event: a gentle web

[thestewards]

I've lived a lot of different lives
Been different people many times
I live my life in bitterness
And fill my heart with emptiness

► The OOC plotting post for this event can be found here.

► Direct all questions to the mods at this link.

► Characters can speak with Fayura or Verim in response to her request or her web. If you would like to speak with them, please add a prompt to your top-level or as a comment to your top-level. A thread with Fayura can be requested here. A thread with Verim can be requested here.

STRANGER SUMMONS
In the morning
You wake to a feeling of unease. It’s not the room, which is comfortable and well-appointed, if plain—much like the guest room of a hotel. A note rests on the nearby bedstand, inviting you to breakfast with Queen Fayura, her court, and the Strangers who make their home with her, and it lets you know you can ask the many footmen in the twisting halls of the Queen’s Residence for directions.

That isn’t what leaves you uneasy, no.

There’s a strange flavor in the air to those both new and already present. Some of the Strangers who have been in Draega for a month or more will recognize this unease as the psychic flavor of the Queen’s emotions. Fayura’s dark presence fills the residence, and while it is normally calm and steady (if a bit wrinkly around the edges, like an exuberant young woman rumpled from her activities), now it is outright unsettled. Because her presence is so strong, because it permeates the very rocks of the bizarre building, it changes the mood in air.

Breakfast is lean: little more than thin porridge, glasses of milk and water, and carefully rationed cups of fruit preserves. The Queen’s Court, those of her First Circle, look wan and hungry. There is as much unease between them as in the air.


In the afternoon
Around midday, a psychic call touches the minds of each Stranger in Draega. Fayura’s mental presence slips along your own, quietly seeking permission to speak to you mind-to-mind, and when she has it, she says: Come straight to the Residence if you are not there already, close your minds to every thought but the beacon I leave for you, and speak with no one, not even your friends.

The beacon is a mental loadstone calling you to the Queen’s Residence. When you arrive, you’re ushered not into the Great Hall, but into a little used room. Here, the Queen holds formal court, something she rarely does.

Though witchlight and candles fill the room with light, a psychic darkness creeps across the floor. Tendrils of ice fill the spaces between the old, hardwood floorboards. Frost spiderwebs across windows and over the walls. In spite of this, the room itself doesn’t feel cold.

At the end of the room, the Queen of Hayll sits on a simple stool. Gowned in black spidersilk, she looks like midnight come to life. To her right stands a frame two feet by two feet: a tangled web simply woven. At its heart sits a Jewel chip. Should you probe it, you find its color and rank difficult to determine. Red, but not. Something darker, something strange, something that isn’t quite right. Her Consort stands just behind her, his golden eyes glazed.

“A coven of Black Widows has come to my city,” the Queen of Hayll tells you once all the Strangers are assembled before her. “They broke a young girl who had the potential to be a Queen when they tried to kidnap her last night.” A wave of fury ripples through the residence, something dark and dangerous—a dull roar from the abyss in the mind from which the Jewels’ power springs. “I have never directly asked you to put your lives in danger, but I ask you now: find these Black Widows. Bring them to me or bring them to Grand Master Niall or Lord Grejor, whomever you trust more to mete out justice, but bring them.”

She gestures to the web beside her. “A Black Widow rarely shares the webs she weaves, but I will share this one with you.”

Fayura's web Trigger warnings: mental assault against a child
Webs of dreams and visions are not concrete things. To weave them, a witch steps to the side in her mind, looking through the veil of madness to read possibile futures. But Fayura’s web doesn’t tell of possible futures. It recounts a single past, a vision pulled from walls that echo with a child’s agonized cries of pain and fear.

Three spiders crawl through the night. They chitter and clamber. They weave their wicked webs in dark corners of the city, ensnaring minds. They search, they search, they look, they seek, seek, seek, probing dreaming minds, peeling back shields around vulnerable minds, tasting the air for the earthy flavor of a Queen. (this one this one take this one to rip and rend)

They find her— is that her? —a girl that is a Queen but a girl who is not a woman— too young to have her adult strength it makes her sweet so sweet —young enough to be woven into a new shape— CON­SUME HER DE­STROY HER

They sing to her from the Darkness, but she doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t want to leave her dreams or her family her home this place this city it’s not dark but it’s Dark and it feels right and good there’s more right and good in the Darkness than in the dark corners and she fights and she pulls and she won’t go, she won’t, and she—

White
Yellow
Tiger Eye
Rose
Summer-sky
Purple Dusk
safety that's safe
it's safe there it is
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's sa

She flees into the sanctuary of her mind, where the Darkness is a caress around her. She plummets past the White and the Yellow, and the Black Widows give chase, thrilling to the scent of fear.

One peels off with a shriek of rage.

Deeper, darker darker, where the abyss is quieter (quieter still deep below in the frigid depths of the BLACK and she reaches reaches for a presence deep below her) and full of Summer-sky power—she can’t go much further, her web is made of Purple Dusk, but the other doesn’t slow. The little girl slams through the web of her mind, shattering it, collapsing the abyss with a scream of power, flooding her body with more power than it can contain.

The spiders withdraw. Their prey is no good to them like this, but maybe they’ll feed on the corpse of her mind later, filling it with nightmares until not even the Black Widows of the Lady’s court can piece the little girl back together.

beneath them far beneath them a quake of power a profound fury a silent song of rage and sorrow that spirals and shivers

TANGLED WEBS OF FEAR AND LOATHING
This Black Widow coven has left tangled webs throughout Draega. These webs snare the minds of light and dark Jeweled Blood and Strangers alike. In many of the webs, the mind of a captured victim assumes an active role within the vision contained inside the web, forcing them to live through the vision. Landen minds can’t be trapped by tangled webs, but their moods and actions are certainly affected. Until the webs are cleared, they will radically alter the behavior of landens throughout the city, twisting their behavior.

Fayura has tasked you with not only finding the members of the coven but with removing the tangled webs the Black Widows wove throughout the city. The events in the web can be changed—much like with lucid dreaming, you need only realize you’re trapped within a tangled web to change the course of its vision or to escape it, and then, when you understand it, you will be able to destroy it.

A Web of Violence Trigger warnings: female on male rape, sexual violence, impending death

run

run

run

RUN

breath burning run faster faster legs aching heart hammering pulse pounding throbbing throbbing throbbing

She’s behind you, you know she’s behind you, hungry for your body and your mind, but you can’t slow down. Your sister, you think about your sister, who just barely wears the White. You need to be there for your sister. She could be a Healer, she could be more that what the Blood have become, she co—

An acrid psychic scent hits you, sour and sharp and seductive. You want her and you hate her as her power slams into your back and throws you into a wall.

A second later, she’s on you, her nails ripping through your skin as she tears off your clothes. You try to shield with your Purple Dusk, but she’s stronger than you. Shields shred like butter beneath her hands. Skin parts and opens and burns. She jabs the snake tooth under the nail on her right ring finger beneath your skin (the rough edges of all her rings cut into your bleeding flesh, and you scream before she muzzles you with an aural shield) and pumps poison into you.

Your panic spreads it faster. You feel the poison in your limbs. You’re going to die. You know you’re going to die. She’s climbing onto you, and you’re going to die like this.

A Web of Desire Trigger warnings: dubcon, sexual assault, assault, sex work, abusive relationships

You were pretty, once. You paint your lips with red paint made from the venom you milk from your snake tooth during your moontime, and you smile. Your face is hazy in the mirror, but your lips are red red red (he wears the Red, and one day, he’ll see how much you love him and he’ll love you, too) and males love red lips. Red mouth, red body, red between your legs when they ride you too hard.

You were pretty, once, but that doesn’t stop them from pushing you down. You watch the ceiling as they pant and groan and heave above you. This will keep you safe. This will keep you alive and fed. There’s nothing left in the wilderness except dead, dry desolation. Same as the desolation inside you. You’re not a Queen, but you feel it, too.

You were pretty, once. You remember what it was like to smile and watch a male’s blood drop from one head to another. You remember the power you had before they used you up and left you dry, before they wrung the joy from loving someone else. You love him, and you wear him close to your heart.

You were pretty, once, and then you told him no, not tonight. You were pretty, once, until he held you down with Summer-sky power. You railed against the Darkness for letting him be just one rank darker than you as he took your beauty from you. A blade over your eye and down your cheek. Sharp edges in your arms, across your breasts, cutting new roadways of pain all along your abdomen.

You were pretty, once. With red, red lips and a smile that drove males to their knees before you, but now red repulses you and your love never came for you. But in this memory, things are different. You are not you. You are someone else, and you can escape the one who wants to cut you.

A Web of Innocence Trigger warnings: domestic violence, violence against women, blood, implied medical torture

You’re five years old, on a ship that rides the waning waters of the Heartsblood River. Your face to the wind, adventure on the horizon. Papa calls out to you, and you turn, running barefoot across the deck to him. He holds his hands behind him, and you jump around him to see what he hides. A shield hides your prize, but Papa is kind, and once you close your eyes, he puts something soft and warm in them. You cry out with delight, opening your eyes: a stuffed animal in the shape of a puppy. From Draega, he tells you, where the landens make amazing things.

You’re 12 years old when you meet him. He’s landen but he’s smart and he makes you giggle and blush, and you give him the stuffed puppy you’ve cared for all these years and he gives you a blue ribbon. You wear it until it falls off your wrist, and then you go back to Draega and buy another.

You’re 20, at the altar in Draega. You want to wear the Sapphire, because Sapphire reminds you of the landen boy, but no one gets Birthright Jewels that dark anymore. Still, you squeeze your eyes shut and hope and hope and hope and hope and pray and pray and pray until you bite your cheek and taste blood. A wish offered with blood is a prayer to the Darkness. That’s when you smell the smoke. You know you should run, but you have to finish your Birthright, you have to succeed, you have to complete it, so you struggle and struggle and struggle. The fire takes your eyes but you take the Sapphire.

You’re 21 and you’re with him now. Your family disowned you, but you don’t care. At last, you’re happy. “Can you tell me our future?” he asks, and you weave a web that shows you with two Sisters but no husband. You lie and tell him something pretty.

You’re 27 years old, reading fortunes not just for your husband but for the hypocrites among the Guild. The Guildmasters come to your husband in the dark and pay him for your visions. He trades the money for drink and comes home stinking of alcohol. Even their Grand Master comes to you, the young prodigy they all adore. “Tell me how to ensure the Blood don't destroy the landens,” he tells you, and you give him a vision of Ebon Askavi and a song that resonates deep within the mountains, growing louder with every passing year. He strikes you hard across the face, but you know he’ll go to the Black Mountain within the year.

When you’re 29 years old, your husband drags you to the Medico Guild and leaves you there. “Weave, little spider,” their Guildmaster says, and you weave because they hurt you when you don’t, turning on their muters and cutting into your skin to see what color you bleed. You weave and weave and weave, pressing deeper and deeper into the sanctuary of your mind until at last you break yourself when you drift down below your inner web.

You’ll kill them all one day. You’ll leave them broken on the floor, eternally sleeping in puddles of their own blood. But you need to find a Queen, and the Queen you want is here but she isn’t ready, not yet, so you’ll wait ten years or find another. You’ll make her understand, you’ll make her see what you no longer can.

AIR TIME
Whether you catch the news on a Far-caster in the city or you're spinning the dial on your own device, you'll hear…

etiquette with evandra and aren
[Today, Evandra speaks softly and slowly. Sorrow thickens her throat and stretches her words into brittle filaments.] How do landens deal with Black Widows, Lord Aren, when even the Blood can be destroyed by them?

[Aren, too, is quiet.] Trust is—

[Evandra, sharply:] The Blood always speak of trust! What good is trust so often broken?

[Aren stumbles over his words.] I… that is, as Blood, we… We rely on Queens… [He trails off.] You are right to be furious. Nothing can be said that repairs a shattered mind.

the weather
[A soft-spoken man’s voice rumbles out of the Far-caster. He’s pleasant to listen to, with a soothing cadence to his voice.] …flooding along the banks of the Heartsblood River to the southeast. The river walk will be unsafe for the next week, and pedestrians are advised to take great care if they want to walk it. Interested in sailing? The Transport Guild…

the news
[Garret speaks with his usual briskness, but his temper snaps behind his words in a way it never has.] The Ebon Council and Guilds have spoken out against Queen Fayura, demanding to know what use a Queen can be if she can’t keep “undesirables” out of the city.

[Wilt sounds hollow.] While the Ebon Council demands the Queen's Court do more to guard the city’s gates, the Guilds have announced their intention to build a large-scale muter that would suppress the power of the Blood within a two-mile radius of the city. A spokesman from the Tinker Guild says they’ve already begun work on this device.

[Garret:] Indeed. The Strangers’ support for the Guilds the past few months…

Comments

[unwieldy]

I. CLOSED to jonathan.
cw for bullying, violence against a minor.
[ The first time Haein comes across a tangled web, he isn’t careful. He slips into it, his mind easily ensnared with how unprepared he’d been, and he finds himself somewhere else, in a memory that isn’t his.

Five years old. Papa calls out. Haein turns, but the man is a stranger to him. He doesn’t have a father, doesn’t know what’s like to have one, so where does this feeling of delight come from as the man places a stuffed animal in his hands? He’s five and the web twists. Someone is pushing him to the ground, and he feels his palms scrape against asphalt as he catches himself. He doesn’t bother looking up to see who had pushed him, keeps his eyes trained to the ground as the other kids laugh and walk past him, calling out taunts that make tears burn at the corners of Haein’s eyes. He doesn’t have a father. He holds the tears back. He’s five years old and he’s too old to cry.

Twelve years old. Haein stares down at the blue ribbon on his wrist as he thinks about the landen boy. His cheeks feel warm, and then it shifts to a stinging pain. He holds one side of his face, his gaze vacant as he stares at nothing while a man screams down at him, his hand raised for another go. You fucked it up! You fucked everything up! The man’s face is a horrible shade of red, his eyes bulging from his head, the veins on his neck straining to burst. Haein is twelve years old and he’d fucked it up indeed, mangling the man’s wish to harm the woman he’d been sleeping with to protect her and her unborn child. The world is full of monsters and they teach Haein how to hate with everything he has.

Twenty. He can’t breathe, the acrid smoke choking him as the fire licks away at him, burns his eyes. He’s in so much pain he thinks he’s going to die. Tears stream down his face, and he can’t remember the last time he’d cried this much. He gasps for breath, but it gets stuck in his throat. Haein had thought he could trust Hyunseok. He’d been happy for the first time in a long time. They were supposed to be friends. Maybe... maybe even something more. Something one-sided on Haein’s part. But Hyunseok had betrayed him, accepted that cursed talisman, and used Haein like everyone else had used him. He’s twenty and his heart, which he’d thought had been absent before, breaks. He leaves it that way.

Twenty-one. He’s happy. No, she’s happy. Haein is twenty-one years old now and he’s the furthest thing from happy. He pushes against the tangled web, tries to call out for help. This isn’t his. He can’t be here anymore. ]

II. TANGLED WEBS OF FEAR AND LOATHING.
[ He's more careful this time. His hands shake with the memories of his first run-in with these webs, his skin sickly pale with the shock of it all, but he can't let that stop him. Having seen what they can do, having experienced it, he knows he can't just hide away and hope they disappear on their own. They need to come down. All of them. It's a bitter, hostile resentment that has him working to pull down as many of the tangled webs as he can.

His anger drives him to seek them out and destroy them. They've shaken him up something awful, memories both unfamiliar and too familiar assaulting his senses. It had been an invasion of his privacy, an attempt to make him vulnerable, and they'd done it. Haein who keeps his personal matters locked up, who shuts out everyone and everything, had found himself exposed and helpless. Unacceptable. How dare they.

As upsetting as the news had been about the broken girl, it paled in comparison to Haein's own selfish feelings. So he works with an almost obsessive fervor to find the tangled webs, and doesn't shy away from pulling in other Strangers to help him remove them. ]

There are two here. Get that one. I'll get the other.

III. WILDCARD.
[ come at me with anything else you can think of and i'll get right back at you! ]

[championbittersweet]

He's more cautious, familiar with this place and how easily it seems that the webs can catch and twist around the unwary, trying to remember Lady Fayura's words of caution in the past to prevent himself from rushing in with a burning rage to find who has done all of this. So when the web wraps around him, Jonathan allows it, letting his anger simmer and reminding himself he needs to understand what he's facing and how to destroy it. He braces himself to recall that the visions are not his own when he finds himself watching the scene instead of living it.

He doesn't recognise the boy at first, his expression creasing into a frown at the laughs of others, cruel and terrible, and then the ringing slap against an older boy, barely in his teens and--

He knows that face. The realisation freezes him in place as they jolt further forward again, the boy turning to the man he knows before his eyes and he can feel the betrayal in the air like a palpable force, pain and broken trust, and Jonathan reaches out with a growl and grabs for the younger man's shoulder.

"Haein! Listen to me!"

[unwieldy]

It's like being in a haze. Confusion clouds Haein's mind, and he tries to find some clarity by distinguishing between what's his and what isn't. The sudden grip on his shoulder as well as the call of his name seem distant. His eyes are unfocused at first, like he's not sure where he is, what's going on, or if the man in front of him is real. Another memory...? It couldn't be. He doesn't remember this.

His gaze drops down to the grip on his shoulder, and then his eyes go wide. Recognition strikes him and Haein's hand shoots out to grab at Jonathan's arm, the one holding onto him, and he tries to fight against the panic threatening to claw its way up. A lifeline. He can't let go. He can't go further into the tangled web.

"What—" His voice fails him for a moment, sounds hoarse, and then he tries again. "What are you doing here?"

[championbittersweet]

His eyes widen in faint surprise as Haein latches onto him, and while Jonathan knows that it's driven by fear and a desperate need for rescue, he's still grateful that it's one less thing to worry about. He imagines it will be fight enough to get out of here.

"Trying to deal with these webs, as you are," he answers, although he can feel it pulling at them both, seeking a way in to twist and undermine--

--and for a moment there's a voice echoing through the air, chanting that he'll never be able to forget now: "A prayer for the summoned by warring song, a child born from darkness must take scent of his path..." and a ghost of fangs in his neck and burning heat through him--

Jonathan snarls and shakes his head as the visions shimmer and shift, and his grip tightens on Haein's shoulder. "Don't let them in! Remember where we are, remember your hate for me if you must, but do not give it anything to use against you!"

[unwieldy]

Haein has already given it so much to use against him. This thing knows him now. It knows him better than anyone else and for someone as private as Haein, it's jarring to think about. He hadn't freely given up his memories, they had been taken from him and then used as some kind of painful reminder as it made him relive some of the cruelest moments of his life. Jonathan's own whisper of a memory is proof of that.

He concentrates on Jonathan's words along with the feeling of fingers pressing down on his shoulder, and he squeezes his eyes shut as he tries to remember. A dream. No. A snare.

"I'm trapped inside one of those webs," he admits. There's a tremble in his voice, but the admittance seems to immediately change the landscape of the vision into something less foreboding, the web curling in on itself as the realization is made. He tries to draw on something, anything. His hatred for Jonathan seems like a faraway memory compared to what the web had shown him.

[championbittersweet]

His fingers dig in sharper as Haein closes his eyes, Jonathan afraid he's slipping back into the trap, but instead of a new memory, the web seems to shudder around them and draw back. He still doesn't trust it in the slightest and Jonathan tugs Haein slightly closer and behind him, although he's certain that it doesn't matter to this particular trap what he does. This is all in their heads, after all.

"Try a positive memory," he offers, scanning the area for some sign of how to undo this trap now they see it for what it is. "There must be a way to escape and unravel this."

[unwieldy]

There's no way Haein would normally allow this kind of physical contact, but he's too distressed to protest.

A positive memory...? He tries to think of one, but draws a blank. The memories he had with Hyunseok are all tainted now, and he searches even further, digging deep into the recesses of his mind. He thinks of his mother, looks past all the difficulties they faced, the times he'd been left home alone because she had to work, the struggle to show him motherly affection due to never receiving any herself, and he finds something.

He can't be older than seven in the memory. The walk back home isn't long, and Haein is surprised to find his mother home from work when he arrives. She looks tired, dark circles under her eyes, but she still smiles when she looks up from the couch and sees Haein walk in through the front door.

She calls for him, pats the empty seat next to her, and Haein reluctantly goes. He sits down, and she brushes his bangs out of his eyes. An action he's not used to, and it's even more strange when she takes both his hands in her own. He wants to draw them away, but her hold is firm.

She tells him she has received a promotion, and she looks radiant as she breaks the news. They can move out of their small, cramped apartment. They can start a better life, she promises. Haein doesn't think he cares about any of that, but the way her voice sings in excitement makes a small smile tug at his own lips. He likes seeing her like this. Her happiness is infectious, and she goes into great detail dramatically describing the future ahead of them.

The web peels back even more as Haein basks in the warmth of his mother's optimism. He's starting to understand how things work as he uses it to his advantage, bending it to become his own. He had forgotten about that memory... All those years after he'd been so consumed in his hatred that he'd lost it. It serves him a kindness now as the web collapses, and an escape presents itself when Haein wills it.

( prompt ii. )

[thricefold]

Alright. [ because what else could zita say? she isn’t sure what caused haein to carry such a fervour in this mission of theirs. he's usually so dispassionate about things - deliberately so - and so this change is worrying. she has no clue what's happening here.

well. no. that's not true. she has an inkling of an idea, with how he goes for the webs, attacking them with a ferocity usually reserved for enemies. she has an idea but she isn’t sure of the details. and he'll probably want to keep it that way too.

so zita makes quick work of hers. though this falls on a more offensive side of magic she's not used to, this is something she's becoming alarmingly adept with as the days had done by and the webs linger in the city. she unweaves the threads that make up the webs of the black widows. she easily untangles their magic and their memories, spooling them high into the air until they were only remnants and remains that left a bitter taste in one's mouth. ]

... I think those are the last ones of this area. [ she pauses with her words. perhaps she realises that if there are no more, there's a chance haein will simply move on and try to batter down the rest of the webs before recuperating from the use of the craft. ] Maybe those are the last ones.

Would you like to do a round here, to make sure none are lingering?

[unwieldy]

[ There's a grim set to Haein's mouth and a hard look in his eyes as he tears through the Black Widow's web. Another one gone, but it doesn't dull the searing anger burning inside of him. It's been a while since he's been so personally wronged like this, and each time it happens Haein has no idea how to curb the fury that follows. He lashes out instead, and convinces himself that it makes him feel better.

With the web destroyed, he turns back to Zita, sparing her a quick glance before averting his gaze. Though they know little about each other, Haein knows Zita to be perceptive and the last thing he wants is for her to catch anything telling from the look on his face.

It's probably too late for that, though.

Her question at least allows for a break in what Haein would have allowed to become an awkward silence hanging between them, and he answers with relative ease. ]

Yeah. [ Better to be safe than sorry. ] We can split up to cover more ground.

[thricefold]

[ zita can't help but frown at the suggestion that they split up since, well, she rather not do that. at all. there's a risk of haein finding a web by himself when they're not together and trying to tear it down, risking an ensnarement in the process.

she has no idea what happens if one tries to tear it down and fails, but she has a feeling that might have happened to others who were caught in the webs.

but, at this point in time, zita knows voicing such concerns to him will only have him quickly consider and set them aside. which is his choice and she wants to respect it but... ]

I've heard from the people here that they worry a possible Black Widow still lingers in the area. not a total lie. [ she's heard the whispers when they were making their way here. ] Perhaps it'll be more conductive to stay together in case we run across them.

[unwieldy]

[ There's a good deal of hesitation at the suggestion to stick together. Haein's used to doing things on his own, and now that he's in... this state, he doesn't know if he can keep up the charade of acting like he's fine with someone else around.

But this is Zita. She's let him have his boundaries... She's respected his wishes. He'd still have his guard up, but it wasn't like a total stranger was asking to accompany him as they wandered through these treacherous parts.

When Haein finally agrees with a slow nod of his head, he still doesn't look entirely convinced. ]

I guess that's alright. [ He makes sure to avoid eye contact. ] Is there anything else you heard?

[ Because Haein would love some clues as to how to destroy these people. ]