revivalproject | [Calibrations] The falcon cannot hear the falconer

WHO: Viktor and possibly you?
WHERE: Calibrations
WHAT: Calibrations
WHEN: Calibrations
WARNINGS: cw for Arcane canon, but of the objects in the room none should require a separate cw. The glowing spinny thing is just a representation of the hexcore in Viktor's mind so it won't be able to actually consume you, but either power or life force, it will definitely feel like it is taking something from you if you try to touch it.

Viktor at the mingle

This room was not a bedroom or any room that anyone would find comfortable or want to spend time in. It was a cold room that was covered in different types of metal, and pieces of writing. In the middle of the room's desk there was something that glowed, hovered a little off the desk and spun lazily on its access. It is the only source of light in this room but the glow was bright enough that another light was not needed anyway.

But the stool that was sitting in front of the desk has been overturned. Around it there was a spreading cloud of ash. There were clothes that were strewn into and out of that cloud and a pair of glasses that looked like they lay where they had been dropped. Viktor was sitting curled over himself against the far wall but where he usually had clothes to cover it, the fact was that he was emaciated to the point that his bones were pushing outward from his skin and he was wearing some kind of brace to help him stand upright. Except for one of his legs. It was dark purple with a metallic sort of sheen. One of his hands, the one that was usually covered by a glove, also had that odd mixture of metal and stone. In spite of that or maybe because of that Viktor was curled up in a pose of abject misery.

"I tried to destroy it. But I can't do it anymore."

With the clothes laid out like someone was wearing them it wasn't a difficult conclusion to make that someone had been turned to dust while they were still alive. The lazily spinning hexcore makes an odd sort of watery sound as if in ascent.

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It wasn't a sort of room that Celty was familiar with, but as she stepped further inside she had a growing sense of foreboding. As her senses adjusted to the lighting, at first glance she wondered if she'd stumbled across the scene of a crime. And someone was still here.

The Black Rider spun at the voice, tensed, but as she found Viktor she wondered if he was also a victim, curled where he was. She stopped, recalling his words. Destroy what? she thought, looking around more before she started to step closer to him.

This is a dream, she reminded herself. These spaces where she had no memory of how she got to them...it was like Lerith's. She pulled out her cellphone, tapping out a message before holding it up to Viktor.

[What were you trying to destroy? What happened here? Are you all right?]

Viktor listlessly looked at Celty's text, and seemed no less miserably dejected.

"After...that happened to Skye I wanted to destroy the hexcore but I can't anymore. It won't let me."

Even knowing that this is a dream didn't change how Viktor's own self-loathing manifested. The hexcore on his desk made another watery sound.

Skye...

Her attention drifted back towards the pile of clothing, an ominous sign. The hexcore's light reflected off her helmet's visor as she turned it towards the desk at the sound. Slowly, Celty rose back to her feet, stepping towards the scattered clothing. She reached out for the glasses, thinking of Shinra.

The memory starts out calmly with Skye talking to herself as she tries to think of what she will say to Viktor. She absently pushes the glasses that Celty is holding back up her nose.
"Viktor, I was inspired by the way that you...."
She sighs in heartsick resignation.
"...Everything you do inspires me."
But when she opens the door to the lab, she sees the hexcore trying to consume Viktor in a blaze of swirling light and wind.
She yells his name and drops the papers she was holding against her chest to try to pull him bodily away from the hexcore . This isn't working very well, and it means she is hugging his chest as she tries to pull him away. Because she is so close Viktor only has to look down to see her. And in that moment he sees her dissolve into a cloud of ash while she is not only still alive but also yelling his name.
Skye died while he lived. And not only lived but also his body was changed.
The glasses, meanwhile, were laying where they had fallen.

The Dullahan slowly drew her hand away from the glasses, looking at the rest of the clothing lying there in a new light. She vanished... Absorbed? Her helmet turned back towards Viktor. There was still much here she didn't understand, although she pitied him for having to bear such a guilt. The woman died trying to save him...a woman who loved him. Had he loved her back?

Celty straightened, sizing up the glowing thing on the desk that spun and hummed so innocuously. She stepped towards it. What are you?

He had not. Viktor didn't even know that Skye had a crush on him until it was too late. As Celty starts to reach for the hexcore, Viktor stirs enough to lift his head and speak.

"Don't do that, it's dangerous on its own-"

But before he finishes speaking, the newly mutated hexcore seems to lock her in place, and where it had absorbed Skye whole, it was consuming an integral part of Celty now. What is the hexcore? Whatever it is, it's learning.

Viktor's warning seems so distant. Internally, Celty gasps, transfixed by the glow. There's a power there, a pull that seems to mean to engulf her entire being. That's what it feels like, and even as some strangely rational side of her seems confident she won't end up a pile of dust, something else in her kicks in and tries to fight it.

NO! she thinks fiercely, like a body remembering to breathe. She is a fairy, magic is what she is if one wants to divide things in such clean lines between that and science. She pulls back.

It's not so much that there is a hard line between science and magic, but rather it's applying the scientific process to understand magic and thus recreate it. At least that is what Viktor has been trying to do. Right now he still looks miserable as he holds his own arms across his emaciated chest.

"It reacts to organic matter. Any organic matter."

Not sure if that qualifies for fairies.

She has a body. She bleeds, she has organs though they don't seem to really possess any function save to simply be where one expects them to be. And this she only knows because she's been dissected, though she remembers nothing of the experience itself, thankfully.

But this is a dream, isn't it? Yet whatever's happening feels so real, and if it can do such things, then she can call upon her own nature, can't she? With this thought, shadows swirl about her, enveloping her like a second bodysuit. If this thing reacts to organic matter, then she won't give it any organic matter to do so, a barrier to help her break away and once again put distance between them.

That seems to do the trick as far as letting her go from being held in place. Viktor looked at the shadows surrounding her, mesmerized. This was the first time he had looked anything but miserable.

"...how are you doing that?"

Once she's managed to step well away from the table and the hexcore, Celty lets the extra layering of shadows dissipate. Her shoulders sag in a sigh, then lift in a shudder. She doesn't want to go through that again, whatever that was.

Looking over at Viktor, she shrugs, removing her phone again to type.

[I don't know. I just know it's something I can do.]

The hexcore makes another watery sound as Celty steps away, lazily spinning slowly on its access as though nothing happened. Viktor is now distracted for the moment and as such the lab door has opened just a crack.

"Is that something you've always been able to do?"

Celty nods. So far as she can remember, anyway. She's never cared too much about the how of her abilities so long as she was able to do things. Speculation and hypothesis were Shinra's ways, not hers.

She glances over towards the door when she notices it's opened, looking back at Viktor then.

The longer he stays distracted, the more the lab door opens. It's made of three doors that interlock so it slowly but surely opens wide enough to let one person climb through.

"Then the question becomes whether it's hereditary, and then what gene is expressed in you."

Escape. An exit, anyway. It's strange, really, how locked up the room actually is now that she can see how it's closed. Celty's not sure if she should be concerned about that or the noticeable change in Viktor given something new to think about.

Inwardly she snorts.

[So far as I know, I've always been this way.]

She turns her phone about for him to see, enlarging the display a bit so he won't have to strain, even as she keeps an eye out of her peripheral on that door.

It's open enough... I should be able to make it, she thinks.

[Calibrations] The falcon cannot hear the falconer

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