do you bare your fangs at us, sir? MOONLIT RIVALS LOG 2, SCENE 2

[libraryassistants]

Who: Readers and Actors
What: The werewolves who are not sneaking into the party cause a bit of mischief... and did anybody actually agree to keep the peace tonight?
When: The night of the ball itself. [ooc timeline: Feb 6th - 19th]
Where: The city of Montica.
Content warnings: Please include any warnings in headers.


Waxing Gibbous Moon

In Town

Above the city, the Umbra Mansion stands tall. Its grand doors and windows have been opened, spilling light like a beacon. Music lilts in the air, drifting so far as to be faintly heard even in the neutral centre of the city.

The streets have emptied, particularly in the vampiric half of town. Most of the vampire loyalists have joined the masquerade, leaving their homes and shops unattended. Tonight is a special night - a once in a century event, and they wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Even some werewolves and neutral citizens have been enticed to attend. Jadis the Mystic has created a lotion that will disguise the scent of a werewolf; an effect that is broken by shifting, breaking the skin, or the gradual passage of time. It is not widely distributed, but rumours travel fast. The lotion is only given to any Guildulf-aligned werewolves, but… well, there’s nothing wrong with a little trade here or there. Right?

For all of the wolves in town - with the moon so close to being full, it’s natural for them to feel a bit more excitable. Energetic. Ready to take on the world. And seeing as Montica is so empty, it’s like a playground has just been opened up. The young wolves in particular are eager to take advantage of the empty streets, the sound of not-quite-mature howls breaking through the air in their excitement. There are hardly any people around to be scared if they play too rough or run too fast, and they are taking advantage of this with great enthusiasm.

In the highly-debated 'neutral' zone, some small packs of adolescent werewolves are gathering. There's banter and roughhousing, the not-quite-adults playfully shoving each-other over the invisible line where the vampire territory begins.

Some of the bravest amongst them take the challenge to dart over and brush their fingers over silver doorhandles - their yelps spurring courage and adrenaline in the others. What starts harmlessly enough quickly escalates as they urge each-other on, teenage excitement and the thrill of the moon encouraging all sorts of bad choices. The longer they go without reprimand, the more bold they become; and somewhere along the way, bulbs of garlic start winding up in places they wouldn't normally be found. (There is at least one group who is excitedly challenging each-other to leave the garlic in more and more absurd places. If they happen to sting themselves on some silver ornamentation on the way, all the better.)

Not all homes are unoccupied, though - sooner or later someone’s going to disturb someone else’s peace, and tensions are already so high. Hopefully there are some Responsible Adults around to curtail the worst of the mischief before someone’s temper is sparked.

Comments

[logosmaxima]

The sorcerous parade of objects continues out the door until the wagon's fully empty, divested of every bit of paraphernalia Magnus has collected and stripped down to the pegs. Now it's wide enough through the middle that Konrad at least has couple of inches of clearance on either side of him, and could lie down (almost) flat without his feet poking out the door into the all-searing sunlight.

Magnus regards the wagon's transformation with eminent satisfaction -- one that's dented just a little as he finally takes stock of Konrad's renewed patina (sigh) and the destroyed remnants of the object his brother found to pick apart ( ... sigh). "Do you know how long it took me to find that bezoar?" he says, mock-peevish, before escorting its remains out the door as well with a brush of his hand.

Then, his moment of acted annoyance complete, he turns to secure the door -- checking, as he does, the telempathic illusion of disinterest thrown over his wagon's heaped contents is secure enough to prevent anyone noticing them to tamper with -- then fixes his attention back on Konrad. "It occurs to me," it already occurred to him, but he'd been busy, "that this may be safer, both to you and the wagon, if you were comfortable resuming your chiropteran shape for it."

Konrad made a much smaller, lighter bat that wouldn't need nearly so much subduing.

[curzed]

It's.. almost space! And he shifts around a little bit to get marginally more comfortable. it's not easy but he's spent much of his life in confines meant for human scale, not primarch; the often hunched posture is learned. The debris of the thing Magnus calls a bezoar is after a moment dusted off a little; he didn't know what it was and wasn't sure he cared except that it had potentially been something important. Not to him, it never would be important to him. But it was to Magnus, and he was unfortunately relying on his brother's help.

"Sorry." it sounds completely insincere, but an effort was made.

With door shut and sealed it is at least more tolerably dark again, but not as comfortable as utter blackness would be. Magnus' suggestion of his temporary, story-granted other form is a good one, he supposed. Then it wasn't fitting something primarch sized into a space this small, just something coyote sized. Which is still massive for a bat, but not for other things. "I've never tried to maintain another form under duress. It may go badly." All of this may go badly.

But it is, he's reluctant to admit, a good idea. Although Magnus could use psyker power to wrangle him easily enough, two primarchs in this space at full size would be distinctly hazardous for the entire wagon to not become so much debris. The reluctance remains even as he swaps humanish form for that of the creature he'd arrived as, as comfortable on four limbs as in the air, enormous ears pinned flat against furred head and neck in an almost canine expression of displeasure.

[logosmaxima]

Magnus knows Konrad well enough to know that even an insincere apology is still a concession -- and he will take it with his usual bluff grace (and perhaps a particle of internal satisfaction).

But he won't dwell on it long. No, with his workspace now swept clean, and Konrad as ready as he will ever be -- note the writhing gray and marrow-red of unease lightening his brother's aura -- it is time they be about the work. The sorcerer stretches out his hands to touch either wall, drawing the warpfire into his grasp. A deft passage of his fingers, a series of swift mudras, reshapes it into a pattern of silence and strength that seeps into the walls and vanishes to all but aetheric senses.

Full dark falls. Magnus settles himself on the floor in lotus position, regarding his bat-shaped brother with eyes grown larger and blacker still in the midnight of the wagon. "It may," go badly, "but if you consent to it, I will block the voluntary nerves of your spine. Even should you revert to your right shape, it will limit the harm you might do."

To the wagon, mostly; Magnus augurs he could evade the worst of it.

Then he holds out a hand in invitation. "Contact will make this easier."

come sit on his lap konrad

[curzed]

It's still strange and not at all welcome to have a shape other than the one he's born with, to feel air crawling across skin he shouldn't have in broad leathery wings or every vibration in the air across black fur. Useful, absolutely. And so it's endured, but there's no mistaking that endured is the right of it.

"Paralysis?" The sibilant tones of Nostraman accent seem somehow more suited to this chiropteran form than his natural one, but it's still his voice, the same pitch, the same tone. Magnus is hardly an enemy, but part of him resists hard the idea of being so utterly helpless around anyone else, and the primarch turned enormous bat considers it silently for a long, long minute, absently licking sturdy fangs better suited to breaking spines than draining blood. It's asking a lot, and he's not given to trust.

The broad vanes of his wings fold when he shifts, balancing easily on his wrists; some bats simply couldn't maneuver on the ground well but whatever species he's become is apparently not hampered at all similarly, picking his way closer only slowly. None of this is anything he likes. Not the form he wears, not the pending deliberate provocation of his 'gift', not the idea of being paralyzed in another's grip. He can be picked up easily enough.

Bat fur is depressingly soft. "Very well."

[logosmaxima]

"Paralysis," Magnus affirms. And waits.

Because even if Konrad does not consent to that further loss of control -- which decision the sorcerer could fully understand; it's the point of offering the choice in the first place -- he is confident that he can manage this.

He is also aware he is asking a great deal of trust -- from someone he has given reason, in the Library itself, to not wholly trust his motives when it comes to Konrad's "own good".

So he waits, and it is only after that grudging acceptance is given that he picks up the giant bat that is his brother and sets him on his lap. (Even he must repress the urge to put his hands on that fur more than is absolutely needful; fey and impulsive as Magnus can be, he does understand that one does not randomly pet one's brothers.

At least not the brothers he's not on hugging terms with. Why can't Perturabo be the giant, appealingly furry bat?)

"Then we begin," he intones, with ritual solemnity. One hand rests on Konrad's head, above the crown chakra; the other, at the nape of the neck. Using the biomantic arts to inhibit only the voluntary action of skeletal muscle -- without unstringing the autonomic processes -- is one he has long practice in, but something that still requires studied focus. There is no sense -- as there might be with paralytic drugs -- of lassitude or heaviness or clouding of Konrad's abilities, only between one moment and the next any attempt to lift a wing or change his posture will fail.

It's probably more unnerving, rather than less.

"Now. Whenever you are ready, you may open the inner eye and seek your vision."

A soft litany in Prosperine follows -- the names of the First Ennumeration, the same he would speak over any Neophyte given leave to part the veil between Material and Immaterial.

[curzed]

He does not settle or relax until relaxing is forced upon him, and it's tolerated with willful deliberation. He agreed to this. If it went wrong, if advantage were taken upon him, then vengeance would be as vicious as he could imagine, and he could imagine a lot.

Resignation settles a shade or two deeper, and he allows his mind run ahead of the moment and into the tangle of the future.

It is immediately apparent that Curze's 'gift' doesn't quite work the same way the Corvidae enjoyed their power. He claims to only see one future - but there's countless immediately at his perusal, and they're tapped with the thinnest ribbon of will and then he .. waits. No pain, no seizures. Not yet. But it's building, with each strand of probability that quivers in response to his tap and is dismissed just as quickly, hundreds, thousands filtered and ignored in microseconds.

Only one feels immediately different when touched, resonates at a completely different sensation, and is locked in on. The others were illusions, flickers of impressions easily disregarded. None of them echo with unstoppable fate.

He's not guessing when this thread is seized. He knows the feel of inevitability, the weight of its forboding and distant fear. And as it's grasped, fire ignites through his mind. Were it not for the paralysis inflicted on him, blinding agony and misfiring nerves would have twisted the chiropteran shape into shaking helplessness. It hurts, it hurts more than anything else ever could, tearing at mind and soul alike with power he's not made to handle. Not like Magnus is capable of wielding his own power.

There is one similarity to the Corvidae's scries and visions. It's raw metaphor.

There is a beast at the gate, its coat gleaming with ice and snow. It weeps tears that shatter and bleed on the ground spreading stains of razor-edged crimson, and its howl is the death of stars.

let's just write forever let's just DO IT

[logosmaxima]

It is second nature for Magnus to slip into sharing the visions of one he's watching over -- he has taught enough of his own sons to access the the Great Ocean so -- and yet what he sees of how Konrad's gift affliction works is --

Is a marvel.

This is not what his Corvidae do, not with this accuracy or rapidity. Even Ahriman, among his best and brightest, has a much more fraught relationship to the twining, shifting currents of the future that wind through the Immaterium. Truly, if Konrad's gift is intentional, it is a magnificent work of their Father's engineering --

Except. Except that it is destroying him, as if it had been welded ineptly onto a soul that was never meant to wield it in the first place. That is the most horrifying of the immediate effects Magnus can see: There is a rift in Konrad's soul. There is a weakness in the root of his brother's being that is slowly, inevitably being torn open by the touch of his own psykic power.

He had meant -- in these first moments -- just to monitor. Just to watch. To get a baseline on what one of these seizures of foresight looked like, on a neurological and aetheric level, to better plan his course of treatment.

But he is less a scientist than he is an artist, less a researcher than a healer, and he cannot witness that degree of suffering without leaping to intervene.

One part of the sorcerer's mind -- one part of his inner gaze -- watches the vision and sifts the metaphors. The rest is suddenly consumed in the inner workings of Konrad's misfiring neurology, looking for the origin of those errant impulses, the root of the hideous pain. The places where the riptides of the Great Ocean threaten to carry torn-off pieces of his brother out into its depths and bury them forever. To his deep frustration -- and rising sense of a worthy challenge -- it is no issue so simple as what he's seen in untrained mortal psykers, though there are analogies to the kind of hideous burnout they can suffer and die from. Konrad's own stubborn primarch hardiness has kept him alive far past what would have otherwise killed him, and his neurology and aetheric self both have adapted in unexpected ways to the continued insult.

He will need untraining. And retraining. He will need healing. He will need so many things that Magnus cannot offer right now -- but Magnus can work to take the edge from the pain, silencing nerves where their quietus will not affect Konrad's ability to maintain the vision, soothing their ragged firing where they must continue.

The audible litany dies to a whisper, then silences as Magnus sinks further into a trance -- but the soothing, focusing rhythm of it beats behind his efforts like a pulse. A reminder that he is here, that Konrad is not alone in his suffering, that someone is witnessing it and working to alleviate it with all his attention.

WORDS WORDS WORDS

[curzed]

Once begun, it's out of the Night Haunter's ability to mitigate, never mind stop. Until it ran itself out, in minutes, in hours, in days on occasion, there is nothing he can do but drown. If it truly is a Great Ocean, then he is incapable of swimming against it, and where the future goes so too does he.

There is a beast at the gate, its coat gleaming with ice and snow. It weeps tears that shatter and bleed on the ground spreading stains of razor-edged crimson, and its howl is the death of stars.

The Emperor had brought the cascade to a stop once with only a touch, a thought - the library aides here had done the same with seemingly minimal effort, and Magnus too likely can. Curze's tendency to keep an ordinary human psyker onboard as shield and filter proved an inelegant but somewhat functional bandage against what otherwise ravaged him. But he's not there. For far too long there's no awareness of the sorcerer's erosion of the pain, any more than most victims of epilepsy are aware during their torment. It slows the inevitable damage.

There is a thousand pinpricks of light, like candles in the darkness, snuffed out one by one by the bleeding tears of the glacial beast as it passes.

There is great golden eye, each point of light reflected in its depthless pupil, but it closes, refuses to see.

In between images and impressions of loss and death, it tries to sharpen, focus into painful, exacting clarity. The stench of burning bodies, the thick smell of astartes vitae, the roar of bolters and snarl of chainswords, not metaphor at all but clearer than a pict-feed, enough to feel the heat on skin and leave ears ringing with the thunder of land raider fire. Fire raining from the sky, incinerating rolling green jungles and forests from the shadow of crafts so high as to be indistinct shapes beyond the clouds, their tiny distant silhouettes achingly familiar. Until it distorts again, becoming tears of blood and flame of the towering grieving beast, shattering like glass on impact into the spray of thousands of tiny reflections of an eye that won't watch.

There is a rising flood of red, each frozen tear bleeding into the next and the next until it's an unstoppable torrent sweeping away the sparks of light, the gates, and the eye.

There is a beast weeping in the darkness of the ruins of the gate, jaws stained with the blood of suns.

It's clearer than visions have a right to be already, its meaning barely veiled. Primarchs only grow in strength over time. Soon there will be no images to guess at, only stark, agonizing certainty of things that had yet to pass.

Magnus will have to be careful. As soon as some part of him is aware something's different, that someone's there, in the disoriented way the falling blindly grasp for anything in their desperate effort to save themselves there's going to risk dragging Magnus down with him.

w ords

[logosmaxima]

Magnus is more powerful than their father -- he is certain of it -- though it is not something he boasts of openly. As the evil pattern of the seizure lays itself bare to his questing, he sees how he could shut it down, aborting the aberrant patterns of it and delivering Konrad from his agony.

But that is one of the merely palliative measures he mentioned; it would fix the worst of the symptoms, but not cure the problem, and require that he -- or someone nearly as powerful as he is, and those are damned few and far between -- be constantly by Konrad's side. (Though ... there were mechanical solutions ... and an option born of the Great Ocean itself -- he puts a metaphorical finger on that second thought, shunts it aside for later.) Watching the whole ordeal through with Konrad -- even if he cannot bear to let it go totally unmitigated -- will give him greater insight into the whole nature of the affliction, and what truly curative help he might offer.

More than that -- more than that ... He cannot help but read the symbolism in the vision. He cannot help but recognize the flash of a burning jungle that breaks through, the distant shadow of a pyramid on the horizon. A thousand points of dying light and an eye that will not see is an image almost blatant in its significant to the Crimson King particularly, and it harrows his hearts so much that he falters a moment in his weaving and patching. He stumbles -- just a moment -- and leaves himself open to being seized suddenly by a desperate clinging force that it takes him an awful moment to recognize as Konrad himself.

The threat's palpable. The floundering Night Haunter is strong enough that he could pull even Magnus down, submerge him totally in the disorienting vision and agonizing pain for precious, disorienting moments. The sorcerer could win free, of that he has no doubt, but what damage he might do -- to both of them -- would take a long time to heal. Might set them back by weeks, months, years that they don't have within the Library.

The easiest thing to do would be disengage, now. Shut down the vision and the seizure, withdraw his presence entirely, and return at a safer time now that he knows what to expect.

And, likely, the next vision -- the one he'd be more prepared to witness -- will not be the same. It will be some other horrible future, and it may have little to do with him.

No -- Magnus must remain for this one. Must win from it what it will teach him. Within the Immaterium, his subtle body takes a firmer stance, wrapping his arms around the inchoate shattering blackness that is also the shuddering subtle form of his brother.

He teaches his sons ten Ennumerations, the last of which brings them to the mind of no mind. For their bright but lesser lights, it is enough.

But their Magus knows more, he knows techniques unnumbered, some of them suited to this exact moment. To anchoring himself within the vicious vortex the Great Ocean has become around the two of them, bearing up his stricken brother in his arms, and demanding of the rushing currents: "Show me."

The images are already so close to clarity. It will not take that much more of his help to refine them, focus them into the unclouded vision of what this future must be.

What will happen to his beloved Prospero, his beloved Sons.

[curzed]

Tizca is last to fall.

It feels like memory, not like foresight; stripped utterly of allusion and left playing like a live pict-feed. It's not a possibility but the inevitable. It's already happened. It will always happen.

Tizca is last; the planetary defenses are first, and the planet heaves in destruction rained down from orbit from ships in either storm gray and gleaming gold, magma bombs and mass drivers and energy lances scouring mountains to rubble, forests to ash and settlements to oblivion, any life there boiled away by wrath from the heavens. Blackened bones and melted rocks cluster around the shining city, the ballistic cannons driven aside by a shimmering kine shield, leaving the capitol the only remaining refuge until the Thunderhawks descend.

Not even the civilian-marked ships fleeing the surface escape, captured or shot down with ease.

....No.

Not yet. Not yet.

The planet is unburned. Ships flee the surface like startled birds.

One Gloriana bridge looks much like another save in its color scheme, the Hrafnkel is no different. The planet being observed is a beautiful thing of greens and blues and swirling white clouds, countless displays detailing years of strategic intelligence, and behind it the towering fully armored form of Leman Russ ... and a mortal man. A warp-touched, a daemon-touched, warp-reeking--

The words the Wolf-King speaks are despondent, aggrieved. Reluctant. He doesn't want this. Whatever their rivalry, whatever their hatreds, this is too far, too much even for him, but there is no choice. He speaks as if that mortal could somehow pass the message on to absent brother. As if the words were to him and to him only.

The pride of a primarch is great.

It is not so great that the terrible master of the Rout does not beg his brother to surrender. To not force the Wolves to descend. To evacuate the innocent. None need to die.

No answer. How could there be? That is the touch of sorcery of a darker, more terrible kind.

"I want that channel to my brother left open. My poor brother. I want him to see us coming. I want him to know it'll never be too late for him to beg for mercy."

Prospero burns.

Tizca, shining Tizca is the last to fall, millions dead in the crumbling debris field that was once beautiful parks and buildings and homes. Astartes, civilian, Space Wolf or Thousand Son. Sisters of Silence, even the gleam of golden Custodes. Only death waits for them all.

[logosmaxima]

The refined vision is -- and is not -- a surprise.

Magnus knew already from the signs and signifiers what to expect, even absent the maddening, tantalizing flashes of clarity. The great weeping beast was amply suggestive of the culprit, and with him, the knowledge of Whose order had ultimately seen Prospero destroyed. (What could he have done? What could they have done to deserve to be expunged? Was Nikaea's misguided conclusion truly so precious to Father, to countenance the XV sharing the fate of II and XI? What could he have done?)

Abstract knowledge, however, is no substitute for the visceral beating truth.

Pict-clear, it crashes over him, bringing with it horrors he knows -- even absent a primarch's memory -- he will never be able to forget. Bone and charcoal, the scraped flesh of shattered continents, the ashes and corpse of his beautiful home. His dream, his idyllic, irreplaceable Prospero -- rendered nothing more than cinders, and his sons, his poor valiant overmatched Thousand Sons, dying by their scores to protect it. In orbit, on the surface, in hails of artillery or bolter fire or warp self-immolation as they take their enemies with them.

The charnel reek registers a heartbeat behind the visual channel: Blood. Promethium. Vitae, ash, acid, ruptured bowels and burning flesh. Burning paper, burning parchment, burning circuits as the rescued knowledge of a hundred thousand worlds goes up in smoke with its protectors. That hits him hardest -- that scent of blind and vicious ignorance triumphant over all he had built, all he had bled for, all he had saved.

No more than kindling.

Then it's gone, wiped away and replaced by a vision of the blind and vicious perpetrator -- A vision that already has Magnus snarling in heartbroken fury before he even lays eyes on Russ. On Russ -- not triumphant but pleading, begging a poisoned emissary for his brother to surrender, saying there was still a chance of clemency. It is so incongruous, so unlike what he'd expect of his brother, of anyone who could architect this utter ruination, that it stops Magnus' fury in full spate and leaves his spiraling mind to struggle with the awful questions the scene raises.

Why was there no response? Did -- did this Magnus of the future, (the eye that would not see), did he agree with the judgment rendered? Did he arrogantly believe he could stop it by --

by never taking the field? By being nowhere in evidence as all his world died?

Or is this the shape of the net the Author of Fate wove for him? Condemnation by his own gagged silence, his Warp-blind brother unable to see that Magnus could not hear, could not respond?

(The eye that would not see. Could not? Would not? Which is it? Which?)

Then Russ is wiped away and Prospero burns anew. Blood and bone, ash and fire, the death of all his dreams.

It is no more forthcoming in the second repetition, this death-knell of his world. Less, for all Magnus' subtle vision is clouded by tears, his hearts by shattering grief.

He cannot stay submerged in the vision. There may be answers here he needs to prevent this horror, but he cannot -- it hurts too much, and it is Konrad's life and sanity being burned up with each repetition. (Not that he had not -- in the past -- burned the lives of serfs and even his own precious sons as sacrifices for clarity. But that was different -- they had consented to the use, given freely of their lives to his efforts. They were not his brothers.)

A gesture. A quelling act of will, a silencing of misfiring synapses all across his brother's wounded brain, snuffs the awful vision. Silence. Sleep.

Be at peace. Be delivered of the pain and horror of what is foreseen, because Magnus cannot be.

It is the smallest mercy that his own sigils, woven into the walls, mute his shattering howl of grief.

That no one in the outside world can hear him weep over what will be.

[curzed]

Soon enough every vision he has will be this utter clarity, no meaning needing to be teased out with meditation and the dance of scryer's cards. Even were fate mutable, it's no wonder he might struggle to believe it when every moment is etched so cleanly, so full of living moment by moment detail.

Not even the Night Haunter can face the death of a planet unmoved at this juncture. Even if there were guilty there, those who deserved their punishment, so many could not be.

It'll replay for hours if allowed until it ebbed on its own, oscillating between agonizing sharpness and barely veiled metaphor, the beast at the broken gates' grief as piteous as the master of Prospero's and not entirely for dissimilar reasons. It's not the first time, it won't be the last, and if it pulls at his mind like tugging at a unifying thread threatening to unravel the whole, well.

That's how it's always been.

Magnus is left to his grief for a time; as the storm of images and sensation cuts out, the accompanying seizure brought to a sudden stop, all resistance floods away like blood from a torn throat, leaving the undead chiropteran creature Curze currently is limp and heaving rapid, disoriented breaths. It's going to be some minutes yet before he can pull anything like a rational thought together, and the paralysis proves necessary for another reason entirely, the scent of battlefield death still thick in memory, the sounds of grief telling fogged thoughts the fight is still on and he needs to get up before he too is cut down, fight back while he can--

Thankfully he cannot. Can't bite, can't claw, can't scrape the focus together enough to abandon the unnatural form this story allows and regain his own, far more deadly shape.

This confusion of present and future too will pass, moment by slow, tormented moment.

[logosmaxima]

The worst of it is that there is nothing Magnus can do in this moment but grieve. No action he can take now will bring him any closer to that future horror, or do anything to avert it. He cannot save a single one of his sons; he cannot even -- and here the grief roils into confused anger, hatred and refusal laced with bitter understanding -- tell Russ that his obvious anguish in his duty is commendable.

Is made all the worse by the Wolf-King being victim of the same horrible trick that's condemned Prospero to burn.

No, the only person close to him he has any chance of saving, of protecting, is Konrad -- so perhaps it is no surprise that old, old mammalian instinct moves Magnus to hold his brother's too-light, winged form against him as he weeps. Tears seep into that over-soft fur, its dampened touch a dim comfort for the long minutes it takes Konrad's aura to show signs he's coming back around.

For once his brother's awareness does begin to return, Magnus must put himself back together. Must submerge his own terrible grief and all it does to him deep in his own mind, held down by the discipline of the Enumerations until such a time as he can contemplate it in solitude.

Until he can abide within it and understand all the lessons it has to teach, in a time and place where he is not needed at his full capacity. That is not now -- not until they are back in the Library, and perhaps not even then, for who knows what the hours or days of vulnerability might cost them all, if he allows himself them.

The Magus steadies his breathing by an act of will, banishing the tears from his eyes and clearing the merely biological remnants of grief from himself with a simple exercise of his power. It is likewise trivial to release his paralytic hold on Konrad, and gently set his bat-brother down on the floor of the wagon, off his lap.

"I am sorry," is the first thing he says when he believes he'll be understood again.

"You described the horror of your experience, and I did not believe the depth of it."

He will not make mention of the content of the visions until Konrad does.

[curzed]

Strange, in a way, to think that the savage Russ might be so unwilling to add a third empty plinth. Everyone knew what the wolves were for, what they were really for. That any of them, never mind their Primarch, might ever hesitate is almost unthinkable.

Beg a brother to surrender instead of deliver vengeance, so their lives can be spared? Harder yet.

Things that Curze himself may dwell on later, in the long restless hours of sleeplessness that will inevitably follow. His fits left him exhausted to the bone but his mind wouldn't let him rest any time soon, and now is not likely to be an exception. There is an impression, through the haze of disorientation, of someone crying. Pain and loss and terror for a future that can't be evaded. It's not his. It's the red, and the drowning tide of blood. Maybe his too, a little, the horror is real enough, the bitter taste of ash seems real enough.

It isn't. Reality sorts itself by degrees, and he is aware, more or less, when he's lifted again and set down on wood and woven carpet, fur ruffling up against dampness. The scent of salt and tears lingers, the sour tang of grief and rage. His? Not his?

Magnus.

The bat shape shakes itself like a dog, wings flapping once to reassure that motion is in fact possible before settling down into a tightly packed fluffy lump, limbs pulled in, ears flat. Throne, he was tired. He felt weak, with the drive to fight-or-die bled away, the pain ended. Like he hadn't stopped running or fighting for weeks. "Did you learn what you wished to?"

Something in his weary tone suggests he is not going to be willing to provoke that again if he can help it.

[logosmaxima]

"Yes." In more ways than one.

"We will not need to do that again."

Though Magnus still has so many questions about how and why, so much he needs to understand if he wishes to change that horrible future. But he cannot -- he cannot use Konrad to answer those questions. He must find another way.

As if mirroring his brother -- or still in need of tactile comfort -- he draws his own knees to his chest, making himself as compact as a human-shaped creature might.

"What you see -- it always comes to pass to the last detail? As you've foreseen it?"

He can sense the exhaustion bleeding off of his brother, and that will keep him from other questions, but this ... this he will need to know the answer to, before he leaves for the day.

[curzed]

It always happens. And with the revelation that it isn't going to be someone else, some other fate, but Magnus' own world, his own sons, must throw it into a very different light. "Always." There's resignation in that weariness, by degrees. "The true future has a feel to it. Once found, it invariably comes to pass. All else is a distraction."

Fate is fixed. "The future sees to itself. By attempting to change it, you make it occur. By doing nothing, life proceeds as it must. I have tried, again and again." What must it be like, for someone who actually cared for his spawn, to have so many of them strewn across the wreckage of a beloved world?

What must it be like, to have a beloved world at all? "Better to not know, and be surprised by the terror of it, than know it approaches and nothing can be done to stop it. I would not have shown you that had I a choice. Some other thing perhaps." Dark eyes close. He won't be able to sleep but he can rest a little. "Ferrus' beheading, perhaps."

[logosmaxima]

"I see," Magnus replies, his voice subdued, and closes his single eye.

Despite his willing otherwise, the vision of Prospero burning plays in the darkness there. He permits it; he does not in the least believe in Konrad's fatalism, but perhaps soaking in the terror of it will also yield to him what he must know in order to change it.

"I think," he finally says, "I would rather know. Even if all that I try must fail, it is better to know."

That was, after all, his eternal stance on knowledge -- wasn't it? Even the worst of it was better discovered than left to rot.

Though -- Konrad's offer of an alternative gets a twitch of a warped smile out of him. "Ferrus' beheading," he echoes. "Yes. A far more cheerful subject, to see one of our other brothers slain, and know I could do nothing about that either."

Black humor does help, sometimes.

"We can speak more of this later. I have -- had an idea, of a path we might take to remediating your affliction. But for now, you need sleep."

[curzed]

Maybe the idea of Ferrus' death is easier to deal wiht than the loss of his world and all his sons! "Every one of you has a fate. Even I do."

And he knows them all. Every single one, every time he meets them. Any time he meets anyone. "...I will not sleep," the comparatively enormous bat grumbles. "The images do not stop. The echoes linger. I wait it out. Staying in one place and waiting it out is the best I can accomplish." Which is better than nothing, all told.

[logosmaxima]

Every one of you has a fate, and suddenly he wants to ask more about Roboute's, and what Konrad knows of it. Of their Father's -- but that is not germane, right now. So little of his curiosity is germane right now, and likely to only bring him further pain if satisfied.

To say nothing of Konrad really, truly needing rest. "That is something I can also help with, you know," the sorcerer says, his smile becoming a little more earnest. "Inducing sleep is easier than paralysis. And your visions do not seem to trouble you if you are cut off from the Great Ocean."

It's nothing to him to maintain the Symbol of Thothmes on one little wagon, for a few hours.

[curzed]

That sorcery Magnus had used to guarantee their isolation right before this ridiculous Story. "That didn't go well once you stopped that particular spell." It's not spells, he knows it's not, but it's a suitable enough word and conveys the meaning well enough. He wouldn't waste time on technical names unless he had to.

But the temptation of submitting to oblivion for even a few hours was a strong one. He'd be vulnerable in this wooden box, out in the middle of the city. But better perhaps than being unable to wake when underground. The little vampires that skulked about would reasonably want to take advantage of the predator in their midst being incapacitated. "It would be welcome," he allows after a long moment. True sleep eluded him often, and he knew he relied on it more than his brothers. Since arriving at the library, he'd indulged in perhaps one try at sleep deliberately, and it had gone as well as ever.

[logosmaxima]

That gets a snort out of Magnus. "It did not," he says, "but I am forewarned this time and will be here in person to remove it."

So. He'd had the hunch he might be able to stop a seizure before it began, and if the Symbol of Thothmes is a reliable trigger, he'll be there to get the next one during its prodrome, however short that might be.

Konrad's eventual acceptance garners a nod. A relieved nod, for Magnus is well aware of how fatigued his brother is. "Good night, then. Or good morning," as the case might be, for vampires. He reaches out briefly to touch Konrad on the head, bringing sleep with the contact.

[curzed]

A flash of sharp teeth from the resisted impulse to snap when touched, and then ... nothing else. Sleep truly is welcome, and if this method cuts off the endless parade of terrors rattling around in his mind like loose screws in a bucket, then all the better.

Unfortunately being awake is directly tied to his ability to maintain that significantly smaller, lighter form. Even in the throes of his fit he'd still been awake, more or less, and in its absence so too does the shapeshift, leaving the full sized primarch behind instead. At least he's maintained what few clothes he bothers to wear.

[logosmaxima]

-- And at least Magnus' own future-sight, if not his more mundane foresight (currently rattled beyond reasonable function) alerts him in time to not be squashed as his brother reverts to all seven hundred pounds of his true shape.

It's a little bit of a scramble, but only a little.

He spares himself a moment after to simply watch Konrad sleeping, as much because it is a strange and precious novelty to see any of his brothers so vulnerable, as to assure himself the compelled sleep is deep and healing and true. From the uncommonly peaceful eddies of Konrad's aura, it is, and Magnus will take that as success.

A low mutter and an intricate pass of his hands sets the Symbol of Thothmes in place to ward the wagon's interior. Another tracery of warpfire joins it -- a simple thing of eyes, to give him advanced alert if Konrad begins to wake before he returns.

And all that is nothing on how zealously he wards the outside of the wagon in making ready for his departure. Anyone foolish enough to tamper with it while he's on his errand to House Guildulf will find themselves quite neatly paralyzed for him to deal with on his return.

It still doesn't feel like enough, to guard one of his family in the face of all the horrors that await them. But it will serve.