exsiliumlogs | hurry, hurry [OPEN]

Entry tags:

hurry, hurry [OPEN]

Date & Time: 2/20, nighttime
Location: All over the friggin' place – near the houses, the starting point, the hold etc.
Characters: Martin Darkov, YOU?
Summary: Gotta find a way out of here, man.
Warnings: N/A

No, no, no...

Martin's thoughts were in time with his panting – a mistake right away, he realized, once he felt his throat start to really feel raw and tight. That's not how you're supposed to run.

But he'd gotten scared. So scared. Everything was just...just too much at once. He didn't think to calm down, breathe through his nose when he ran, take stock of where he was going. He had no idea if he was going in circles or squares or anything, just--

I have to get back to Olvoski. I have to. I have to. Have to, have to...

"Gnah...hah..." He had to stop again, bent forward with his hands on his knees, panting hard. Nasally whimpers escaped here and there, the worst of which he fought ferociously. I must not cry. I must get back to Olvoski.

I must!

It made his shaky legs move again. Bleary-eyed and blind to real direction, he ran, seeking out the shape of a body who could, who just might be able to tell him what he needed to hear.

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"Owuh..."

Martin pressed his hands hard against the bump trying to form on the back of his head, curling up and rolling himself onto his knees. A little squeak of a sound escaped him as he sucked a breath through his teeth. Ow!

But the voice that was rumbling from nearby began settling in and stopped Martin's fidgeting and froze him again, feeling his stomach drop all over again. His head snapped up and he grimaced until his vision caught up, gaping anew at the stranger in the dark. He could see him plain as gloomy day, and--

And he wasn't...really...the picture of a monster-ridden horror, which was...was uncommon...Martin looked very obviously baffled and alarmed, mouth pulled down in an unhappy way.

"Wh-wha..."

Bariyan lowered his hands to give Martin a long, concerned look. The boy looked young, twitchy, in pain, confused, and-- all right, obviously not in the best of states right now. Bariyan chooses to give him the benefit of the doubt. Unless he attacked again, anyway.

"You're really out of it, huh?" Bariyan said. Then his voice softened just a bit. "Hey. Look, I'm... not going to hurt you. Promise."

Some of them have silver tongues and try to woo you to their talons.

Martin's eyes darted to the hands. Claw-free, but. But that didn't mean it was any less dangerous. His gaze snapped back up to the face, staring at him as if he was waiting for a second head to emerge, all slimy and full of horrible, misplaced features. That would've made more sense than what was really happening.

"But you're..." Words fell out of his mouth just out of sheer confusion. He shook his head quickly, scooting backward until he felt the wall behind him. One of his hands left his head and started digging frantically into his pocket. "You're a..."

At that, Bariyan raised both hands to his neck, to the stitches. Sure, they were a little off-putting, but... they had never inspired that much fear in a complete stranger before.

"Yep," Bariyan said, with a shrug. "Look, all it means is that I've already been dead once-- so I'm not in any hurry to go back."

But he didn't miss the fact that Martin was going for something in his pocket. Bariyan frowned and took a careful step back, poised to get out of the way the moment anything came hurtling his way again.

"Trust me," Bariyan said, giving Martin a warning look, "we'll both be better off if you don't attack again."

His hand shook a little wildly when it was freed from the pocket, scattering a pair of little pebbles on the ground. He winced and held his breath, tightening his grip on what remained in his hand, braced against the voice that warned against him.

But this is my job, he insisted. And it doesn't matter if I die, because I have to do my job. This is what Darkovs do. That's all, that's all. So. So--

He stammered something – something funny and slurred in places, like trying to talk with a mouth full of soup – and he let the rest of the pebbles drop to join the two. There were a few little, green sparks, a hiss there, but a great deal of...nothing while Martin's open hand remained where it was, altogether frozen.

After empty seconds, he cracked an eye open, slowly turning and looking down.

Huh-?

Nothing's happening...

Bariyan took another couple steps back and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Said suspicion did not die down any, even after seeing Martin give his rocks a confused look. Could be some sort of ruse, right? Hell, it probably was.

But sparking and hissing aside, it really didn't seem like the stones were doing much. Bariyan shifted his weight from one foot to another, coughed, and tried again.

"Kid. Are you listening to me at all." Bariyan assumed that the pebbles weren't just for show, and continued: "What do I have to do to convince you that I am not your enemy?"

Why isn't anything happening?

Martin's eyes darted to the monster...er, maybe-monster? And back to the inactive rocks. He looked less afraid and more confused with each returning glance – almost comically baffled at last.

If they're not reacting, then...

Then he was wrong?

But.

But he was agreeing with me? Martin's eyes got big, fretful, playing out his internal struggle plainly on his face.

But...

"How?" he blurted at last, vocalizing the one word throttling his brain. He looked at the...the whatever with a searching look. "I don't understand at all!"

Bariyan was taken aback by the sudden outburst. Words! Whole sentences, in fact! Fancy that. Bariyan was much more hopeful for a civil conversation now.

"Well, that makes two of us." Bariyan scratched at his neck, a little self-consciously. "So are you all right now? Can we talk without you trying to kill me?"

There was really no protocol for what was happening. Even if there was, he probably didn't know it from memory just yet. Martin was really at a loss. For some reason, watching the...the...person-thing react as he did, speak as he did...it was making Martin feel bad. Embarrassed, almost. As if what he'd done or...or tried to do was wrong.

Except it was pretty Darkov of him, he thought. Or hoped. He was trying.

But what would any Darkov do now?

"S-sorry..." Not that, probably. Martin's face colored immediately, bringing a hand to it. "I don't...understand. If you're..."

Bariyan smiled crookedly. "What, dead? Look. That aside, I'm just as human as you are. Though... I'm going to guess that's not true in your world."

He idly wondered if it was safe to move in a closer yet. He had to raise his voice in order to make himself audible, and it was making him sound even worse than usual. But he spared Martin's stones another brief glance, and decided to keep his distance.

"The name's Bariyan, by the way." Maybe that'll help matters. In Bariyan's experience, people tended to be less eager to murder after proper introductions were made -- well, most people.

Never address a monster by a name it offers; names are power, and you will give it power over you.

Martin gulped.

He needed to take this slow, make it make sense in his head. One thing at a time.

Almost blandly, tied in with the blank look on his face, he said, "I'm not a human."

"Ah." Bariyan blinked. What? He looked plenty human from here. "Then, if you don't mind me asking, what are you?"

Human or not, he still looked like he was no more than fifteen. Quite frankly, Bariyan was surprised that the first person here to make a serious attempt on his life would be some kid.

"D-Darkov," he blurted, immediately looking troubled What if he realizes he's a monster when I say so and kills me?

His head drooped a little, still peering up through his bangs even as he shrank, curling his fingers into fists on the ground.

"Darkov," Bariyan repeated. "I don't know what that means, but all right."

Bariyan crossed his arms, and looked down rather unhappily at the other. Martin looked very much like a lost puppy, right now. A lost puppy who, Bariyan reminded himself, had just been trying his damndest to send him right back to hell.

He looked Martin in the eye, and raised an eyebrow. The question of so are you going to try and kill me again? is still hanging uncomfortably in the air.

The response was clearly not expected. Martin's eyebrows raised, head lifting up quickly. He started shrinking again almost the second he saw Bariyan's eyebrow begin to quirk.

He gulped.

"Oh..."

Oh. Well, then. That's... Good? Was it, really? He had no idea. Things were going way, way, way over his head.

"S-sorry," he uttered, more to his knees than projected out. What do I do what do I do now??

"Apology... accepted, sure," Bariyan said, with a wan grin.

Gods, he is just a kid. Bariyan's instincts tried to kick in: does he have any family here? Where's his parents? Who's taking care of him? He caught himself before he went overboard. That could all come later. After making sure that they were at least on talking terms.

He gestured towards the stones. "Would you mind putting those away, or telling me what they're for? I just don't want them blowing up in my face."

"Oh--" He had forgotten about the pebbles. He flinched a little, quickly sitting upright and shoveling them all into a hand, back into his pocket.

"Sorry, they're--" he grimaced up at the...dead man. Thing. So confusing. "Supposed to hurt monsters. Bad things."

"Well then. I guess I passed their test." With the stones gone, Bariyan finally felt safe enough to step back in. He crouched down to level with Martin, eye-to-eye. He figured if Martin had still been planning on attack, he would've done so long ago.

Bariyan folded his arms over his knees and regarded Martin thoughtfully.

"So. I'm not a monster. Though I'll leave it up to you to decide whether I'm bad or not." Bariyan smirked at that thought, then pushed it back away. "Are we all right, now?"

He had to have been doing something wrong, obviously. Some kind of mistake. He'd tripped into trouble somehow, wound up here, and now that he'd completely disregarded protocol in his panic, he must have...have broken his tempering stones? Was that even possible?

Well. Well, maybe it was for the one Darkov in the history of ever to not get a spirit contract, he thought with a bitter and slightly hysterical bent. It flickered on his face for a moment, lost when the dead-thing moved closer toward him and forced him back to the problems at-hand.

He is a talking dead person.

But also...not a monster?

Martin stared at him worriedly, unhappily, baffled. His mouth opened and closed a couple times at the question, only managing a throaty little sound he was obliged to cough and swallow against. He could feel blood flooding to his face to really show how foolish he was.

"I-I...I don't know," he stammered, shrinking down. "Sorry I, I don't...I'm not..." Not any good at all – at all!

Whoa, kid was messed. The hell sort of world had he come from? One where he didn't typically hold conversations with things like Bariyan, he assumes. Bariyan grimaced and ran his hands through his hair, scrambling for something to say.

"Let's just say we're all right for now," Bariyan said, though it was quite evident that one of them was not all right. But they had to get past this point.

He tilted his head curiously towards Martin. "You're new here." A statement. Bariyan was pretty sure that anyone who'd been here for a couple days would've gotten all the running-around-in-panic and attacking-perfectly-innocent-people out of their system already.

Martin nodded just slightly, mouth pressing into a thin, unhappy line. It was a huge understatement.

"I just," he grimaced, scooting himself further against the wall, back straightening out. "I'm just trying to get back to...to Olvoski, is all."

Bariyan contemplated that answer, then said, "Well, running around like a headless chicken isn't going to help you at all."

But he didn't blame Martin, to be honest. This had been a surprising enough experience for him, let alone some scared kid who barely looked old enough to take care of himself.

"So you just arrived." Bariyan sighed, and looked Martin in the eye again. "Do you remember how you got here? Do you think this is your world? Do you think there's a way back out?"

No, of course not. His head dropped again, guilty as charged on all counts of headless chickening. The guilt got worse as the questions came one right after the other, twenty-ton weights on his shoulders.

"No," he mumbled after each one, more and more despairing. But he startled a little after responding to the last, looking back up. "N-no, I mean-- I mean I don't know it, yet. So that's why I'm looking, asking where..."

Bariyan's stone-faced countenance finally broke, at that. He grinned down at Martin. It was, however, hardly a reassuring grin.

"You think you're the first person here to have asked that question?" Bariyan shook his head. "If anyone here knows, they aren't talking about it."

Not that Bariyan had looked deep into the issue. The longer he stayed here, the more certain he was that he didn't want to go back.

Martin's stomach did a little flip at the sight of the grin. It was awfully familiar in intent, though the face was a stranger's (and also dead). He squirmed, unable to look at it for long and feeling awful for it.

"I still have to," he uttered, muffled by his unhappy fidgeting. "Try."

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screeches MARTIN'S SO SAD AND ADORABLE, i'm going to die

please don't die you're already dead don't be double-dead 8(

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