14595/Ex Umbra: Silence Must Be Heard

Ex Umbra: Silence Must Be Heard
Date of Scene:	03 April 2023
Location:	Dakota Apartment 1
Synopsis:	Blackagar catches falling stars. Grief leads to fury, fury to insight, insight to action.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Blackagar Boltagon

---

Jane Foster has posed:
Then...

The eleventh hour draws to a close as a titanic struggle for the skies rages over the Atlantic Starport. "Enough," whispered the Midnight King, felling a dark elf legion in the process.

The last throes of an invasion convulse the heavens and the earth. Svartalf dagger-ships streak through storm-tossed skies, pursued by fighter planes and shrieking missiles launched from the US carrier group caught in the choppy seas. Naval artillery unleashes salvos upon the massive dark elf heavy cruiser that hangs ominously in the sky, an alien behemoth dwarfing all before it. Cracking guns report in thunderous barks to take the craft down. Atlantean and Themysciran ground forces join with Wakandan soldiers under Diana's guidance. SHIELD agents and a strange assortment of Asgardian gods and sorcerers try to contain the venomous chaos that threatens to plunge the Earth into madness.

The Dreadnought codenamed Mannaz after a runic designation invented by one Jane Foster plunges into the oceanic depths. Its unstable, dying power-plant ascends rapidly into space in Superwoman's hands. Mortal forces hold the line on the quatrefoil-shaped port, while at the center, Malekith makes his last stand. Slumped Kursed and fallen dark elf sorcerers ring him. Thor and Jane fight on the front lines, the runic hammer and celestial axe hewing a path through to their main quarry: the blue-and-black-skinned man laughing through blood on his teeth.

Malekith flicks his wrist before being driven again to his knees by a horrendous blow. Blackened arcane talons seize around the woman in Asgardian armour and plunge through the metal finish. Lightning sparks and bites while Jane and Thor exchange blows again to bring the elf down.

<<Oh no.>> Pain; then mental connection snaps, moments later resurfacing from the corrosive void. The woman fights on in the flesh as the seconds run down.

Ashen recognition bifurcates her thoughts in the span of seconds that it takes for her armour to dissolve to sparks. <<No-- can't undo-->>

Ice-cold stasis flashes deep into the bone.

<<--final duty to fulfil.>>

Heavy weight drags down, the inexorable closing in as all sense of flesh and form evaporate.

Terrifying clarity resolves into a single idea: <<I love you.>>

A ghost's words come at a distance, barely audible and fading, shaped by tenderness and implacable calm, vehemence and absolution. <<You are chosen, Malekith.>>

She is gone. A necklace crashes to the ground where she stood, pulled down by the peerless crystals no longer supported by Jane's neck.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
Anguish.

Then silence.

It all happens in a moment, passing as a blink of the eye. The spot where Blackagar stands, tossing aside Dark Elf who press at him as if they were nothing. A turning of his head and then there it is. The silence. Silence that he knows too well, all his life.

Followed by Anguish. Loss.

His mouth opens and then he is gone.

Felt through a separate bond. Loyal, steadfast, Lockjaw appearing to snatch his master in his mouth and teleport both away before the sound of suffering can be made. Somewhere, in deep space, the resonance of massive energy being discharged sparks. The flash of a nova that dissipates shortly after.

And then... silence.

---

Several hours later is when he returns to the site. Waiting until many of the figures that were present are gone. Dressed in a simple dark coat, simple clothes, Blackagar lowers himself and picks up a necklace from the ground, brushing ash and dust from it as he holds it up to examine. There he remains in thoughtful silence.

"Who are you, sir?" a random soldier inquires.

No response follows. The soldier asks again, growing more insistent. Again silence. As he approaches, pulling a weapon unsure of threat or foe, placing a hand on Blackagar, the King rises abruptly and grabs the weapon, snapping it in two in his grasp, crumpling it.

No words.

None are needed. Blue eyes, filled with pain.

Filled with rage.

Turning, he steps into the sky and disappears into flight above.

Jane Foster has posed:
Now.

Some matters remain unchanged, though the world ever moves on. Programming continues in Jane Foster's absence at the Hayden Planetarium following plans set out weeks and months before. Employees carry on their duties; their director's absence for a few days isn't noteworthy. After a week or two, questions mount.

The Dakota apartment remains paid and locked up snug, the remnants of a lifetime together only touched by living occupants.

SHIELD carries on. The organization is too big to stumble over the loss of any agent. Personnel files take on a new status, and "lost in action" becomes a thorny issue for Director Fury. An AAR talks about a body in SHIELD's care. There is none.

For a year and more, that body in cryostasis hasn't changed except as permitted under Blackagar's watch.

For two years, it hasn't changed at all. This day is like any other to her blued lips and closed eyes. Whatever sensors are present won't track the least changes except a faint fluctuation of temperature amounting to a tenth of a degree.

Twenty-eight hours later... In a place with no atmosphere, micro-meteroid bombardments probably trigger Attilan's seismic devices all the time. Ping-pong sized fragments aren't at all unknown. What they never do, however, is burn a path through the inky void of the night sky. They might blaze when they hit the artificial atmosphere, but this collection of fragments sails at shocking speeds over Attilan's sky until at least a few hit the Moon's surface outside the city. Disturbingly close, in fact, sending a spray of grey dust in a column five hundred meters into the air. /Something/ lands with a thump, carving out a new crater.

Something that burns the coppery gold of a nova, radiating tremendous heat and its own peculiar light show.

Waiting.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
A dark and brooding king.

Attilan has survived without Blackagar's direct intercession for extended time for quite awhile. So when he is locked into his Royal chambers, not making appearances or interacting with the council, people continue on. The city and the people run themselves. The only mistake having been made was a statement made. "For the best, really," had been uttered. The doors to the chambers had flown open and once more Lockjaw and others had interceded to stop disaster; rather that individual had been banished. Perhaps in the future, they would return with understanding but the grief of Blackagar was such that none knew how to handle it; himself included.

The times that were not spent alone in the chambers were spent by the frozen body in thought. A difficult matter to find those thoughts, particularly when the passage of grief clouded it to a point of rage and vengeance only to dissipate again to the realm of grief. It was only due to the circumstance that the location of the body's chamber and its holding was beyond the main city and close to the landing spot of the asteroids that Blackagar is aware of it. The message arrives, informing him of something landing close to the city. An asteroid most likely but unusual, that an investigation would be sent. The message is dismissed with a wave of his hand as he slowly picked himself up from where he sat and headed for the door, to walk and investigate himself.

Jane Foster has posed:
Rather for the better not to send some unfortunate group of geologists or engineers out there to examine the new pothole a kilometer and some outside the well-mapped confines of the hidden city. No need to subject them to unnecessary radiation or gritty dust getting in the worst places, as lunar soil has the unfortunate talent for doing.

Unnaturally vibrant light crackles away, visible even at that distance. The source lies squarely within the crater carved out several meters deep, sending metallic blotches strobing off the sides of the bowl. Black glass veins radiate away, some still weeping molten slag, the red-hot basin doing nothing to the fragments glowing in that sea.

He'll probably want for a coat given debris raining down from the plume forms tiny glass droplets, pelting the ground inside and around the depression. How fitting; grief and its physical manifestation.

Any decent sightlines are limited until reaching the rim on foot or shortly before that from overhead. First, the meteorite hasn't been obliterated on impact, a rarity. There in the slowly solidifying pool of melted rock burns an unnatural fire around unnatural objects. Not hard to spot several shards composed of a gilded metal. The largest would fit in his palm, an upright arrow quivering slightly and producing a curiously clear noise. The other splinters range from postage-stamp to the length of his thumb.

Vibrations rise in a multitude, as many as there are shards, to keen in anger.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
A mystery.

Blackagar has no need or desire for mysteries in his life. There is sitting to be done. Brooding. Embracing malaise. A brief memory flashes, of someone bringing him food at some point before departing. Did he eat it? When was the last time he ate? This level of grief cannot be healthy for him. The thought crosses his mind, is wiped aside.

Dust that falls comes close to him before it falls to side along the invisible shield of energy that encompasses the Inhuman as he strolls across the Moon's surface. Thicker chunks hit and bounce off, rolling away to collide with others. Wiping clear the debris would be as easy as lifting a hand or speaking it so, but instead he simply steps around until reaching the rim and looking down inside. Meteorites are not uncommon, remnants rare as they are, but the presence of vibration and the presence of harmonics is quite unusual. A steady glare falls at the object. No, he does not have time for a mystery.

Jane Foster has posed:
Meteorites composed of gold might be fanciful creations of sci-fi writers, but rarely encountered in the solar system. Simply put, the low melting point of gold would leave a puddle or be vaporized on contact. Neither does a meteorite, metal or not, tend to resemble a slender blade slammed into the earth, albeit any crossguard in this fanciful comparison is sheared off utterly.

The broken shards, wrapped in shivering copper fire, all carry the same uncanny shape. Every last one, give or take their size.

Metal feathers.

Scattered plumes floating in lunar fire, caught in the blast radius they carved out at impact. And there's no mystery required to recognize those, since they've been seen on a Valkyrie's back any number of times. The blade fragment carries the same hue and composition, merely worked in another way.

And all of it matches a bracelet neither on a frozen sleeping woman or the dissipated soul. His necklace dropped. But that? It didn't.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
It is the precipice of turning and walking away when Blackagar takes a closer look, recognizing almost in an abstract way the odd layouts of the golden shards. His own knowledge of metals is limit but it is not requiring of genius intellect that there is a melting point. Considering only for a moment, he steps forward and slides down into the crater, bringing his foot down upon the rock pieces with an intent to break them away and to see the full item. Revealing it to his considering gaze.

Lowering himself to a squat, Blackagar stares in silent thought. Peculiar. A mystery.

A hope?

Jane Foster has posed:
Volcanic glass and shocked quartz don't adhere to the uru feather. The smallest, even, proves resilient to bonding, requiring far greater forces to blend the finely drawn metal edges to mere stone. The feathers are peculiarly cool to the touch considering the firebath Blackagar pulled them from.

They might bounce about if not collected, weighing terribly little. But they might as well be mountains to anyone else who tries.

The smallest flickers. //Clang! The sound of metal hitting metal, the clash of arms. A feminine laugh rises up. "Again! You'll never get it right if you let me throw you on the mat!" calls a trainer from SHIELD. //

//A darker evening, the air cool, coats the pedestrian-only thoroughfare of Cecil Court. Glimmers of amusement heard, not felt. There, a door; Amorino, a gelateria. The mischievous sparks from Jane on that not-so-long ago walk through London ring clear and bright.// The smell of ozone faintly dances over the airless void.

//Himself. Himself in a kitchen, making some kind of pasta. Himself again, walking through Attilan's markets. Himself anew, cleaving through disir on a Scottish loch. Himself now, staring down.// And in the largest fragment, his own image reflects, sheathed in bleeding flame. Anger there. Loss. Insistence, a shocked hint of a crackle. The sword's all edges to cut, a broken hint of itself, waiting to be drawn.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
Whatever it is that strikes him with these impressions, it is not taken well. In fact it is taken with rage and anger the boils from deep within. These are memories? Visions? Whatever it is the fact that loss is barely kept under control by Blackagar as is, anything to dredge them up pulls it erupting to the surface.

The last image of himself standing there looking...

His hand comes smashing down, striking the meteorite with an intent to not grab anything, or to just gather things. But to destroy it. That anger replacing curious inklings immediately. The blow takes energy from him, leaves him on his knees in near sobs but kept silent.

Jane Foster has posed:
The metal shards do no harm pulled away from the crater, unless someone's particularly unwise and somehow manages to receive a cut from their imperfect edges. Stamped lines form the delicate barbs in realistic detail.

Such things are forged in uru, one of the hardest and enduring substances known to the sentient races of the galaxy. While it can be broken down, utter destruction takes enormous effort.

In a flash of rage, he sends whatever remains scattering far and wide, sparks of fire and the thrill of ozone thick on the air. The larger piece shatters to smaller ones, spread across the lunar dust, taking a different path as they will.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
Destruction. That is the word that echoes in his heart as Blackagar remains there on knees and hands with head lowered. Everything within his mind and heart a torn jumble of immense pain. Fingers' crunch around moon dust as he squeezes it in his grasp, tighter and tighter until finally the dust is pressurized into tighter forms of rocks that are then crushed once more.

Time passes, how much he does not know nor does he care. Decisions tumble through his mind, the scenarios tied to the decisions becoming less and less of a concern. Consequences? What do those matter anymore.

Slowly, he starts to rise to his feet, begins the process of gathering the shards one at a time.

Jane Foster has posed:
Attilan carries on as it has since rising from the Moon atop ancient ruins of a long-ago civilization. Witness to rage and fresh grief, what do those gleaming towers attest to?

Scattered shards call to one another, the notes of a requiem. Or perhaps not so dour and dark a movement; they register the fresh bleeding shades of passion: anger, impulsive action, grief, self-recrimination, and probably a good lick of vengeance. Each is a note in the emotional texture that can be sensed by contact or close proximity, but their voices are exhausted. Probably even more than Blackagar -- though that's a near thing. The largest coppery feather cannot project its mutinous opinion of dark elves terribly far.

A crackle ripples from the copper-scorched fragments, struggling to reach the Silent King. Three feathers manage tremulous grumbles before falling silent to the undertow of exhaustion.

The clearest impression requires patience, his hands to the cooled metal enough to capture the wounded pride, the whisper. <<You know me. I could not hold her together. The honourless cur ripped her free with a magic unknown to we or me. He shattered her.>> Anger scores a scarlet path, the swing of a blade. It projects a faint image of a woman's alabaster face, dark eyes rimmed in black markings, utterly stylised. <<The laws of death are unbending.>>

The effort sends streams of liquid metal twisting, rubbing the raw gashes left in the violent descent to the Moon. They cannot heal. They are not healed. <<By holding her together I was broken. She went beyond where I could follow, though I know the way. She is not beyond you.>>

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
The impression falls on him, it is more akin to thought then word. A scowl appears at first, looking towards the gathered pieces that have been assembled together into a makeshift sack wrought from the jacket he has pulled off to use. The clothes underneath have the look of a man who is lost and wandering, not unlike the first time he was seen on Earth.

But it is the impression that staggers. Slowly he shakes his head, his own thoughts not truly projected by present. <<Too often my thoughts betray me now. False hopes. Anticipation of that which cannot be.>> Even in that, he hears what he believes his own voice. The Laws of Death are unbending.

She is not beyond you.

<<Death is unbending.>>

Jane Foster has posed:
<<The laws. Not Death.>> The ragged feminine response holds equal parts respect and weariness for the topic. A reverberation distorts the distinct presence projected into his mind, faded murmurs as the smaller bits pulverized from the longest uru shard try to hold together. Unless he's capable of thinking in chorus, Blackagar may be able to distinguish them from any common hallucination. Especially where a crackle of exasperation sounds not a little like thunder racing through the sky.

One small piece simmers in a firebath of ire pointed wholly outward into space, replaying smacking Malekith in the back of the head. Mostly to itself, but he can surely hear that if he tries. See the brief tableau over and over, too.

The smallest reflect the largest, when they don't simply spark against his jacket, throwing gilded striations against the blackness of the material and his own flesh. <<Death is not barred to you. You may walk the path, even alive.>> Fatigue slides past, a grey curl etched in mental furor. To be so weak, to be reduced to this. <<There is a cost to bodily cross the river. Death's law will not bend, true, a price must be paid. But living, you may seek the sunlit lands again.>>

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
Tired. So incredibly tired.

It is a sensation he shares. Who knows if he has even slept since that fateful day and if he had, what sort of quality it would have been. Perhaps it is why he has trouble focusing, or understanding, or even believing. The truth lays deeper, he doesn't want to believe. A glimmer of hope only to be crushed again. When hanging on by the slimmest of threads the sharpest blade is the most dangerous. But still...

The matching fatigue is felt.

<<I do not understand.>>

Jane Foster has posed:
<<I and we can tell you the way into Death. We cannot take the path. I do not live and breathe as her or you.>> A bitterly sharp laugh cracks with the resounding force of a small bolt, viciously illuminating, white-noise swirling through his mind. Flames seethe, harmless where they flicker off the heap of feathers he collected, their edges rubbing together, molten and unfitted.

Except when circumstance would have two slotted together like puzzle pieces, snapping into alignment, adding volume and clarity in the face of his fatigue. Whatever else, they do not radiate cruelty. Anger isn't wholly pointed at Blackagar; it smolders, mostly.

<<You can make the descent. You can come back. We held her together because she was stolen from the Underworld in the first place.>>

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
<<Descent. Into death.>> Blackagar repeats, the undertone of annoyance, of disbelief at the concept that had been working in his mind until now dissipating as he seems to consider it a bit more realistically. Until now, there has been the sensation that perhaps his own mind is creating things, that there isn't anything legitimate to his thoughts. But at the moment, now, he seems as if it is possible.

<<How.>>

Jane Foster has posed:
Crackling answers the Silent King. A luminous halo of flame retains some of that furious glow, though the metal is disturbingly cool to the touch, a reminder of what leapt across the blasted grey expanse of the Moon beyond his kingdom.

Abrasive sparks withdraw from the battered cuprous-gilt fragments he reduced to even smaller pieces, contained within the largest remaining. Blackagar may well have broken in grief, discovering a fresh nadir that entertains sparkling madness to conjure up a voice and false hopes from nothing. But small indicators could rationalise away the prospect of madness; does the madman ever openly question his sanity? Would lucidity cycle so quickly away? The manner of speech is understood, but the accent harbours qualities quite like any other. In the silence of his thoughts, the smoldering image comes alive. The pieces are too drawn out in their passions or their near-obliteration to make a smooth transition between fragmented images.

A strangely wrought, twisted key inscribed by runes lies in his palm, an antiquated design worn and weighed down by a patina of age.

Some lonely hillside turns its back on the sea. A river trickles out from a noxious cleft riven by thick shadows, the cavern sinking deep into the earth. Miasma floats out in a haze, and vague impressions of a broken column lie scattered against the scrub.

Feathers drawn into a broken arrow, an incomplete blade. The burning edge opens a ragged line, and beyond, mist and snow.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
Madness truly is a subjective reality, pain and suffering, grief is a realistic response to the situation. But to envision the things in his mind cause him to press the limits of what he should believe or should not. Images plague or bless him and in the end, his head shakes free with a soft growl leaving; a growl that rumbles the area.

<<I do not have time. Nor Patience. If there is a path, I will have it presented to me directly. Not with mystery.>> The clenching of his hand and the key within it emphasizing his position. Anger that boils just under the surface and threatens to burst free again.

Jane Foster has posed:
<<You have three.>> The rumbling doesn't impress whatever holds communion with him, a fact possibly because whatever smashed into the lunar surface is even more tired than he is. What crackles away lacks an inexhaustible supply of energy, burning down as the seconds pass. A multitude of voices threaded by fury bordering on rage remains largely one, hot but cooling while below the pitiless advance of time. Blackagar could fully crack the lunar regolith in a heap of fury and the voice in his mind wouldn't get any louder. <<Use a skeleton key to open the realm. Enter death where one of the Rivers meets the mortal world. Repaired, we can create the portal.>>

The softer growl ripples right back at him. Around him. A surge of the injured knowing their own weakness, a self-assessment found entirely wanting. <<Crossing the River requires a sacrifice to enter, not to return.>>

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
<<A sacrifice? Of what?>> Blackagar inquires back, turning the key over in his hand before sliding it into the pocket of his coat, absently dusting moon dust off as he begins the process of collecting remaining shards whilst waiting for an answer.

Three?

Rivers meet the mortal world?

The images he saw are chewed over, but still provide too little for him in his current state to consider.

Jane Foster has posed:
Three paths into death. Three routes to the same end. Let it not be said his invisible companion fails to offer choices in the world rather than a long, lead-bound railroad into murky places the breathing generally aren't meant to walk.

She -- they -- show him three options, and wait.

<<Always something significant to you. Sometimes it's flesh or blood, a memory, a secret. Some make promises.>> A pale spark of curiosity floats up. <<Do your people have no legends? Have you not heard of shedding your status or paying a coin to cross the River into death?>>

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
<<Legends of such are just that.>> Blackagar responds flatly in his mind, <<And I do not negotiate unless I choose to. None dictate to me the terms that I will, or will not, accept.>> He continues gathering the pieces together, collecting them into a bundle within a pouch he has formed with his shirt.

<<If I walk to the gates of Death, I will deal with the situation as I must. I do not trust those who impose treatise.>>

Jane Foster has posed:
A mirthless crackle of static answers him, the muted, tiny voices in chorus from the pieces he's managed to gather. All of them show signs of fragmentation and breakage. Finely graven lines that give each plume its detail abruptly halts where they were torn apart with vicious force and again, fresher breaks from Blackagar's own wrath.

<<Peas in a pod.>>