Sir Jacob Frye (brassknuckles) wrote in valloic, @ 2022-08-17 16:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, assassin's creed: jacob frye, wicked saints: serefin meleski |
Log: Jacob Frye & Serefin Meleski
Not that he bothered to tell anyone that. Why mention things that would never, could never, exist here?
But with blood magic on his mind, and solutions for fixing it circling his thoughts, it was only a matter of time that the vulnerability of sleep might cause him to conjure memories of things and monsters greater than himself.
The hooded face of Velyos tended to come and go, though not as frequent as it had been before destroying him in the real-world of Vallo. Chyrnog was another voice, one that Serefin hadn't heard in his mind in far too long, and never in Vallo. He had lost an eye—or at least he remembered losing an eye—for his troubles with the god of chaos and entropy. In the current dream, Serefin was sitting in darkness, their incorporeal faces and equally insubstantial bodies coming in and out like spectral figures. He closed his eye in the nightmare, but that didn't stop the darkness from clinging around him.
Nyrokosha lived in the darkness (she was darkness, Serefin's dream mind supplied unhelpfully) and her voice slithered out through it as if called by the thought, seductive and frightening, but this was only a dream. This was only a dream.
Let me out, don't you want to let me out?
Serefin bolted upright, nearly knocking his head on the top of the nap nook in Jacob's office at the Underground. He didn't remember falling asleep, just waiting for Jacob to finish up for the day. Now he was sweating, but feeling ultimately not god touched. No one was hitching a ride on him like Velyos—he knew the signs to look for—and he exhaled. Why couldn't he have a nice dream, or strange ones like everyone else was having in Vallo? He wouldn't mind something ridiculous like—
There was a tremor underneath him, and Serefin rolled out of the nook and waited for it to happen again. When it did, he was sprinting through the Underground, barefoot, and toward the wine cellar below. A seeping, smoky darkness was pouring out of the crack beneath the door. Serefin hovered briefly for the knob before he heard another set of feet coming down to meet him.
"There is a problem," Serefin said, keeping his attention on the door. "Of course you know there is a problem, but this could be a very destructive problem."
Jacob liked when Serefin came to the club just to lounge around, nap, or distract him from his work. It was a different way that Serefin fit into his life, like a piece he'd never noticed was missing until it was right there in his face every day. And so far, they'd only heard about silly dreams coming true, nothing terrible. So his defenses weren't up anymore than normal. He unfortunately had a job to do, so he spent the afternoon doing it. He was just kicking out the last of the loiterers and locking up the front room when he felt the floor quake.
"Well, that can't be good," he sighed.
Serefin's unsettled expression was enough to have Jacob pulling out his kukri from a boot sheath. Did he need to have a knife the size of his forearm every day at work? No. But he felt naked without it.
"I suppose it was getting a little quiet around here," he said. "Any hints on the problem?" His eyes were on the door.
"Nyrokosha," Serefin said, though there was little humor in his voice. In fact, there was a small level of guilt that overcame him at seeing Jacob come down here, poised with his kukri after whatever nightmare had coalesced under his place of business. "I wish it had stayed quiet around here for you, towy nóżczko. I was sleeping, dreaming, and she was there and now she is here, but she was only a dream, that was all she was supposed to be and then—"
The heavy iron-and-wood door started to make a pressurized grinding sound, as if something was pushing against it. The darkness started spilling opaque smoke faster through the cracks, and Serefin's fingers danced in the air, lighting up a few constellations in the palm of his hand and around his knuckles. He stepped closer to the door first, and the darkness seemed to squeal against the light and retreat. Bottles from inside the cellar crashed against the stone.
"She is one of the banished old gods, of darkness, if you could not tell," Serefin said as he ghosted his starry hand across the door and around the seams. It kept her back but Nyrokosha was still bucking around within the cavernous room. "She has often taken the form of a spider. An incredibly large spider."
He put his hand on the door, the darkness contained behind it now. But that did not make Serefin look any less afraid; he still thought it might be a terrible dream he was walking around in. "Nyrokosha has tried to lure people to do her bidding, do not listen to anything she says in your head. I would leave her but she will just try to lure someone else to let her out."
"Hush. It's not as if it's your fault Vallo is being so very Vallo right," Jacob frowned. He hadn't forgotten the last god from Serefin's world and he likely never would. Sometimes he dreamt about it. At least that dream hadn't stepped out of his head. And the spider wasn't riding around in his lover's skull. Still, he pressed closer to Serefin and lowered his voice.
"Is this even any use against a god spider?" He held up the kukri. "Do you need to magic me up again for an extra boost? Be straight with me, love. Tell me what will work here and what won't." Not long ago, Jacob would've been too stubborn and too reckless to take the time to strategize. He'd have rushed right in and started swinging. He'd grown some since then. Or at least, he'd fallen in love and carved out a life he was rather fond of keeping intact. "You can tell me if you think we should bar this bloody door long enough to fetch a few more fighters. I'll only be a little insulted."
Serefin eyed the kukri, and his heart sank a little. He didn't know, despite all this god encounters and being a bit divine himself, he just didn't know. But Serefin had learned that going into a situation already with doubt was never going to produce a positive result. He snatched up Jacob's wrist with his free hand, and allowed the stars to cling to the weapon like a halo. "I would rather not find out later, better safe, yes?"
The skittering became louder, and more bottles were smashing against the floor, enough to make all the hair on Serefin's arms stand on end. "It should only be us, any more and it could get complicated, unless we simply cannot manage. Besides she has a corporeal form, this should be easy for a dragon rider. Though I do not recommend climbing on her back right away."
With one hand on the knob, Serefin took a deep breath. "Remember, do not listen to anything she says. That might be more dangerous than being a spider."
He threw open the door, which nearly fell off the hinges due to the earlier damage. The wine cellar, though a cellar all the same, was darker than usual. The lights had been snuffed out, and the stars in his hands were all that lit up the inky space. "Nyrokosha," Serefin called out, while turning to make sure Jacob was with him. He didn't want to lose him in this.
In his mind, in both their minds, her deep voice slithered in as she—in her full nearly twelve-foot tall, bone spider glory—crept out of the void.
Serefin's tension was contagious. Jacob could face many things, and had, with cavalier indifference. But when the man he loved was visibly anxious, he couldn't quite hold onto that reckless default. He kept the starlight blade in attack position as he followed Serefin down into the wine cellar.
"Bloody hell," he murmured quietly as the spider rose up out of the dark. He was almost grateful the lighting down here was poor. It had made for good ambiance to fooling around on more than one occasion but now it stopped him from seeing the full horror of what stood in front of him. It didn't protect him from her voice in his head though.
"Aren't you pleasant?" Jacob sneered. She'd called him inadequate among other things. And her eerie voice shook his normal confidence. He moved a few steps away from Serefin. "Best we flank her, love. She looks like she's got quite a reach, if not much in the way of social grace."
"You shouldn't be so hard on her, Jacob, she's been banished for... ah, how long has it been, Nyrokosha? A millennia?" Serefin asked, defaulting to sarcasm to hide the absolute fear that was skirting underneath his skin. With Velyos gone, Serefin had spent nearly a year without so much as a scare from gods wreaking havoc, but now his dreams were determined to make sure peace did not stay. It felt cruel, and that fear turned slowly into anger, as he began to follow Jacob's suggestion and flank the spider goddess.
Nyrokosha was not subtle in her movements, and the noise she made was a mixture between hissing and clicking, the clattering of bones of her body against themselves. Serefin had never been more thankful for a touch of light in the dark because it would have been easy to lose track of the goddess.
He moved in closer, stepping across broken wine bottles, and Nyrokosha moved back, away from the stars in his hand. That only made her turn toward Jacob with alarming speed, which was the opposite of what Serefin wanted. Panicked, he shouted. "Hurt him and your chances of getting out of here become nonexistent, Nyrokosha!"
It was a good distraction, as she paused her approach, but as she slowly tilted her giant spider head side to side, considering her choices and Jacob, with new found interest, Serefin didn't feel as confident.
Jacob almost missed fighting men, but not really. This was so much more interesting. And when he died one day, he'd much rather it be at the hands of something horrible and huge like the creature staring him down than some average bloke who just had a better day. Let him lose his head to inhuman teeth. It would make for a much better obituary.
"He's just messing with your head, Nyrokie," he taunted, spinning the kukri and flashing grinning teeth in the dim light. "You're not going anywhere but in a hole. Let's go." Serefin drawing attention to him as someone important to him likely only put a bigger bullseye on him because she lumbered wildly across the wine cellar, knocking aside shelves, and headed straight for Jacob. He gritted his teeth and rolled out of the way of her crashing limbs, swiping his blade at her flank. She howled but didn't stop thrashing his way.
Serefin sent the stars wide, like a spray of bullets along her other side. Bones splintered and sizzled against the miniature supernovas. Jacob's wound left a glittering stream of starlight that prevented her from dipping into the darkness without some kind of dim light trailing her. But the adrenaline was fighting against his fear and it felt like an uphill battle, and calling the stars back to him felt like a marathon. It took much more to blast away a spider goddess than he had intended.
Even the one from his nightmares. Why couldn't he have dreamt her smaller? Why did she even exist at all? He supposed it was better than entropy and chaos, incorporeal and far more vicious.
Chasing after her as she followed Jacob deeper into the cellar, Serefin's fingers curled into fists drawing as much starlight as he could. The magic still felt like an impossible task, like the capacity for this power didn't belong to him without some kind of drawback he would find out at a later date. But he didn't want to find out without Jacob by his side, and as Nyrokosha started to crawl up the side of the cellar wall to drop down on Jacob, Serefin loosened a streak of white-bright light at her back. Nyrokosha made a horrendous noise as she dropped down to the stone floor.
Flipped her onto her back, her eight limbs were flailing in rage, but she wasn't quite dead yet. "Jacob, her—!" He was pointing, breathless, at her exposed chest.
Serefin’s power in that dark and damp space left spots of light in Jacob’s vision. Luckily, he was used to fighting impaired, one way or another. It reminded him a bit of when he’d worked on blindfold training with Serefin so early in their acquaintance. The level of trust between them had grown tenfold since then, though. And it helped keep him focused. He dodged another reaching limb by rolling underneath it, slashing repeatedly as he went, and then he watched Nyrokosha begin her climb with apprehension. He really didn’t want her getting the high ground.
Thankfully, Serefin took care of that, and Jacob managed to avoid the falling body with an agile step. He moved in unison with Serefin’s instruction, as his vision was lit up by the eagle’s sight and he’d seen the bullseye at the same time as Serefin had.
“Alright, bossy, give me a second.” She was too large to simply reach in and stab; flinging the kukri was too much of a risk. Jacob made the split second decision and made a run for the wall, using it as a springboard to land on the spider’s chest. He drove the blade home with a sparkle of star power and only let go when one last burst of dying energy let Nyrokosha fling him off of her. He hit a wine rack and took it to the ground with him.
Blood and bone, Jacob was impressive. All the magic in the world couldn't do what Jacob was capable of, and Serefin could only watch in the dim dark as his boyfriend went gliding up and off the wall, driving his blade into Nyrokosha. Time seemed to slow down for a moment, and Serefin exhaled all the tension that had built the moment he woke up knowing what had somehow crawled out of his mind. But with time slowing, that meant that he always watched in unhurried horror as one of her legs smacked Jacob across the room.
Nyrokosha twitched, and didn't move again, but Serefin was already running; his chest burned, but not because of lack of breath. Seeing Jacob hurt was enough to cause stupid, chaotic things to happen in his mind. He should have checked if Nyrokosha was really down, but it didn't matter. He was sliding to his knees by Jacob's side, pushing parts of the shelf and bottles off him.
"Jacob, Jacob—" The darkness from Nyrokosha started to recede, but Serefin tossed his hand back, instinctually, leaving the stars hanging in the air like a halo around the both of them. He wanted to see clearly, as he scooped up Jacob's face in his hands. "Love, are you all right? I will boss you right back into tomorrow if you lie about it, and I'm not keen on the idea."
Jacob lost consciousness for a brief moment, when his head connected with the wine rack. He blinked back into awareness with Serefin's face close and a ringing in his ears making his lover's words hard to catch. He groaned and rolled off the edge of the wine rack to the ground, practically half in Serefin's lap.
"I'm alright, I'm alright." He lifted a hand to his forehead and pressed, as if that would stop the inside of his skull from rattling. "Is she dead?" Dropping his hand, he quickly glanced past Serefin with his eagle vision and confirmed the creature showed no sign of life. Or half-life. Whatever stood in for life when you were a nightmare pulled into the world, he supposed. "She's dead," he confirmed with a crooked smile. "At least that one is. Try not to bring her out again, yeah?"
He tried to soften the tease by lifting Serefin's hand to his mouth and kissing his palm. "Are you tired? That was quite the lightshow."
Despite the chaos of just minutes ago, Serefin's worried expression smoothed away at Jacob's gentle tease. That was a good indicator that nothing was distressingly broken or nearing fatal. Serefin took his own moment to glance over his shoulder to see with his own eyes that she wasn't getting up again. He'd concern himself with what they were going to do with her corpse later.
"I am never sleeping again," Serefin said casually, like that was a logical solution or something he could actually pull off, "but I will do my best to keep her out, or well, in. I'm still not all that certain on how it works." And that was the fear, wasn't it? His subconscious could be a horrific place if he wasn't paying attention, and the added layer of it becoming tangible was more terrifying that he could imagine.
But the spiral was easily stopped by Jacob kissing his palm, and Serefin couldn't help but touch him—Jacob was solid, he was real, and he was all that mattered. "I will be fine, but I do not want to spend another second down here." He was looping one of Jacob's arms around his shoulders, and slowly hoisting him up from the ground. "Don't say you need it, just let me. It is not every day you fight a god on my behalf, though it has been more than others."
Jacob laughed, humorlessly and with a groan as he was pulled to his feet. His legs were fine, which was a relief. But he was fairly sure his back was going to be one giant bruise later. He let Serefin carry a little of his weight if for no other reason than it let him press up close and talk against Serefin’s ear.
“You did the real work, love. I just finished the job.” And got tossed aside like a ragdoll, but no one needed to be reminded of that. Anyway, he was feeling good, even if he ached. Whatever this was, it likely wasn’t the real god of Serefin’s home, but they’d faced this version of it as a united front and come out on top.
He kissed Serefin’s cheek and held up his kukri as a starlight torch. “Let’s check the rest of the club for anything else lurking, yeah? Evie will never let me live it down if I just close up shop and go home to our good whisky.”