Troubled Dreams

As she lies in bed, Kate-Lynn finds herself... dreaming.

Kate-Lynn has, sadly, gone to sleep in her sunglasses. She knew there was *something* she forgot to do.

She's standing in the middle of a room. People are gathered round her in some sort of historical outfits, silks and velvets, gowns and jackets and tight-cut trousers. Everybody's laughing at a joke she's just made.

Except there's something a little odd about thinking of herself as female... but that's not important.

Kate-Lynn's face goes blank for a moment, and then she smiles with wry wit. Yes. Terribly funny, wasn't it?

A servant brings her a packet - small, sealed with red wax. She makes an excuse, opens it.

Inside there's a letter from a man she ... it's strange, she knows that she can't trust this man, yet she knows him almost better than a friend. It says... it says...

Kate-Lynn peers closer.

The words blur into a dangling, severed head, still dripping blood from the neck. Its mouth opens, and it hisses, "Beware the Ids that March!"

The entire world comes apart in a high-pitched shriek like a steam whistle, and she's awake, staring through dark glasses at the ceiling.

Kate-Lynn says, "Mm *hm*." after a moment.

Kate-Lynn rolls over and turns on the light, and then stays still a while.

It is a quiet night. Gabriel lies in his bed. It is calm. It is peaceful. Naturally, his sleep is uneasy and troubled without the lullaby of gunfire or the light of napalm on the horizon.

Gabriel wishes for the calm peacefulness of Beirut.

In his sleep -- he's in the middle of an unwashed mob, surrounded by the reek of humanity. He's doing something really important, though he can't remember quite what it is. The entire city seems to be rioting. People scream. (It comes to him, vaguely, that the screams are in French -- but he understands what they're saying. Something about murderers. Traitors. Rebels.)

Gabriel fights his way through the crowd, trying to get a look at what is going on.

A young woman is clinging to his side, looking up at him with big trusting eyes. "Oh, msieur! Can you truly get us to safety?"

The mob seems to be chasing a group of soldiers in uniform, who are themselves chasing someone on horseback through the streets. Oh, yes. He remembers now. This was the diversion.

In the distance, there's an explosion. Then another. Someone screams in French, "Merciful Reason, they have dynamited the guillotine!"

Gabriel mutters, "Uh, sure..." and works on trying to get this young woman out of here to what he assumes is safety.

<> Gabriel says "You know, Daimonique, in Holy War..."

With a few kicks and a couple of sword-brandishes, the crowd is conveniently sent on its way. He manages to pull the young woman into an alley, which he *knows* leads to a way out of the city.

She looks up into his eyes, reaching up to touch his face. "Msieur, you are so brave to aid us like this. I swear I will always remember you..."

Gabriel grabs her hand and says, "This way." He starts making his way out of the alleyway.

There is another explosion, somewhere in the distance, and the continued screaming of the mob, as he pulls her down the alleyway, round further corners, and ... comes awake sitting bolt upright in his bed, tangled up in the sheets.

Gabriel blinks a few times. Blink blink.

Gabriel lays back down on the pillow and blinks up at the ceiling. Then he rolls over to peer at the time.

It's about 2 am. Dark outside still.

Gabriel rolls back over, going "Shit." He closes his eyes, trying to go back to sleep, and idly blames it on the strange day he had and bad British television.

<> Demiurge says "Raquel, then."

It's all so strange. Her bed isn't the bed she's used to. The room is different. The place is different. The very air and noise are different. But still, Raquel sleeps.

Raquel curls up, hugging her pillow.

In her sleep, she's making a speech to an assemblage. It's important. She's swaying them with her words. She hears them shouting for her and against her. She stands proudly and continues.

Raquel lets the words fall from her lips, ringing and glorious, fire in her bones.

Raquel looks around, speaking as the dream dictates, firm and self-knowing.

More people rise to support her, as she speaks for clemency, for reason, for an end to the current riots, for all sorts of useful and worthy things which drift through her mind like chaff.

<> Daimon says "I feel so... Fei Fong Wong-ish."

Raquel smiles to herself, using all the emotion within her to preach reason.

<> Daimon reduces the universe to Xenogears.

<> Demiurge says "Who's that?"

<> Daimon says "Main character in a game called Xenogears by SquareSoft. Fei Fong Wong was the First and Last Man, the man fated to kill God (for 30,000 gold pieces). He kept reincarnating over and over again, and only by remembering and assimilating his past lives could he conquer the present."

<> Daimon says "It's a cool game."

<> Demiurge says "Oh, that's neat."

<> Jo would kill God for 30,000 gold pieces.

<> Daimon still can't believe that. 30,000 gp and 100,000 experience points.

On a bench nearby, another man smiles thinly. It's someone she should know, someone she should remember, an enemy, but the world tilts as a face forms in the floor, stretching wide metal lips and reaching up a metal tongue to take her in . . .

Raquel backs away from the face, trying to think of what words would send such a thing away.

Raquel looks around, for a weapon -- a chair, a sword, anything.

It puts out a long brazen tongue, and swallows her down like a crumb of bread . . . and she wakes, half sitting up in her bed, mouth open.

Raquel fumbles around to find the light and turn it on, quickly, as if the metal face were still there.

Her room is empty and peaceful.

Raquel pants, and tries to remember what she was saying in her dream. It had seemed so important.

The only word she can remember is "Revolution."

Raquel sighs. Revolution. What a depressing thing. She slips out of bed and goes to her luggage, to get out her sketchpad. A little sketching, to calm her nerves, and she'll be able to sleep again.

<> Raquel . o O (Would it be too evil to try to sketch images from the dream?)

<> Demiurge says "They don't quite seem to work, Raquel. You can try, but they dissolve when you think about them, slipping away like water."

<> Raquel says "Okay. But she'll try for a while. The metal face, the scary bits, snatches of clothing..."

<> Demiurge says "Right."

<> Raquel says "Then she'll sketch some of the others, like Kate-Lynn and Carlotta and Justin. O;>"

<> Demiurge says "Now Justin."

The whole place is far more expensive than he's ever had before. It's all so damn soft. So rich-kid. So upper-class. But the drink was good, the bed is good, the room is quiet and dark . . . and Justin sleeps.

And he is somewhere else. He's standing by an arched window. He can hear the roar of a mob outside, hear the distant thunder of an explosion. He knows the need to protect, to serve, to guard.

Justin snores solidly in reality, unless elbowed in the ribs.

<> Justin says "Hm. How much can I actually do in a dream or am I just being shown?"

<> Demiurge says "Act as you feel you would."

Justin goes to look at the window to access the threat.

Justin just peers over the edge, no use making himself a target.

A mob surges outside. There's another flare of explosion, from a square in the distance, and the screams of the mob redouble. A group of the guard come storming out from one of the doors below him, starting to restore order.

He feels the callouses on his fingers as he rests his hands on the railing, knows the weight that he bears. That nobody can take away. That he will not _let_ anybody else take away.

As he moves, he hears the crackle of paper in his pocket, and he considers the bargain that he made. Too late now for regrets. It always was.

Justin pulls out the paper to see it.

It's written in a hand he recognises, a hand he distrusts absolutely -- and yet the words on it are those of an agreement, a bargain. A necessary bargain. They twist together like serpents, swirl to form a darkness.

The darkness has a form. An empty towering stone church, swept clear of all ornament, pure and empty, with nothing abiding there. Yet something watches. Something waits and calls . . .

And Justin is awake in his bed, tangled in the sheets, face down in the pillow.

Justin growls to himself, the bitterness of the useless regret still in the back of his mouth.

Carlotta sleeps. Somewhere.

<> Demiurge says "Did Carlotta go back to the hotel rooms which Kate-Lynn was offering to pay for, or did she return to her own presumed prebooked hotel room?"

<> Carlotta is at the hotel, then, with everyone else. And plans to bail for France the next day.

<> Demiurge says "Right. Kate-Lynn can afford to hire _nice_ rooms at an expensive hotel."

After the extremely busy day, sleep washes over her comfortably. Down. Down. Down.

And she's sitting at a desk. It's a man's desk -- her husband's desk? -- and she's reaching down to open one of the drawers. Her thick silk skirts rustle softly, deep rose and white in the candlelight.

Her fingers trace the decoration in the wood with familiarity, and the drawer clicks open. She brings out the bundle of papers inside -- maps, passports, certificates, all in script and ink and heavy with wax seals.

Carlotta blinks. Husband. She doesn't have a husband. Despite grandmother nagging her about it.

Carlotta savors the feeling of the items though. Important documents. She really likes important documents. It gives her a little bit of a thrill to carry them.

Her husband is depending on her. Usually she can't persuade him to let her as far into his work as this -- he considers it too dangerous -- but this time he's had to admit she's needed.

And the danger is another thrill. It was the same on the theatre stage, it's the same now. This is going to require the performance of her life. She can't wait.

Of course, it all depends on whether they can trust their contact -- a devil's deal, indeed. The candle flames gutter briefly.

Carlotta frowns, and shivers, and goes back to examining documents, gathering together the right ones, stowing the rest for later.

She knows what she needs. A map of the Temple, several forged Certificates of Safety, sets of identity papers, packets of French money.

The papers begin to writhe and twist between her fingers. There's a distant smell of people, of a crowd, of blood. The sound of shouting.

Carlotta gasps. "No!"

Carlotta grabs at the papers, trying to hold them, keep them safe.

People grabbing at her, pulling at her sleeves, shouting, as she forces her way through them, trying to see who it is on the scaffold.

Carlotta pushes faster, frantically trying to get to the front, to see...

The flash of the steel and the spray of blood flashes across her sight, cuts off vision. Light. Darkness. And then the sheet, tangled over her head and face, as she struggles choking in her bed, awake.

Carlotta holds her hands up, as if proffering the 'safe passage' certificates, only it's too late, and she's away, and gasping. "Madre di Dios...."

It's quiet. It's dark. It's about four am.

Carlotta looks around, blinking owlishly.

There is nobody else in the room.

Carlotta shivers.

Carlotta gets out of bed, muttering a 'Hail Mary' in Spanish under her breath, finds something solid and heavy to bash someone over the head with, and goes about the business of checking out her room. Just in case.

The room is quiet and empty save for her, though the heavy object is very comforting in her hand.

---

The League