revivalproject | Nowhere to run from all of this havoc

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Nowhere to run from all of this havoc

WHO: Kaz (who will eventually be an avatar of The Eye) and various people
WHERE: Temba
WHAT: October event
WHEN: 10/16 - End of October
WARNINGS: Probably this entire log will be riddled with CW but specific threads will have specific warnings so read at your own risk

For Tony
Between the giant eye floating above the entire city then a voice and something both speaking and a truly bizarre feeling which rocked through Kaz at the same time, and it was no surprise that Kaz lost consciousness. When he next woke it was to the sound of gunfire. Kaz knew that sound, though, and knew that he needed to find cover quickly. He recognized the sound of gunfire but it was coming from several sides. This wasn't one or two people firing. This was a warzone.

The sound of gunfire and deeper explosions that Kaz knew were mortars was barely muffled when Kaz found a way inside. The building he was in was barely more than the skeleton of a building and the roof had caved in on one side so that the floating eye was still visible beyond it's edge.

For Kyle
It felt like Kaz must be a mile underground by now. The way before him was getting narrower as he walked but the way back was either blocked off after a few steps or had become too narrow to walk through inexplicably. Just the tunnels themselves gave Kaz an unnerving feeling of being buried alive.

Now he came to what appeared to be some sort of chamber. It wasn't much of one and the walls weren't stone. They were the same as the things as the tunnels, just raw earth. If anything the chamber reinforced that feeling of being buried alive worse than the tunnels did.

For Kavinsky
The fire had come on slowly with blackening walls and smoldering plaster. But whatever had caused the ignition, Kaz watched as parts of the building he was in burned. It was smoke at first. Smoke that made Kaz's eyes water and his throat hurt from coughing. He wasn't able to find a window to get air so he was forced to lean against a wall and be lost in a coughing fit. But the wall was becoming hot to the touch so he had to blunder away blindly.

When he did find a window, the heat from the fire had broken out the glass, so Kaz gasped at the air it was letting in. It was still hot though, so it felt like trying to breathe in the hotter air from a furnace.

For Felwinter
It would have been a forest at night had their been folage on the trees, any sound beyond Kaz's footsteps or things like a moon or stars. Kaz couldn't use his cane on the soft forest floor so his limp was much more obvious as he tried to pick his way forward, being careful where he placed his feet.

Then something, maybe a sound or maybe a twig snapping that Kaz's feet didn't snap, made him pause midstep. Now the feeling the sound elicited made him look behind him. He wasn't sure what caused that feeling but he knew with absolute certainty that something was stalking him. The gloved hand around his cane tightened and Kaz was now being less cautious about where he put his feet as he picked up his pace. Soon he went from a slow walk to jogging, fast jogging and finally outright running. When he started running his limp was very obvious and now slowing him down considerably.

Open
Kaz could not see three feet in front of him for how thick the fog was. The ground was firm enough he could at least use his cane here but everything had the echoing open quality of being outside. Others might have the urge to raise their voice, but Kaz kept his voices volume as though he were talking to someone nearby. After all, he reasoned, being loud wouldn't do anything about how thick this fog was.

"Hello? Is there someone out there?"

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The dreaded sense of wrongness was like the paranoia that had seeped deep into his metal body for the decades, the centuries that he had spent on the move, hiding, running, suddenly swelled several-fold. It dispersed as quickly as it came, but never completely vanishing, a lingering sense that draped over him like a mantle, an unease that clung to his very being.

I don't like this, Felspring whispered within the comm of his helmet. Something's happened. Something's not right. They were hardly words that needed to be said. They both knew each other well enough to know what the other thought.

He was on the move now. He had to move, had to... It was more of a sensation than an actual directive, but put into words it would have made no sense to him. He had stared at his hands as though he could see through the worn gloves he wore, and yet they were somehow not enough, the helmet he wore was not enough. They'd know.

They can't know.

They won't know.

He moved quietly through the woods- when did they enter the woods? Were they not in the city? but it seemed that no amount of cover drove away that feeling, that sense of being watched, and the strange light, that great Eye could still be glimpsed through the snarl of twisting tree limbs. It was distracting enough that his attention drifted, the silence he had born in his favor broken by a single misstep, the offending twig easily crushed beneath his boot. He had not initially meant to stalk anyone, but the atmosphere made him tense.

He heard the movement ahead, Felspring noting that the figure had picked up speed somewhat. "Wait-" he started to call out, stopping himself just before he adjusted the volume of his tone, as though something seized his circuitry, an irrational decision to stay silent gripping him.

Do not give yourself away, it seemed to warn, and it wasn't the voice of his Ghost, but it felt like his own.

If Felwinter was intending to call out to Kaz, he didn't do so loud enough to stop Kaz's flight. It did, however, tell Kaz that someone had been stalking him. Kaz slowed to a stop in a small hemlock tree grove. He was breathing hard but short of making that sound, he kept his back to Felwinter.

"It would make for a better ending for you to show yourself now."

Silence responded to Kaz's suggestion, perhaps all the more unsettling with the stillness that settled upon the grove. There was no sound to further betray the idea that there was someone out there, no errant rustle of leaves, no panting of breath.

Felwinter stood unmoving in the shadows just beyond the grove, statue-still. Stop and stay. Do not reveal yourself. But you have the advantage. The thoughts were conflicting, finally eliciting the faint creak of leather as his fingers curled into a fist as though to stay his building frustration.

The voice that finally responded had a vague metallic echo to it, definitely familiar even if it had been some time that the two had spoken before.

"...you sound so sure of yourself."

When Kaz did finally turn around to look behind him, his eyes had gone from black to a green that glowed as if he had LED lights shining behind his irises. Those strange eyes found where Felwinter stood unerringly, though that should have been impossible thanks to the gloom that was shrouding Felwinter. Kaz no longer blinked anymore but instead saw. Saw every part of the creature before him. Saw every secret buried deep in Felwinter's psyche.

"I am. Because I will see you, either way, Felwinter. If you try to hide, that will mean you were planning, originally, to do something to me."

It should have been impossible, and yet Felwinter could not deny that those strangely glowing eyes were looking directly at him. He remained rooted to the spot, more out of shock than any real thought that he could possibly stay hidden. Even in this darkness he was somehow exposed, known.

This was wrong. Everything was wrong. But in that sickly sight, that creeping paranoia only swelled.

He knows who I am. Fear seemed to frost his metal spine, an even chillier sensation than the icy peak of his mountain fortress. Part of him, some small bit in the back of his mind (Felspring?), insisted that it couldn't be, but the thought was quickly lost.

"I planned no such thing," he said, putting as much steel into his tone as he could summon, frigid as the winds that dusted his mountain with snow. More lies, but he at least felt he sounded convincing. His life was a lie. He was a lie. An anomaly of an existence.

However confident Felwinter felt about his tone, Kaz's gaze still bored into him. The taste of terror was there and just made Kaz seem to perk up a bit, like a hound smelling prey. Not in a way that was visible just yet but the glow from his eyes intensified.

"Yes, I know what you are. Or at least what you were not. While it may matter less in Temba, I doubt you being neither robot nor human would be looked at favorably."

Kaz was certain that the grey area of lying by omission was part of this story.

It was like a spotlight singling him out in the shadows. There was no retreat. Something in him knew that it would not be easy to avoid this. This...was something more.

I know what you are. Those words were like ice spidering through his circuits. "It doesn't matter," he insisted. "Not here." And yet his thoughts flew instantly to that moment in the mines, the indifference that Cobb Vanth held towards his Ghost and Reeve's Mini, 'droids', he called them, willingly sent forth ahead to brave any potential dangers beyond the narrow hole before he would try to send anyone of flesh and blood.

"So you know, not everyone is just so irrational over non-humans," Reeve had assured him. It was enough. Felwinter had thought it should be. This was not Earth. Rasputin would not find him here. Having such knowledge from the Warmind would not benefit anyone here. It didn't matter, he repeated in his mind, and yet...

Kaz did not disagree, but while it might matter less in Temba, trying to avoid the piercing green eyes from Kaz only made him respond more. Something in Kaz sensed the fear in Felwinter and reveled in it the closer it came to the surface.

"You're still afraid. As much as you tell yourself this is not Earth, you are still afraid. So what is it you fear will happen?"

the green eyes still pinned Felwinter in place and now came closer to where Felwinter was casually. As if Kaz wasn't voicing Felwinter's thoughts as he had them.

Perhaps it was irrational, but then often fear was. And too long had he held these things close. Even if he did relax a little, here, he could never truly let down his guard. Maybe no one cared, but he was openly accepted here as a comrade. He didn't want to be dismissed as a thing.

"Nothing," came Felwinter's reply, but there was no heart in it, a breath of a whisper. He realized Kaz's closer distance and staggered back against a tree with a start. "Leave me be."

Kaz had a noticeable limp but he was still calmly walking toward Felwinter.

"You are afraid most that others will think of and treat you differently. Once they knew your secret there's always that danger."

Yes, Kaz knew perfectly well that with such a motley crew of captives already gathered, it was unlikely that there would be much objection to a robot. But Felwinter's fear was still a legitimate one and that fear rolling off of Felwinter in waves was delicious.

"You know that the longer you keep that secret, the greater the lie by omission you must tell."

It was like Kaz was reading his thoughts, except it wasn't exactly. Somehow a part of him knew exactly what was happening, and the significance of those glowing eyes trained upon him. It made him even more painfully aware of the absence of his shotgun and his sidearm, and the Light was simply no longer there, no matter how much he strained to grasp the Void, or burning Solar flames.

He wanted to hide, to slip away but there were no others to blend with, nothing but woods and emptiness and him. It was almost laughable, this child who limped towards him filling him with such uncertainty, and he could not even steal away his face because of It. The one who Watched, who Knew.

Those doubts were like well-placed knives, slipping into the chinks of armor that had suddenly proven brittle, compromised. His rationality slipped through those cracks, and his words, the only thing he could possibly use to defend himself, just weren't there.

"...I do not need to say anything," he said, hating how weak he sounded.

Kaz was closer now, but he stopped in order to look Felwinter in the eye. Well in the helmet, rather.

"Then your plan is to...what? Keep lying by omission? Sooner or later others will find out, and if it is later, then any goodwill you have gained will be called into question by that fundamental lie."

Kaz, the person, probably would never use that secret as anything but blackmail, but the thing inside Kaz was motivated by what would cause the most fear.

"Would you rather that secret was no longer yours to tend? It would reduce the time you had to keep lying."

Felwinter fell silent, tension knotting between his shoulders, a hand pressed against the tree behind him as instinct compelled him to run. There wasn't anything keeping him from doing so, save for Kaz's words. His head jerked up at that last insinuation.

"No," he said, bark cracking under the tightening of his fingers as fear welled anew. "It is not yours to keep nor to divulge."

The part of Kaz that wasn't Kaz at all reveled in the terror in that single word and pushed for more. But Kaz didn't indulge it, knowing that a person could only be pushed so far until terror backfired into aggression.

"While it may not be a secret I created, it is mine to keep, now, whether you like it or not."

And here it's hard to say whether it was Kaz speaking or the Beholding. Strangely they would both be in agreement.

"If you don't want that secret known, who else's secrets will you offer me instead?"

"An unfair trade," the warlord not quite hissed. "I have not known anyone well enough that they should share any secrets- and why should they?" He was growing more on the defensive, his mind mapping out potential courses of action. He did not have the Light, but he still possessed strength and speed well above a human's.

"You See what is unknown already- why ask what you seem able to gain so freely yourself?" Any closer and I shall take your face Or shall I run? This tree, is it so brittle Flee Hide Fight The shadows betray you The Eye Sees you

Kaz tilted his head inquisitively, though his expression was back to bored apathy. There was no terror to be gleaned here.

"None? Do you mean to say that you've not allowed yourself to become emotionally close with no one at all?"

Because there was no terror here, and no offer of secrets Kaz intended to walk away from Felwinter entirely.

"That is one thing you shall not hold over me," Felwinter replied, slowly finding his mental footing. "Perhaps fortunate for others. I may keep them at a distance, but if I do not know their secrets, then neither can I betray them."

He remained against the tree, watching as the teenager began to walk away, waiting until he'd gone off a fair distance before he pushed himself from his sole support, lurching off into the woods in the opposite direction. He would find no solace here, nor satiate the hunger that gnawed at him from within.

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Nowhere to run from all of this havoc

Felwinter the Stranger

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