[PRP] too much to talk about (shiloh & jeremiah)

[Melancholies]

"So they used a different geas..." Shiloh's brow furrowed deeply, "I wonder who'd have that kind of a power—" And then he stopped and laughed, the sound sharp and sarcastic, "Well, a principal I guess."

His hand had started to pet Hellbine again, and even though he was concerned he was at least calm with the knowledge that Jeremiah wasn't like, imminently dying. Even if he sounded like it. "I guess that makes sense too... but I heard Sonny was really upset about it. They—They're not stupid, y'know? If you ask and your respectful they'll listen just like anyone else. You don't have to force them." Not to mention it sounded like the prospect of someday freeing them was a whole hell of a lot harder now. He liked Sonny and America liked Sonny, but this third person didn't have a whole lot of regard for them...

He sighed.

"Is that what you came to tell me?"

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Exactly." That they were a principal and capable of enormous power. Jeremiah watched Shiloh petting Hellbine, his own breathing steadying and his face turning back to it's natural pallor. "... and, yes, you are correct. They didn't have to do that with Sonny at all, nor me but they will take no chances that somehow they are revealed."

He managed to say this in a steady voice, though his hand was rubbing at his throat idly and without realizing.

"It's not all I have to talk about, no. It's just the most pressing at the moment. I did not want you to be concerned that there were multiple principals missing." A sigh escaped. "There's a lot I've learned, a lot that ... I suppose I could start with that aside from the Charter, there needs to be a heavy focus on dismantling the remains of the previous Sigil."

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"The remains of the previous sigil?" Shiloh perked up, but his poker face was far from perfect; his eyebrows lifted in surprise and his eyes glimmered strangely, the way a starved dog watched a steak through a barbed wire fence. "What do you mean? I thought killing the other principals destroyed that."

He paused and looked up at the sky.

"I just thought everything here was an effect of the new sigil." He blinked. "Well, and the Court sigil being a failsafe. What's left over?"

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"All of it," Jeremiah said dryly. "It was scattered to the winds but it's all still there, the new Sigil built upon it. We didn't ..." A hand raked through his hair.

"We didn't move ourselves to another reality but another world. The Court sigil exists because it's part of other ashdown," another topic to discuss but not at the moment, "and we may have changed this world more because of our otherworld influencing it. The cage, if it exists, did not come to be in the same fashion. Aleksy does not seem to know of it."

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Shiloh's eyes were huge, but he seemed to be taking this all in stride. He gave Hellbine a few more pets as he mulled things over. "So its... it's totally different, huh?" The him of this word, the Jamie of this world... Melany was living her own life until they came over and ripped the Spinel Lady with them. It made sense in a way, since the original principals didn't seem to exist either. How would there have been a cage?

"So if it wasn't just attached to the principals..." he trailed off, "What else is there? What's keeping it here then?" He looked concerned.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Yes, and ..." Shiloh was taking this well but then he had not said the next obvious thing. "Those that we replaced? They're likely dead." It was a given but he said it all the same.

His hand was held out, a notebook dropping from a swirling glimmer of magic into his hand. "As for what is left of the original Sigil? The things that were used to make it. A ring Liam gave to his fiance Vivien who died, Renard's original grimoire, crossroads dirt from the original Ashdown, a bird taught to mimic an air raid siren," he would speak more on this, "and the one thing they had never planned on, instead born from Renard's bound magic: Sunny."

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Shiloh had... figured, in a way. The knowledge they were dead still sunk in his gut, but hadn't every Shiloh before him died? Now he was a principal and a Noble, and he'd likely be the last Shiloh to exist until forever. The thought was sobering.

"Those all seem kinda arbitrary." He sniffed, cataloging the information in his brain. If he didn't have a good poker face earlier, he was starting to acquire one now; his face was blessedly neutral as he mulled everything over. Liam's engagement ring, Renard's grimoire, crossroad dirt, Sunny...

"...A bird taught to mimic an air raid siren though?" He tilted his head inquisitively, "I mean, everything else seems easy to get," They had gotten Renard's original schema after all; it had to be possible, "But that just seems weird as ******** class="quote">
azuredreams

[azuredreams]

"They were creating a cage and, in the creation of a cage, you need elements of the person that is going to be bound. As the practice was, for married couples, to pool their magic together, they needed things from both Renard and Liam," the grimoire and the ring, "that they could either say were freely given or likewise lay claim to without a need to counteract the fact that they were potentially stolen."

Another bit of proof that consent mattered. Items not freely given had to be counteracted.

"I assume they wanted to cover everything, so that was likely why the dirt, as for the birds? They were fed Renard's blood and the dirt, taught to mimic the air raid sirens in case Renard ever came close to breaking the cage." A small pause. "Did you hear one? During your time in the Void? During the eighties?"

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Bean roused about then, making a confused squeeeeak? sound. Shiloh's face matched the noise perfectly. "There... there was the bomb that kept going off... everything was really overwhelming." Sirens... sirens... He rubbed at his temple a little, "So to adequately cage something, you need multiple things to account for everything you're caging..." He was thinking, "We definitely didn't have that much stuff when we went in to cage Sunny. I wonder if that's why everything got janky like it did?" He huffed.

"I hate that magic has so many loopholes..." That was like someone taking one of Shiloh's belongings under the guise of It's borrowed! "Or that there even has to be cages at all. So what; the man goes back in time and ******** up reality. Isn't that basically what they did anyway with the cycles? It's still pretty ********." He sighed.

"That's really ******** weird though." He cleared his throat awkwardly, "Feeding the birds blood and dirt. Like... what the ********?" Shiloh shook his head, "So I guess all of that has to be disassembled to properly deconstruct the cage... I wonder how easily you could go about locating that stuff." It'd probably be pretty roundabout for a lot of it...

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

Hellbine perked them, rolling over onto his back and then onto his stomach as he stretched himself up on his hind legs, paws pressed to Shiloh's torso, to try and peer towards Bean. Plant baby.

"I've heard others who were within the different time periods state that there were air raid sirens going on during the reality collapses, like when the bomb went off. It could imply, for whatever reason, Renard was close to breaking the cage or that the cage was, in truth, close to breaking on it's own. We do not know." Nodding as Shiloh continued on, he couldn't be in more agreement. "Essentially, yes, I believe so. Due to the lack of consent and the fact that you were binding magic that was already bound ... we created a potentially worse problem but likely moved ourselves to a world that's more befitting of solving things.

"As for the cycles themselves? The original group did not intend them or that's what I've been lead to believe. They did not account for the fact that Renard's schema had a time element to it and in not accounting for that, the cage was created with the cycles."

Jeremiah was quiet a moment before he spoke. "I assume that the feeding of the dirt and blood was to attune them to the purpose they were meant to serve. As for locating some of it ... America and I are working on the ring, though there's little to be done until Liam Noor is no longer missing." A breath escaped. "The birds are also known in a manner. They're children, Beaumont. Rabbit's sirens are the descendants of those birds, changed by the magic over the thousands of years the cage and cycles have gone on. We have to find another way to deconstruct the cage without them." As obviously harming them was not acceptable in the slightest.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Bean's eyes were huge as Hellbine observed him. He started up a cat-and-mouse sort of thing as he continued to peek out and then hide and then peek out again like it was some sort of a game. Shiloh seemed oblivious to this—or really good at ignoring it.

"I do remember that now, yeah..." He sighed. "Even if they didn't account for it, how did they thing doing something this large scale was okay? I dunno..."

Everyone had ulterior motives, he reminded himself.

"I hope they find Mr. Noor soon..." Shiloh said as he poked at the lawn, "At least you—?!" There was a strangled sound, "—W-Wait, wait, the sirens? Rabbit's? You mean Nev and Sy?" His eyes were huge. "There's no way we're hurting them. I'm not hurting Sonny or Sunny or whoever either. No one needs to hurt. No more death." His voice was raising a little, but he was absolutely adamant about it. "None of it. I'm having none of it."

But this was good to know, too. His mind was ticking behind his panic.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Considering three of the parties are dead, one is incapacitated and the other is currently not in control of their magic ... we can't exactly find out how large of a scale they had planned but I do feel as if they hadn't planned on all of this." Jeremiah's hands smoothed across his trouser leg, looking up to the sky. It seemed as if he was good at ignoring the game as well, especially since Hellbine was playing along and peeking too. He'd bob his head at either side of Shiloh trying to catch a glimpse.

"Yes, Nev and Sy." His fingers curled. "You know I'm in agreement. Even without babysitting the sirens or caring about Sunny, I still wouldn't condone this. There's been too much blood and death and there is surely another path to find." Even if somewhere in the back of his mind there was that gaunt version of him that had stared at him with something else behind his eyes. The one that said he never had the spine or the balls to do what needed to be done. "I'm going to talk to Rabbit about this, tell him that the children may need more protection. You're one of a handful that knows the truth about the sirens that I am aware of but that doesn't mean someone else hasn't discovered it."

As always, he worried about what the information could be done with in someone else's hands.

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

"I won't tell anyone else. Nobles are supposed to protect Othercreatures, and they're no exception." The way he said it made it sound like he'd rehearsed it. This was likely because he had. This was probably due in part to Beel, but regardless. "I mean, aside from Jamie, but..." He blushed, "I can't really help that. It's really hard for us to keep secrets from one another."

Almost impossible, really, without a great degree of trust that the other wasn't going to go rooting around in their partner's headspace.

"I'll have to look into alternatives, because the cage has to be broken." He was the key, it kinda felt like his job, "Court too, and everything else. Remaking the charter is just a quick fix to free Melany, if nothing else. At the end of the day, I want it all gone." Burned to the ground, he thought. "I just want things to be how they were. Maybe they weren't perfect or great, but it was normal. We died and stayed dead. Life continued to move forward." He sighed. "The world didn't end in November. I wouldn't have to watch my brother die, or Jamie die. I wouldn't have to deal with the guilt of meeting their new-cycle selves, wondering if I should be treating them the same or differently, let alone waiting hundreds of years to even meet them."

Shiloh was silent.

"Sorry..." He sounded a little bitter.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Exactly," Jeremiah said in agreement. "We are meant to protect them as much as we are meant to ensure that they do not influence this world." His lips twitched a bit. "I'm not going to expect you to keep secrets from Jamie. It would be as if you were asking me to not tell Algie something." Jamie and Shiloh were not married but it was, in his mind, essentially so.

He was quiet again, listening to Shiloh speak and he understood. "The Charter is a failsafe. It frees Melany but it also is there for us to be able to continue and act, to do something that would enable us to break free of the cage and cycles if we cannot do so this time while stepping away from the mistakes of the old. " His focus shifted back to Shiloh. "I would much prefer a world without all of this. Magic, yes, clearly that's meant to be part of the world - it was before all of this - but none of this ... living for countless centuries, watching people we love and care for live and die again, worrying about what we should do when we meet them again, or being physically altered by the magic to the point we may have to step away from lives in this world."

A breath escaped.

"Which leads me to this: you remember, at the conference, when Silk referred to other ashdown as the real world? She is not incorrect. It is the real world. Potentially all of it that remains from before the cage."

Melancholies

 

[Melancholies]

Shiloh had his thumb in his mouth as he aggressively gnawed at his nail (or what could be considered his nail; his hands were pretty disgusting and rough). "That's just the thing though," He said finally, licking his lips, "The charter gives us this ability to survive through the cycles. If s**t goes bad this time? Hey, we'll have what. a couple hundred years to try again." He sucked in a breath, "But I just don't think that's gonna work, y'know?"

He looked up at Jeremiah with something weird in his eyes, something primal and harsh and like a cornered prey animal—or maybe like a hawk with an injured wing and nothing to lose.

"Like, I'm personally ******** either way. If we nixed Court now, I'm still a principal. I'd still live on in the cycles, prolly." The others did, "But I honestly think if we can't do it this time—if I can't succeed and Jamie has to die—there's really going to be no coming back." His eyes hadn't left Jeremiah, "Like, seriously ********, and it ain't 'cause I have trouble watchin' a loved one die. Sure, that'd rip my heart out, but I don't trust my head to stay screwed on right." Bean had knocked his beanie off, but in the midst of the conversation Shiloh didn't seem to care. After a while the sprout jumped off of his shoulder to dart around in the grass, still apparently entranced with this game with the cat.

"We're really close," He said as he drew shapes in the dirt, "Closer than close." Shiloh tapped his head, "Our minds got tangled up and they're only getting more tangled. I feel what he feels, he feels what I feel. If the link gets compromised it hurts." Nosebleeds, migraines, dizziness and nausea...

"I don't want to think what death would do to it." He finally looked away with a quiet sigh. "Anyway, it really makes sense doesn't it? That magic is malleable and easy to cast in Otherworld, and everything that could ever be considered magical is on that side anyway, and then you have the Court who's supposed to serve as gatekeepers so s**t stays separate." He paused, "It's almost like they ripped all the magic from the world and contained it. I mean, it is."

azuredreams