Fourth Wall for a Fourth Age

[madimpossibledreamer]

the lair area is actually near the Park, not the black goat woods. I think I just included it before the Filth pool because it felt like something important to include and I wasn’t going to have it pop up again—except now it has, so now it’s non-euclidian with two different entrances far away from each other and absolutely no explanation. Random non-euclidian geometry is perfectly in-character for this game.
Also almost named this Outside the Story, but the next chapter’s title is more concrete, so I thought I’d go for contrast.
 

Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Time to check out the lead at the lighthouse.
Word Count: 2534
Rating: Teen 

 

        It starts raining on the way. That’s not too unusual, but Rukh absolutely disapproves, glaring up at the sky with one angry blue eye and croaks at it angrily. “The weather’s not going to change just because you don’t like it, buddy,” he informs Rukh, who makes sure to croak even more angrily and loudly right in Desmond’s ear this time.
        He gently pushes the bird away a little, but surprisingly his raven actually goes along with it, rather than trying to fight him like with the bath. That seems to be because he’s staring at Desmond thoughtfully.
        “What?” He feels a little weird, having a conversation with Rukh as Alice and Lydia watch, but it’s not like Rukh hasn’t demonstrated he’s intelligent enough to have a conversation, either. Bob may or may not be frolicking at the end of his leash like he doesn’t care about any of this and definitely not about conversations between a man and a bird. But then, the smell of blood and death might be fairly normal for him, and he doesn’t seem like he understands as much language. That might just be because he’s young for an ak’ab. It’s hard to know how much Desmond should believe Shaun’s ‘plotting to kill us in our sleep’ line, which would mean they’re smart enough to plan that kind of thing, and how much was just the man grousing.
        Rukh turns his head to the side a little more, kind of like a questioning dog, like he’s trying to figure out something about Desmond. Which leads to a natural conclusion.
        And a natural answer. “No. I am not abusing my powers just to change the weather. For one thing, it might be necessary to finish cleansing the Park, and for another, I don’t want to risk scrambling my brain just because you don’t like water.”
        Rukh croaks angrily and nips at Desmond’s ear. At least he’s being vaguely gentle about it. So it’s more of a playful grumble than actually being angry, which is probably because he understands Desmond’s reasoning even if he doesn’t like it. And then they’re too busy fighting their way through groups of zombies, anyway.
        They’re walking past where the Park was, and it feels like the Druids are winding down their efforts, though it’s harder to see through the rain and mist. Past something that feels like the earth-shaking danger again—it’s a different spot, but it feels like this rock archway and the other rock archway are connected, somehow, like a portal but not one you’d notice until you’ve already stepped through. It doesn’t feel any less dangerous, but...more watchful, maybe? Wary. Which, hey, if he’s doing something to put whatever lives in there on its toes, he’ll take it.
        The zombies are almost as vicious as before, though they kind of seem...fatigued, maybe? It’s weird having to fight them again, after all the ones in the Park just kind of were ignoring them. Though, hang on…were those also, like, ghost-zombies? Seeing as they hadn’t reappeared after they’d gotten out—though, no, they’d been there back when they’d first entered… This is threatening to give Desmond another headache, and given that he’d finally managed to start feeling better after overextending himself, maybe he should stop thinking about that, because honestly he gets the feeling that he’s never going to understand absolutely everything about what happened in there and it’s probably for the better, anyway. Especially when he has another vision to follow which might end up being really dangerous. The first one where they’d been undoing the ritual hadn’t been, necessarily. Maybe if they’d messed it up. They’ll never know. The other ones had been, though.
        Past an abandoned house. Given the road they’re on, it might even be the Phoenician house, but to Eagle Vision (which, oddly, is a relief; maybe it’s just that that’s one kind of sensing his brain is actually used to using) it’s a dull grey. Chelsea and Nate really had found anything worth finding in there.
        “Desmond?” Alice asks with a hesitation that Desmond’s beginning to suspect is supposed to be deferential.
        He doesn’t want to draw extra attention to it in case she clams up, though. Just be casual and encouraging. “Yeah? What’s up?”
        “How do I begin earning a weapon?” That’s really encouraging. She might have Altaïr’s arrogance, but she really is sincere about trying to earn her place, not just assuming she deserves it.
        Actually, yeah, that’s a really good place to start. “Have you trained with any kind of weapon before?”
        “Not for long,” she admits grudgingly. He’s going to guess they briefly gave her one and then she started worrying them, so they took it away. Given that they may have been keeping her and probably at least one sibling captive, they probably deserved that, too.
        Lydia takes that opportunity to join the conversation as they come to a fork in the road and a crashed car. That had been common enough in Kingsmouth, but it’s rare to see one out here. Doesn’t look like there’s blood, smashed windows, or anyone still inside, though, so Desmond’s going to hope that the occupant got out safely. “Feel free to not answer; I’m just curious, but...why fire? That’s not common for Eastern dragons, is it?” She’s a lot like Alice in that she has absolutely no fear about just naming that when everyone else has been dancing around it.
        Alice shrugs, looking very unsure. “I...like it.” She isn’t dancing around the answer or pretending it isn’t a choice. It’s good she’s actually embracing preferences, even if those preferences might happen to be arson. She then adds, biting her lip, “...I also have not earned being a dragon yet.”
        “You’re still young, and you’ve got time. It’s fine that you haven’t skipped steps to get there before you’re ready.” That attitude of wanting it now is probably one of the biggest indicators he’d had of her relative age. He’s still not ruling out her maybe being chronologically older than he is, which is a weird sentence. He considers. “The next time we find a knife, it’s yours, okay? As long as you promise to be very, very careful with it.” He suddenly remembers Lydia’s rum-theft and adds quickly, “...As long as the knife doesn’t currently have an owner.”
        Alice nods, probably more strongly than she intends. “I will take great care of it and find a sheath for it.” She’s attempting to show him that she’s taking this very seriously.
        “Just make sure you don’t use it on just anyone. I’ll teach you how to know how to make that choice. It’s probably fine on zombies, but you have to be more careful than you’ve been before.” She is being attentive and taking very serious mental notes, so he has to hope that’s good enough.
        “You don’t know a lot of magic, do you?” Lydia sounds more resigned than disappointed, but it stings a little bit anyway.
        “Not really. I got a crash course a little while ago but I don’t necessarily know what I’m doing. Though I got a lot of practice healing, so I could probably teach that.” At least Lydia finds that funny.
        “It’s probably good for me to learn that sooner rather than later anyway,” she agrees with a sigh. Which, sure, it’s not flashy, but if she wants to go for the non-lethal stuff it’s probably better to learn that kind of backup stuff anyway.
        And then they round the corner around a bunch of rocks, and there it is, the lighthouse. That’s definitely the answer to the riddle because it’s a bright gold. They get interrupted by another group of zombies, of course. At least both Lydia and Alice seem to be trying more earnestly to stay out of bite or grab range, which is good, because he’s still tired and Alice had seemed to struggle with healing—hey, actually, that’s something he’s gotten a pretty good hang of, though maybe he really shouldn’t tell Shaun about that when they meet back up. He’d just worry and get really grumpy about worrying.
        The rain seems to be picking up a little, but it’s not bad enough that he thinks they need to hide in that abandoned house right in front of the cliff. The zombies really like congregating in this area, which is a pain, but every now and then he’ll hear the distant sound of a sniper rifle and judging by the angle of the shots...he pauses, eyeing it thoughtfully. Sniper in the lighthouse, probably. Generally a decent shot, but occasionally misses really clear shots, so maybe someone who knows what they’re doing but has wobbly aim for some reason. Old soldier, maybe? Drunk? Or...maybe whoever it is is hurt. Getting across those old wooden suspension bridges in the rain might be a little difficult, but if someone’s hurt up there and possibly bleeding out, he can’t just wait around down here on the ground, danger or no danger.
        Assuming this isn’t his wannabe killer. It’s possible, he guesses, but if that’s the case they’re even less competent than he thought and that’s saying something. Location-wise, it’d make sense if they’d fled over here, but if that’s the case who were Chelsea and Nate chasing? Just in case, he checks with Eagle Vision, and gets absolutely nothing. Anything that is there blends in so well with the gold of the lighthouse that he can’t see anything specifically, and pushing harder is absolutely going to give him a headache. It’d be easy to say that because the Eagle Vision says the lighthouse is important now it means that it’s safe to go there, but that would be a beginner’s mistake.
        “Do we want to wait here at the abandoned house for the rain to stop, or continue to the lighthouse?” he asks, curious about what they’ll say.
        Lydia snorts. “I ain’t afraid of no rain!”
        Alice just sort of shrugs when he glances at her. It’s probably a bit much to expect her to keep expressing opinions at this point. They can warm her up to it.
        Of course, Lydia almost promptly proves that maybe she should be a little afraid of some rain, given that she slips on the wet boards of the bridge pretty quickly. At least there’s the barest minimum of guard rails made of a couple pieces of rope and some netting that looks none too sturdy. She definitely wasn’t afraid of heights compared to Chelsea, but does end up clinging to the bridge rope for a bit after glancing down to the waters far, far below. And Draug. They’re practically swarming beneath. At least the sniper up in the tower gets the memo that they’re bad, too, because a shot occasionally takes one of them out, too. Also positive? Not one of the shots has actually headed in Desmond’s direction, which is good, because while he’s pretty sure he could pull them away to an Anima Well or shield them, it’d be a pain to have to try to do it while he’s this drained or to have to come all the way back here.
        Lydia is, however, pretty quickly energized again by the inside of the lighthouse. Maybe before the Animus, Desmond wouldn’t have gotten it at all, but he can feel the history in the ancient elevator, probably there since the original construction of the lighthouse. He’d still prefer scaffolding or maybe climbing up the outside, though at a glance there aren’t enough handholds and it’d probably be a challenge for him on the best of days in this rain. He trusts the strength of his arms and legs more than some old creaky machinery. Of course, he half gets his wish—the elevator goes up to a midway platform, and then they have to take more wooden staircase up to the very top, struggling to see and not slip. There’s no railing here, and even Lydia’s hugging the wall just a little.
        A voice calls out. At least the man doesn’t sound in pain. “It’s not enough that it looks just like one of my books out there, but then one of my protagonists has just gotta stroll in.”
        They do, Alice eyeing the man suspiciously, Lydia too relieved to be out of the rain to bother too much with strolling right up next to the makeshift desk and taking the plastic white lawn chair to sit in, setting the book aside.
        Maybe this is Krieg, the author. Desmond hadn’t really expected anything about the man; he’d just read a single book, and they didn’t include his whole life story on the back cover. Still, this isn’t exactly what he’d been expecting. The man reloads the rifle and casually shoots again, still talking. Desmond spots the bottle of bourbon and suspects any shaky aim is due to the man being drunk—he doesn’t look hurt, and he sounds like exactly the sort of functional alcoholic Desmond had to learn to spot while bartending. “‘That’s not fair,’ goes the dialogue. ‘I’m not a loner. I’ve got two other people with me.’ Two other people, mind you, questionably young women, but the truth is, you just put on the trappings of being social. You’re too sickeningly pure to even have the thought cross your mind. It’s on all the suckers reading the story with their dirty, dirty minds, isn’t it? Have you ever let somebody in in your whole goddamn life? ‘Course you haven’t. What’s there to say, been burned before, and the personal favorite ‘no one could ever understand my pain’. Shitty backstory, plenty of trauma, making you just that little bit broken, the kind of character that audiences eat up. ...You going to say anything?”
        Desmond shakes his head, trying not to let the guy get to him. “I didn’t want to interrupt your conversation.”
        “Oh, that’s good. Witty too.” He glances at Lydia. “Go ahead and make yourselves at home. If I send you back out in this and you fall on that staircase, the local sheriff’s going to be on my ass for more than just the drink.”
        Lydia proves her lack of conversational fear extends to authors, though maybe she has that much bravado because she knows she has backup if anything goes horribly wrong. “Like when you were driving? Was that your car out there?”
        Krieg grimaces. Desmond is inclined to believe the protest that’s no doubt coming; that’s the sort of face that one of the most belligerent customers gets at the thought of facing the world sober. “My agent’s GPS was trying to kill me. Wouldn’t be surprised if that was a sentiment shared by the owner. Hell only knows I’ve been more of a pain for him than my ex-wife.”
        Alice elects to perch on a table across the room—she really likes perching, maybe almost as much as fire, it seems—and Desmond makes room on the floor. He’d go help Krieg snipe a few zombies and maybe some Draug, but the rain’s getting to be too much to aim through and even the author seems to have decided it’s worthless at this point.