Psi War: Astra | Retrieval
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xp_logsJean, Haller, and Emma find an aspect of Quentin on the astral plane, but he's not alone.
It was dark and smoky when the telepathic trio arrived in the astral plane. They stood at the entrance to a long corridor, the linoleum floor lined on either side by metal lockers that stretched up dozens of stories, out of sight into the blackness. They could not see much more than a few feet in any direction, but as they stepped forward, the illumination followed them, like being tracked by a spotlight. For a time, the only sound they could hear was of their own steps on the floor, until giggling and unintelligible shouts reached their ears.
The lockers further down were warped somehow: twisted, organic. It took a moment for Jim to realize the metal wasn't flat. At first he took it for a sort of frieze, with figures sculpted on the doors, but scrutiny revealed it was more than that. Faces and limbs bulged against the metal, figures undifferentiated from the lockers they leaned against or walked alongside. Background.
The tile beneath them felt off, too. Jim glanced down and saw there were no seams. Instead there was the hint of something wet and red beneath.
"Formed," he remarked. "Or at least, a specific imprint rather than a collective aggregate."
Jean glanced around the building grimly.
"It's his old prep school. It's where Jennie and I found him," she said. She remembered every wall, every brick, both astral and otherwise. She remembered what he did to his classmates, lashing out against their cruelty.
"He may be where we first met him originally." Her attention lingered on a melted clock.
"Though that will obviously be a bit more hard to find."
Assuming Quentin was still alive and this weren't merely an echo pressed into the astral plane by his death, but Jim didn't say that. Still, he'd never encountered a scenario like this before. He traded a glance with Emma.
"If you're going to be stuck in a nightmare made by the Shadow King," Emma observed, "high school seems as appropriate a place as any." She reached out and prodded the wall gingerly. "It feels... out of kilter. Not surprising, in the circumstances." With a quick shimmer, her image reformed - blonde hair scraped into a bun, white suit and heels, the strict headmistress come to track down her erring pupil. "Any particular direction, Jean?"
Jean was silent a moment, studying the hallways. "Not at the moment. It feels....he feels...everywhere. And nowhere," she murmured.
She glanced around. "We can head to where I originally found him."
"Lead the way." Jim kept his eyes open as the followed Jean. Everything seemed just out of reach: impressions of movement out of the corner of the eye, murmurs punctuated with scornful laughter over a distant loudspeaker. As he passed a classroom doorway he thought he glimpsed an eye replace the window -- and then another, and another. It was if the entire construct was organic, but the moment he turned his full attention to it the veneer of artificiality reasserted itself.
It did feel off. Something just under the surface, like maggots moving beneath the skin of a corpse.
Their footsteps seemed to echo and squish as they walked, competing sounds that shouldn't have been. Jean made her way down the hall, following the path in her memory. But she knew that couldn't entirely be reliable. This was not reality, but the astral plane.
"When Jennie and I first found him, he'd pulled the bullies that tormented him into his mind. We had to talk him down," she said.
They did not seem to make much progress as they marched down the hall. The scenery never changed. They might as well have been walking past stock background from old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. But the human voices grew louder, curses and yelps and the unmistakable sounds of fists and feet beating a body.
The figures flowed into one another to create an indistinct mass of violence. A leg separated to kick a side, a shirtcollar was seized by an arm bifurcating at the elbow. They weren't individuals but a single organism, fused together by rage and pain.
Jim's eyes narrowed. Blink, his thin frame was replaced by the bulk of Jack, and abruptly the roiling mass was nothing but a collection of bloodless gore dripping down the walls and into nothingness.
Jean jumped. She was so startled by the display that her astral form slipped, revealing how truly beaten and torn the Shadow King's psionic attack had been. Her skin was bruised and bloodied, covered in cuts and gashes that criss-crossed her entire body. They were only just starting to heal. It was all too familiar, had it been another time, and another place. Another Jean.
She stared at the gore for a moment, then back down to herself before it flickered back to "normal" as her attention returned to Haller.
"A little warning next time please, Jack?" she said, ignoring the abrupt carnage that he had displayed.
The whole room groaned as if in pain, and the tumorous mass of flesh and bones and blood pulsated like a beating heart, but another hand rose up from behind it and stilled it with a touch. The owner of the arm stood up and wiped his bloody hand on the dark blue school blazer he wore.
"Fucking finally," said Quentin, scanning them all, before focusing his bloodshot eyes on Jean. He wore a standard schoolboy uniform: khaki pants, white shirt, red-and-white-striped tie. But like Jean's true Shadow King–ravaged form, Quentin himself looked like an extra from the set of the Thriller music video, his skin blistered and torn, pink hair thin and matted, his mouth a dentist's nightmare. "I've been waiting for you."
So have I, a disembodied voice rasped in Jean's mental ear. You will be mine.
Jean's breath caught in her throat. She spun around to find nothing there, her eyes darting about, searching for a glimpse of shadow. She tried to calm herself, to find resolve and remember what she'd felt before. To embrace that feeling again.
"He's here," she said, clenching her jaw.
"Shadow King. He's talking to me."
"Anything useful?" asked Emma, acerbically, not taking her eyes off the Quentin-form in front of her. "Or just his usual 'I'm the most powerful, I own you all, be scared' blah blah blah." Emma was always up for a good taunting, but she had never particularly rated the Shadow King's variation on the theme, which she considered lacking in imagination.
Jean looked fairly disgusted. "The latter," she said. She glanced back to Quentin.
"Are you okay? Well, as much as can be expected."
Quentin wiped some grime off his face with his torn sleeve. "I'll be fine once you get me the hell out of here. Astral Plane? Definitely not heaven." He stepped out from behind the monster and beckoned the others to follow him. "The fight didn't end after I shot myself," he explained as they walked. "Next thing I knew I was in this black place. Just me. And then it showed up. All teeth and tentacles. Tore me apart. Literally. Like, trying to weaken me, keep me literally scatter-brained so I can't fight back. Fucker doesn't know what he has coming for him now."
A hearty laugh echoed in Jean's ear. That's sweet. He thinks he can win. the Shadow King whispered in her ear.
Just like you. But I can feel you tremble. All that fire and...yet you quiver so. But I can make you stronger. I can quell those fears.
Join me. the Shadow King whispered, his breath hot against her skin despite not being there.
Join me. Join me. Joinme. JOIN ME. Join me. Join me. Joinmejoinmejoinme...
The words echoed, and Jean tried to focus on Quentin as she tightly balled her hands into fists.
"I'm sorry. This is all my fault. But we're going to fix it," she said. She glanced around.
"You said he tore you apart...we need to bring you back together. What do the other sides of you look like?"
Quentin shrugged. "Like me. Not whole. I feel them, though. They're not far. Gonna be a fight, though. Sooner we find me, the easier it'll all be."
Jim regarded Quentin: the scraggly hair, the rotted teeth, the cracked skin. Avatars reflected the owner's perception of themselves. If Quentin had been torn apart, what was this aspect reflecting?
Around them the muted voices in the empty corridors had grown louder. The words were unintelligible, but the rising agitation was unmistakable. The motion at the edge of his vision throbbed like a man thrashing against a straitjacket.
"Seems straightforward enough," Jim said aloud.
"Good." Quentin cracked his knuckles and then waved a hand, conjuring the same psychic pistol he'd used to kill himself. He cocked it and bared his teeth in a wicked grin. "Let's resurrect Quentin Quire."
It was dark and smoky when the telepathic trio arrived in the astral plane. They stood at the entrance to a long corridor, the linoleum floor lined on either side by metal lockers that stretched up dozens of stories, out of sight into the blackness. They could not see much more than a few feet in any direction, but as they stepped forward, the illumination followed them, like being tracked by a spotlight. For a time, the only sound they could hear was of their own steps on the floor, until giggling and unintelligible shouts reached their ears.
The lockers further down were warped somehow: twisted, organic. It took a moment for Jim to realize the metal wasn't flat. At first he took it for a sort of frieze, with figures sculpted on the doors, but scrutiny revealed it was more than that. Faces and limbs bulged against the metal, figures undifferentiated from the lockers they leaned against or walked alongside. Background.
The tile beneath them felt off, too. Jim glanced down and saw there were no seams. Instead there was the hint of something wet and red beneath.
"Formed," he remarked. "Or at least, a specific imprint rather than a collective aggregate."
Jean glanced around the building grimly.
"It's his old prep school. It's where Jennie and I found him," she said. She remembered every wall, every brick, both astral and otherwise. She remembered what he did to his classmates, lashing out against their cruelty.
"He may be where we first met him originally." Her attention lingered on a melted clock.
"Though that will obviously be a bit more hard to find."
Assuming Quentin was still alive and this weren't merely an echo pressed into the astral plane by his death, but Jim didn't say that. Still, he'd never encountered a scenario like this before. He traded a glance with Emma.
"If you're going to be stuck in a nightmare made by the Shadow King," Emma observed, "high school seems as appropriate a place as any." She reached out and prodded the wall gingerly. "It feels... out of kilter. Not surprising, in the circumstances." With a quick shimmer, her image reformed - blonde hair scraped into a bun, white suit and heels, the strict headmistress come to track down her erring pupil. "Any particular direction, Jean?"
Jean was silent a moment, studying the hallways. "Not at the moment. It feels....he feels...everywhere. And nowhere," she murmured.
She glanced around. "We can head to where I originally found him."
"Lead the way." Jim kept his eyes open as the followed Jean. Everything seemed just out of reach: impressions of movement out of the corner of the eye, murmurs punctuated with scornful laughter over a distant loudspeaker. As he passed a classroom doorway he thought he glimpsed an eye replace the window -- and then another, and another. It was if the entire construct was organic, but the moment he turned his full attention to it the veneer of artificiality reasserted itself.
It did feel off. Something just under the surface, like maggots moving beneath the skin of a corpse.
Their footsteps seemed to echo and squish as they walked, competing sounds that shouldn't have been. Jean made her way down the hall, following the path in her memory. But she knew that couldn't entirely be reliable. This was not reality, but the astral plane.
"When Jennie and I first found him, he'd pulled the bullies that tormented him into his mind. We had to talk him down," she said.
They did not seem to make much progress as they marched down the hall. The scenery never changed. They might as well have been walking past stock background from old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. But the human voices grew louder, curses and yelps and the unmistakable sounds of fists and feet beating a body.
The figures flowed into one another to create an indistinct mass of violence. A leg separated to kick a side, a shirtcollar was seized by an arm bifurcating at the elbow. They weren't individuals but a single organism, fused together by rage and pain.
Jim's eyes narrowed. Blink, his thin frame was replaced by the bulk of Jack, and abruptly the roiling mass was nothing but a collection of bloodless gore dripping down the walls and into nothingness.
Jean jumped. She was so startled by the display that her astral form slipped, revealing how truly beaten and torn the Shadow King's psionic attack had been. Her skin was bruised and bloodied, covered in cuts and gashes that criss-crossed her entire body. They were only just starting to heal. It was all too familiar, had it been another time, and another place. Another Jean.
She stared at the gore for a moment, then back down to herself before it flickered back to "normal" as her attention returned to Haller.
"A little warning next time please, Jack?" she said, ignoring the abrupt carnage that he had displayed.
The whole room groaned as if in pain, and the tumorous mass of flesh and bones and blood pulsated like a beating heart, but another hand rose up from behind it and stilled it with a touch. The owner of the arm stood up and wiped his bloody hand on the dark blue school blazer he wore.
"Fucking finally," said Quentin, scanning them all, before focusing his bloodshot eyes on Jean. He wore a standard schoolboy uniform: khaki pants, white shirt, red-and-white-striped tie. But like Jean's true Shadow King–ravaged form, Quentin himself looked like an extra from the set of the Thriller music video, his skin blistered and torn, pink hair thin and matted, his mouth a dentist's nightmare. "I've been waiting for you."
So have I, a disembodied voice rasped in Jean's mental ear. You will be mine.
Jean's breath caught in her throat. She spun around to find nothing there, her eyes darting about, searching for a glimpse of shadow. She tried to calm herself, to find resolve and remember what she'd felt before. To embrace that feeling again.
"He's here," she said, clenching her jaw.
"Shadow King. He's talking to me."
"Anything useful?" asked Emma, acerbically, not taking her eyes off the Quentin-form in front of her. "Or just his usual 'I'm the most powerful, I own you all, be scared' blah blah blah." Emma was always up for a good taunting, but she had never particularly rated the Shadow King's variation on the theme, which she considered lacking in imagination.
Jean looked fairly disgusted. "The latter," she said. She glanced back to Quentin.
"Are you okay? Well, as much as can be expected."
Quentin wiped some grime off his face with his torn sleeve. "I'll be fine once you get me the hell out of here. Astral Plane? Definitely not heaven." He stepped out from behind the monster and beckoned the others to follow him. "The fight didn't end after I shot myself," he explained as they walked. "Next thing I knew I was in this black place. Just me. And then it showed up. All teeth and tentacles. Tore me apart. Literally. Like, trying to weaken me, keep me literally scatter-brained so I can't fight back. Fucker doesn't know what he has coming for him now."
A hearty laugh echoed in Jean's ear. That's sweet. He thinks he can win. the Shadow King whispered in her ear.
Just like you. But I can feel you tremble. All that fire and...yet you quiver so. But I can make you stronger. I can quell those fears.
Join me. the Shadow King whispered, his breath hot against her skin despite not being there.
Join me. Join me. Joinme. JOIN ME. Join me. Join me. Joinmejoinmejoinme...
The words echoed, and Jean tried to focus on Quentin as she tightly balled her hands into fists.
"I'm sorry. This is all my fault. But we're going to fix it," she said. She glanced around.
"You said he tore you apart...we need to bring you back together. What do the other sides of you look like?"
Quentin shrugged. "Like me. Not whole. I feel them, though. They're not far. Gonna be a fight, though. Sooner we find me, the easier it'll all be."
Jim regarded Quentin: the scraggly hair, the rotted teeth, the cracked skin. Avatars reflected the owner's perception of themselves. If Quentin had been torn apart, what was this aspect reflecting?
Around them the muted voices in the empty corridors had grown louder. The words were unintelligible, but the rising agitation was unmistakable. The motion at the edge of his vision throbbed like a man thrashing against a straitjacket.
"Seems straightforward enough," Jim said aloud.
"Good." Quentin cracked his knuckles and then waved a hand, conjuring the same psychic pistol he'd used to kill himself. He cocked it and bared his teeth in a wicked grin. "Let's resurrect Quentin Quire."
