sothoth?]

Jedao raises a hand, casts about the room for something - he pulls the smallest, sharpest knife he can find to his hand, through his hand. Then pulls it back out and lets it clatter to the floor, as the darkness of his true flesh oozes and writhes and begins to close. He takes no further notice of the small wound.

"A bit of void, fashioned to my purposes," Jedao says, out loud and in mothsong at the same time, which gives it a different, stranger sort of resonance. He finds a place to sit, calmly, almost primly, as though perfectly assured of welcome and reverence.

"Hello, darling. I've come to fetch you." He tilts his head, regards Larson with a look of remote, almost-amiable patience.

"You have until I grow bored to release My Child in whatever manner you wish."

Edwin's admiration is just as unmistakable as his wicked delight. Larson kneels, doesn't quite prostrate himself, torn between awe and that confusion.

[How--?] Edwin has a thousand questions. How did Jedao find him, get here, how are they getting home, but too many of them give away too much, even if Larson has no context for half of what Edwin would say.

When it's clear Edwin isn't going to continue, Larson speaks, face turned downward. "Forgive me, Great One, but I-- I don't yet have the means to separate from his high highness."

Edited 2024-06-05 05:38 (UTC)

"Well, that's unfortunate for you," Jedao murmurs softly, almost gently, still doubling his voice.

"Forgiveness doesn't enter into it at all. Would you forgive a - what are the shiny ones, they're everywhere down here - a beetle crawling in your hair? No. Nor blame it. You would simply remove it. And if you can't be harmlessly brushed away, you'll be smashed and picked out. Now, that's messier. I'd rather not. I'd rather coax you into scuttling away. But I'm not really invested one way or the other. What do you think, my dear?"

The pitiless, remorseless remoteness melts into warm affection as he speaks to Edwin, without losing a speck of his regal poise.

"It's your hair, as it were. Should I give him time to arrange anything?"

By which Jedao means, is he lying just as much as he's asking about time.

He soaks in that affection like a half-dead plant with water. He can feel Larson's fear, not the actual emotion but the physical manifestations of it. Pounding heart and trembling hands sending tremors through Edwin's consciousness.

[He was going to make me summon something to help us. To fix it so-- so we could be separated.]

He doesn't know how true that is, but it's what Larson said.

"The Elders would be familiar with some means by which to accomplish it, Great One. I would never force your child to do anything, I swear it, on my daughter's grave."

[...He fed her to old gods for power.]

Edwin's quiet disgust and fury show how he feels about that.

He's - appalled, perhaps, but not shocked.

I see. He speaks only in the mind, now, which is to say, to Edwin, whether or not Larson can still hear him just fine.

Edwin, what I'd like to do is just burn out the parts of his brain that hold his personality, and leave the sensorimotor cortex intact, so that you can have the body to yourself while I do a little research on the exact parameters in this reality. I'm pretty sure I can free you myself, I just need time. Is there any reason you can think of that I shouldn't do that?

Larson, mercifully, cannot. Or maybe not mercifully, because he can still feel Yellow's vicious eagerness and the way it curdles into something as uneasy in the mind as nausea.

I-I...

It's not mercy for Larson that stops him. Not wholly, not even by half. It's the thought of being a parasite in a body that isn't his, a parasite in truth. After everything, that's the word that still clings tightest.

Goddamned parasite.

I...

He doesn't know how to begin to explain.

'I don't want that' is a reason, Jedao tells Edwin gently. Jedao loves him so much; he pours it into his thoughts. I don't have any compunctions about doing it, except that you're the one who has to live with it.

I don't... think I want that.

God the warmth, the simple love makes him want to hug his father tight and he can't.

I can... project myself outside of him, I did it when I was angry before, but it hurts him badly and I'm still anchored to him when I do it.

I'll hurt him if he needs hurting, Jedao promises. A clear, simple fact. Edwin doesn't have to do that.

Jedao pulls Larson's kneeling body closer with another swooping gravitational anomaly, like the whole universe tilted for a moment, so that Larson is falling, sliding vertically down toward Jedao at the center of all things -

When Larson is in easy range, he reaches down to cup his cheek in one hand - the bloody hand, tacky with ooze that wriggles with almost imperceptible thready tendrils. Even if Jedao isn't conforming to Larson's expectations of Yog-Sothoth, it will be impossible to be unaware that he is something profoundly alien, something from the other side, not just a man with chutzpah and a few parlor tricks, even though that's basically true.

"You are lucky beyond the dreaming of all the dreamlands, that my child asks me for patience," Jedao murmurs, his voice almost unbearably tender.

"You mentioned his other half."

Jedao asks no specific question; he wonders want Larson will tell him, and what Edwin will corroborate or counter.

Edited 2024-08-17 03:57 (UTC)

"Your child's other half, Great One."

He has to force the words out, awed by the being in front of him and nervous of what might happen any moment. "When he came to this world he was... split. And a piece of him is bound to an... arrogant, blasphemous abuser."

There's a viper tang to the last words. Larson believes exactly what he's saying, and Edwin curls inward nervously at the rage he can feel echoing all around him. He's the one who kept Larson asleep long enough for John and Arthur to escape. To kill Larson's son, then escape. He didn't mean for the first part to happen. From the limited amount he saw of Jack, Edwin liked him. Or something close to liked.

"The things he said to your child--"

[Sh- shut up.]

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SPRING BREEAKKKKK;

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