towerofanimus | 1st Spell

Who: Tara and whoever she happens to stumble across
What: A newcomer tries to find her way out, and instead finds a hell of a lot of trouble along the way.
When: All day
Where: The floors listed below
Format: Commentspam or prose, I'll copy whatever you give me
Warning: T for danger and possible violence

Awareness returns all in a rush. The haze and disorientation that always follow teleporting are a little slower to fade. But the first thing Tara knows is that she's on her back, resting on what feels like a mattress.

Opening her eyes reveals a ceiling. It's not a terribly distinctive ceiling. Tara attempts to turn her head, to see and take in more of the room and maybe get a sense of where she is. And the failure of her body to respond to even that simple command is enough to confirm for her that she can't move.

A few more seconds of increasingly desperate and entirely fruitless attempts to move result, before Tara gives up and relaxes her whipcord tense muscles with a whimper. Actually speaking up takes psyching herself up a bit, but finally she manages it.

"Um...h-hello? Can...c-can someone please help me? Or at least, m-maybe tell me how I got here? I...I don't remember. A-And, I...kind of can't seem to move. At all."

Later on, after the sleep paralysis has worn off, Tara can be found wandering the halls of the second dormitory level. She's fished a change of clothes out of her trunk, as well as - after some hesitation - her knife, and feels a bit more herself in a shirt and pants with the knife hanging off her belt. Both hands are clamped tight around her collar, her pale fingers obviously trying to tug it looser, to find any give in it and failing. Indigo liquid runs through it, marking her as an official resident of the tower, now. Her shoulders are hunched and the girl darts a nervous glance at every door she passes and every person she sees. But anyone who looks back will find Tara hastily looking away, staring fixedly at her feet and trying not to be noticed.

***

Tara is sitting at the top of the staircase, eyeing the perilous way down with wariness and exhaustion. She's bleeding and bruised - blood streams down her arm from what appear to be claw marks in her shoulder, and the back of her shirt is torn, as though something made a grab at her as she fled and just barely missed.

In her efforts to magically urge the skin of her arm to knit a little more quickly, she's not liable to notice anyone else on the staircase right away, or her immediate surroundings at all. Given the poor state of repair it seems to be in, this might not be a very good thing for either of you.

***

After learning even what little she has and seeing even what little she's seen of the tower thus far, Tara is reluctant to relax, even here. The garden that spreads out before her looks lush, beautiful, and peaceful. But there's danger here, and strangeness. She only needs to run her hand along her collar to know that.

But, even so, Tara finds herself wandering out into the garden, drinking in the quiet and letting the scent of flowers soothe her shattered nerves just a bit. She'll stay here, for just a while, wandering the meadow. Every so often, she'll stoop, pick a flower, and weave it into a growing daisy chain she seems to be crafting. But at the slightest sound, the slightest hint of another presence, she goes tense, gaze darting about for signs of danger. If you've just entered the garden, you'll likely feel Tara staring fixedly at you, a half finished daisy chain hanging in her hands, wondering if you're a threat and what she should do if you are.

***

Anyone coming up on the steps leading up on floor twenty two or the steps leading down on floor twenty four are liable to suddenly run into Tara coming the other way. She hurries either up or down the steps with a rather lost expression on her face, to immediately be replaced by one of surprise as she nearly runs into anyone. "O-Oh, my god, I'm so sorry..."

But then, with a frown, she stares up back the way she'd come with an expression of determination. "Not again..."

She turns, as though to start off on the stairs again.

***

Tara is dismayed to find that the staircase seems to simply end, here in the cafeteria. And, after all the walking she's done and the fright she's endured to get down this far, she absolutely refuses to accept it.

So she begins to search. Tara is growing increasingly aware that she's trapped, but refuses to accept it with her last threads of stubbornness. Attempting not to catch the eye of the other people here, Tara begins to pace the perimeter of the room, running her hands along the walls, searching for hidden catches or secret doors. Finding nothing, she examines the floor, seeking signs of trap doors. Finally, in a state of agitation and the in the center of the floor, Tara gives a frustrated growl and stamps her foot. She says a word in Latin that would, under ordinary circumstances, unlock any locked door within her range. But nothing happens, and she knows it, and finally Tara slumps to her knees in defeat. Her stomach feels impossibly empty. Maybe the people who run this madhouse will at least have the decency to feed her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Wwe're about thirty floors up right noww," Eridan grumbles. "And the floors are gettin more an more dangerous the higher you go. The first library is about ten floors dowwn from here."

He reaches out and grabs her hand, quickening his pace as they approach the first of the more dangerous floors. "Best be quick."

"R-Right." She hurries along to keep up with him, casting a glance out the window just before they start down the spiral staircase. Clouds drift by outside, the sky stretches endlessly and no matter how hard she'd looked, Tara couldn't see the faintest glimpse of the ground below.

"Is it r-really only thirty floors? We, we must be higher up than that."

"Lots a things don't make any fuckin sense here," Eridan says firmly. "There's lots a places wwhere powwers don't wwork, an you can't fly from the roof no matter wwhat. There's places that are wway bigger than they could be, an others that just don't seem to exist at all only there's room for them."

"S-So I'm assuming there's no door out of here, either. The, um, the roof doesn't matter. I-I couldn't fly that far anyway."

She moves a hand to her clawed up shoulder, testing the healing. Then she bites back a gasp of pain. Healing is not going well. Maybe they're moving onto a floor that's upsetting her magic.

Or maybe she's just gone a bit too long without draining someone. Returning to Sunnydale...upset her routine, somewhat.

"Y-Your collar is...different than mine."

"You can't fly off a the roof, anywway. I tried it once, my first fuckin day." Taiki had said he could fly. And with Eridan on his back, they had plummeted to their deaths.

At the gasp, Eridan looks at her with concern. "Wwas it a towwer monster that got you? There's a healin' place wwhere maybe wwe should go first, to get you patched up."

He touches his collar. "They havve different colours, but I don't knoww wwhy."

"You tried it? But...you, y-you must have managed something. I mean..." Here she gestures, managing to encompass Eridan in all his faint fishiness. "H-Here you are."

Of course, she already had an idea that death couldn't quite stick here. There was Willow, after all.

"Y-Yeah. Big a-and ugly and...mostly big. Kind of familiar, but I-I don't think it's anything like we fought, um, back home."

Tara pauses at the bottom of the stairs, something faintly bothering her but not something she can place. "I-It's okay," she says, in a slightly odd voice. Despite herself, she finds herself glancing back up the way they'd come. Two floors down, right? So...why couldn't she remember the one they'd just come through.

"I, um...I-I can give myself a, um, nudge in the right direction."

Eridan's quite familiar with this phenomenon, and he pulls Tara away firmly. "Don't look for that floor," he said. "I'vve seen people, they just wwaste awway goin up and down."

He swallows and rubs his throat under the collar. "Death don't stick here. You die, an you just wwake up after on your sleepin rectangle, all healed up as if it nevver happened."

It's like being pulled out of a dark, cramped tunnel, being tugged away from that stairway. Tara blinks dazedly, almost glances back, and then thinks better of it and continues following Eridan. It's not as though she doesn't have plenty else to focus on.

"...has Willow ever died?"

Eridan doesn't answer at first, his fins and whole body drooping a little. "Yeah, she died once."

"What happened?"

She has no designs on vengeance...okay, she has a few designs on vengeance. Justice. Whichever it is. The concepts have rather blurred together in Tara's mind.

Eridan glances at her uncomfortably. "It's complicated. It wwas towwer security wwho killed the both a us, though." That much is very true, but it leaves out a whole lot of detail.

"S-Security?" This is news to Tara. "But...w-we're guests. We're, w-we're supposed to be...w-what is tower security, anyway? Like, um, l-like those monsters up there?"

Happy. That was the word Tara had wanted to say, but even now, she knew it would have been an idiotic thought to finish. "Be happy here". That's what the note had said.

And yet, here they were in an apparent deathtrap.

...Tara was feeling more and more at home by the second.

"Wwe're not fuckin' guests. This place is a towwer full a traps an monsters an misery and it's all one big experiment," Eridan snarls angrily, stamping down the stairs with more violence than necessary. "An if anyone gets uppity, these humans wwith red collars come an they cut your head off! Wwhich is wwhat happened to Wwill an me after they murdered my moirail an I got a little pissed."

For several seconds, Tara doesn't reply. It's partly because they've just stepped into the reference library, and she's looking around for Willow, thinking that they finally must have reached their destination now.

But she doesn't see her here.

"...a-at least it's quick."

If Eridan makes a habit of getting mad and pissing off tower security, Tara knows that it's only a matter of time until she herself gets her head cut off. She won't let Eridan do anything stupid without trying to intervene, because that would upset Willow, and she won't let Willow get hurt. Which she knows will probably result in her getting her head cut off.

"I-Is this it?"

He lifts a hand and rubs his throat self-consciously. He definitely doesn't intend to piss off tower security again. Then again, it's unlikely that he'll find Feferi dead in his bed again.

"Not quick enough." He looks around. "Wwell, this is one a the libraries. She could be here."

"Is there another? Um, I-I can keep going on, to that one. A-And you can look here. Or...o-or vice versa. W-Whichever, I guess."

Although she won't say as much, Tara would rather the burden of explanations be on Eridan.

Yeah, maybe a good idea. [He gestures around] Okay, you look here, an I'll hurry dowwn to the other one, and if wwe find her wwe leavve a little message on the netwwork, and if not wwe both head to the cafeteria to meet up.

R-Right. [Cafeteria. That sounds good either way. It's been an exhausting day, and Tara is hungry. Even plain oatmeal would go down all right.]

Um...b-be careful. Please.

[Because it sounds like Willow would be sad if anything happened to him.

And, with that, Tara is going to turn away and hurry off into the stacks, softly calling Willow's name.]

1st Spell

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