nexus_crossings | This Mortal Coil

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This Mortal Coil

Micolash is in the Nexus Plaza, thankfully looking cleaner and smelling better than the last time he'd been asking questions. The cage is still in place, of course; why would it not be? He even looks a little healthier! Not much, as his skin is still sallow and gaunt over angular bones and features. But at least not as unsteady and proportionally more alert as well.

He's not quick to ask a question, however. The scholar is instead on a sofa, long legs pulled up onto the seat with him and folded in front of him. The rest of the sofa, normally big enough to seat three, is piled with books. Easily two dozen, if not more. A glance at the covers that are visible will show a selection of possibly recognizable names: Erwin Schrödinger. Charles Hartshorne. René Descartes. David Ray Griffin. The one he has open on his knees right now is a collection of Thomas Aquinas' summae and related theories.

The scholar is content to immerse himself in this reading for hours on end, but eventually, he seems to recall where he is. And that he can ask questions if the fancy takes him.

"What do you think. Or believe. Happens after death?"

Getting RIGHT to the heavy stuff, it appears.

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Amelia shakes her head at the question, her feet shifting beneath her in response to his intense gaze. The way he moves is very strange to her and she's certain she's never met anyone quite like him before - a rare thing in the Nexus. It's not often that someone who appears so introverted is so intense when they interact with someone; Usually such people are very shy, in her experience.

"It's not a familiar term, but I have a feeling it's not a pleasant thing. Where I'm from there's only one place we go when we pass on, but the experience within it varies depending on a person's actions in their lifetime." She crosses her arms loosely in front of her chest, tilting her head curiously to one side. "Is it something from your world?"

His movements are odd. Strangely languid, fluid, a man underwater. Sometimes a twitch or a rushed gesture, a shift in his posture. He moves like a man not familiar with his own body, honestly.

"Mm. It is not my world, but Kos', some say Kosm. A curse formed from a mother's fury at her body's desecration, the slaughter of her unborn child. Hunters carved her carcass open, pillaging her insides and her blood. Ripping her infant from her womb and-...Ah, but it is a grim tale. A horrible tragedy. Had I known at the time it was enacted-..." Micolash does look pained and troubled at the recounting. Whoever this Kos/Kosm is, it is someone he feels open sympathy for.

As he continues, he looks back down at the book in his lap, picking a finger at a frayed string of the cover's binding. "Her outrage at their actions was so powerful, so everlasting that it formed the Hunter's Nightmare. A curse. A verdict of damnation. That any and all hunters forevermore, if they should lose themselves to bloodlust, would, in the end, find themselves in her Nightmare. Cursed to fight, hunt, kill and die. Again and again..."

His pale blue eyes flit upwards again, meeting Amelia's own. "Does this sound akin to your own Nightmare?"

She's never seen someone so unsure of how their body works. Not even children have that kind of awkwardness. It's intriguing - or it would be, if she weren't so distracted by what he's describing. Rather than be repulsed by the explanation, though, Amelia looks confused. That dreams or nightmares can be created by magic isn't surprising, but that people can be sent to one that's so well known is. And it's a whole separate world from his? How does that work?

"Ahh, no. Not at all." Her lips draw into a thin line as she thinks how to further explain what happens where she's from. "From what I understand about the Eternal Dream, it's a single place that everyone goes to, but every person dreams on their own. There's nothing to suggest that someone might meet those who have gone on before them or that what one experiences is driven by anything but their own lives." True, she's never been there and no one's ever come back from the dead to tell the world about what they've experienced, but there's also no folklore or stories that would suggest otherwise.

Her shoulders rise and fall in a small shrug. "As far as I've been told, the best dreams someone can have in their lives won't compare to the ones they'll enjoy in the Eternal Dream. Nor will their worst nightmares hold a candle to the horrors they'll face for the rest of eternity." A heavy burden for anyone to carry if they, like Amelia, believe they're destined for one or the other when they die.

He hums in curiosity (and maybe a little disappointment) when Amelia denies that their examples vary wildly. Then listens to her following explanation, blinking sleepily but still intent on her words. He huffs once or twice at particular terms and notions, making note of them, the sound more of polite interest than scoffing, thankfully. Slight amusement maybe at how unalike their understandings are.

"...Sounds. Lonesome, doesn't it?" He asks quietly, an anemic waver in his voice. "Though it is still somewhat as the Dream and the Nightmare are as I have discovered them. Singular planes, lands of the Great Ones, but. Segmented. Pocketed. Layered. The Nightmare of Kos, some say Kosm, exists in the same Nightmare Frontier as my Nightmare of Mensis, the same as the Astral Clocktower and its...dour secrets."

Micolash trails off briefly, fingernails still picking at that thread on his book as his eyes lose focus. Thinking. Remembering.

"...What. Do you think." The caged man soon resumes talking haltingly, even though he's still partway lost in thought. "These worse-than-the-worst nightmares entail?"

She smiles, but it's a hollow thing. All show and no meaning.

"Nightmares aren't supposed to be nice," she counters, "and dreams are meant to make the dreamer happy. Everyone disagrees with the people they care for and love from time to time and such things don't belong in sweet dreams." Her head tilts slightly as she watches him, her pleasant-enough smile never fading from her lips. He has such a strange way of thinking of things, but he does seem quite knowledgeable about dreams. It's the first time ...in a long while that she's felt she could actually converse with someone about the topic.

"I'm certain it varies for each person, the nightmares they'll encounter in the Eternal Dream. For some people, what they see now when they close their eyes is terrifying, but easily forgotten. Maybe something like losing a precious object or not remembering something at a critical moment. Worse things are easy to imagine in such cases, and would play off the fears of whoever was dreaming them." The smile on her lips turns dark as she tips her face toward his. "But for some of us, I'm certain good dreams would be the real nightmares. If losing things or people or your own life aren't what you fear, then what about gaining those things you don't think you deserve and having to struggle with them for all eternity? Wouldn't that be more frightening?"

Someone may have thought about this a lot over the last few years of her life. And for her, it's completely true. Her dreams are more often what make her weep or what she forces herself awake from. Her nightmares are suspenseful and horrifying things, but her dreams? Her dreams are that much worse.

"I speak of your understanding of the Dream as lonesome," he clarifies. "Unless I have misunderstood? Everyone not finding the others who came before, that everyone's dreams are their own. Singular. And isolated." He frowns, still finding the idea unpleasant despite the example pertaining to the more pleasant afterlife option. "Lonesome..." he repeats.

Micolash listens to Amelia's own clarifications and thoughts carefully, eyes now up again and meeting hers. The thread he'd been picking from the book's cover finally comes loose. He keeps it held between thumb and forefinger's nails. "I...suppose that would be. Harrowing. In its own ways. I find relief when I am given what I thought I'd not earned, really. But I. Believe I understand your sentiment. Such as being delivered unto a Nightmare where you were expecting your greatest works to culminate? Your highest goals? And only realize you have been now trapped in a realm where they are...lacking. That you have. Fallen short..."

Micolash's eyes are losing focus and gaining a haunted, dark look in its place.

She nods slowly as she follows along with his words. "Very lonesome, as I understand them to be. I might be one of the few who thinks this way, but knowing that I go into them alone and that anyone I see or meet isn't real?" Her shoulders rise and fall in a half-hearted shrug. "It's a lonely place to be."

It seems he grasps what she's trying to say when she speaks of terrifying dreams. "That one could never be the person required to achieve what they're given in a sweet dream is a torturous thing to wake from," she agrees. "Every new dream, every recurrence of that which has happened before, would only make the feeling worse. The loneliness of the situation would only become more intense as time went on. It could drive even the strongest person mad."

Dreams, as if she wasn't bad enough at normal conversations not going down dark paths, she had to decide to start one about death and the afterlife. This is proving to be quite the downer, even if it's informative for Micolash.

Informative. And familiar. If the content of Amelia's explanation is shocking or depressing, he certainly doesn't look it. Instead, his face pulls into a queasy, forced smile.

"...You adjust."

Wait, what does that-

"Even if you break. You adjust. Adapt. The breaking is simply...violent evolution. A broken mirror is still a thousand points with which to pierce the stars..."

Micolash's tone is that of someone who knows. A man speaking from experience.

The little outburst isn't surprising, but it draws a frown across her lips. "And if you don't adjust? If you break and there's nothing left to pull back together? What then?"

In the land of the living, there's always somewhere to go, someone to reach out to. In the Eternal Dream, there's no running. There's no hiding from the dreams or nightmares. There's no escaping what one has brought upon themselves.

"If a mind becomes too fractured to dream... what happens to it?"

"Then the pieces of what is left are gathered and cobbled to build something. Entirely. New."

His smile is still sickly serene, a terrible sense of certainty to his words.

Her eyes widen a little at the response. Whoever this man is, he knows all too well of what she speaks. Almost as if he's lived it, or has watched over those who have. Given his descriptions of Kosm earlier... she wouldn't be surprised by either.

"That sounds..." Her lips draw into a thin line as she debates on the correct word. "Horrifying."

Is that the fate that waits for her? Will she crack under the weight of the Eternal Dream and become something else? Will she be forced to grow in a new way, and discover a new way to survive? Will she even remember what she was like after this breaking? Will she even be herself in the first place after she dies? If this goes on forever, as she's been told it will, how many times will she fall, break, and be forced to rise again?

Her mind reels with the possibilities and her body sways ever so slightly as she tries to force her way through it. She closes her eyes to ground herself and reaches up to touch her forehead, briefly, then draws her fingers through the strands of her hairpin. It's small, but it helps.

"That's quite the revelation," she murmurs. A breath, and then she opens her eyes again. Part of her still feels like she's about to drown in all of this new information, but she'd rather not do it in front of a stranger. "How is it you came to know all of this?"

Micolash watches keenly as Amelia has this moment of terrible realizations and revelations. He knows the signs and sights of someone gaining Insight. It's always unique to the person but shares telltale signs. Dawning horror, icy clarity, pinning pupils. How wonderful that he could facilitate such growth for another at this time.

When the woman is coming back to herself, finding her center once again, Micolash pulls a stack of books closer to himself to free up room for her to take a seat. Pats it invitingly. It's no good to leave someone swooning and at risk of going weak-kneed and falling! Again, he knows how this goes.

Being asked about his own understanding of these matters, the caged scholar smiles dreamily again. "Oh, I conducted a ritual to deliver myself to the Nightmare, in pursuit of higher understanding, higher being. It was successful, though...one way. And everyone who came with me arrived already. Changed. Only I was left to inhabit the Nightmare of Mensis and...conduct my own transformation over time. Over repeated rending of thought and body. Lessons, every single one. I consider myself blessed; fortunate! To have received such particular mortification to expand my mind, even if some things must snap to. Facilitate such."

For someone who is describing what can, for all intents and purposes, be perceived as an actual hell, Micolash continues to sound pleasantly reminiscent. Lessons indeed.

The seat is taken with a grateful nod. She would have pushed through the weak knees, but who is she to turn away such a well-meaning invitation? It's only polite to take it.

His response again surprises her and earns a brief widening of her eyes. What he experienced isn't surprising - that much makes sense, given his obvious knowledge of the subject - but... he...

"You did this to yourself?" She sounds vaguely scandalized as she frowns at him in the way an older sibling does when the younger does something she thinks is incredibly stupid. "You chose to subject yourself to nightmares and horrible things? Why would you do that?"

Surely there's an explanation beyond "because it sounded like fun." Because in what universe is living through that kind of change fun?

Micolash nods behind his cage as he folds his legs up onto the sofa with him once more, resting spindly hands on his knees. This gives Amelia a great view of the man's untied shoelaces. "I am a scholar of the Great Ones, of Their realms pertaining to the Dream and the Nightmare alike. My greatest goal, my highest desire, is to exist as They do. To dwell upon the planes above that of the Waking, to traverse them freely as something...no longer beholden to reality. Not as we mortals know it.

"The ritual was my answer, my salvation. The culmination of all our research! To deliver us, we dedicated members of my College of Mensis, to the higher planes. To leave behind our useless, profane mortal bodies and project our being to the Nightmare that awaited us. For what is wiser than to reach as high as you are able, and then study further from your newfound vantage on how to continue your ascent?"

His smile looks a mite strained or forced as he goes on, however. Joyless. "There were...unpredictable elements. Things that did not proceed as I'd hoped. Or planned. But even when things are undone and hope is lost, what option does one have but to proceed? To persist? To surrender or succumb would only make all the effort up to that point go to waste. Be for naught..."

While she understands the drive and desire behind his words, the spiritual aspect of it all confounds her. So this is what men and women did to themselves when they found themselves in a religious fervor, striving to be close to their gods? Subjected themselves to tortures and horrors beyond imagining for even the chance to be like the ones they worship? That's even more terrifying than she could've imagined, and she files away another mental note to continue to avoid religion and this kind of spirituality like the plague.

"The best laid plans are always doomed to some amount of failure. No matter how much time is spent planning, something always goes wrong." Maybe that's why she doesn't make plans past the large, vague, overarching kind? She can tell herself that, at least.

She frowns thoughtfully as she looks him over. He's so frail and unkempt, as if he's given little thought to his person well-being or appearance since things went wrong in his attempt to become a god. Another result of his zealotry? It seems likely, but there's really only one way to know for certain. "Is that why you're here now, in the Nexus? To learning more so that you can correct mistakes so that you can attempt this process again?"

Micolash still has that smile on his face, but it continues to be... Not insincere, but it looks practiced. Like a conscious effort is made to try his best to emulate a smile and it's off. Just slightly, but it's off.

"A Hunter of beasts invaded my Nightmare of Mensis and cut me down. In doing so, he forced me to. Wake up. To return to the body I'd left behind in the Waking. But there was no suitable body to return to." One of Micolash's spidery hands drags down the length of one shin, smoothing out the pantleg under his palm and finding the cuff. He proceeds to fiddle with with between his fingers, rubbing at the material idly.

"But how fortuitous that forces even beyond my understanding delivered me to another Dream altogether! That being this Dream. This Nexus. A place to try again. A second chance. To see it righted and resume my path of ascendancy beyond this. Mortal realm."

Her eyes widen a little at the story Micolash tells. "That sounds... awful." What would happen to a soul on his world if it didn't end up here in the Nexus? True, fortuitous isn't the word Amelia would use to describe this place, but to each their own. She's the last person allowed to judge others for how or why they do something (until it directly affects her, of course).

"It's not a dream," she says, shaking her head a little with the words. Her lips draw into a thin line as she exhales a silent sigh. "This place is as real and touchable as any other world in the multiverse, and there's no escaping that." Quite literally, for some of the people here. She gestures to the books spread around him as she adds, "But the countless volumes in the library that may be of use to you. If nothing else, I'm sure they'll make for interesting reading."

Micolash tilts his head and his expression slips to one more patronizing. A smile that speaks 'oh you' more than anything. "A Dream is as real as any other reality, my dear. It is simply a different reality. If you think in terms of those that we see when we mortals slumber? That is our meager soul taking flight, glimpsing malleable reality from a distant window! A realm meant for beings Greater than we. But one we can reach, if we are dedicated."

Her lips slowly tug into a frown at that last bit. "But I don't understand why. Why the care and drive? You can aspire to be like others without throwing your existence in one place away for another. Shouldn't it be enough to act in their way, in the place you are now?"

Zealotry and religion. She may never understand it at this rate.

"Spoken like someone who has never felt the draw and the majesty of the Great Ones. To simply be in Their presence is to know awe. Their very souls are so vast, Their existence so profound, linked to the sea and the stars." His voice actually trembles with emotion as he gestures his description, always waving his hands wide and languidly.

"They can travel to any plane They care to. Including ours, despite all its beastly savagery and profane filth. And in the course of studies at Bergynwerth, then Mensis, it has been made clear that we mortals can join Them! Become as Them! I have seen it in the transformation of Vacuous Rom, her form no longer human, her thoughts and existence simply too grand for such an unsuitable vessel any longer. To do as you say, to merely live out our pointless, fleeting lives simply in imitation of Their actions and ideals? It is anemic. A childish charade. Not when ascension is at our fingertips, should we just find our way..."

Edited 2017-12-19 01:46 (UTC)

All this talk of mortals being less is upsetting. Life, for most human-like creatures with definite lifespans, is short and hard enough as it is. Being told by a fanatic that his gods are simply better and that anything less than trying to be them is childish strikes a nerve that borders both uncomfortable and terrifying.

Being talked down to by someone who's on the same level as yourself is bad enough. Being talked down to by someone who only thinks he's better because he's reaching for something more? That's a whole new level of "do not want," as far as Amelia's concerned.

"And if you never find your way to it?" she counters, trying to keep her emotions in check as she dodges his flailing arms. "What happens when you meet your end and didn't achieve what you were looking for?"

Micolash seems to relax some now, his fanaticism simmering now that he is not speaking at length of the nature of these perceived higher beings. He leans back on the sofa, sighing and drumming his thin fingers on a nearby book. The title of the volume reads Discours de la Méthode. "That is the question, isn't it? Blood-drunk hunters who die under the influence of their carnage are delivered to the Hunter's Nightmare. I had gone to the Nightmare of Mensis upon voluntary ejection of the soul from my body. If we die and have not found ascension, enlightenment, what do we become? Where do we go? I do not care to find out personally. Death in the Waking is to enter mindless sleep; death in the Nightmare is to awaken and forget.

"It is an end to progress. An end I will not entertain the possibility of any longer. Not when I have been given this marvelous, mysterious second chance to try again."

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This Mortal Coil

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