17532/Ex Umbra: Prism Through Time

Ex Umbra: Prism Through Time
Date of Scene:	31 March 2024
Location:	Asgard
Synopsis:	Blackagar takes a moment to recover.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Blackagar Boltagon
Tinyplot:	Praxidike

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Jane Foster has posed:
Another path crossed, another Jane not his own met and lost. Another lifetime encountered from a point of no return.

Blackagar's return to the quiet chamber comes without fanfare, though the proverbial door slams shut on the resonating howl of laughter and his voice obliterating a device meant to contain the power cosmic. He enters into a space defined by light from the stained glass oriel window mounted high on the wall. Glistening gold and milky silver fragments splash across him and the floor. Looking up reveals the arching bridge over a dark river, albeit subtly broken. The shining span no longer reaches from one bank to the other, cleaved in half at the center. Dark water shot by wavelets and iridescent blue currents adds a dramatic element not present from before.

The only other element is the silence. The House of Wisdom holds its secrets and memories close, but his finely attuned senses might realize the hush lasts longer and carries a deeper texture than before. Daisy and Jemma do not answer Jessica's questions down the long hallway. Jessica, arguably the lightest footed of them all, leaves no hushed tempo in her wake headed for one of the many rooms. For the first time he detected the Inhuman hacker, he may well and truly be alone.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
Each step is taken staggeringly, weight on his shoulders invisible as he moves. So close, that last confrontation with Malkeith had brought him nearly to the brink, the thought had crossed his mind.

~Destroy this whole world, end him.~

A task he could have taken. But instead he had held back. Hadn't he? That world was still on it's spiral to damnation, not solely of his fault, it was only sped along. The silence of the cave is welcomed now, and slowly, he sinks to the ground, sighing, shuddering around him while doing so.

Jane Foster has posed:
Destroy a world with a word. End it all in a slaying stroke that most would take entirely for granted, putting thoughts to a sharp rebuke or uttering an angry snap.

His choice reverberates down the dimensions strung like pearls on the boundless throat of eternity. Wheeling galaxies form hazy pinpoints, home to countless worlds around billions of stars. From any point in the floating House, Blackagar can see the cosmos. A sliver of it, true, but a glimpse all the same.

Light remains upon him, solid and barely changing. Wavering glimmers in the patchwork only amount to the slow waltz of the heavens outside, in the vast beyond of creation.

Jane Foster has posed:
<<Your work was never without cost. The consequence mirrors the action.>> Statements form in his psyche as they have all along, measured and distant in their own gravitas. Flickering copper rims the edges of his vision, afterimages left afterward. <<All that remains is what you will do.>>

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
A wry smirk that would accompany a chuckle in many others, but not within him. What he will do. That amount has never been a concern, nor was the price, or cost, however it was to be phrased. The truth of the matter was even if these realities he were entering were real, something he holds in some doubt, every one he's seen was on the precipice of utter destruction anyway.

Would someone visiting his see it as well for this reality?

~Spare your platitudes. There is only a handful left to be done.~ At what price? What will she return /to/?

Jane Foster has posed:
<<As you prefer.>> The fiery afterimages remain, as they do so often when he looks around, a factor that hasn't much changed when entering here or other places. <<They exist.>>

Silence anew greets Blackagar by his own preference.

At what price indeed?

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
~So do dreams, existence is not a precursor to relevance. Every one of these is on the verge of destruction. Is that the price to be paid? To witness the downfall and the end of civilizations? Even the ones where they can avoid it, they refuse to. Arrogance and pride.~

Even though he said to be left alone, he retorts anyway. Blackagar's body leaning against the wall behind him, sitting on the ground now with one knee raised and an arm outstretched over it with head hanging.

Jane Foster has posed:
Some questions, even the Midnight King receives no answer to. He can shout to the cosmic powers, demand answers of the Skyfathers, or raise wondering opinions to Eternity's star-dappled visage hidden behind the endless darkness. Replies are another matter.

The House remains peculiarly still in that moment between idea and action, the strike and the spark, hinged on the precipice of what may be.
He can sit forever, he can leave. Time is not present here.

Not unless he crosses the threshold through the other doors, walking into the war against the sea of tents, the glittering fractal patterns that Daisy passed into, or under the diadem twined in roses.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
Rest, it is what he needs. Time may not exist, but it does not mean the wear on his mind is insufficient. When was the last time he slept? Much less took a break of some regard? Constant effort, continually going on and on and on. When will it end. His eyes drift every closer to closed, mind wandering away in a brief moment.

The villa. Where his mind turns to, the olive trees and the dock where the fish is dropped off in the evenings. Calm, peaceful. What was the plan? Weren't they discussing... something?

Jane Foster has posed:
To sleep, perchance to Dream.

For in that sleep, what dreams may come?

The calamity of so long an ordeal wears on even the strongest convictions and healthiest bodies. If Blackagar sleeps, then he no doubt will do so on the floor. Furniture exists in the House of Wisdom; upholstered benches, padded windowseats, spots remembered from a life carved out in academia and a comfy house in Seattle, the shared apartment in Boston, the Dakota in New York. Elsewhere and elsewhen. No beds.

But to dream is to find solace, medicine for a broken self.

Dream and Sleep are brothers to death, after all. But sleep as he will, knowing neither hunger or thirst, he will have to wake.

Blackagar Boltagon has posed:
The dreams are not dreams, they are wanderings, the slow meander of a mind that is taken to place after place, location after location.

Event after Event.

Reliving what was, what could be, what may have been in other places. It all becomes a muddled existence, how much of it is sleep induced, how much is just pondering? It is all the same, one in each. The sound that awakens him could be his own, a shift of a foot or some other reverberation in this place.

~It is dangerous to sleep here, not enough time, you know this,~ his own voice echoes in his mind, accosting him.

Jane Foster has posed:
<<You are mortal where Time cannot flow. A conundrum.>> The whisper, oh so far away, dances on the threshold of howling coronas and stellar furnaces erupting from the dense contraction of gasses in a swirling rotation to something entirely new.

Little in the House has changed if he cracks an eye open. No sign of the three women returned from their respective jaunts.