- Location
- St. Petersburg
'it is'
Nice touch. She remembers him well enough to be snippy about it, but not enough to remember his name.
Nobility's minds, no. This is a tall tale, coming from us, and since they don't understand the nature of the connection it does not change anything to them - the dragon still remains an unpredictable threat.
They would probably relent, though, since the Princess would feel validated in her judgement, and they'd know when their words fall on deaf ears.
Adelle's, maybe. She is already leaning that way, and she keeps us around in the hopes of finding something - anything - related to the death of her... actually, who was Margaret to her? Hewett mentioned losing family, but we'd recognize a face from the royal family, wouldn't we? They'd be around for public events, no? A sworn sister, perhaps? Someone entrusted to her care for one reason or another?
Her companions were mentioned to not be too close to her, so this does not concern them. The only dilemma is whether we tell Adelle or not. How private is the dream to us? Margaret didn't call for Adelle to come, only for us.
[x] Tell no-one
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Charbon
[X] Tell Adele
[X] Tell Adele
[X] Sable
[X] Tell Adele
[X] Tell Adele
- Location
- In my Lair, on my Hoard
[X] Charbon
[X] Tell Adele
[X] Tell Adele
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Hair Colors of the nobility
Gally
Got the whole word talking King Kiba
"Even the nobility got their superstitions. Go to any court in the realm and you'll see hair dyed pink and blue and green, so that the rider's coloring matches their dragon's. It's lucky, they say, and it's luckier still when you're born with it, but I served under a little lordling with the same brown hair as his dragon's scales, and all that luck didn't stop a cannonball from taking his head off, did it?"
-Unknown
VIII
Gally
Got the whole word talking King Kiba
VIII
As you watch the nobility trail out of the room, you know they'd never believe you. They barely know who you are, after all, and their minds seem made up already. Adele, though…Adele brought you here. She already suspects that you have some connection to Margaret, and more importantly she doesn't want to kill Sable. She'll be more receptive to the idea that there's another way out of this situation.
Adele stares out the window, eyes narrowed. She doesn't seem to notice you until the sound of the door clicking shut interrupts her from her brooding. "Go to sleep, Robin," she says, sounding far more tired than she had in front of her companions. "With any luck, this will all be over in the morning."
You swallow. "Your Highness, I haven't been entirely honest with you."
Adele shifts in her seat but says nothing, waiting for you to continue.
"After Sable killed Renault and Katya, I confronted her."
"You confronted a dragon that had just murdered two people," Adele says, the doubt evident in her voice.
"I thought I still might be able to save Renault," you say. "For a second, I thought she was going to kill me, but…there was something there. A connection. I heard the song again, like I had in my dream. Your Highness, I'm certain that Sable was the dragon I saw in my dream, and I'm fairly certain that I saw Margaret there too."
You are not entirely sure what to expect when you finish your confession. You gird yourself for anything – but nothing in the world could've prepared you for Adele's reaction. The girl springs from her seat and vaults over the table, crashing into you so hard that you're forced to take a half step back to keep your feet. Her arms wrap around you and she pulls you into a hug, laughing. "I knew it!" she says, kissing you on one cheek, then the other. "I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!"
You are not sure what to say. Adele pulls away and does a little spin, then seems to remember herself. "I – well," she says, smoothing imaginary wrinkles out of her jacket. "Thank you for telling me the truth. Now, and before. And thank you for keeping this between us."
"You don't trust your companions?"
Adele snorts. "About as far as I could throw them. They resented Margaret, because she was common. They were always trying to convince me to put her aside. And what do you know, but her body isn't even cold before they're telling me I need to kill Sable." She shakes her head. "But I knew. When I saw her flying this morning, I knew. It was a miracle that brought Margaret to me, it's only fitting that she leave with a miracle as well."
"I want to help," you tell her. "I want to know what's going on." You have never been able to abide a mystery, especially one that runs so close to home.
"Good," Adele says, nodding. "We'll need to work quickly. I can't restrain my companions forever."
"You seemed to be doing a pretty good job of it back there."
She waves a hand, brushing your words away. "I'm the Queen only so long as my lady mother is away. She is in the north, civilizing dog-fuckers of some sort, but it is not so long a trip on dragonback."
People in Rosny speak little of the war, but you had heard about it during your time abroad. "Do they really…you know…with dogs?"
"I imagine they must," Adele says, slipping you a wry smile. "Else, why would my mother need to civilize them? But we're getting off topic. You need to claim Sable, and soon."
"Claim her?" you ask. "How?"
"I have no idea," Adele says. "This is a bit of a unique situation. But you've heard the song. You've seen the tower!" She covers her mouth with her hand, as if surprised at her own words, but then she speaks again. "Sable…she was…at the top of it, right? You saw her there?"
"Yes, but not much of her. Margaret was there too, if Margaret is who I think she is."
"Black hair?" Adele asks. "Green eyes? Sickly?"
"That was her."
"She shares your coloring," Adele murmurs, more to herself than you. "That can't be a coincidence. But it's lucky." She reaches out and takes a lock of your hair between pale, delicate fingers. "We're going to need all the luck we can get, I think."
You try to ignore the warmth of her skin so near your face. "Can you help me?"
"I can guide you. I can make some things clear. But claiming is something you have to do on your own. It's not easy, and it's going to change you."
That leaves you uneasy. "Change me how?"
"Your perception, mostly. Dragons never sleep, but they exist in the Dreaming all the same. When you claim Sable, you'll be able to see how she sees. How I see." Her hand drops back to her side. "It's a good change, I promise. But we need to hurry. Go to your room. The Shine will be waiting for you."
"The Shine?"
"Take a glass. It will help," Adele says. "I'll explain more once we're asleep. Now go, every second counts."
You have more questions, but Adele's tone brooks no argument. So you leave the room and stride quickly down the hall, towards the bedroom you have been provided. Sleeping silks have already been laid out for you, atop the four poster bed that is nearly as large as the sleeping room back at the home. When you press a hand against the mattress, it feels like touching a cloud.
The Shine is on the bedside table, a bottle set next to a glass. The bottle is closed with the seal of the Royal Academy, and the markings on the neck spell the name of the brewer. Markus Chastain.
You do a double take. Markus Chastain is the most famous brewer in the realm, perhaps in the last thousand years. He is an artist with the Shine, a visionary and quite possibly a madman. You've heard that helps.
You have worked in brewing for years now, practically living amongst the vapors, and yet you've rarely touched the finished product. Images boil up in your mind – men and women stripped of all thought, staring into nothing until they starve or drown in their own vomit. Just earlier today, you had watched a man overdose and die.
But your Princess commands you. "It will help," she had said, and you have the feeling you'll need all the help you can get. You…
[] Have one glass
[] Have two glasses
[] Have none
- Location
- In my Lair, on my Hoard
[X] Have one glass
- Location
- St. Petersburg
I skimmed the last update and I can't find the mention of the song anywhere? The one he remembers when he looks in the dragon's eyes is the song from his dream, but he doesn't hear it. Can you even hear one outside the Dreaming?
I am happy to see you happy, Adelle. Just remember that your miracle comes on the broken backs of two charred corpses.
So, is she our family? It's not hard to imagine people separated in a world like this, but the mention of the girl looking "of age with us, but looking simultaneously far younger and far older" makes me suspect some spiritual kinship, of a sort that is inherited from a different, earlier time.
Of course, it could merely be a way of describing how sick she was.
Why, I'll have you know that drugging a minor is an offense that really should be a capital o- !!
Never mind, Your Highness. We live to serve.
[x] Have one glass
I kinda like it that for all that Adelle is depicted as kinder to the commonborn than your average noble, her upbringing does make itself known from time to time.
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- Location
- Germany
Wonder if we can meet him
I suspect she might be a sibiling, or maybe even a twin
The younger but older thing might be more a result a different upbringing,
Like how a hard and poor life marks your body, thus makes you seem older, while a good and healthy life keep your body younger,
Or our expriences might reflect our appreance during the dreamin, like how she was young in mind, but her life at the court jaded and matured her, thus making her older
I mean, so far we haven't meet anybody else in the dream, nor did we get a look at ourself during the last dream
[X] Have one glass
IX
Gally
Got the whole word talking King Kiba
IX
You pour until the clear liquor nearly reaches the rim of the glass. When the Shine is being brewed it reeks sickly sweet, but the purer the final product the less it smells. You take a deep whiff and get only the smallest hint of smoke. Maybe Chastain really is a genius. You tap the base of the glass against the bedside table, summon up your courage, and down it in one quick go.
It burns going down, a sharp, delicious heat. It tastes like the chill in the air, during cold winter nights in the sleeping room. It tastes like pastries snatched from windowsills, and that fish you had caught in the lake while travelling, and you even catch the barest hint of wine on Orianne's lips the night she had kissed you after the fire went out.
You gasp and cough as tears fill your eyes. Moon and Sun and all the heavens, you'd forgotten why you hate drinking the stuff. You feel wispy and delicate, like someone's just smashed your head in with an emotional sledgehammer. Already you can feel the effects coming on, a weariness settling into your bones and eyes. You could fight it, push it away, but the sooner you get to sleep the better, and so instead you strip down to your underclothes, peel back the covers and settle in for the night.
In what seems like only moments, you are in the Dreaming.
The palace glows with an unearthly light around you, walls stretching so high above your head that you can't even see the ceiling. You are no longer in your bedroom, but in a long, hallway, both walls lined with windows that look out into utter blackness. Behind you is nothing but an empty expanse of wall, and so lacking other options you press forward. You can feel the Shine within you, racing through your veins like dull fire, driving away the fogginess of dream. You wonder if Sasha had convinced Gaston to give her more Shine tonight, if she is wandering through the shifting landscape of the Dreaming with visions of what might be flashing before her eyes. You hope not. Stories and histories are littered with the broken minds of would-be prophets.
"No rush for you," she had said, before running away. The nobility like to take their hermits young, you know, but Sasha has a few more years yet. She is impatient and impulsive and desperate, and seeing the frustration in her eyes had been like looking directly into your own past, when you had abandoned all sense to run away with a back alley brewer. But that had been three years ago, when you have been young and lost. Now you're back in Rosny, and more lost than ever before.
You don't notice that you've been looking at your feet until your forehead bumps lightly against something prickly. You look up and see that you're no longer in the hallway with the windows – now you stand in the palace gardens, surrounded on all sides by high hedges.
"Robin?" you hear, whisper quiet. You jerk your head left, then right, trying to identify the source of the noise. "Robin," it comes again, louder, more insistent. "Robin!"
You see one of the hedges rustle, and press your ear up against it. "Robin," the voice says. "Are you in there?"
Recognition flashes through your mind. "Adele?"
The hedge rustles again, shaking violently, but it stands firm. "It is you," Adele says. Her voice is louder now, but muffled. "What are you doing? Where are you?"
"I don't know exactly," you admit. "I think I'm in the gardens? I was in a hallway, and I was walking, but then I look up and I'm here. I don't…" you look around for an exit, but find you can barely see five feet in front of you. "What's going on?"
You hear Adele sigh. "You got lost in thought, dummy," she says from the other side of the hedge. "You can't do that here. Follow my voice."
"I can't," you tell her. "I can't see you. I don't know the right way to go."
"There is no right way to go, Robin," Adele says. "But there's no wrong way either. You just have to focus. Remember what you're doing here."
It comes back to you then, in a flash of insight. "I have to find Sable. I'm going to claim her." Your feet move as you speak, as if of their own volition. You take a left, and then a right, and then another left, strangely confident despite having no earthly idea where you're going. "I'm trying to find out what happened to Margaret. I'm trying to find out why she was in my dream. Why she called me."
And suddenly the hedge ends, and Adele is standing in front of you. In the dim light of the starless sky she glows, gentle and ethereal. Her hairs stirs in an intangible breeze, and her eyes…they are still black, still tiny pieces of midnight, but they dance with pink and green and purple. You have to remind yourself to breathe.
"You found me," your Princess says, one corner of her mouth quirking upwards. "I knew you could do it."
"I'm sorry I got lost."
"You really shouldn't have," Adele says. "That's what the Shine is for. You did take it, right?"
You nod. "A whole glass."
"Really? That's odd." Adele chews her bottom lip. "You don't look it. You should be bouncing off the walls right now. If you were nobility I'd say you had a tolerance built up, but that would take a few months of consistent drinking…"
Or maybe years of consistent exposure to the stuff, you realize. You hadn't drunk the Shine in ages, but you spent every day cooped up in a poorly ventilated room while it was brewed all around you. You're not sure how Adele would take that particular bit of news, however – unauthorized brewing is no longer a death sentence, but it's still one of the highest crimes in the realm.
Luckily, Adele doesn't seem too interested in digging into this particular mystery. "We have to hurry," she says, taking your hand and leading you through a ghostly recreation of the palace gates. "This little detour has cost us time, and those highborn backstabbers will be looking for Sable too."
"They can do that?" There are a million and one stories about just what the nobility can do while they dream, and sometimes it can be impossible to tell truth from fiction.
"Of course. They've been practicing since they were little, so it would be kind of embarrassing if they weren't any good yet. Neville's the best and Darcy's definitely the worst, but even she's at the sixth arcana, I think."
You frown, suddenly wishing you had paid more attention when people had talked to you about the Dreaming. You've heard of the arcana, you know they're important, but it's a difficult topic to broach – not only do few gutterborn know anything more than rumor and legend, but it's also difficult to talk about with strangers. Add that to your preference for brewing the Shine rather than tasting it, and your knowledge of such things is woefully incomplete.
Adele glances over at you and can apparently see the confusion written across your face. "Dreaming consistently is like a long journey," she says as you walk. "And each arcana is like a landmark, noting your progress."
Ah. "The tower I saw…"
"The Tower is the always the first," Adele says, though she doesn't look at you when she says it. "After that, the order varies, but the second arcana is always one of three. The King, the Queen, or the Hermit. Whichever one we find will tell us which Art you have an affinity for."
You're on slightly more solid ground here. "I know the Arts." You slip into a sing-songy rhythm as you repeat the old rhyme. "The Hermit sees through space and time. The Queen is master of her mind. And if you meet the King, beware, he'll take your dreams and lay them bare."
Adele smiles. "There's a reason even children know that rhyme. Hermits 'see through space and time,' meaning the future, or the past, or far away. Queens 'master their own minds.' They can explore their own psyches, understand who they are as people, and shape themselves. They can cut away fear and pain, or instill discipline and courage. Kings 'take your dreams and lay them bare' – they peer into others' heads. It's how I'm here, with you."
"You're a king?" You smile. "So I was right to call you your Majesty."
"Very clever," Adele says, rolling her eyes. "I'm a Princess, Robin. I know all the Arts, and you will too. But everyone has their natural talents, and everyone has an Art they're better at than the others. That's what we're trying to figure out right now."
"How will I know?"
"Trust me, you'll know," Adele says. "It'll be big, and bold, and it'll look-"
"Exactly like me?" you ask.
Off in the distance is a statue of you, clothed in silk that reflects the sky. Your eyes shine, two emeralds the size of boulders, and clutched in your hands are…
[] A staff and lantern (The Hermit)
[x] A scepter and a stalk of wheat (The Queen)
[] A scepter and globe (The King)
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- Location
- St. Petersburg
I see now that she is aiming for a profession of a seer, but why the rush? Shine and impulsivity don't mix well together. Is there some other pressure weighing over her?
Well, if her prophecy was about us, it came true, so she is definitely on the right path. I wonder if we'll see her again.
Let me see if I got this right. Anyone can enter the Dreaming when they are asleep, but Shine induces a state of lucid dreaming where one can control what their dreams are about, and their actions in a dream, reaching into the collective consciousness or whatever the Dreaming is, and pulling something out of it.
That would explain the King's and Queen's powers, but the Hermit's implies there is more to the Dreaming than that. Well, that, and the whole deal with Dragons existing in both worlds at once.
So if we ever wanted to find someone in their dreams, that's what we need to go for. Got it.
[x] A scepter and globe (The King)
May want to give Sasha a stern talking to if we see her around.
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