Summary:Sam does something totally inadvisable. He falls asleep in Limbo. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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It's not a garden. Hell, it's hardly even a lawn. But on the site where once there stood the garden of an old woman that taught Illyana there was more than black magic, life is starting to grow again.
There's a small spring at the center, and a bare trickle of a stream that flows away from it. Crowded around it are various plantings that (mostly) Sam and Illyana have been coaxing to grow. The area is demon-free, and the sorceress has made it very, very explicit that Sam is claws-off. And teeth, and tails, and anything else. To ensure it in this area, she's set out five stelae in a perimeter a fair distance out, that the demons don't seem to be able to cross.
Speaking of demons, Illyana had something come up and said she'd be right back. But time is wonky and Limbo and to Sam, that seems like hours ago. To quote a Moor, there's no sun in this cursed country.
Sam Guthrie wipes some of the excess soil from his hands. It always dries out so quickly here. Irrigation has been a major concern. He's been experimenting with hydroponics, with water recirculation. He had thought about trying to see if Illyana could just do some sort of weather spell, but it felt like cheating somehow. Even if doing anything here probably counted as that. If a realm is infused with magic, is it breaking the laws of nature to use magic? Probably not.
He was starting to become concerned. Not deeply so. Illyana radiated a certain degree of untouchability and he'd come to trust in it, at least a bit, enough to overcome his naturally protective nature. Still. He was starting to wonder where she was…but he wasn't dumb enough to start roaming limbo looking.
It was a long day of work to start with, and Limbo tends to suck the moisture right out of you. Honestly, it shouldn't have been surprising when Sam dozed off with the smell of green, growing things around him.
"Help! Help!" The cry rouses Sam, but not from sleep. He was sitting at his new desk at SHIELD, staring at paperwork whose letters were all jumbled and turned around. It's empty, save for him. The cubicles seem to stretch forever and the cry is faint.
Sometimes even if you know you're dreaming, it doesn't save you from the dream. The odd seems normal. But that cry for help? It rouses the hero in Sam.
Now if only he'd remembered to wear pants to work today…
He may be in his boxer briefs, but he's still roused to action, swallowing his momentary embarassment to answer the call of duty. Whatever that duty is. He isn't entirely sure.
He starts to walk down the rows of cubicles, frowning as he swims in and out of awareness, whether he's dreaming or not, trying to focus instead on the cry for help and breaking into a run if need be…
The cubicles stretch onward, but Sam can see a door in the distance that the cry is coming from. He breaks into a run and everything seems to streeeeetch and then SNAP, he's suddenly at the door and shoving it open and stepping out into… A jungle. But not like any jungle he's seen. There are odd, exotic plants and color *everywhere*. It's like some child's rendering of it, right down to the wobbly lines.
As Sam continues to chase the cry for help, he comes upon a woman being set upon by a trio of… what look kind of like men, except their heads are huge like tiki masks, but are definitely attached and the rest of their bodies are large and misshapen and they're dragging the woman off deeper into the jungle, crude spears in hand.
The woman is, well beautiful. Breathtakingly so, with hair like night and skin alabaster pale. Too pale for any human. Her eyes too are black from edge to edge. No iris or white or pupil to be found. She's scratched and scraped up, her dress torn as well as she fights her captors weakly.
Sam charges forward. He's a simple man, in many ways, not in the way of being foolish but in terms of being straightforward. Shades of grey or not, he reacts with his natural instincts and moves to protect the woman. He'll try to summon his blast field, hoping his powers remain with him even in this…surreal environment as he plunges in to try and shove them away from the victimized woman.
"Hey! That's enough o' that nonsense!" he shouts in his Kentucky drawl. Not as impressive seeming when he's standing there in his underwear, but hey, it is what it is.
Sam's blast field fires up without a hitch, and he goes cannonballing towards the trio. As the woman is being drug along behind them, it's easy for him to plow right into them, scattering them like bowling pins.
The woman scrambles for cover behind one of the huge trees that reach up towards the blue, blue sky, cowering out of sight. The three men? Creatures? Get to their feet, growling something at Sam in a guttural tongue and brandishing their spears at him warningly.
Sam expands the field, taking up most of their field of vision and trying to cut their access off to the woman. "I don't know what y'all are sayin', but, whatever or whoever she is, ain't no reason to be roughin' up a lady like that, no way, no how. I dunno what kinda mix-up or…shenanigans are happenin' up in here. I ain't even sure if they're real. But I ain't gonna stand for it, no sir. You wanna hurt the lady, you're gonna have to go through ol' Cannonball."
One of the attackers is rather off-put by Sam's expanding blast field, backing up while making thrusting motions with that spear. One of the others attempts to charge Sam himself, not realizing the futility of *that* action, while the last chucks his spear at the tall blond man.
Man or spear, both alike bounce off the blast field. The spear shatters at the tip while the man himself is rebuffed, battered by the forceful turmoil of the field and being thrown backwards beyond his fellows.
"Yeah. You gotta go through me - and ain't no way you're gonna. So just save yerself the effort and back off while I figure out what the hell's goin' on here," he says, pointing into the jungle for them to flee.
The first, seeing what happens to his fellows, hightails it back into the jungle. The second that went flying is left groaning on the ground. The third stands there a moment, before he looks beyond Sam, towards where the woman was, and then he drops to his knees and prostrates himself.
There's a strangled whimper behind Sam, and partially blocked by the tree she was hiding behind, a tall man with chalk skin has her by the throat. "And just who are you, to wander into my realm and interfere with my orders, hmm?"
Sam narrows his eyes, "Just a man, sir. I got no problem respectin' your authority on your land, but if your authority involves hurting women or abusin' folks, then they ain't worth bein' obeyed, all due respect. Where I come from, a leader's a leader cause o' wise judgement and by earning the respect o' folks. Ain't nothin' to respect in that," he says, gesturing to the hand around the woman's throat. "I'm lookin' fer a friend o' mine, too. Yellow hair, pretty, a bit scary?
The white-skinned man arches a brow at Sam, and then tilts back his head and *laughs*. "Oh, aren't you amusing, boy? The woman is my property. Like the land under your feet. I'll let you walk away, but if you challenge me then I'll have to hurt you."
The man's grip on the woman's throat is tight, nails more like talons dig into her skin and blood drips down in long streaks from the small wounds, a match to the tears down her face.
Sam steps forward and his blast field intensifies, tearing up a bit of the foliage around him as the roar of it increases, a sonic impact that's palpable on the surface of the skin. Before, he was just trying to do what was right.
Now he's mad.
"People ain't somethin' you can own, mister. My folks fought a whole war 'bout that very thing, a hundred and somethin' years back. I ain't about to shame 'em by lettin' anybody else get away with it in my earshot."
The pale-skinned man throws up an arm to protect his eyes as Sam's blast field starts to churn up the surroundings. He gives ground as Sam advances, but he drags the woman with him. Her feet kick out, trying to keep them under her and not strangle herself on the man's painful grip.
"We're not in your home anymore, boy." The man practically spits the words before sweeping his arm out to the side, and then forward towards Sam. Branches from the trees around them tear loose and fly in a rain of missiles at Sam's field.
Sam's only resisted blasting forward because he doesn't want to drag the woman into it. "Freedom ain't got no home, sir," he says, strangely respectful to his elder even as he does push forward more, thrashing aside a few trees and making it clear that it won't be stopped. He starts to flux the edge of the field, enough to try and swallow the woman in and try to separate her from her captor, at the cost of broken bones to him if he tries to hold on.
As the branches shatter and Sam's field starts envelops the woman, the man refuses to let go. His eyes burn red and bears a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth before giving a roar of pain as the bones in his arm break, the sound of it lost beneath the roar of Cannonball's field.
The woman is dropped abruptly and she tumbles to Sam's feet while the man takes a step back. He raises his good arm and in a pillar of smoke, he's suddenly gone.
Sam doesn't immediately drop the field, keeping his fists flexed. He knows more than one person who can vanish and reappear in a moment's notice, after all, including the woman he came looking for in the first place.
Still, he does finally reach down and offer a hand to the woman, "Can you understand me at all?"
The woman works on sitting up, palms flat to the ground. She turns her head to look up at Sam as he offers his hand out, dark eyes shining and wide. Face tear-streaked. A small nod. Followed by another. "Yes. Yes! I understand you." Her voice is a bit rough from the man's treatment earlier. She has little bleeding half-moons that ring her throat.
She takes Sam's hand, holding onto it with a desperate grip. "You have to save me!" Hadn't he just saved her?
"Yeah, I kinda got that part," he says. "I don't really know what's goin' on or even what I'm doin' here, lady. I ain't even sure if I'm really here, if I'm bein' honest. But why don't you tell me what -you- think is goin' on, and we'll see how that all reckons up with what I'm figurin'," he says. He lowers the field slowly, if only to make it easier to hear, but keeps an eye out for any further attacks.
The woman finally manages to get her feet under her, and if Sam lets her she'll move into his personal space and throw her arms around his neck to cling to him tightly. "You're not." She tells him, her words rushed. Like she's afraid they might run out of time. "You're not really here, but *I* am. Please, come get me and free me from this awful place!" Her body trembles, words broken but little hiccuping sobs.
He blushes a bit at being embraced by the strange woman, bringing his hands up to put them on her shoulders, trying to get her to look at him directly, "You're imprisoned in some way? Why? Who are you? And who's doing this to you?" he asks. He already knows this is beyond the abilities of a rocket-powered country boy, but he does have friends who are far more capable than he.
Sam's able to push her back a bit, her arms loosening about his neck and he can look into her face, so pretty it makes him ache. She nods emphatically when he asks if she's imprisoned, tears running down her face again. "My name is Chimere. I'm a prisoner of the Dream—"
The rest of it is cut off as the world seems to tilt and smear. It takes Sam a moment to realize he's been shaken awake, his mind muddled as he's got one foot in the real world and one in the dream. Well, Limbo at any rate.
Illyana is leaning over him, smirking. "Lying down on the job, Guthrie?" She mocks him teasingly.
He finds himself staring up at Illyana, the clinging tendrils of the phantom jungle hanging on his shoulders for a moment, the voice of that strange, frightened woman ringing in his ears.
"I…" he says, pushing up slowly. He runs his hands over his face, as if to feel his own skin, making sure it's there, "I think I was…somewhere else. At least my head was. Maybe it was a dream. But it didn't feel like a dream. Or, at least…not any dream I've had before…"
Illyana Rasputina tilts her head to the side, frowning a bit down at him, and then she scratches at her cheek as she thinks. "Might be Limbo. I tend to have nightmares, so I don't sleep much here." Which was rough when she was stuck here for seven years.
The blonde offers him a hand to pull him to his feet and then jerks her chin at his shirt. "You cut yourself?"
On the front of Sam's shirt are smears of drying blood, where Chimere's bloody throat was pressed against him.
He runs his hand over the smears and shakes his head, "No. But the woman in my dream, she was bleeding. She said she was trapped. Her name was…Schmear? Shimmer? Chimere…" he says. "She was being chased by these men and I ran them off, but she was still afraid…very afraid."
Illyana Rasputina looks dubiously at Sam. "Uh-huh. I think I've had you out here too long." Then her lips quirk into a familiar smirk. "Rescuing damsels in distress even in your dreams, hmm?"
The blonde steps over, slipping her arm through his and summons a stepping disk to take them home. "You know what'll make this all better? Ice cream…"