exsiliumlogs | TEMPORAL TURBULENCE: BRAZIL&NORWAY

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TEMPORAL TURBULENCE: BRAZIL&NORWAY

Date & Time: Brazil, 1200 A.D./Norway, 1201 A.D.
Location: Assorted
Characters: Alistair, Bariyan, Chloe, Martin Darkov, Natasha, Robin, Sark
Summary: Group #4's adventures spent lost in time.
Warnings: Violence? (notify Elle or Liz of anything else worthy of labeling)

The mission was set. Team members were given their equipment: The cloaking devices would acclimate to the area and disguise them based on the historical data pulled in. There was a weapons check: The Initiative was insistent about having those chosen weapons along for the ride. Four operatives were introduced as beacons: They would stay in contact with the Initiative and relay any alterations in plans until the mission was deemed a success. And it had to be a success, or disaster would be the only thing left.

1890 A.D.

There was a man, not very well-known as far as famous men go. A writer. His existence alone was not the significant factor in the timeline's disturbance, but his profession and his choice to tell a particular, peculiar story.

This man, the Initiative states, helped sow the seeds for modern time travel centuries before its prime. What was a captivating fiction in that man's time was the reality of today, and without his account of the Time Traveler, there was risk of the very existence of so much. The recruits absolutely have a stake in this.

To the export room — the massive, rather bare and bleak place where so many were to exit and put a stop to what was putting a stop to the writer's tale. It was as yet unclear, but the Initiative is certain they'll know it when they see it, that it will be revealed once their reluctant soldiers set foot on ancient soil.

One last check, one last insistence on the urgency of their task. One, final urging to avoid as direct an impact as possible without ruining their chances; keep your temporal footprint as light as you can.

Good luck. We're counting on you.

A flash, a bitten-back breath, a blink...The room was gone.

But this wasn't right.

Out of the many who were assigned, only seven remained. Seven, and an Initiative's operative, who was immediately aware of a problem. A big problem.

BRAZIL, 1200 A.D.

The village the eight found themselves in was in no way even close to the one they were targeting. Already, the cloaking devices were fumbling to find disguises to suit, lacking the historical data for an appropriate match for an undiscovered Brazil. Historically undiscovered, anyway; if the ghost city they had arrived in was anything to go by, humans were not strangers to this land.

But it was empty. Birdsong echoed off great stone structures, some decorated, some bare, but all vacant. There's a faint scent in the air of salt from an unseen but not-so-distant ocean, and a thick, heavy humidity causing a sweat right away.

Over six centuries too far back, the data relays. And no answer as to how to get back.

NORWAY, 1201 A.D.

The heat is very suddenly gone, replaced with a breath-stealing cold. There is snow to the ankles and a sharp wind blasting through. Mid-gust, the party has arrived in a land so far away from the last, but barely a blink away in time.

One whole year. The dismay in the operative's report cannot be disguised, nor was there any attempt to. Whatever was going on with the equipment back at the Hold was serious trouble.

Speaking of serious trouble. Unlike the first, there were no quiet and empty cities to wonder at; this frozen land was very much alive, filled with the scattered shapes of horses and ironclad men racing to a location unseen in this bone-chilling darkness. Flickers of firelight on metal, the loud whinny of a horse and a man's shout straining to echo far...Something was certainly up.

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He had been trying to hop over a raised tree root when the transition came. In a blink, his foot wasn't landing on soft, trodden dirt, but sinking into a couple inches of snow.

It wasn't something his body was prepared for at all; the landing caused him to pitch forward, losing all traction and falling face-first into the powder before him. He was quickly a tripping hazard for those who were racing behind him, having been trying to evade the chaos coming from confused, bloodthirsty humans on a rampage.

It seemed the gods had vanished, leaving those tribes to a fate of their own making, and arrived to grace a whole new landscape.

Martin was thinking on none of this as snow went up his nose.

If there was one thing that Sark knew how to do incredibly well, it was run. And so run he did, just like they were all doing, to get away from the tribe that had been angered -- an understatement if you had to ask Sark.

The only problem was when everything transitioned as rapidly as it did, Sark hadn't been expecting that he'd have to pull his foot up just a little bit higher to make room for the snow.

The next thing he knew, he was not only tripping over inches worth of snow but practically Martin as well, who had fallen first first in front of him. Trying to keep from crushing the young boy, Sark grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hoisted him upright, using the leverage to keep himself from tipping over any further as well. Needing another second to straighten himself up, Sark shot Martin an assessing look before he glanced around, taking in their brand new surroundings and not considering the fact that they were still standing in the way of their stampeding cohorts.

"Somehow I doubt we've yet to make it to where we're meant to be."

It was dark, getting darker; whatever battle that had been raging earlier now came to a halt in the face of darkness, men scattering back to their camps, to firelight, to company, to sleep. To rest. Bariyan had been watching the shift in movement for at least an hour now, standing knee-deep in snow, hidden behind a frozen tree clinging to the hillside.

The past month spent in that jungle had set Bariyan's mouth into a permanent frown. Their arrival here had not made him any happier. His eyes still red, still angry....

The snow had let up and the air was clear and empty. Bariyan's eyes turned upwards to the night sky. There was a strange glow on the horizon. If he didn't know any better, he'd say it almost looked green.

It was none of his business.

If he kept repeating it, maybe it'd be more true. He was sure it was, but...but everything seemed set on changing that. Making him get involved (he was already involved; there was no way out, was there?)...making him...

No, that wasn't right. Nobody was making him do anything. He was doing it. His choice. His disobedience. His...feet, cold in the snow.

Martin was actually...kind of, sort of, more-so-than-before glad for the snow. The cold. The long nights...It was almost home, but nowhere near. It made him less afraid, more open to observe...and get involved.

Again, his choice.

It was probably the snow, too, he thought, which made it so hard to sense the things he knew he could; he was losing track of Bariyan and Alistair a great deal more, often surprised to find them so close at-hand when they were.

Following tracks, though, he was less surprised to find the former there. More worried than anything; it was hard staying on Bariyan's good side nowadays. Rather...less-angry or sad side. Another thing that was his choice, perhaps? Though he couldn't say he said yes to even joining the team at all. But still. The miserable way Bariyan looked when he glanced his way was...

Crunch. Lightly, though; the snow was packing, but not solid. He stopped a fair few footprints away, shielding his eyes from the slap of his hair in a gust.

"Bariyan—?"

Most of Bariyan's attention was on the sky, but that did not render him completely insensitive to his surroundings. He'd noticed Martin coming from a ways off. He simply did not acknowledge the boy's presence until it became clear that the boy was going to acknowledge him.

He'd almost hoped that Martin would simply pass on by. Obviously that was not the case.

"Yes?" Bariyan replied, unmoving, not even looking over. "You're far out from the others."

So are you, Martin thought.

"Most are asleep," he said instead. "So I won't bother them out here." Tromping around in the snow was bound to be distracting to anyone wanting a bit of rest, anyhow.

Fair enough answer, he supposed. Part of him wanted to send Martin back anyway. But he knew that sort of thing was no longer under his control; or perhaps it never had been.

"Come over here, then. At least get out of the wind," Bariyan said. He turned, arms folded over his chest, regarding Martin's small silhouette against the white backdrop of this land.

He seemed very far away.

It was a bit of an ordeal for Martin, short as he was, to push through the snow, but he did so obediently and without complaint. Only struggle. Flushed, a little winded with the effort to hustle, he came to a stop near both Bariyan and the tree.

His body did a little involuntary shudder, acknowledging the cold for a little bit before becoming just a dull thing in the background. It could be colder.

"Did you...find something out here?" he asked, rocking forward and back a little in his place to give his legs more room in the snow. "Or..." He looked up, trying to follow where Bariyan had been looking, though not particularly remembering where. He didn't need precision, though, to see the green. It made his heart flutter a little.

"Oh..."

Looks more like something found us, Bariyan thought, but there was no point in being so paranoid aloud. Besides, the men below them did not seem alarmed... unless they were blind to it? Paranoia, he thought, again.

"What do you think?" he asked. "No one down there seems particularly worried." A gesture, towards the camps struck below.

His gaze only rested on the flickering lights below for a moment, drawn back up with a growing fascination.

"It's like...the signals back home. The color." He squinted a little, lifting up on his toes. "But...blurry. And I can't see any shapes."

Of course not. It wasn't home, but...

"Signals for what?" Bariyan asked. His tone came out sharper than he'd intended, as if he were on edge -- though he was on edge, and had been ever since their arrival here. But he had not meant for that to come out.

He swallowed and uncrossed his arms. No use. No use in being so tense, considering the fact that there seemed to be no way out. Not yet.

The sharpness did, nonetheless, cause Martin to snap back to attention, wide-eyed and worried he'd made a mistake. The mistake was, of course, bringing up home at all, but...He'd done so much of that already, he could hardly stop himself anymore. Just wince in the aftermath. He did.

"They're..." He swallowed, hugging his arms just as Bariyan uncrossed his own. "For the hunts. Some tell you to meet one place, or...go back to the compound, or keep looking...So nobody has to yell or go out of their way to look for the others."

Bariyan saw the reaction his tone had drawn from Martin and immediately felt the familiar twinge of guilt. He had not meant to do that. Too late. Done. He drew a breath in, and when he let it out to start speaking again, none of his anger was present in his voice.

"The colors mean different things, then?" Bariyan asked. He wondered if it were the same here... a signal to one of the armies?

Martin nodded, keeping his eyes back up on the sky.

"Green gathers...white is for a search..." He scratched a little at one of the arms he was hugging, tightening his grip. "And...there's some only certain people understand. I don't know them. Different shapes for different groups.

"Gold..." He saw his breath trail off with the word, up and away. "Is for home. Usually."

Home. Bariyan thought back to the earlier months. The first time he'd met Martin, all the times following. Martin had been so intent on returning home then, and now.... Bariyan understood the reasoning behind Martin's acceptance, and he knew it was a decision that he should have supported. And he did. But it still felt like a surrender that he'd been helpless to prevent.

Guilty as charged.

And himself? What was home, now? Ash and ruin. An empty grave. Several empty graves....

Bariyan shook his thoughts off, keeping his eyes fixed on the green ribbons forming in the sky.

"What else could it mean?" he asked, quiet, barely audible over the wind.

"Others coming," Martin said absently, trying to perceive familiar shapes that weren't there. He squinted, let it go, and finished the answer. "Other Darkovs, I mean...From other places. Not the ones I live with."

Another shudder, quickly forgotten like last time. "I don't know how many there are."

A pause. More thinking. "Are they all family?" Bariyan asked, hesitantly.

A cult, he'd thought, before. Not that he'd said it aloud. Or at least, he hoped to hell that he hadn't said that aloud. In all honesty his opinion on that had not been changed yet, but now he at least knew better than to say so. He'd already given Martin enough reason to mistrust him.

Bariyan cracked his knuckles, for lack of anything else to do with his hands. Still watching the sky. Signals in Darkov's homeland, but a mystery here....

"Mmh." It was an affirmative sound, muffled and muted as he fidgeted, trying to work the stiff cold out of his bones. Strangely, he felt as dulled to the subject as his skin did to the chill. There was something comforting in the cold: It didn't frighten him to feel it the way others would. He was far from freezing to death, which was perhaps some factor...But the cold air made him feel more awake and alert to things he'd fallen away from acknowledging, while pushing aside others he put too much stock in.

Like his dreadfully sensitive stomach, for one. It wasn't a factor. Neither was Bariyan's smell; that was just another thing in the background. There was no nagging what if halting his answers in that place and time.

"All Darkovs are kin." He was about to leave it at that, but the thought, slow to trickle in, gave him more to say. "Some are Lumas on one side or such...But that's kind of the same. They don't hunt, but they're still like us, so we're allowed to take up with them."

Bariyan took this information in quietly and without reply. Strange lands, strange people, strange ways. And he was in no mood or position to question the hows or whys, not right now. So he let it be. Requesting information and being content with however much Martin wanted to tell him.

Which was, in all honesty, more than Bariyan had expected. It seemed that Martin was more open about his homeland these days.

"Do you miss it?" Bariyan asked. The question had occurred to him suddenly. He finally looked away from the sky and its strange glow, back to the boy.

Martin stared blank-faced at Bariyan and his question, blinking slowly, but seeming to not wholly grasp the meaning. Miss what? What's it? The life? That life...his life was...nothing to miss. Not as it.

Them, though...

"I miss my cousins," he said, the sentiment not registering on his face just yet. Some of my cousins, anyway. "And my sister."

Bariyan looked down to kick at the snow, stamping it flat, listless. Drawing his next breath in through his teeth. What did he know about the sister? Little. Nothing. That she had to be saved, somehow, from something.

"What happened to her?" he asked. A blunt question, one that he'd perhaps asked before. He could not recall. There'd been many questions asked, since coming here. Fewer answers given.

The numbness was starting to lose hold, overpowered by a strong knot in his stomach. All it needed to start was thinking on her, saying the name out loud, huh?

"She's...poisoned," he said, looking and sounding unhappy with the word choice. "There's a monster on...in her now. It's my fault. That she'll die." The knot tightened. Just like Father. "Just like...Robin."

He's dead because of me, too. No amount of cold was going to numb him from that. Sure, they'd been rather too busy to dwell on it, but now?

Martin's fingers pinched his arms as hard as they could, well after it hurt.

"I keep...killing people. And hurting them. By being around, or...messing up."

"That's not true." An automatic response at this point, repeated over and over in the hopes that maybe one day Martin would not shrug it off. But it brought Bariyan down, made him sad; sad to think that one boy already thought the weight of the world was entirely his to bear. The weight of several worlds, even. And try as he might, Bariyan could not convince Martin to relieve himself of any of his burdens.

Bariyan sighed, tilting his head away to look back at the sky. Too tired, too angry at himself to say anything more on the matter. There was not enough strength in him to start the back-and-forth that he expected, should he try to dissuade Martin from his guilts again.

But something Martin had said hooked a claw into Bariyan's thoughts, and would not leave him alone. So he spoke. "But your sister is still alive."

"Sevens will kill her," he blurted, thinking it simultaneously. "If I don't...fix things. Somehow. I don't know how, I just...said I would fix it. I said I just needed a little time to."

Martin's expression hardened as he stared upward. Something in his veins was heating up. "I think...I only got it to keep me out of the way. Nobody thinks I can. Because I'm me."

ＮＯＲＷＡＹ.

OPEN HERE TOO BECAUSE HEYY

JUMPS IN AWW YEA

closed to martin

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