snowblindrpg | [log] Event: Breaking Down [open]

A

The Cat has gotten accustomed enough to this space after his last visit that now he wanders with relative ease. He can even smell the people here, for the most part, which is a relief. He goes looking for anyone he might be able to help, or just friends he hasn't been able to visit in the waking world.

Only... is he bigger than he was a minute ago?

B

Something massive and dark lurks in the shadows. Even if you can't see it, you can feel it - an ancient sorrow, old as the stars, and the instinctive feeling that you are being hunted.

The shadows must be truly impressive to hide him, though, because the Cat is some ten feet tall now from head to front paws. He's built as much like a panther as like a housecat, but there's no mistaking those purple eyes: all 6 of them, 4 taking the place of ears, nose and mouth.

He stalks the strange halls and rooms of this space, looking for prey.

After his run in with Castiel, safe to say, Zack has... more of an idea of what's up than he'd almost like to know. To think that once they had been hunting for lights from monsters and now they've become the hunted. The concept isn't new. Anomalies have been hunting them all the past six months. But to know that it's the others now instead... That isn't even accounting for the other fears that tangle with them all, even as they travel. And no amount of experience as SOLDIER can entirely block it all out, not when it's constantly battering against the mental walls he tries to put up.

It's enough to get his heart in his throat when feels something different. Something that seems to sweep in and take over, drowning out the others, even his own. It's a deep seated sadness, like he's lived forever and seen too much of the same awful hardships over and over again. He can't place where such a feeling would come from, but it doesn't matter soon enough. Not when it also starts feeling like he's being watched from-

A glance behind him and all he can see are eyes. He doesn't know how he got so close, but he's not about to worry about that when he knows he's got to run.

"You know, much as you work that purple, I think you're going a little overboard there, buddy!"

"It hardly matters," comes the wholly recognizable voice of the cat Zack called Smokey. It is at the same time massive and whispering, coming from all around. He prowls, not overly concerned about the man running. He can cover a great distance with a single leap.

"Why not relax? You will die here, regardless."

"How many times have I heard that before?"

Zack's calling it over his shoulder before training his eyes back on his surroundings, looking for some way out of there. A way that makes itself apparent when the room shifts again and there's a dip in the ground, small enough for him to hop into. Not so much for the giant fur ball above. The Cat will see the floor shift below into something more akin to a deepening maze for a mouse made now for a human at about Zack's stature. Zack hurries away although the corridors are certainly wide enough for a paw to reach in.

( ooc: And now that I'm back from my cosplay hiatus. /o/;;; Just responding to this in case you wanted to continue it. I know it's pretty old at this point. )

Edited 2017-04-16 18:39 (UTC)

The Cat stalks over the maze, walking carefully on the tops of the walls and occasionally dipping a paw down to make a show of swiping at his prey. He wants to play, of course.

"How many times has it been true, little mouse?"

"Considering I'm still alive, I'd say not often!"

Really, he's heard that threat far too many times before by whoever he's been up against in the past. Mainly, well- at Wutai. Though that was back when he was dealing with military and he'd had his enhancements never mind he'd been armed, too. Here, well... Here, he's just trying his best to avoid each little swipe of those big-ass paws.

"By the way, could you get any less original with the mouse thing, Smokey? Come on!"

"Then you have not heard it since you came to Norfinbury. None of us will survive this place."

He swipes between the walls of the maze almost idly, as though he doesn't particularly care if he hits Zack. It'll be more fun if his prey tires, slowly losing hope until all is lost.

"You must not have been there when we had those freaky dreams then!"

Even as he's shouting that though, he's not oblivious to his situation. Smokey's big. Larger than life than he's ever seen an anomaly. And if this place changes again into flat ground, he's a sitting duck. The dull continuous ache in his limbs doesn't help either. Just doesn't ever seem to want to go away and it couples painfully with the hunger and the wariness from poor sleep.

But he's stubborn. Stubborn and stubbornly slipping out of the way when he has to, at least attempting to create some distance while he still has the chance to.

Those walls certainly are starting to get taller at least. ...But then aren't the pathways widening, too?

"Shit."

"No," he admits, "I was not."

He sees the paths starting to widen, and keeps his game up. Now he has an objective, a direction to push him in. Once he has the chance to pounce, he will. He will have to be careful though, corner the man so that he can be conscious to see his doom.

"For what it's worth, I will die here too. Perhaps you will die just a bit sooner than I will."

"How's that any comfort? I'd like you all to live, thanks! Even better if I get a chance past this, too!"

He spits it out perhaps more harshly than he usually would. Harshly and suddenly and he's cursing to himself again. He's wasting breath, isn't he. There's no way he's going to get him thinking otherwise or doing otherwise or whatever, is he. All he should be concentrating on is a way out, but he knows one wrong turn and that's-

-that's a dead end, he finds, as he skids to a stop. A look back tells him he doesn't have the time for a do over with where to go and that's all the reason he has... to snag out both knives tucked away in his belt and start punching holes in the nearest wall, scaling it as quickly as he possibly can.

"That is only natural," the Cat assures him serenely. Despite his tone he's moving fast, strong strides making just a touch more noise than those of a significantly smaller feline.

It takes all his self-control not to pounce the moment he has Zack cornered. Instead he stretches up, an impossible 20 feet or so, to place one massive paw on the wall. From the leg several purple eyes stare down at the SOLDIER.

He'd thought he was making good progress at least as the walls seem to grow with him. Thought he'd be out of reach of those ginormous paws. Until one of those said paws hits the wall a mere inch off from him, gigantic eyes boring down on him and Zack makes a split second decision right then and there to take one of those knives in hand and try to take a jab at one of those said eyes. Certainly not enough to kill him but it might just be enough to distract him!

At least so he hopes.

The Cat roars in pain, sounding as much like a lion as anything else. He swipes at the man with all his claws, now both serious and angry. No more playing now - he wants Zack dead, and the light in his jaws.

He was hoping for the Cat to back off for a brief moment. At least maybe for long enough to him to finish scaling over the wall to the other side. He's not that lucky. A big paw comes swatting at him and Zack has no where to go, so he presses to the wall as close as he can and hopes it'll be enough. The first dig of claws against his back ends up mostly caught on his coat, but the second set?

The second set sends him sideways with a shout. The only thing that breaks his fall in the end is sheer will power. He stabs the knife into the wall at the last second, feeling his body lurch and his shoulder burn too hot. Zack lets go, hitting the floor hard and holding his shoulder, too shocked from the impact to move. Faintly, he registers the wetness on his arm that's probably blood and the scream of pain from something probably pulled out of its socket.

The Cat prowls towards the downed man, a warning growl in his throat. Every eye on his body is fixed on Zach, even the ones on his thrashing tail.

He leans over the man to stare closely at his face, whiskers around the eye that should have been a nose folding against the floor. The growl is almost deafening at this range.

Without a word, he moves to press a giant paw on the man's chest.

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heroproceeding - 2017-05-12 01:51 (UTC) - Expand

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absentconstellation - 2017-05-12 16:15 (UTC) - Expand

There's a sound of four powerful wings beating, and suddenly Castiel is at the Cat's side, standing stiffly upright. His four faces orbit until the one that looks like a sabertooth cat is pointed toward him, his ears pricked forward with interest. The other heads eye the Cat warily, but open their mouths and speak his name in greeting all the same - properly, perfectly, not the rough approximation that he used when speaking with a human tongue.

"It's a shame to see you this way," he says. "Your light has been taken as well."

The Cat's many eyes examine the strange form before him. He's had time to get used to the very odd field of vision this has given him, and has no trouble tilting his head in curiosity.

"Castiel." He's the only one here who knows the Cat's true name, so it can't be anyone else.

"It was inevitable. We will all perish here, immortals and mortals alike. This is only the beginning."

"What makes you so sure?"

He's curious, not challenging. In all honesty it seems like a pretty valid assessment of the situation to Castiel, but he didn't remember the Cat being quite so fatalistic about things before. Or quite so covered in eyes. It doesn't look like a very comfortable configuration of sensory organs, but it reminds him of home, in a way.

"It is an innate sense. We have been cut off from the gods here, from our very essence." And it's made him feel terribly unsure, and terribly handicapped. Normally he keeps it to himself, but now... now he needs everyone to know, to understand.

Castiel doesn't nod - that's a human affectation, and he is neither wearing one's form or interacting with one right now - but his ears do flick in acknowledgement. It's a similar gesture.

"There is no power here to preserve us," he agrees. "This grotesque cycle of death and resurrection cannot continue forever." The machine will wear out, or the deity behind it will grow weary of the game. It's as inevitable as any prophecy, if not moreso. This relies only on entropy or the cruel whimsy of lesser gods.

"Do you have a soul," he says the name, again, "? Will some part of you endure after death? Or will this be a true ending for you?"

"I inhabit a mortal body, most times." Right now he's not entirely sure. Is this his mortal body? Has he taken a new one? The transition was certainly odd.

"If I truly die, all my stars and all my stories will die too. Only my memory will live on, and that only vaguely."

"We have that in common, then. When I'm gone there will be nothing left of me but what my siblings remember." And that is... enough. Maybe. It never felt like enough when he was the one doing the remembering. Reciting to himself the thousands of names of the fallen, having less and less time to devote to each individual memory as the list grew longer and longer over the course of eons.

He was always one of the more sentimental of his kind. How many of the others will observe the vigil once he's been lost to them as well?

"Do constellations die often, in your world?"

Edited (words) 2017-04-26 00:35 (UTC)

"It has never happened."

His voice is grim. Stars have died, but never a whole constellation. The universe isn't nearly old enough. But if it did happen, if a constellation died all at once and not star by star as it is meant to happen, whole galaxies would be thrown into chaos. The consequences are nearly impossible to calculate.

That's troubling. In Castiel's experience, nothing ever goes well the first time it happens, the deaths of ancient things least of all.

"Then how do you know what will happen when you die?" Again, it's a question, not a challenge. The Cat sounded certain enough in his prediction, and Castiel is no stranger to certainty of things that have yet to be.

"When I was born I was gifted with knowledge of myself. Father Universe and Mother Flame laid down rules, and wished them to be followed from the start."

And from knowing what he is, he can extrapolate what will happen when what he is ceases to be.

[log] Event: Breaking Down [open]

cw: eye horror

Evening of 221

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well, that was weird. DW said this tag was deleted. oO

:|b

At least I found it!

If it makes you feel better I apparently did the same thing to Castiel

gdi dreamwidth

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B

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not sure how I missed this for a month?

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