[DRP] hellfire (jeremiah)

[azuredreams]

When he finds the time to breathe, which there seems to be little of, Jeremiah goes to other ashdown. More importantly he goes to Court, not that long before he was going to meet Shiloh in fact, and lets his feet guide him. It never fails and he finds himself within the section of it that he would, perhaps, call home if not for the fact it was not.

Yet if things went poorly-

Jeremiah pushes the thought away as he pushes the doors open and, sure enough, there is music playing as Adze and Fell dance. Not that his husband’s fetch lingers long because almost immediately he realizes that Jeremiah is there. An expression flickers on his face and Fell’s hand finds his thin frail face and tilts it. One finger presses to her lips as she presses a finger of her other hand to his.

She smiles at him and Jeremiah thinks, were there more to them, that there might have been a blush on Adze’s face.  

[azuredreams]

“No, no one has seen either of them.” Fell tells him while she arranges a shelf of books to what he thinks is Algie’s preferred way of having things organized.

“Melany has been seen on the other side in Ashdown.” It goes unspoken about Ezra, Jeremiah unwilling to bring him up at all, that he has been too. Not because he does not trust Fell to keep his secrets but because it is still a topic that is hard for him to speak of. With anyone. “She isn’t- It is not the same Spinel Lady anymore.” That causes Fell to nearly drop a book, her head turning to look at Jeremiah with something akin to confusion, uncertainty-

“Then that means …”

“The Court is in a state of flux,” he replies, “and we are going to change it, reshape it, make it more than what it is now.”

Fell inclines her head with a small smile. She had told him, after all, that she would see the world he would shape.  

[azuredreams]

Shiloh is gone and Jeremiah remains. Fell inclines her head, the table long since cleaned and beckons him to follow.

“You were looking for me not that long ago,” he says, following her as she walks the winding paths of the Court. Except that these are not the paths that they walked the night of the red moon. No, these are the hidden paths. The paths of moonlight and shadows, the paths that only those who know them best can walk.

Someone who has been part of the Court for a long time.

“I was,” Fell replies, looking over her shoulder and up at him. Her eyes are mismatched, one bright and the other dark, and they find focus on him briefly before she looks back ahead. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you? Seen it as well?” She pauses and laughs, a light airy sound. “Well not it but what it has done.”

“The destruction? The bits of this place that had been destroyed? The feeling as if something is lingering right outside my perception waiting and watching. I’ve spent time trying to follow it, to find what it is, but I’ve no luck so far.” At this, Jeremiah frowns because it sounds like failure even if it does not feel like it. Not when, as usual, he knows not every detail.

“Mm,” his fetch hums her response. “I thought you might, your senses do you well, and I found someone that has information about it.”  

[azuredreams]

What is not known is the sheer amount of otherbeings that exist within other ashdown. Not that most realize it and, Jeremiah thinks, that people have forgotten in the aftermath of the red moon. There had been an entire gathering of beings and creatures that had come to celebrate the tithe.

Sometimes he wants to know how that went down in this reality, if he had disappeared after it in that reality too. If this version of him he replaced had sought what Ezra could teach.

Then again, Ezra is no longer the Burning Man and this reality, perhaps, did not even have the ability to call him that. Certainly, Melany is not the Spinel Lady even if she is now, altogether, something else.

Still-

Jeremiah remembers well his time within Ezra’s household, his time spent with September and July (he wants to go looking for them, the twins, because they are sibling to him in a way he still cannot put words to even after everything has been said and done). More than that he remembers the correspondences. He remembers helping oversee the problems that those of the nobility have to deal with. There are petitions for help, of course, and squabbles that they mediate.

There are also favors that are requested but they never come without a price. Within other ashdown there is an entire Court and the Nobles are responsible for it and for those that are resident to it and the place it is part of.

It is something that he has, with everything that has happened after the void - the tear in the world, the breaks in Sunny - that he has sorely not looked into.

At least, for this moment as he walks a cobbled stone path that is covered in muted sunlight through tree leaves, he knows he is stepping towards rectifying that.  

[azuredreams]

Where he inclined to name what was before him, Jeremiah might have called it a sylvari (and that was something else that was frustrating in the world shift, his character wasn’t a necromancer anymore but that was a complaint for another time). Except that where a head was, there was a gathering of butterflies and looking at it directly made his eyes want to water.

It’s voice, when it spoke, was like rainfall. Jeremiah would have preferred picking a spot to look at, one not part of the being, but that would have been potentially disrespectful. Instead he inclined his head and watched, listened as the butterflies flitted around it and it’s voice filled their meeting area (a small side garden).

Whatever it is, they said, has rampantly been destroying the area that we occupy. It cares not for anything and has no preference, it’s destruction is rampant and spiteful. We would have you deal with this before it causes far too much damage, before there is true harm.

“Of course. I’ve been trying to find it but so far I’ve not been able to track it down.” Jeremiah had spent time looking, had run into other visitors while he was looking, but had not accomplished much. “It’s stayed at the edges of what I’m able to follow.”

The butterflies moved in a flurry, away from the being and circling Jeremiah. He did not move, did not startle, but when he felt something land in his hand he reflexively closed around it. At least until it started to flutter and then he stopped, releasing his grip as it came to rest in his palm. When he brought his hand up, it was a large moth, or so first glance told him. The wings were feathered, though he was not sure if it was actual feathers or leaves, the thorax fur and the abdomen was something silky and soft.

It will guide you to it when you sense it again. There was a tilt of it’s head.

“Thank you,” Jeremiah replied, fingers brushing against the insect and then blinking as it fluttered and disappeared into a small patch of silvery blue wrapped around his thumb. It hummed under his skin, a strange sensation but not entirely unpleasant.

We petition you, Noble, the voices - the fluttering of wings, the chirps of crickets - spoke once more, that you deal with this before there is too much damage wrought. It means ill, not just to those that call this place home but to those that come from the other world.

Fingers brushing against the stained skin, blue-green eyes focused on the otherbeing and nodded as it disappeared back into the garden path. “It will be done.”

There was nothing else left to be said and his path obvious.  

[azuredreams]

What he had not counted on, however, was things to go entirely haywire in Ashdown of all places. He had, in fact, not stepped there in over a week and that, perhaps, should have been telling. Between All-Seeing, Alexis’s attempted suicide, the other Beaumont twin dumpster diving and a wealth of other things, he has been thoroughly inundated with work in Ashdown.

His skin buzzed as he stepped over. The sound of fluttering wings was the only thing he could hear for a moment but even that was overwhelmed by the sensation of absolute danger. It was apparent once he looked around, the area he had arrived in completely destroyed.

There, in the rubble of a building that had not been destroyed previously, was something. He could not put words to it, the form shifting and constantly changing. Jeremiah thought, for a moment, that he recognized it-

That it was someone he knew but then it shifted again- a glitch. The figure jerked, moved, and before he realized it was running straight at him.

The buzz under his skin was stronger than ever, his own sense of danger telling him that moving would be a good idea.

Jeremiah did not move at all, instead feeling himself chilling as icy scales appeared on his skin. He was bracing, fingers twitching as magic crackled in the air.

What should have been two forces meeting, the silver-haired man grabbing a hold of the thing and pressing it to the ground, instead ended in nothing.

Another glitch, another jerky movement as it seemed to go around him entirely. Jeremiah moved quick but even his ability to be somewhere else in an instant was not quick enough. He let out a growl, coldfire flaring to life in his clenched fists.

It was gone, the buzz under his skin gone as well. No sense of danger remained but the destruction did. Jeremiah picked his way through it, his stomach sinking when he saw butterflies fanned out everywhere.  

[azuredreams]

The otherbeing had not died, but it had been gravely injured. Jeremiah had stayed for a while, helping and healing where he could.

Not enough.

This was a matter that could no longer be ignored or left alone, not as he had already done so. How much longer until whatever it was did actual deathly harm? A choice was there, he just had to make it.  

[azuredreams]

It became a little easier when he finally crossed back over to Ashdown. He had thought about it, to check the building that had been destroyed in other ashdown had a counterpart in Ashdown. Except that what had been a bakery building (he remembered it from the world they had once been part of and was now gone) in other ashdown was now an antique store.

Another one of the shifts in reality.

Looking inside the windows, Jeremiah could see it. There were cracks in the walls but that was not the worst thing. No, the worst thing was the roof that was caving in, sinking to the floor.

Without warning, the owner said to him later.

Jeremiah knew better.