lostcarnival | ⇨ DANGEROUS ENCOUNTERS

While the other encounters may have been accidental, this one seems all too intentional. Everyone wandering the Athenaeum's halls will be familiar with the shadows by now, the darkened halls that separate and confuse. Sometimes you can enter the darkness and wind up places you've never seen before.

That is what happens this time. No matter where you were, no matter where you were trying to get, you'll find yourself emerging from the shadows in a darkened room. You can still see the shelves and the high interior walls, but it's as if a filter has been imposed over them, that robs the place of most of its color and suggests darkness while still allowing sight.

At the far side of the room, there is a black throne. Seated within it is a man with dark waves of hair and classically formal attire, boredly reading a book. Very quickly, too, from how rapidly he flips the page.

He barely looks up for you, even as others begin to congregate. Either this is one hell of a coincidence, or this meeting was intentional.

This isn't where Lambert's intended to end up, though it's not as though he had anything specific in mind in the first place. He'd worried about the shadows other had reported on the radio, but he's heading away from the Carnival, not towards it, searching desperately for any sign of the Curator or Scribe -- a tall order, for any entities with no form.

Still, it's their realm, and they're its rulers. If there are unwanted intruders -- assuming this isn't some damn trick of the place itself, as full of those as it is -- they have the best chance of ejecting them.

All-seeing-shield strapped to his back, sword in hand, Lambert's too busy looking around to see when his foot steps right into darkness ... and steps out somewhere else.

"Ah, fuck." Yeah, that really is all there is to say.

This isn't where anyone would ever intend to be, in Childermass's opinion, but it seems none of them have that choice right now. The shadows spit people out wherever they want. It's only by sheer chance that he ends up here, he wants to assume. Let it just be chance. Better, let it not be real at all. Why here? Why now? The cards only told him so much but he hadn't thought the Count would be at their door so soon.

It's a jumble of panicked thoughts from when he first stumbles in, all put to a screeching stop when he turns away staring at the throne at the end, to see who else is here.

"This can't be here," he says, looking at Lambert, voice hushed. The Count is right in front of them but he still doesn't want to believe it.

So much for being a meat shield.

The problem with Jasper's nose beam is it's right in front of her eyes, instead of above them, and it makes it a little difficult to spot shadows when they're right in front of you --

-- and so now she's here, tensing immediately and looking around in alarm, making the beam from her gem swoop wildly around the room. After a moment or two it falls on the man in the throne, and Jasper's eyes narrow.

"What is this," she snarls, baring her tusks.

Peridot has been doing nothing but searching aimlessly through the halls ever since she escaped the ice dome and fled from the other group. First searching for Lapis, and then for Steven. She has found neither.

She's still in dragon form, too; the stress of her search is starting to wear on her, which means her more involuntary feral instincts taking hold where the frustration and worry is eating away at her confidence. The more times she gets turned around by the shadows, the more frustrated she gets, hitting dead end after dead end until she finally emerges into this new space. An acid green dragon, just slinking into the room unannounced.

She looks up at the throne, and recoils with a hiss.

The Count lifts his eyes from the book long enough to offer Childermass a piercing stare. He holds it for about five second, with no other notable body language.

Sighing heavily, he returns to reading.

"HEY," Jasper bellows, striding across the room towards him. She will grab that book and throw it on the floor if he lets her, but let's be real, he won't.

A crow appears out of nowhere and directly assaults Jasper's gem.

"Don't—"

Or do. Sure, whatever, go ahead and get killed, Jasper. Childermass, for his part, is staying back, quashing the urge to immediately grab the iron knives he has hidden away in his belt.

"Good God, woman, are you stupid?"

Leaning tiredly forward, limping and charred, one hand reaching up on Jasper's back so as to keep her ahead of him, Herbert grumbles and peers around her side when she comes to an abrupt stop.

He makes a sighing, dismayed sound like nnnnnuuuuhhhhfffmmf and ducks back behind Jasper--just before she goes charging forward and he tips down onto the floor.

Great! Today is great! He loves Jasper! He loves libraries.

"You think I don't know that?" Lambert eyes the Count as he gives Childermass the once-over, unconsciously shifting his feet to a more fight-ready stance. He notes the other arrivals in the room, but is the Count really just planning on sitting there? He doesn't trust it.

... and then witcher reflexes are no match for the speed of gem stupidity, apparently. Lambert doesn't get a chance to do anything else but respond to Childermass before someone's already hurtling themselves at the Count, and is immediately met with an attack in turn. Well, fuck that then. He's going to use the time to get to Childermass's side, since if anything else is coming, he might as well be close enough to slice it up for him.

Jasper shouts and swats at it angrily with her huge orange hands, but she's forced to take a few steps back before she's able to get a grip on it -- she holds onto it firmly, glares at it, and then glares at the Count, baring all her identical rectangular teeth.

"What do you want!" She's so tired of this nonsense! She just wants to locate Lapis!

Shouting is the opposite of what they want. Childermass's attention flies from Jasper to the Count again and then back to the big green dragon still known as Peridot.

"Peridot, control your friend before she gets us killed," he snaps, fear not so much shifting to irritation as just fueling it all the more.

The dragon has mostly just been watching this all unfold with widened eyes, pupils narrowed to vertical slits.

Childermass's comment, oddly enough, is what brings something close to sapience back into it's expression.

She charges forward and.... snaps her jaws around Jasper's mane of hair, yanking her backwards.

"She is NOT my friend," she snarls through gritted teeth, because yeah, she can't just leave THAT alone. And then to Jasper: "And YOU... That's a high fae, you CLOD!"

Sans emerges from the shadows with a cacophonous rattle. Not the small, skeleton man Sans. The huge as hell skeleton dog Sans.

He's been running around for what feels like hours now, and this has just caught him totally off guard. Unfortunately, skeleton dog Sans isn't very good at emoting, so he just kind of stares around the room in shock with all seven eyes looking equally stunned.

Then he zeroes in on the Count, a softer rattle going through his throat. Oh boy.

Jasper is about to say something ridiculous like 'I've never had a friend in my life, how dare you,' but then Peridot grabs her by the hair, making her let go of the crow, which promptly returns to doing its best to prise her gem off her face.

"AUGH," she snarls, smacking it away with such indignant force that it smacks against the wall and is reduced to smoke.

"I don't care what she is," she snaps, "I'm not going to just stand here while she reads!"

The dragon lets go of her hair, but. Only to headbutt her. In the butt. "Jasper just SHUT UP and let the rest of us handle this!" she snaps in a low voice. "That's an order!"

"I mean, she did break a magical boar's neck with her bare hands," Lambert mutters. "Maybe we should let her try."

But smartass comments or not, his eyes are on the count, though he's a little surprised when the Warden skids in, too. That makes four of the supervisors in this room now, which is either a really good thing, or a really bad one.

"I don't think the Winter Court is really into light reading." He eyes the book, but its probably too much to hope he can read its title from here. The last time he saw the Count, he hadn't exactly been himself, so there's exactly zero useful knowledge he can have to speculate on what brings him here, except the surety that it's something self-serving.

Edited 2018-05-16 02:37 (UTC)

Finally, the book is snapped closed. Dismissively tossing it to the side, the Count lifts his head to address everyone for the first time since they entered. His voice is a low drawl, displaying some amount of disinterest in the hijinx currently unfolding.

"Welcome to my Elysium," he says, leaning back in his chair. "I've brought you here so that you might plead your case. In a matter of speaking."

On the tops of shelves and beneath every shadow, the eyes, feathers, and beaks of crows can be seen, lurking. It's almost as if the darkness itself is comprised of them.

Edited 2018-05-16 02:42 (UTC)

Since Peridot had dragged Jasper away, Childermass had fallen into watching the Count intently again. Waiting, almost hoping he would just carry on ignoring them and maybe, just maybe they could walk away, back through the shadows. Tough luck, apparently.

So, of course, he steps forward when the Count announces that. The glittering eyes watching all around them from the shelves are infinitely less intimidating than the man on the throne, meaning Childermass ignores them for now. He's used to them... or was used to them. Either or.

"Our case for what?"

Edited 2018-05-16 02:44 (UTC)

"--gyah!"

That causes at least one more to stumble out of the shadows, the 'invisibility' he'd pulled over himself on reflex dropping now, as hiding in the shadows becomes even more harrowing than it was.

Jasper growls under her breath, glowering fiercely at Peridot. She wants to make demands, but... Peridot, unfortunately, is a Supervisor. They're practically all Supervisors. Letting everyone else handle this is basically her only option.

She is so mad.

And by hiding behind Shima, Rin figured he would be obscured, too. It kind of worked. Or maybe it didn't. But it doesn't actually matter, because Shima has made himself known.

".... Gyaaaah! Are these... are these shadow birds?!"

Crows. Shadow crows.

"... The Count!! Oh no!"

"Shut up, both of you shut up!" Peridot hisses urgently, baring her teeth at both Rin and Shima. She's torn between scolding them and keeping her eyes on Childermass, who she really, really hopes that he knows what he's doing.

"I see I spoke too soon," the Count says, clearly unimpressed. He regards Shima and Rin with the mildest of irritation before looking to his son, the only person to ask a sensible question thus far.

"You have found yourself in the middle of a battle between Courts... perhaps for the second time. The question is, what will you do about it?"

HOLDING COURT | OTA MEGATHREAD (SHORTLY AFTER "BREAD AND ROSES")

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