[]Empty Cathedral

[continued from ATK1. any characters in the cathedral continue posting here.]

He recalls this feeling, that much is certain. The sweaty hands and the dry mouth, the occasional finger twitch (almost nervous) and the pain beginning to form in the back of his head. The ground felt hard, but his first reaction was still to pat himself down in search of the rectangular box that should have been in his pocket.

Should have. Pockets were empty.

So that’s when he opens his eyes to stare around unfamiliar cathedral walls, ceilings, ground. Anything blurry eyes could settle on for more than a few seconds before darting to something else. This intensifies the oncoming headache, brought on from some sort of withdrawal (from what, he’s not sure). He covers his eyes with a hand and a groan to keep them from doing anything risky. Like seeing.

Salan figures he’s woken up in stranger places before. It would be easier to compare if he could remember any of them. Or how he got there. Or where he was. Or, well, anything would be an excellent start. He also figures he has woken up with stranger things stuck on him than weird metal buggies on his arm, but as his mind blanks he decides that this just might take the cake. (Speaking of cake, he was getting quite the rumblies…) Couldn’t be too important right now, anyway. Could be hallucination. Could be dream.

He considers himself alone, he considers himself lost (stuck). He stands. He brushes away the dust debris that gathered on him from the ground. He’s dizzy, he’s tired, he’s busy giving oblivion a name and a face as he walks (stumbles, actually, with a grace that not even a weeble-wobble would be jealous of) through the unfamiliar cathedral. Then again, everything is unfamiliar to him besides the withdrawal, his name, a face he wishes to be gone. He swears to himself, unsure if it is in his head or out loud or if there is much of a difference at all anymore.

Athan takes about five seconds to recover, blinking rapidly into something warm and softish. It's only when it breathes that he realizes it's a person. Ah.

He takes one step backwards. He stands up straight. Very deliberately, he disentangles his fingers from where they've bunched up the man's shirt. His hands hover uncertainly about the shoulders, as if wanting to smooth out the wrinkles he's made--but then he decides against it, dropping them to his sides. His fingers twitch against his pants legs.

"Oh. Yes. Right," he says, doing his best to form words. There's a funny, distracting sort of feeling thrashing around his brain now, saying things in some emotional language he simply can't speak: it's like little magnetic tendrils tugging on his senses in the air between them. A not entirely unpleasant pull. Either way it's making his thoughts a bit murky, so he shuts his mouth and settles for getting in a good once-over.

Now that his eyes have stopped with the fireworks, he can see that this fellow's not exactly...intimidating. That's a relief. The first thing he properly notices is the hair. Athan cocks his head to one side--mild, appreciative recognition that they both belong to the same elite society--and moves along in his appraisal. He's just around the waist when he notices that the man's got on a terribly strange wrist-watch, and--oh. Oh.

That's not a wristwatch.

He spends about five seconds staring at the way it just sinks into his skin and then intentionally sticks that straight into the back of his mind, soundly resolving not to examine the crook of his own elbow, because one of those--one of those whatevers is something he'd really rather not deal with at the moment. A sullen ache twinges down the length of his arm as if on cue, aware it was being ignored. No no no--back to matters at hand. So to speak.

Hm. Interesting as he is, Athan doubts he's the most interesting part about this place. (Interesting, distracting--) He looks over his shoulder down the length of the hallway and opens his mouth to say goodbye--but that magnety feeling is still there, stronger now, making him suddenly and inexplicably unwilling to skedaddle. He glances back.

Fortunately (though he can't stand feelings, he decides in the back of his mind--surely not everyone needs to ask what they mean?), Athan doesn't mind the inexplicable, and he's a great believer in going with his gut. So while in some far-off, echoey place his atrophied survival instinct weakly protests that running far away would be the best option, he chooses instead to break into a smile (flashing a single dimple), lean against the wall, and reply: "What's a boy like you doing in a place like this?"

There is clattering somewhere. Very loud clattering, like metal and stone, or porcelain as the case may be. Should anyone wander towards the bathroom that the sound is emanating from, the fist thing they would notice is the sticking door. The second thing would be the floor full of writhing chains. The third would be the man attached to the chains, struggling, tangled and rasping. His eyes are wide and the only noise he seems to be capable of making to communicate is entirely inhuman.

He had woken up only moments ago, and consciousness was a swift and painful kick in the pants. It seems that it's very difficult for him to breathe because there's something big and silver in his chest. It seems that he must be in pain, because the tangled chains are pulling harshly at the skin and muscle they're attached to, drawing blood. He's remarkably tall, and his face is contorted in pain... it would not be far from the mark to mistake him for a monster.

The air around him is a whirl of pain, panic, as if he's projecting what he can't say into the air of the room.

The small asian-looking girl's gaze shot up, rather pointlessly as there was nothing but dungeon ceiling to see in that direction. But she had heard something- or perhaps just felt something resonate in her mind, telling her to head up. Stepping over the numerous chunks of rubble scattered along the floor, she found her way to a staircase, but it was partially collapsed as well. It brought back memories of the funhouse that Epic liked going to with her family. Every step had been of different shape and size as she climbed them, throwing off the senses. The entire funhouse was imbalanced, irregular in every way that its creators could come up with... you would barely be able to tell whether what was seemingly a path was a reflection of mirrors, a loop back to some earlier part or an opening to a new room that might even look identical to the last one. It was like being an infant- with no blueprints in your mind to tell you what things are, the only option left is to explore.
She had enjoyed the challenge back then.
Why wasn't she enjoying it now?
...Because I've lost so much. They've ruined my life. They've ruined it. "YOU RUINED MY LIFE!" She called, as loud as she could- hoping that whoever was monitoring this, they were listening. She listened to the echoes, as if she'd be able to hear a response.

What she heard was indeed a voice other than her own, but... she couldn't quite make out any words. It sounded strange, faint, alien- but for some reason, the idea of it being a threat didn't occur to her. Rather, it was drawing her to it. She ran, tripping over things but never falling- catching herself always in the nick of time to keep sprinting. She felt a little elated now that her body was beginning to work again. The pain was still there, but it was fading.
The sound became clearer as she approached- it was of metallic origin, she could tell that much. It scraped and clattered and rang nearly constantly and she had no trouble finding the right direction, though she did enter a few empty rooms by accident.

There is was. She stopped before the doorway and stared at the dude struggling out of the room, in a rather bad state. He was exceedingly odd- unlike any person she'd seen before. Then again, she'd definitely never seen anyone look like they're in so much pain, and it made her stomach turn. ...From the smell and such it was a bathroom. Maybe he needed to pee really badly or something. ... ...Or not. "Hey! Mister!" She called, some of his distress getting to her and making her seem more nervous than intended. Something kept telling her he was her friend, but she'd never seen him before. Then again she would often forget a lot of the people that she befriended anyways.

Tiber blinks and nods at the man's response, neither perturbed nor aware that he should be. He's still stuck on "intensely glad." Even if he is in hell, or...Russia or something (two of his less rational ideas, both formed on the staircase), at least he's not alone anymore.

Wariness has yet to cross his mind. It's almost embarrassing, but in this moment--about ten seconds after meeting him--he has feeling that this guy's the closest thing he has to a friend for a hundred miles in any direction. Either way he's not shooting at him. That's always a plus, Tiber thinks, scratching his own nose as the man reaches up to--oh thank christ. He's got one of those metal things stuck in his arm, too. Okay, okay, so Tiber's not the only one. Well, that's not exactly reassuring, but--oh fuck it, it's awfully reassuring.

Tiber nods when the man apologizes and introduces himself, and picks his way forward over the debris, bloodied arm outstretched for a shake. "Tiber. Uh. Lossky. Tiber." The guy--Sarky--seems nice enough, even if he looks to be glowering most of the time. Tiber's kinda scared to look directly at his mouth, too. Bit like staring into the sun. "Wait, you're saying you dunno either? Shit." This is both a relief and a disappointment. So Tiber's not the only one that's just woken up, lost and amnesic (he drops his "I was roofied" hypothesis, then), but he's not exactly rescued, either. "Same with me. There's some kinda bell tower up there. We in a church, d'you think?" He kneads at his neck while he speaks, rolling out a crick with one hand.

When he falls silent, though, he finally hears the snuffling from the other side of the far wall. Tiber makes a shushing motion and steps over, frowning, to rub at the grimey window with one hand and squint through. "Dogs? You have dogs?"

Vertigo was busy.

There is another sort of, sickening popping noise as he wrenches the leg free of its socket.

There were ten of the animals in a stack, some starting to go stiff. He'd carved long, lean strips from the thighs, taken their kidneys, and put it all to one side.

Fire, he remembers. Stopping, no, slowing foxyloxy had taken fire, red roses of it, and some part of him wanted that again. Not the booms, but the heat and the warm and maybe it had been the taste of real food, thought how real things in shiny silver but not really a metal it crinkled wrong and the soft white...

Vertigo is, in short, attempting to cook his food.

He is explaining this, softly to the bear, five stories up, as he skewers meat onto a bar and puts it over coals. It'd been... Too easy, to find things that burned. Really. it had.

The kidney in particular he is deciding to call a rousing success, salty, coppery, but with a firmer texture, needing salt when he heard the sounds.

Ghosts in the pit?

The man who took the copper but that was okay the copper was there for the teams to take back because they needed it right? And there was so. Much. Copper. It was everywhere if you looked like the veins of the old buildings lub-dublub heartbeat and--

Vertigo is still mouthing the words lub-dub as he watches him. Him, yes. Male, his brain supplied the pronoun. Broad shoulders and so forth. The way he walks. Different bones under the cloth and skin, give it away.

Vertigo is looking at the dead, the harvested, laid out in the patterns that don’t seem to want to go away. He’d tried to at least change them, a little, to make them less awful but the dead are the dead and this is all Vertigo knows to do with them.

"The smarter people are the dangerous ones, but if they're truly smart will stay away from an area if you mark it off right.”

“Which way’s right, sir?”

“Even the warriors that are only a little bit clever stay away from the big, dark holes with bones outside.”

Vertigo works his way carefully down the wall, stopping several meters above the man. Bear tucked into his jacket, one hand holding a cluster of metal shards, wrapped with cloth at one end, and tipped with seared red meat at the other.

"See, he's lost," he tells the bear, in a clear voice.

Cyrus was indeed too preoccupied with himself to notice Nior sneaking up on him. He however could not ignore it when he felt the foot prod his back and the cold voice say, "Are you done?"

Cyrus almost instinctively whipped around, his hand savagely grabbing for the foot instinctively, but he missed the woman's ankle and instead simply turned around on the floor. He panted lightly, calming down, and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"Spare me the jackass hardened survivor crap lady. My partner just died from the pack of dogs outside so I think I deserve a little freak out time okay! And, oh wait, I forgot! I'M GONNA DIE TOO WITHOUT MY PARTNER!! So if you would for just one second stop being a bi-" Cyrus froze on his words. He was going to call her a bitch, HER. It was a girl... or woman. Cyrus had thought that the only one left was that witch, and this woman certainly didn't sound like her or speak the same way as she did, or at least compating what Cyrus had heard of the witch.

It was then when he noticed it. He was bonded again. He had felt the sensation so long and so many times that he hadn't noticed when it had returned, only when it had left. What had she been doing here unbonded, without a partner? That was suicide even with the thick doors between them and the dogs. Cyrus paused for a moment, while his brain tried to work through what it ment and then his eye(sockets) widened. All this time he and the others thought that they were the only ones here, and the last ones that would be there but this...

"Wait! Are you NEW!?" Cyrus jumped to his feet and reached out towards Nior, as if to confirm she was real, a stunned expression on his face. He hadn't gone crazy had he? Maybe he had lost one too many partners and his mind had snapped or the tick had finally pumped a deadly toxin into his system that was rotting his brain... He hoped not...

A girl. A little girl.

He still hurt, the lines in his brow said so, and a faint hint of fear is flowing out in the room around him, fear and anger that gradually subside as the insect-like screech slows to a drawl of slow clicking, and then stops at last. The chains stop moving, and the tall man dropped to his knees to look at the girl at eye level.

He tilted his head to one side.
Then to the other. But that side makes him wince.

The chains have finally gone completely lax, and one slips off of a place it was previously caught.
He is surrounded by a tangible idea, the idea that this place is wrong and that he wants to comfort the girl. Is she lost? Does she feel this place is wrong too? He decides he is going to look after her, if she is lost he'll help her find her way. He lifts an arm to her. A chain lifts in unison.

He makes a small screech and swats futilely at the chain for a moment before realizing that it is him, it moves with him.

Confusion in the air. But he still turns to the child again, because figuring things out is obviously second to helping out a kid. He already knows better than to attempt speaking very much, but he feels the need to try to say his name. Jason. Jason Derringer. Jasss...

His attempts fail miserably as he points to himself and repeats the strange noises coming out of his throat to get a handle on them. "CHssss kek. Chrrrsk Krr. JYssssssk." His frown is wide and his eyebrows are knit, offering a facial apology to the girl.

Whoa, this guy was... really weird. He made a lot of weird noises and moved strange, too. Maybe he needed to go to the bathroom after all, I mean, even she could get pretty weird sometimes if she really really needs to go, like on long car trips, and then she'd walk all funny and act all jittery all the way to the toilets. Or maybe he was just crazy. She hoped he wasn't crazy because then she really had to do something about the feeling telling her not to go away.

As a matter of fact a kind of embarrassed, sortof apologetic terror took ahold of her (as if she was facing someone terribly disfigured but undeserving of criticism) and the little girl was at a total loss for words, staying put and staring too much for it to be polite. The man towered over her, quieted as well, then dropped to his knees and returned some staring of his own- right at eye level. She figured she deserved that. The sudden clatter of one of his chains did nothing to break the awkward pause they'd entered. He began to lift an arm but suddenly made another screechy noise, accompanied by a sudden movement causing the black-haired girl to jump back. Oh, he was just bothered by his chains. She tried to untense a little, relaxing her shoulders. He hadn't done anything bad. He was probably friendly! ...Said the random feeling of unknown origin in her mind.

"O-" Too bad, he started speaking first. CHssss kek chrrrsk krr jYssssssk?
"What's that supposed to mean?" She said out loud, furrowing her own brow in effort as well. From his pointing to himself and stuff, she figured it could be one of several things.
"Okay, um, if you understand me, imma make a few guesses! First guess: You're speaking another language and saying... "I am very tall. I will now gift you with my magical tall powers and make you as tall as I am!" REALLY? You'll do that for me?!" She grinned widely, very excited at this prospect as evidenced by hopping up and down a little. She'd always wanted to be tall. That'd show her big brother!
"And wait! My second guess! Umm... How about "My name is krr jYssssssk!" But if that's a name, it's obviously made up. I've never heard of anyone called krr jYssssssk."
Somehow, the small child was imitating those strange sounds perfectly. She had a kind of talent for this stuff.

Spoiler:

Sarky only stares at the proffered hand. There's a lot of blood there and two questions occur to him: one, why is he bleeding? and two, does he really expect me to touch that?

Sarky shakes his head. Again that vague sense of guilt, like he should go easier on the guy. He still hasn't an idea why he keeps feeling bad. Maybe he's just finally grown a conscience, or something. Doesn't matter, not right now.

He goes to join Tiber at the window to get a good look at the dogs that have been causing suck a ruckus. It might just be him and his paranoia at work -- God knows he has enough of that -- but it seems to Sarky as if either the growling has gotten louder or there's more dogs, or possibly both. The very presence of the things and the state of this church (if it is a church) makes Sarky more than a little bit uneasy. Actually, everything about his current situation makes him uneasy, from the weird thing in his wrist to Tiber's very existence, but he keeps that to himself for now.

Despite Tiber's efforts, the glass remains rather dirty and so Sarky can't get a clear look at the things, but he cocks his head to the side and squints and--

For a moment, the only thing that Sarky can say is: "Those. Those aren't."

He stops. He recuperates. He says, "What the shit."

Quickly, he picks his way through the debris to the next window down. This one's just as dirty as the last but there's a broken pane towards the top. Sarky's tall enough to just see through it, if he goes up on tip-toe. He doesn't exactly like what he sees. Those aren't dogs. At least, those certainly aren't dogs like he's ever seen.

Sarky steps away from the window. Pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, squeezes his eyes shut, and starts to wish that he were dead. At least, dead in a way that didn't involve him getting within five feet of one of those things. He is fairly certain that the one closest to the window has not only teeth but a tongue in its chest. In its chest.

"Okay," Sarky says, after some thought. "No, I haven't a clue what's going on. But those definitely ain't my dogs and I ain't entirely sure that those are dogs at all, actually."

The frustration is getting overwhelming. Salan particularly likes walking, to an extent, and this inability to walk in a straight line upsets him. Greatly. But he moves on, somehow, he moves right along in his zig-zag manner and his nothing-to-see-here stare. He never liked being lost (he thinks so, at least) and he sure as all hell didn’t like not knowing where he was. What person in a normal mind would?

He stops every few steps to lean against a wall, anything for support to keep him from lurching forward and falling. His vision blurred on occasion and as much as he rubs his eyes, they never see straight. He wouldn’t have so much of a problem with this if every time he opened his eyes his head didn’t want to explode out the back of his skull or if his stomach wasn’t threatening to empty itself all over the place.

He tries to tell himself that he could be worse. He could be dead (though he feels like he’s in the process of dying and sincerely hopes he is not as he has never heard of anyone dying from withdrawal) but this isn’t as comforting as he was hoping it to be. He keeps eyeing the thing on his wrist every once in awhile. Doesn’t seem too much of a threat, besides the fact that it’s got as much as life as he does. He will figure out how to deal with that later.

For now, he is much more perturbed at what he thinks he sees (and something starting to smell…odd. He can’t place what.) on…the wall? He’s blinking again and trying to focus again, trying to see if that’s really a person he’s seeing or if it’s just his mind being a dick.

He defaults to the latter.

He sits down on the ground, partially because his legs have committed the crime of quitting on him. He rubs his eyes a few times, looking to see if the person is still there. They are, they haven’t magically disappeared into dust. He is still unable to define many features on them. He feels something close to happiness, though. At least he isn’t the only one anymore. He manages to speak, and with due caution to, when he politely demands, “Who the hell are you and who the hell am I?”, as if the stranger might know better than he.

It wasn't hunger or a craving for more soft white-

no, no I know the word now, that had been cheese, yeah, I knew that,

But the fact remains that the buildings around him are still too tall some days and when the moon is full and the city is filled with light it also had shadows and when it is all shadows well that’s okay, right? Cause it’s all the same and you can sleep during the day and it isn't that he is afraid of the dark so much as the idea that at any given moment he might

tumble

out

of

it.

There had been nothing around him then, it is a solid three mile ride to get to the sea, slower with the pack on his back and having to stop and caress the bear in his bike basket but the orange, red,

harvest

moon is still cooler than the bloated fat sun with its too-bright watching eye.
He could still see the street sign now, maybe, not quite,

foxyloxytheskyisfalling

maybe he just knew where it was it was hard to tell most of the time which, if he'd seen something or simply known but what he'd known had so far kept him alive and in spite of the fear and the ghosts and

foxyloxy

and all the other nightmares...

I do not want to die.

It is a nice, clear thought. He holds onto it, knows it is one of those, things, that nothing can change, because nothing has changed it so far and what else can this world throw at him?

Even as Vertigo crouches, he sways on his feet, crazily, as if about to lose his balance and just…fall the three or so stories down, down, to the floor.

Instead he points the skewered pieces of kidney at the man, coughs politely, then places the morsels into his mouth, chewing, staring down at the man.

Man, yes. Male. The shoulders, the voice, the-

"Front towards enemy."

Salan simply stares for a few seconds. This is shortly followed by a groan of defeat, burying his face in his hands and repressing the urge to scream. Screaming would just make the ache worse, he reminds himself.

He peers through his fingers to stare at the other man again, quizzically. Judging. Wondering what he is eating, first of all. That looks disgusting.

“Don’t point that at me,” Salan states with hope that his voice will carry far enough, grimacing as he watches him chew, watches him teeter like he’s going to fall. Salan almost moves out of the way, just in case but then dubs this as a ridiculous thought. Maybe he wants him to fall on him. On his head. Knock him out for a week or two or forever.

But he shrugs off the words – doesn’t care what that means anyway, probably bad by the sounds of it, he doesn’t mean to become an enemy – and steadies his mind. He pushes himself up, mustering up a glower at the strange.

“You can just stay over there,” Salan says to him, making shoo, shoo motions with his hands. He points over his shoulder with his thumb. “I’m going that away. Stay. Right there. Good boy.”

Salan takes a few cautious steps backwards, as if his legs might fail to carry him. He doesn’t break his eyes away from the stranger until he is a few more steps back the way he came. He turns around, but glances back over his shoulder every few steps and pausing in between.

So. Not alone.

So. That’s not so much of a consolation prize if they’re gnawing down on something identifiable and the first words they say have something to do with enemy. Salan is starting to wonder if he should try those tricks they talk about to make sure that one is dreaming or awake. He is starting to wonder if he should even care. He is starting to look back over his shoulder again to see if he should go back because God knows he doesn’t really want to be alone and by himself.

Foxyloxy Vertigo's mind responds.

and then he straightens up, strides along the edge, quick, nimble, familiar. Following.

"And always answer questions, because it means they can talk," He adds.

The bear doesn’t answer.

Well. Not out loud. He presses a kiss to its fur that leaves a ghostly red impression, in the wake of chapped, torn, lips. Bitten through a hundred thousand times over.

Red like lip stick, like fire, like hair on the pillow case and thatwaymadnesslies.

His face falls into a small smile, unsure of what else to do.

Then Vertigo crushes the bear to his chest in an embrace, lets go of the wall. Leaps. Falls falling like a spinning leaf.

There is a loud rattle when he hits the floor, scattering debris, just ten meters or so from the man.

He sucks at his fingers, sticky and red, straightens up a moment. Tosses away the metal bar and "Sir, yes sir, Spidereye reporting, sir," Crisp, clear, sane and then it is back to the falling apart like

Leaves on the wind______________----___________Leaves on the wind _________________________Leaves on the wind ___________-------______Leaves on the wind ______________-----------------------------___________Leaves on the wind __________________Leaves on the wind _________________________

"On the wind, wind, on," his lips continue when his voice stops, and he shrinks back down, crouching, eyes shut, free hand coming up to his temple. "Leaf on the, leaf on the wind, watch me, watch me, haaa,"

nails to his forehead four tiny crescent blood moons, no stop, red crescent, the weeping fans, and...

He rocks in place, mumbling into the bear's ear, very softly. Looks up. "He told me he killed himself, but he was lying." Vertigo calls out.

Inclines his head towards the man, as if waiting for an answer.

Tentatively, carefully, Hailey Silver steps into the main hall of the Cathedral, towards the dark haired man kneeling on the floor from the side. She clasps her chosen weapon, a broken chair leg, to her small chest as she pauses to preform a once-twice-thrice over of the obviously hysterical young man. Half of Hailey's mind is telling her to knock the man out and make a run for it, while the other half counters this impulse by urging her foreword, insisting that she makes sure he's alright.

When she'd first woken in the church's damaged and neglected attic crawlspace, screaming had been the first thing (throbbing aches and pains and dangerously close fiberglass insulation aside) the white-blond young woman had noticed. Once the fog had cleared from her head, a very groggy and concerned Hailey prioritized finding the source of the distraught wailing. It had been a tedious and dangerous journey down to the ground floor, more so than impulsively heroic girl cared to recall in detail. Still, at least her mini adventure had given her some clues, an impromptu object for self defense, and interesting yet puzzling facts. First and foremost was the strange chrome device implanted in her left wrist. That was second on the young woman's list of "Things to Investigate ASAP".

Though, now that she'd found the object of her first mystery, Hailey is at as loss as to what course of action to take next. Trusting her intuition over logic (a decision Hailey hopes and prays won't end up being her last), she steps closer and closer until she is only an arms length away from the rocking man, and crouches down so that when the man finally looks up and away from whatever visions are haunting him she'll be at eye level.

Hailey clears her throat, still cautious enough to keep her hands to herself for the moment, though she won't deny there is a tugging, pesky urge to pat the pitiful man on the shoulder comfortingly. "Um, sir...? Are you alright?"

She jolts as sounds from outside reach her ears, but the resolved girl stands her ground. Admittedly, she does clutch the chair leg tighter, her knuckles turning white.

Spoiler:

The blonde man frowns comedically and shakes his head at the suggestion of 'powers of tallness', but his face changes quickly to a more serious wince at the mimic of his new "voice". He appears not to like it in the least.

He tries again, points to himself with an arm and a chain, looks at the chain as if it isn't welcome, then finally continues. "Mk kek Jyssssk. JYAAASHK trhhhrraknjya."

This is getting disappointing, if his face is any indicator to that. The chains droop in synch with his shoulders, which earns nervous glances to both sides, perhaps a bit disbelievingly. He pointed an arm at the girl(and grabbed a chain down from pointing with his free arm), and nods towards her, hoping she would understand his charade. He did it twice just to make certain.

There was an incomprehensible twitch of Cyrus's expression as Nior hissed at him. After all these years he still kept his eyes open out of habit and out of personal preference. It had been a long time since anyone had seen his... condition who hadn't already, and Cyrus had forgotten just how creepy others said his "eyes" were. He folded his arms and gritted his teeth, closing his eyes so the woman wouldn't have to stare at the empty sockets.

"I'm fucking HUMAN if that's what you mean!" he spat savagely, "Blind but still a fucking person! You may want to check yourself though, make sure you aren't missing any body parts or that you can't suddenly spontaneously make people's fucking heads explode. Oh an there's this too..." Cyrus held up his wrist with the tick planted into his skin, showing the woman that he was in the same boat as her. God, she had just woken up which meant she was actually new. Cyrus could hardly believe it but it had to be true. Cyrus wondered this is what Luke and Chistyakov had seen that had attracted Paige to the church...

Cyrus suddenly realized that he would probably have to explain what the hell was going on to this woman. Cyrus rubbed his temples at the light headache that had begun to form from his emotional and physical roller coaster of a day. "Shit, how do I start to explain this..." he frowned heavily and paced around in nervous circles muttering to himself and trying to gather his scattered thoughts.

The 11-year old took the strange man's headshaking for an answer, not really surprised that he wasn't, in fact, going to give her tallness powers. Things just never went her way when it came to such issues... well, at least he understood english. She would've tried french had he not- after all, he was blonde so maybe he was european. And he was tall, so maybe he was norse. Like a viking. And vikings travelled all over so maybe they also learned a lot of languages. Like whatever gibberish he was speaking- but then it became increasingly obvious that he was only speaking gibberish and not english [which he knew] because he couldn't talk properly. The girl felt a pang of guilt, watching him uncomfortably gesticulate and make yet another pained effort to speak for her sake. He seemed to put a lot of emphasis on JYAAASHK.

"Sorry about that, um... Jyashk- jysk- I'm sorry this is hard to figure out because you talk funny, no offense mister." Gulp. She really had to learn to not being so rude. "Is it okay if I just call you Jask right now, maybe we can figure it out later um. If you don't mind, mister." All the while as she spoke she gave him exaggerated sympathetic pats on the shoulder since maybe he needed a bit of comforting right now even if he was an adult, after all she really wanted to have some comforting too because some really bad people had ruined her life and taken all her stuff away and endangered her family and thrown her into a very scary place. Preferably the comforting would come in the form of ice cream, shiny Pogeymon cards and tallness. She could settle for just one.

"Jask" then pointed to her, a questioning look on his face. She should introduce herself. "Oh me? I'm Lau-" abrupt cutting of sentence. She'd never liked her name because it just didn't seem like it belonged to her. After all, the story behind how she got it went something like:
Uncle: Hi Ada, nice talking to you on the phone again after so long! Did you know we're getting a daughter? We're going to call her Laura!
Mom: Oh what a lovely name! We should call ours that too!
LAMEST. REASON. EVER. Right? She didn't have a birth certificate in the Pit, and nobody knew her. ...sooooo.
"Actually you can call me Epic! Epic Henrik!" She piped and grinned widely, proud to now bear the Awesomest Name Ever. It was such a privilege, getting to name oneself. People would ask her are you epic? And she would answer yes. Yes I am.

Also, she remembered how most people in this show- er, very terrible reality of the Pit- always lost their memories- he was probably really, really confused as to where he was right now. Not that Epic really knew where they were, but she had the gist of the situation. "Jask, there's something that I need to explain to you." Epic leaned against the wall with her arms crossed, tilting her head forwards ad closing her eyes in remembrance, as if about to tell a very long story. And then she almost immediately jolted back up within inches of Jask's face, grimacing. "I FORGOT! There's monsters outside and they want to eat us! And we need to find weapons! The people who find weapons usually don't get eaten as fast. Come on you have to help me!" Upon this declaration she grabbed the big man's hand and urgently pointed down the hallway as she tried to march forth to find something usable.

Salan pauses in his steps to look back when he hears the landing. That causes him to falter in itself. Now he’s being followed? That doesn’t bode well. When he turns he is startled at how close this new stranger has landed to him. He frowns. Sternly.

Yet when he speaks again – Spidereye? What could that possibly mean? Can’t be a name, can it, – Salan finds himself listening. Something tells him to brush it off. Keep walking, leave him there and find someone else. Someone who isn’t a total nutjob, preferably, if that is possible.

Salan feels…something. Too close, getting too close here.

Salan nearly takes pity. He feels like he should, at least. It was like when you see the crazy people walking down the street, yelling whatever they want to yell about your mother or God and you just ignore them and shake your head because there’s nothing you can do about it to help them, except Salan can’t quite ignore this strange, strange person who looks like he could collapse in on himself at any given time. That doesn’t mean this talk of winds and leaves aren’t unnerving.

Salan figures more paranoia to have is not the greatest thing for him. He wipes his palms on his jeans, eyes darting back over his shoulder before looking down at the stranger. He frowns. Looks as if he’s holding a…a bear.

(Salan refuses the urge to bury his face in his hands again and, possibly, run away screaming.)

“Did he now,” Salan says instead without much emotion in his voice. “He was lying? Well, he must have been a dick. Glad he’s dead, way to go. Are you gonna stand up now, or are you just gonna stay down there?”