lestercraft | TLV: IC Inbox

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TLV: IC Inbox

"This is Arthur Lester. I'm not available right now, but do leave a message and I'll find the time. A-a voice message, please."

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[OOC: Please note Arthur is blind, so audio format is strongly ICly preferred, but by God don't let that stop you]

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He hums softly.

"John is... part of a being, an eldritch god, whose scope of power far outstrips anything possible in the entirety of Earth's potential. Even he couldn't separate us without causing irreparable harm, not if we weren't willing. A-and we weren't, obviously, not until John had somewhere safe to reside that wouldn't send him immediately back to- to essentially Hell, for all intents and purposes."

He makes a face. "Strange got it into his head that John was manipulating me into keeping him, that I wasn't of sound mind to make that estimation or understand my circumstances with him." He puts his mug down on one of the flat counters on the couch. "We were fine, of course, we always are. It was just a fucking painful experience."

Which makes me wonder how 'fine' you really were. Or are.

"He was in Hell?"

A pause before.

"Not... not running it or anything?
He doesn't seem the type. "

She's trying to put the pieces together from everything he's said.

"N-no, no," he chuckles softly. "John was, um- no."

It's hard to know how much he should say about John's experience - certainly he's not bringing up the second time, but their meeting surely was fair game by this point.

Though- he thinks for a moment, and asks instead.

"You mentioned in that- dream we shared. A-and I promise this is relevant, but - what is the Dark Place, exactly?"

"I don't have a satisfying answer for that," she warns, right from the getgo, "but... it's... it's also a Hell, frankly. I've been there, not for long but- it... feeds on your insecurities, your fears. Everything is hostile there, even the things you think of as familiar and normal, they get... twisted into something almost true enough to believe. It tries to tear you down so it can remake you into something it can use."

She sips her coffee and shakes her head.

"It's full of phantoms and shadows; nothing is safe."

A glance down in her coffee.

"My grandfather and his brother are there now. By choice, for some reason. I don't really understand it. I'm worried about them, honestly."

"In our universe we have the Dark World," he returns simply. He's rather glad that he doesn't have to explain the core concept and can focus on the differences. "It's... similar. A dumping ground for everything that dies, in every timelines. An endless expanse of nightmares, where- nothing is safe and time has even less meaning than here, it moves differently."

He glances up at the ceiling as he leans back into the couch. "Before John and I met, he spent- what must have been ten years in reality, was more lifetimes than he can remember, long enough a-and violent enough to completely destroy his sense of who or what he even was. He didn't have a name when we met, he chose John later on."

He angles his head to look at Saga. "So. That's where we'll end up going if we do eventually die for good in our world."

A dumping ground.

She can't help that it makes her wonder if they are the same place. After all, it's not a lake, it's an ocean. And the depths of the ocean are a very different thing from the shore. A place vs a world.

Not important right now, but she'll nod to what she's saying. She can't help but ask, however-

"And is there anyone there to help you get out if it happens?"

His expression cools, closing off, but it's not aimed at her.

"John's being there was- an unusual circumstance. He didn't have a physical anchor in the human world - he was bound to a ritual book, one made to trap a different entity entirely. When there wasn't someone holding the book for him to engage with, he was- trapped there, until someone opened it so that he could possess them."

His voice is neutral though, statements of fact that he's fully come to accept as is.

"That sounds a whole lot like a 'no'," she says, and it's clear that there's some thinking going on behind her eyes. Her fingers curl around her cup for a moment. Finally-

"I ever mention my deal to you, Arthur? The reason I accepted the job offer for this place?"

There's immediate curiosity in his eyes when his attention flicks back to her, bordering suspicious, but he shakes his head lightly.

"You haven't, no. I try not to assume those for people."

"Which is good, considering," and by that she means 'considering all the very strange and different people here' but in this case, it's actually a little funny.

"The lake that we were near during the dream... it's what's called a Threshold, a place where the Dark Place touches our world. A part of the Dark Place that had sort of... broken off and become a version of someone else, called himself Scratch, he took someone right in front of me, a man named Jaakko Koskela. He and his brother had set up a 'cult'" and she holds up her fingers to put the quote marks around that, "which was really just a sort of supernatural neighborhood watch dedicated to protecting their town from what came out of the lake. They used the spooky connotation of a 'cult' to keep people out of the woods, make it harder for the Dark Place to pull people in."

She breathes in and breathes out.

"My deal is to get him back. Because he wouldn't have been in a jail cell, easy pickings for Scratch, if it wasn't for me. I should have seen what the group was all along, but I was too busy dealing with... with everything else. I've dealt with enough cults; I thought they were the enemy. Then I found out the truth."

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