singillatim | scene ii | ota

Entry tags:

scene ii | ota | el topo

Who: Tom Zane and anyone he's talked to for more than 30 seconds
What: Tom puts his holiday boar present to use. It's drugs.
When: Anywhere from december to early january
Where: Various places around the Milton area
Warnings: Heavy use of drugs, possible coercion/manipulation to use said drugs, will update accordingly

Tom asks for more than he needs not out of gluttony, but because he feels there's a necessity for it. The world is bleak and cruel, and people here don't know anything about themselves. If Zane can help with that, why not?

There's simply no point in hoarding this sort of stuff. They're all in this together, and that means Tom is going to pitch in the best way he knows how: a little party. Different from the beautiful ones they've been having, more one-on-one, far more intimate. He does his best work like that.

There's also the fact that he just enjoys having fun on psychedelics, too. That's a very big factor. It's not all cryptic poetry and mysterious motivations on his end.

i. Alan, Mr. Scratch, and Dr. Darling

He seeks those from home first. Each one of them gets a visit in their respective homes. Alan he wakes up by simply going to his room in the morning and standing directly over the foot of his bed, patiently waiting until he opens an eyes. Scratch at least gets a knock on his door before he barges in. Darling gets the softest touch out of all of them, Zane waiting until they're both settled in the evening before wordlessly grabbing research notes book out of the scientist's hands. The words are the same to all three:

"I've decided we're going to have fun."

ii. close CR

Next, he seeks those he has a connection with. He's been solidly binging by the time this happens, and he hasn't slept much for about two days. It doesn't bother him in the least. If anything, it fuels him--this is what he's used to. This feels familiar. It's nice to stop drowning and start floating, if only for a while. Who is he not to share this gift?

He brews tea out of the psychedelics, an old thermos tucked underneath his bundled up arms with each visit he makes. He's spent the better half of three or so months observing, so it's not hard to memorize the usual haunts of people he considers friends. Some he even visits in their cabins.

"I have something for you."

iii. OTA - partaking

He's been rolling for an awful long time now, but he still has a mission as well of a few doses left: he'll sidle up to anyone he deems in need of it--the sullen and the moody are definitely high on his list, but he moves to the sunnier ones, too.

The problem with this big pile of snow they're on is that everyone's broken. If this fixes it, all the better. In the community hall, outside, or any area roughly around Milton Zane can be found with a thermos, eyeing people. Staring. Deciding. With a hum, he'll get up and move towards them, delight in his eyes and a soft, mischievous smirk playing on his lips.

"Hey, man. How's it going?"

iv. OTA - observing

Tom Zane is everywhere. He is on a higher level of consciousness, fully in and attuned to his emotions. He is in a state of blissful being, feeling one with the aurora and the land and all that entails. He is art. He is inspiration. He is being. He hasn't felt like pure creation since the Dark Place.

He's calm and anchored, but it's not hard to tell he's going on a bender. Even without looking at his eyes, it's fairly obvious he hasn't had much sleep in the past week or so. He's content, and can be found doing all manner of things: he stands directly on a table in the community hall to frame something he cannot physically film. He wanders out into the wilderness nearly shirtless for the umpteenth time and doesn't seem to notice the cold. He dances. He has entire conversations with inanimate objects. He brings his camera with him absolutely everywhere during the entirety of this, making art despite having no film or power. Occasionally, he'll scribble poems in a fit of inspiration. It's also not uncommon to see him read the same page of a book over and over either, absolutely transfixed. Despite the gloom and the darkness, Tom Zane is having a grand old time.

v. wildcard

[ if you'd like a personalized starter or want to plot a little further as Zane delves into other people's psyches via hallucinogenics, don't hesitate to let me know! hit me up at

whitespire or tortillasunrise on discord.]

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Zane thinks for a moment, already perfectly happy with being near the fire and on the ground. This isn't just a fun time--not for her.

"You don't need that," he says confidently. "This is all you, man. C'mon." As he pours, he continues, flashing the other a smile.

"I thought of you right away when I asked the boar. The others--they're wonderful, but I don't think they understand. I think you do." A beat, and he slides a cup of the tea towards Randvi, making a point to place his hand encouragingly on hers once she grabs it.

"I think you understand everything."

Randvi pulls the cup toward herself, smiling as she inhales the warm steam, its earthy scent travelling straight to her heart. It's been a long time since she's done something like this - it's more the realm of heroes with destinies - but it still feels like something familiar in this strange place.

“I am trusting you to guide me,” she reminds him, then drains her cup. She can already feel the warmth spreading through her limbs.

"Kippis."

Tom's smile is genuine--softer than usual, far less manic. He'll happily do it for Randvi more than anyone. There are two people here he admires the most, and she's one of them: brave when she needs to be, smart. Loyal. She's got the heart of a hero.

A champion, maybe, and Tom's smile widens as he tips his own cup back, finishing it in its' entirety. He shifts easily into a director role, setting the scene for her mentally, designing parameters on the fly.

"Tell me what it's like, back home. The fondness of it."

Randvi closes her eyes, trying to picture Ravensthorpe in her mind. The memories that had fled her mind recently have returned, but it's still been so long since she's been home that it's difficult to picture at first.

“We live in a village on the river Nene,” she says, voice going soft as the warmth of the tea spreads through her body. “It had been a war camp for the Ragnarssons, abandoned as they moved inland, but we have cleared and rebuilt it. I've raised some of the walls there with my own hands. The village rises from the river on a hill, with the longhouse near the top. It is populated by the Norse people of Fornburg who did not wish to be ruled over by Harald Fairhair, but also others: Saxons, a trader from far to the East, several people from an odd religious sect in Constantinople. I spend most of my time in the longhouse, in its map room. It's generally warm, lit by many candles, and smells like vellum, parchment and beeswax. The map is marked by wooden tokens I carved myself.”

She sighs, a bit dreamy now. “The scouts tell me there is an old Roman tower nearby, along the road to Grantebridge, sinking now into a river. I've never seen it, but I'd like to.”

"Oh, wow."

Tom's already making himself comfortable, sliding onto the floor. He lies on his back and stares up at the cieling, and it's very easy to see the wood warp and shift now. His lips part as he listens, lacing his fingers together and on his chest.

"Can you see it?" Zane can. Randvi brings about sight, taste, painting a picture worthy of a Rembrant. It's the way their current resident cabin gives way, peeling like wallpaper to his addled state and giving way to something else. Strong, sturdy old logs. The smell of candles and earth and paper and maps. Zane sighs, happy and pleased, and he reaches out to blindly grab at Randvi's hand to hold it, squeezing it encouragingly.

"Can you hear the river from where you are?"

Randvi lets Tom hold her hand, squeezing back. When she had been living in Ravensthorpe it had been hard to imagine missing her map room, but seeing it now feels almost unbearably nostalgic.

“I wake early to sort the correspondence and at that time I can. Otherwise the din in the longhouse can be so great that it is difficult to hear much else! Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed I visit the Seer’s house. There is a waterfall there, and you can see the…” She doesn't know what they're called. “The glowing insects over the pond below.”

Fireflies, he thinks, and his lips curl into a feline-like smile as he squeezes her hand gently.

"Let's go to the Seers house. Let's see you." A beat. Tom is unused to navigating like this--there's nothing from the dark presence he can pull, he's also high as hell, he doesn't know Randvi nearly enough although that's hopefully going to be rectified with this. It's been a very, very long time since he's been in the 'real world,' as it was, though he's still not entirely sure this is similar.

But it's something he feels is needed strongly. Selfishly, he needs this as much as Randvi. He carefully sits up, still holding Randvi's hand.

"How much of you did you leave behind?"

Randvi pictures herself as she was then, before this place and before her injury, as if she's watching herself from afar. She stands by the pond, watching the fireflies in quiet melancholy.

“I left myself behind in Graenafylke. The woman standing there misses who she was before she married.”

Tom is there. It's not quite a power--not like he it used to be--but it's something. He imagines himself there, maybe. Randvi and him in close proximity means their consciousness latches onto that and shares their little world.

Or maybe Tom does have a bit of the Dark Place's powers within him. Right now, high as a kite, that's what he believes.

"Is she still there, that woman? Or has she been swept away?" He's asking it softly, non judgemental--there's no manic tone to his voice. He's genuinely curious, a little somber.

Randvi stands on the hill, holding Tom’s hand and watching herself watch the fireflies dance.

“She is still there, but…” she pauses for a moment, chasing her thoughts. Perfect clarity seems just out of reach. “Dreaming feels dangerous in that village. There is a destructive force that she holds inside herself. Like a spark that could catch.”

Tom's tongue clicks sharply as he shakes his head. There's a battle, then--between herself? Between parts of her? A third force? No, maybe not that second part.

Fascinating.

Tom wants to peel her layers away like old wallpaper, to understand her like studying an old house's bones, but he doesn't want to directly. So he molds, manipulates--out of everyone in this village, and everyone here that's not from home, he wants to help Randvi the most.

"It's not dangerous, darling. Not with me. Push. I can hold you steady."

“There is a man who watches me.” Randvi points away from the seer’s home, down the path toward the place where they lay the stones commemorating their dead. A dark-haired man, broad-shouldered and angry, looks toward her.

“His name is Dag. He had been raised from birth to be the Raven Clan’s warchief, only to have that torn away by an act of generosity from the boy who would grow to become my husband toward a traumatized orphan in his family’s care. This man may look like a raider whose thoughts end at the point of his spear, but he is ambitious and will stop at nothing to destroy the current warchief. I suspect that both he and I know that he can use me to do it.”

She looks away, back toward herself. “Sigurd does not see it because he always sees the best intentions in everyone. It's something that I admire about him, but I wish he could have selected any other man in Midgard to be my minder in his absence.”

A raven lands on a tree nearby, and the Randvi by the pond looks up at its call. By the time she turns, Dag has disappeared into the night.

Things are sliding into place as Randvi places more players onto the scene. A tragedy, maybe. An epic, certainly. A cycle. Runo. There's electricity in the air, prickling his skin with excitement, and the grin that slides onto his calm features say otherwise.

Probably, he shouldn't get excited about this, but there's a sense he can't shake. Newness, novelty, yes, but something beyond that--he's peeling back layers, getting to know the other far more than anticipated.

He squeezes the other's hand again, eyes tracking a raven he swears he sees. Odin's here. Barbara hasn't taken his birds here.

It's beautiful.

"Will he use you? Will you allow that? Or is it uncertain, like your faith in Sigurd?"

“I don't know. What he wants me to do is my own natural inclination, and denying the truth of myself gets more difficult by the day. He watches me but I watch another, and that may bring everything down around me eventually.”

The raven is real, and its owner, the shadow of whom hangs over this entire interaction, shimmers in the reflections in the water. A woman with blonde braids and scars on her face and neck, a large raven tattoo curling around her ear. The magnetic quality about her is something that Randvi can't quite name, but Tom might recognize as the spirit of Odin that this woman has carried in her head since childhood.

“I had hoped not to see her here,” Randvi admits.

There's a thrumming energy to it--maybe it's the shared trip, maybe it's real, but Tom knows, and nods in deference. If it's not Odin--and she certainly has the same aura as he eldest Anderson brother when he drank the water at Cauldron Lake--then he'll just be pleasant. If it is?

Well. Tom wouldn't ever want to see Ahti upset. Best to extend that thought. As majestic as she is, though, that isn't his focus. It's Randvi, it's always Randvi. One of the very few that understand him here.

"Who do you watch? Are you sure you have all the answers?"

He makes a point to keep touching her in some fashion--his hand slides down hers but their fingertips are touching as he squats down to touch at the water, rippling Randvi's reflection.

“The warchief.” Randvi wouldn't normally admit this, but the warmth of the tea swirling around in her head has it out in the air before she can even think to stop it. “She is Sigurd’s honour-sister, and we have been working closely together in his absence.”

It's like a dream, building a village and ruling alongside someone she loves, but it isn't real. It's dangerous to want it.

“There are other pieces on the board, things I do not understand. A group called the Hidden Ones uses my husband and his sister for their own purposes. There are wars to the east, and to the north. I saw…”

She had received here a box containing Sigurd’s sword arm.

Tom is diving deeper into Randvi's past, glimpsing those inner machinations, and there's a ripple through him as he does so. He's thankful, his curiousity being openly sated, but there's something else among the understanding he can't quite put a finger on.

It's fascinating. Randvi is fascinating, calling on stories of the true old gods and war and strife. Thousands of words are rattling in his brain in this altered states, poems and scripts and art.

He's missed this dearly.

"Show me. Show me everything. What you saw, your true self."

The world shudders around them, going dim for a moment before it resolves into a dungeon purely constructed from Randvi’s imagination rather than a memory.

A wooden box sits open in a pool of blood on the floor. The box contains a man’s right forearm - Tyr’s, Tom might remember, though Randvi knows it as Sigurd’s - severed at the elbow, skin flayed on the underside starting at the wrist.

A hooded man stands outside the room, mostly in shadow, carrying a fragment of Loki’s aspect in his spirit.

“I saw it here, a so-called gift from the gods. Someone tortured him, but I don't know why.”

It's moving. Flickering. Changing, shifting in a way that reminds Tom of the Dark Place. It's less the act itself but more the feeling as someone shapes a shared vision, a shared dream. Tom's smile is wide, and when he sees the box, takes in her stance, her voice, he moves deftly behind her, placing both hands on her shoulders and leaning in.

Here it is. A catalyst. A beautiful start to a journey he's unsure of where the destination leads, but it's there. Randvi has always been so measured, surely, this will do it? He squeezes her shoulders, leaning in to lower his voice to a whisper, gently pulling the strings.

"Does it anger you? Not catching it, doing nothing? A mistake that cost you much, yes?"

Somehow Randvi’s body feels both light enough that she’d float away without the tether of Tom’s hands on her shoulders and so weighted with fears and responsibilities that she can barely lift her head.

“Of course it angers me. I'm the clan’s strategist, I should have -” She stops, her thoughts splintering like a poorly cut gemstone. Should have what? Strategist is an overblown title offered by her husband to make her feel better that she isn't permitted to travel. “I'm angry at Sigurd, who plays at conquest as if it's a game with no risks. His sister, I sent her to protect him. I'm angry at Basim, pouring poison into both their ears for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend.”

The dungeon dissolves as well. She can't bear to look at that awful display any longer.

“Everything angers me.”

The pond wavers back into view, though it's dark now. Sounds of battle, the clash of metal on metal, can be heard coming from somewhere nearby.

“That's a force I hold inside that may prove even more destructive than the other.”

Tom's soft smile has turned to something far more sinister, the hand on Randvi's shoulder a little too tight. This is it, he thinks, and feels the rush of exhilaration. Randvi is beginning to see the parts she doesn't like. To mere her other selves.

Randvi is not Alan--not an artist in that sense, but someone who ebbs and flows like the tide and is just as unrelenting. Tom breathes in, readying himself, knowing he has to be careful. He respects Randvi enough for that--there's no point in pushing someone if they can't bounce back.

"Let it out," he encourages. He keeps his voice soft but his words and tone are firm, subconscious instruction more than a simple suggestion. "I'll pull you right back if you need it." A beat. "You won't."

The water continues to flow while the battle rages on, shimmering in the moonlight, showing Randvi's reflection. Tom has a pebble in his free hand. How he got it, where he picked it up, those are all unimportant to the narrative he's trying to sow, logic working in a way that he's very good at, whispering what he's doing in Randvi's ear so she'll pick up on it in her altered state. When he throws that pebble into the river, the ripples warping her reflection.

"You're changing into her anyway."

Randvi shakes her head, but it's denial of something she knows to be true. She's needed to be so careful with her simmering anger in this place to prevent unwanted fires, but she's been feeling it for so much longer.

She feels Tom’s hands squeezing her shoulders - and she's gone, for a moment, lying on a wooden table with hands pressing her shoulders down as a woman she loves cuts into her face to save her - and his breath on her ear.

“I should never even have been here, in this village. I should have been free. The gods punished me.”

"The Gods are testing you, Viikinki." Tom's mouth is dry with anticipation--they're getting somewhere. Where he's not sure, the destination he has no clue about, and that's exciting in and of itself. This is exactly what he's craved--peeling back layers, looking into someone else's mind.

If he can't make a film, he can try to get inside someone's head.

"You can still break out."

Maybe it's the effects of the tea, but it makes Randvi a bit dizzy to think of the gods testing her. To think that they see her at all, are interested in her fate.

“I want to,” she says, and without Tom’s steady presence behind her she might collapse from the strength it takes to say it. “To escape. I could never admit to wanting it before I tasted freedom here.”

The sounds of battle draw closer but Randvi only reacts by gesturing toward the water in front of them as it resolves into a new reflection. It's Randvi, but in a way she’s never dared to picture herself: her hair is short, as if she's just shorn off her matron’s braid, and she's dressed in a manner that gives her a much more ambiguous silhouette than what she wears now. With her eyepatch she's a bit surprised at how similar her idealized self looks to Azar. Perhaps Hytham’s friend had made a greater impression on her than she’d thought.

But now it's her turn to throw a stone. The reflection shimmers and disappears.

“I’ll never get out, Tom.”

The battle sounds ever louder. It's nearly reached them now.

There. There it is, the moment Tom has been waiting for--Randvi's unconsciously been circling it, but it comes to light now just as the light from the sky shimmers and reflects off of the water. She's not looking at the lake herself, Tom thinks--it's an internalization, one that makes pulse thrum with excitement. He mistakes the beating of his heart with war drums, the trip and the dream sequence and the realization all starting to mingle and come to a head.

"Oh, no." He moves his hands up, running up and down the other's arms in a comforting manner, soft and gentle.

"You will. You are. You just need to dive in." Tom is here to provide just that.

Hands gripping Randvi's shoulders tighter, he proceeds to push the other as hard as he can into that beautiful, captivating water.

scene ii | ota | el topo

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Cw gore, allusions to torture

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