There are silver mycelium threading through the black sand in this dream, delicate hyphae structures like down feathers of lunar glow fanning out in seeking circles. One is right in front of his left eye, and Paul watches in abstracted fascination as the threads pinken while he lies half-curled on his side, his face slick and chilled with more of the same red pigment. It's preferable to thinking about what he's curled himself around, to watch this, to note the differing speeds and hungers each strand drinks him down with.
He's facing out towards the sea, where other blood-hungry engines clash with earthquake tremor force under a lashing storm against a shrieking, roiling beast, a blue-edged fluid figure weaving between both like the graceful crashing of waves, and these, too, are a comfort.
"Why won't you look at me?"
If a mad choir could sound hurt, this one does, and it's enough to draw a wet, sucking noise from Paul's throat that leaves a froth of metallic bubbles at the corner of his mouth, a sorry effort at a laugh. He never knows if it can tell what he thinks or not, if it even is capable of considering the question of what he thinks. There are times he thinks it does; there are times he thinks it looks past him, moments ahead, and chooses the sounds like a translator in a locked room, working mindlessly off a closed cypher fit against his heart, an idiot loop of torment.
Sharkskin fingers card through his sea-soaked hair, their minute teeth rasping at it. There is a body crouched behind him, full of a thing that may still think it's human, and it hums in a thousand throats, a swarm of insects, a forgotten lullaby.
"You're being so brave. Does it hurt?"
Down the beach, he hears the cries of voices that mingle so much less perfectly than the ones behind him, and the myriad of weapons raised beneath those voices. A seeking circle of life on black sand. He listens to that instead, lets them pulse against his wrists, throb in the devastation underneath his ribs.
"Oh." A sigh like the sea going out. "Oh, no."
There is a skull with hidden eyes wound with a chain in the center of another circle, the one that Paul lies on the edges of, a broken and scattered bloom of violence full of ruined fungi. They're right at the limit of his field of vision, half-seen, half-obscured.
He has to see how this ends. It's why he couldn't allow for a door. It's why he left a note, written in simple cypher, tucked under the top edge of the blanket on his cot. It's why he slipped away to the shrouded black stone cave his body is crumpled in back in the Waking World, his thoughts only of necessity, of purpose.
The hand in his hair fists, and Paul makes another wet sound as his head is lifted, pointed in the direction of the center, and he looks, because he always looks -
- it still hurts to attempt to laugh, but this time it doesn't stop him, his body shivering with it as he sees the thing that wasn't there before, steaming as if freshly poured. Paul knows that it will be black, sweetened with two sugars. He knows the kindly weight of it in his hands. He thrums with knowing, with triumph, with vindication, with salt-and-metal foam spilling out of his mouth faster than sound does.
His reward for this is being rolled onto his back, a knee laid over his chest to draw another sound entirely out of him, but that's all right; that's all right, as the choir looks down on him behind its featureless caul, a hand on his cheek smearing what's left of the facepaint he rose out of the surf wearing under its passing thumb.
(The Anchorite Dying, she'd said, her application meticulous, and Paul had only smiled softly, his mouth obediently shut.)
"Mimicry." The choir hisses, tenderly. "Brood parasitism. Oh, Paul. What have you done?"
There is a shadow over them. There is a wave. There is a cold, endless ocean, and a ruined skull with a half-smile and open eyes.
Paul wakes up. It is a surging lunge into consciousness, his body trembling and foreign to him for seconds after as he aligns himself back into unbroken skin, into unopened flesh, gagging on sour-rotten lime and brack-water until he collapses fully back into the present moment. He lies on his back and watches his breath mist in the meager light of his still-burning incense for a while. He sits up, tugging his sweat-soaked clothing into some semblance of order, and gathers up his things.
The walk back to camp isn't a long one. He takes his time going back anyway, the carefully calculated fungal dosage still enough to make him vulnerable, wide-eyed, wondering. There is a tender ache under his ribs, a thing he has yet to name. His blood whispers just below the edges of his awareness.
Paul Atreides stands at the edge of a circle of living things, and looks in. He sees what has been done. He judges it to be good. He makes his way back to his tent and crawls into his cot, where he sleeps - truly, deeply sleeps, dreamless and restful - for the first time in days.
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Fated Leviathan Visions
First Vision
content warning: human remains, dead animals (non-graphic), impalement]
Second Vision
content warning: violence, underage character discussing drug use]
Third Vision
content warning: dead fish, descriptions of fish innards, fish body horror, psychological horror, body horror, amputation, eye horror]
Fourth Vision
There are silver mycelium threading through the black sand in this dream, delicate hyphae structures like down feathers of lunar glow fanning out in seeking circles. One is right in front of his left eye, and Paul watches in abstracted fascination as the threads pinken while he lies half-curled on his side, his face slick and chilled with more of the same red pigment. It's preferable to thinking about what he's curled himself around, to watch this, to note the differing speeds and hungers each strand drinks him down with.
He's facing out towards the sea, where other blood-hungry engines clash with earthquake tremor force under a lashing storm against a shrieking, roiling beast, a blue-edged fluid figure weaving between both like the graceful crashing of waves, and these, too, are a comfort.
"Why won't you look at me?"
If a mad choir could sound hurt, this one does, and it's enough to draw a wet, sucking noise from Paul's throat that leaves a froth of metallic bubbles at the corner of his mouth, a sorry effort at a laugh. He never knows if it can tell what he thinks or not, if it even is capable of considering the question of what he thinks. There are times he thinks it does; there are times he thinks it looks past him, moments ahead, and chooses the sounds like a translator in a locked room, working mindlessly off a closed cypher fit against his heart, an idiot loop of torment.
Sharkskin fingers card through his sea-soaked hair, their minute teeth rasping at it. There is a body crouched behind him, full of a thing that may still think it's human, and it hums in a thousand throats, a swarm of insects, a forgotten lullaby.
"You're being so brave. Does it hurt?"
Down the beach, he hears the cries of voices that mingle so much less perfectly than the ones behind him, and the myriad of weapons raised beneath those voices. A seeking circle of life on black sand. He listens to that instead, lets them pulse against his wrists, throb in the devastation underneath his ribs.
"Oh." A sigh like the sea going out. "Oh, no."
There is a skull with hidden eyes wound with a chain in the center of another circle, the one that Paul lies on the edges of, a broken and scattered bloom of violence full of ruined fungi. They're right at the limit of his field of vision, half-seen, half-obscured.
He has to see how this ends. It's why he couldn't allow for a door. It's why he left a note, written in simple cypher, tucked under the top edge of the blanket on his cot. It's why he slipped away to the shrouded black stone cave his body is crumpled in back in the Waking World, his thoughts only of necessity, of purpose.
The hand in his hair fists, and Paul makes another wet sound as his head is lifted, pointed in the direction of the center, and he looks, because he always looks -
- it still hurts to attempt to laugh, but this time it doesn't stop him, his body shivering with it as he sees the thing that wasn't there before, steaming as if freshly poured. Paul knows that it will be black, sweetened with two sugars. He knows the kindly weight of it in his hands. He thrums with knowing, with triumph, with vindication, with salt-and-metal foam spilling out of his mouth faster than sound does.
His reward for this is being rolled onto his back, a knee laid over his chest to draw another sound entirely out of him, but that's all right; that's all right, as the choir looks down on him behind its featureless caul, a hand on his cheek smearing what's left of the facepaint he rose out of the surf wearing under its passing thumb.
(The Anchorite Dying, she'd said, her application meticulous, and Paul had only smiled softly, his mouth obediently shut.)
"Mimicry." The choir hisses, tenderly. "Brood parasitism. Oh, Paul. What have you done?"
There is a shadow over them. There is a wave. There is a cold, endless ocean, and a ruined skull with a half-smile and open eyes.
Paul wakes up. It is a surging lunge into consciousness, his body trembling and foreign to him for seconds after as he aligns himself back into unbroken skin, into unopened flesh, gagging on sour-rotten lime and brack-water until he collapses fully back into the present moment. He lies on his back and watches his breath mist in the meager light of his still-burning incense for a while. He sits up, tugging his sweat-soaked clothing into some semblance of order, and gathers up his things.
The walk back to camp isn't a long one. He takes his time going back anyway, the carefully calculated fungal dosage still enough to make him vulnerable, wide-eyed, wondering. There is a tender ache under his ribs, a thing he has yet to name. His blood whispers just below the edges of his awareness.
Paul Atreides stands at the edge of a circle of living things, and looks in. He sees what has been done. He judges it to be good. He makes his way back to his tent and crawls into his cot, where he sleeps - truly, deeply sleeps, dreamless and restful - for the first time in days.