debts all come due

[myironeyes]

[Open spam, basically anywhere]

[He drifts. He expresses the will of the place he is in. If someone tries to interrupt a performance or deviate from the script in the Opera House, he will prevent it with a snapped wrist or an effortless backhand into the wall. Someone upsetting the ghosts in the stables or interfering with the banquet, anyone doing too much damage to the walls, or fighting the inhabitants - he hurts them until they stop. Somewhere, he acquires a broadaxe, heavy and eerily crystalline, not the little obsidian hatchets he knows, but light in his hands. The brief moments of brutality are like scraps of food to a starving hound. But he does not always kill, even though Ruin's chasms in him yearn too. The place is not concerned with how fast the intruders die. And before any of his own concerns, he is its hand.]

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[maytakecenturies]

[Her eyes rake over him, darting only briefly to the figures ranging behind him. She doesn't dare look away to check behind her, but she knows the exit is far from clear. It would be logical to play along until doing so would damage her.

But this tower is not logical, and neither are his actions. So she adapts, though in the long run it isn't doing her any good.]

I have no part to play here. [She moves to step around him, giving a wide berth.]

[myironeyes]

[With jerky but inexorable movements, he closes that berth. If she tries to block him, he physically wrenches her arms out of the way. If she tries to dart an escape, he blurs with speed. He picks her up, ungently, at the waist, with every intention of carrying her back to her mark.]

[maytakecenturies]

[Avoidance has always served her better when applicable, so that is what she attempts: when he moves more quickly than she can follow, she stumbles back only to be seized.]

Release me.

[She doesn't expect an answer, or a response she'll accept, though, and turns her intention to worming her arm free. She won't need much, she knows, just a moment, a brush, and she can take control. When she wrenches her arm up, her arm shoots for his face, but not as an attack: her fingers find the points at his temple, his cheek, and she reaches out with her telepathy, forcing her will into him.]

My mind to your mind.

[myironeyes]

[It's like stepping on sliprock, and starting a landslide. She pushes, and he more than crumbles, the crevasses of him deep enough to be possessed of their gravity. She falls in. She owns him - she is him, and he is in steady, constant agony, the impalement of the body and the mangling of the mind.

He is terrified, and horrified, sick with revulsion at the acts of his hands and his helplessness before the tendrils of the shadows here. His relief is the only solace, a desperate gratitude that she could stop him, a plea not to let go, even as he knows she suffers to hold him.

Make me run he begs, flinging his understanding at her in urgent clarity while his body holds still: the compulsion is localized, each part of the building pressing him to enforce its own agenda. He is unnaturally strong and unnaturally fast, and if she wants not to be here, he can bear her away in a heartbeat.

He cares about her, warm and smooth-edged and sturdy like a worn stone worry bead tucked amid the spikes, and he wants terrible not to hurt her.]

[maytakecenturies]

[The pain is present, not easy to ignore - but what pain has ever distracted her mind from a task? (That is ego; she knows it is, even as she strains against his constant agony.) She cannot give him up, not until he is hers wholly and completely. She will not play the part the master of this castle wants of her, and she isn't bothered by what she needs to do to combat it.

He begs, and she slams his thoughts down, makes him heel like a dog in training. His emotions perturb her: if it was only pain, anger, want, anything base and physical and basic, she would understand.

But he cares, he would protect her without her forcing the urge into his head. That baffles her, and she almost withdraws. It's not an emotion she's familiar, not one she recognizes easily, absent as it is of lust and ego.

Before she can get lost in the sea of bizarre emotion, she rallies her thoughts, calms her mind.]

Escort me back to the ship.

[Her voice is mostly calm. She struggles with the edge she feels, instead manipulating everything she finds in his mind.] You will keep my safe. [Even, she adds silently, at risk to himself.]