5916/Astral Flux: A Woman Scorned

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Astral Flux: A Woman Scorned
Date of Scene: 04 December 2018
Location: Astral Plane
Synopsis: Emma visits the Astral Plane to undo the wrongs she helped perpetrate.
Cast of Characters: Shadow King, Emma Frost
Tinyplot: Astral Flux


Shadow King has posed:
    The Astral Plane may not be under the Shadow King's full control anymore, but he had spent so long it in, with so much power at his whim, that it is a destroyed and corrupted shell of what it once was. The citadel of the Shadow King's creation still stands, ebony and pulsing with his emotional heart and his sheer level of greed and sadistic nature. It stands clearly as 'other' in this place, now that he is no longer bending the rules to make it feel like it made sense. No, his pieces, scattered, are tumors in the landscape of the Astral.

Emma Frost has posed:
Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. And if there were anyone who understood both the sentiment, and the execution, it was Emma Frost, a woman who lived up to her name in more ways than one.

Of course at first she'd held out hope - she'd so convinced herself that she was special.. that /HE/ was special.. And of course he hadn't been. In the end, he'd been nothing more than any other man she'd ever met who'd played her along a thin line and used her for what she could offer.

That he'd actually wanted her mind hadn't, in the end, made a difference. Ultimately, he, too, had used her up, and tossed her away.

All of which had left Emma in a brewing state of discontent, until she'd found the tethers to the man she'd bound herself to him with and shredded them with a thought. Well, several thoughts, and some well placed psychic strikes of her own. All of which were likely made easier and possible by his already ignoring her. No matter. She had no use for him anymore either. Or so she told herself.

True to her nature, though, there was goodly amount of damage that Emma could still do to make him regret what he'd lost. As Jean had pointed out, the Astral Plane was free of the bulk of his influence, but not entirely so, and what was freed was damaged and drifting. All of which Emma had plans to make more difficult for him to keep control or ever regain a foothold there again. Well, keep control she could at least manage, or begin.

Cue Emma Frost settling herself in the penthouse suite of Hilton Ritz, and entering the Astral Plane, first to assess, and then, to undo what was done.

Shadow King has posed:
    The Astral plane is not populated like it was, but it is far MORE populated, in that it is not bereft of most life. The Shadow King had kept it as his personal private plane, where some of those whom he controlled were allowed to walk, and those barriers are lifted. It doesn't make it a fun place to be, and many would not WANT to be there yet.

    Yet there are some. There are flickers of someone else here and there, some just looking around. There's one actively seeming to explore that dark citadel, though whose side some of these psychic traces are on? Hard to tell from just a glimpse.

Emma Frost has posed:
Emma didn't expect it to be a happy fun place. In fact, she rather expected that it would be a place few would want to fear to tread. It's what she would have done if she were him and being forced to retreat or abandon her playground. She'd have littered it with traps and dangers and things left to go amok and wild all out of spite and as a last thumb bitten at her enemy.

In short, she'd have left an icy fuck you in place.

So that's exactly what she expects when she arrives. Which leaves her to assess the place before she does anything else. If she's going to work anything here, she doesn't want to fall pry to whatever dangers may have been left behind. And, in light of that, she also bolsters her reserves to protect against her former obsession.

One thing she does know she wants to do, if not now, then soon, is to release that poor thing she'd helped further bind into this place. Or at least ascertain if he'd been freed yet or not.

Shadow King has posed:
The thing that Emma remembered from so long ago is ... STILL THERE. It is deep inside the very walls of the citadel. The 'bricks' of thought themselves will need to be torn apart, or a more creative way to get inside to it will need to be found. But this place is a world of creativity: of finding some other way outside of the mental box to reach a goal.

    The limits here are thoughts. And for the talented psychics, those are rules just asking to be broken or adjusted.

    The poor thing, when reached for along the threads, does react. It has been lonely, cut away. And the creature which held it for so long has not been there, and perhaps in its way, the poor mind has started to awaken, only to discover the prison it is tucked away in.

Emma Frost has posed:
There's a beautiful moment from a film, where the Goblin King enacts an Esher painting.

Emma as it happens, had never appreciated that tidbit of pop culture so much before now, but really, all that had been left behind there was an exercise in thinking slant.

Of course the steps wouldn't lead just to him. Of course the place was waylaid with dead ends and walls that closed in behind you. But once you stopped looking at is as what was there, but instead, at what was not, it became a rather more different exercise.

Emma does have the threads to follow, after all, and as long as she doesn't lose those threads, and allows herself to merely slip along the path that is, rather than what is seen..

The challenge, of course, being that Emma does not give up control lightly, and for this exercise to work she either has to believe she controls the outcome, or to give up control.

Shadow King has posed:
    She has help. The poor mind she seeks is not just one place. He is melded into the citadel like a horrible piece of the very walls and floor. His awareness guides, like a little ball dropped down those steps, rolling, and twisting down through a stairway or passage that doesn't really exist, when you look at it from the correct angle.

    The mind is there, in the essence of the 'throne', as well as other pieces of the place. It is aware of her, in a quiet way, a prisoner with no voice left to stare silently out from the surfaces it is bound to....

Emma Frost has posed:
Reaching him, it seems, is simpler than what remains.

Of course reaching him isn't quite as simple as she imagined it would be. And the fact that his presence has been ingrained into so much of what is there - foundationally so - is more than slightly problematic.

"I would apologize," Emma starts quietly. "I doubt it would help. Still, mistakes were made. Many my own."

In Emma speak, that ranks as apology. What it doesn't do, however, is help her ponder where to go. It was all rather more complicated than she'd first expected it to be. However, now that she sees what has been accomplished here, neither is she surprised.

"You are most likely to die," she says with calm, and perhaps the barest hints of sympathy. It was, after all, not his fault. He was as any of the others the Shadow King had used, nothing more than a pawn. A human who was weak enough to be used. Weak enough to either have their minds easily torn from them, or proud enough to have their hubris turned against them.

She had already cursed herself for being a willing participant in the second category, gleefully and willingly binding herself to the King. Thinking herself special when all she was was nothing more than a plaything, interesting only in that a mind like hers was rare, and rarer still to willingly make offer to one such as He.

Though, in the end that might have been what saved her - that it had been she, not he, who bound her, and his amusement in her willingness. He'd not wrapped her so tightly into his web.

but first, how to extricate what was bound here, from what was left behind.

The throne, it seems, is the key. She approaches it. Intent upon knowing it. Knowing the core of it, that she might destroy it.

Shadow King has posed:
    The person is not a human. It's aware. For what it is, anyway. Or what it was used for. In fact, approaching the throne may give a temptation of what exactly was built in this place. This is a style of Cerebro, in a way. And the mental thing seated here has power of it's own. It is aware of the whole of the citadel, and those attached to it. A pressure onto the mind could reach out through this castle, and beyond, even.

    The setup is elegant and brilliant in a way. A 'way' being entirely uncaring of the horror it has made of the identity trapped in it, and the others in the walls: for there is not just the one. No, this place was formed on the nightmares of psychics collected and trapped here.

    And that mind in the center knows Emma in return, as she knows IT. It was a mutant, perhaps. A psion. Someone that fell early, and was not given choices about fate. Or perhaps the wrong choices that did not save it. Or perhaps it resisted early, and is a page from the book Emma didn't open. That resistance caused where it is now. And the sense of it looking back at her, a reflection of what could have been.

Emma Frost has posed:
Now she sees it. Now that she's approached the throne and opened herself up to the place more, she sees that the beauty and the horror of the place is that to destroy it is to fundamentally destroy all of these beings. All of these minds, and as a result, all of the bodies and lives they are attached to. All of them will be affected by being torn away from this place, and left irreparably harmed.

Even if she can say that she is not responsible for that, for what will ultimately be done to them, she can still feel twinges of remorse and horror for the sheer level of disregard and brilliance ammorality behind such a move.

Then again, what else had they expected? He was the Shadow King. A King of minds. What else would he build his domain of? Bricks and mortar were the symbols of lesser kings. But when you ruled a mind, you ruled everything.

But the one attached to the throne? /That one/ she had been most responsible for. If she'd just excised it then. Just found the body and killed it. Done anything but what she had, perhaps none of them would be in this position now.

Which meant freeing him was her first, and sole, responsibility.

Thankfully, as she had helped bind him, complete with torments to keep his psychic energy always abuzz, she also was uniquely suited to know how to unbind him. And given her touch was also upon him, they were things that the Shadow King had no control over. It was there she would start. First reaching out for the threads of the binding that bore her signature.

Shadow King has posed:
    After the time with Emma and the poor contorted mind, Shadow King did come back and toy with it more. There are things Emma wasn't present. In fact, he restored the mind to know /who it is/. This mind is not only trapped here, but it has a memory of everything that it lost. To turn over and over and over in that poor little awareness. It knows it's name is.... Harry. Harry Koll. Harry had friends. He loved his wife before she passed. His two young daughters. And he has no idea if they are dead, alive. Or if the friends he brought into this mess are a part of this building, or not. Or any semblance of time. He fears he has been here, in this literal hell, for hundreds of years, and they are all long gone, long dead. Emma is one of the torturers, to his eyes. He remembers, roughly, but he is also deeply enamoured with anyone that looks at him. He seeks pity, help. Anything. Lonliness can drive one to that.

Emma Frost has posed:
The name. That Emma can hold onto. That, and find out if his daughters are safe. That much she can do for the poor thing.

"I know," she tells the man. Of his desperation, despite the fact that she had helped put him here. "Again, I won't say I'm so - no. Actually. I am. I suppose you deserve that." Especially as she didn't know he'd remember this. At least she hoped he wouldn't when it was all through.

There were things she hadn't done to the man. To Harry. And things that had been added after she had left and been unable to return. Emma wasn't surprised to find that out. Just as she'd hoped he'd have arrogantly left her works in place. Both as something to entice her with on any return, or to flaunt in her face as to her duplicity when it came her turn to dance to his tune. Either way, the threads of torment and torture she'd helped to reinforce, as well as the tethers and bonds she'd set into motion - all of them were there, in place. Waiting.

She identifies her mind upon the man and begins to unravel those things, starting, first, with the horrors she'd given him to 'remember' that he might 'never be lonely' even as she knew they would be terrors branded into his mind.

It was, she supposed, a thing she would be called to task for later. And, if she admitted it, rather deservedly so.

Shadow King has posed:
    The bigger surprise, probably, is that he is a powerful psion himself. Unraveling things changes how his own mind reacts to the Astral Plane, and the castle. It does not collapse, but it does warp around them, as he struggles against both the terrors and his own awareness of what is going on.

    The shadow king finds powerful people and corrupts them, uses them like playthings. This one was the entity that held this beautiful castle together. And that took some considerable power on its own.

    Harry has some concept of what she's doing. It is like a very ill doctor watching someone else operate on them. He has his own opinions about it and is not a good patient. He recognizes some methods she is using and understands what is wrong with him, to require those methods. He starts to truly, deeply panic, into a frenzy of fears. The Shadow King, it appears, can inflict well beyond even being present at all.

    From inside the throne room there is a glint of silver and purple: another awareness has come to peek inside, a little bright bird on a windowsill. It watches, pretty and glowing, head tilted just 'so'.

Emma Frost has posed:
<<If you insist upon making this difficult, I can attempt to do this the much unkinder way for both of us>>

She understands, though. She would fight this, what she is doing. With every fibre of her being she would fight it, quite likely even if she didn't want to.

Still she perseveres, resorting to explaining what she is going to do next. To engaging him into possibly confirming his possible counters. Getting him, if not working with her, at least not working so actively against her.

The bird, it happens, is missed at first. Not for long. Just long enough. And when Emma notices it, she prepares to throw a psy bolt at it, the energy gathered and on the precipice of being released, but held back just long enough for her to confirm that it is the Shadow King (or some other manner of minion) and not the one Jean had mentioned: Stephen. For while the one she did not want to have that little messenger carry tales back to, the other was a different sort of problem they needed to tackle, only this one, to help.

Shadow King has posed:
Harry's not good at language right now, she gets some sobbing sort of screaming. At least it's something. He's responding, in his way. It is the way of a response from someone whose tongue was cut out. At least he isn't catatonic, but the shriek of the walls around them also isn't pleasant or helpful. He keeps on doing it, too.

    <<You don't need to shoot everything that moves, no need to waste energy here in this place,>> the bird says lightly, flitting along the sill, without actually touching it. <<Are you here to harm it? It doesn't deserve that, I think,>> the bird asserts. The bird does not 'feel' like the Shadow King, so if it is something else, that would potentially make more sense. It has a magical tone to it, as opposed to being based in telepathy the way Emma and Harry are. Even the Shadow King was based in telepathy, but this has the touch of whimsy, fae, magic.

    

Emma Frost has posed:
<<Easy for you to say>> Emma directs at the bird. She doesn't drop the bolt, its energy still crackling vibrantly at the ready, but the feel of the thing is wrong. Magic. Fae. Things she is only peripherally aware of - certainly not in her wheelhouse. They could be the Sorceror Supreme. This place, though, it bent things and made you believe what was not.

Emma's mind might be strong enough to resist most of that, but she wasn't not ready to stop being wary. Not yet.

<<Not harm, no. Not unless mercy is the answer.>> With no doubt as to what she meant by mercy. It had been her first consideration so long ago as well. <<It is the lynchpin. If I can free it, the rest will be easier. Why?>>

Shadow King has posed:
    <<Do you think so?>> Asks the bird with thoughtful interest. Everything it's doing is a read of a fae, this sort of elusive curiosity. <<I'll leave you to it, doesn't look like you need help,>> decides the bird without any real judgement either way. It observes, though, seeming to settle in to see what she does, but does not appear to be a threat. In fact, after a little while it will grow bored, and simply depart, in a little flash of blue spark and magic. It was a fleck of awareness, perhaps a magical scout or mental familiar: one of the various entities now returning to the Astral Plane, but not usually harmful.

    Harry himself is something of a horror that will take all of her concentration, and a great deal of time. But if she's willing to commit that time, she can start to extract him. He is disconnected, she will find: he is, indeed, severed, and lonely: he is a web of roads and paths that lead nowhere. The Shadow King destroyed what was on the ends of those leads, perhaps, or they escaped his grasp. Perhaps both are true.

Emma Frost has posed:
It goes, is disinterest a thing Emma decides to trust. If only because it allows her to focus her efforts on Harry. Harry, who will take all of her energy now to extricate. It's a Herculean sort of self-imposed task she sets out on, determined not to leave him until he is no longer bound here - a promise that may have her regretting her own resolve before it's all over.

Time and place outside the Astral cease to exist for a time for Emma, and in that Penthouse suite, Emma's body remains as still and as uneachable as any the Shadow King had held in his grasp, lost to her task here without regard for food, or water, or other human comforts.