wrfmlogsarchive | footfalls echo in the memory...

Who: Josiah and Song
What: Song tries to help Josiah find out what caused his memory loss. As usual, things don't go entirely as planned.
Where: Josiah's loft in Radiant Garden
When: Friday, February 13

The spell Song wove was complicated and time-consuming, but Lilith's support sped up the process. Instead of waiting for natural sleep to complete their journey into dream, Josiah magiced them into slumber.

The spell didn't take very long to work, and Josiah had been right - his aim had improved since the last time they had gone through a dreamscape half a year ago. The darkness fell quickly, and along with it, completely silence.
Something should have appeared - some sort of landscape, some sort of hint that they were in a dream, but there was absolutely nothing. Just a quiet plane that extended into nothingness on either side - disconcerting, to say the least, that there was no "ground", no horizon, no sky. Just... nothing.

At first Song was afriad that magic had blacked out on her again. This was what it had looked like the last time. At least she had no delusions this time about it being Xemnas' dreamscape, which had looked similar but felt entirely different.
And the could feel Josiah there, which was something.
"At a guess..." she commented in tone so calm that it mocked the bleakness around her, "I'd say either we botched the spell or this has something to do with your enormous span of lost memory."

Josiah said nothing to the comment - in fact, he seemed distracted. His eyes wandered over the darkness as if looking for something - as if something could even be seen in the shadows - and finally stopped at a point some distance away. He began walking slowly towards the area - he didn't know what, but something was drawing him to that particular space and he had no idea why.
The silence - the silence would have unnerved him, but he would have sworn (and didn't even dare say this aloud), that someone was whispering through the shadows. Indistinct whispers, but voices nonetheless.
Belatedly, Josiah was glad Lilith had stayed behind - didn't need all three of them trapped in the dreamscape if something went wrong.

Song shut her mouth, taking his behavior to be a good sign. Whatever he sensed was probably a clue, and if it turned out instead to be something dangerous, well, that's half the reason she was here.
She followed him, but at a distance. She wouldn't interfere unless she was needed. In the meantime, she tried to stretch her senses in all directions, measuring and testing the void around them for any variations.

He stopped suddenly, and stiffened as the whispers suddenly grew louder. His eyes darted across the shadows, but saw nothing and no one who could be speaking. He still couldn't make out what they were saying - and Josiah didn't like the idea that these voices were part of HIS dreamscape - and scowled in frustation. This wasn't turning out to very helpful at all - maybe he was just going crazy, and his lost memory was a sign of-
get out.
Josiah blinked. That... was not what he had expected. He threw a glance at Song over his shoulder, and murmured, "did you..." well "hear" wasn't exactly the word and he mulled over the rest of his sentence carefully, "did you sense that?" Because that's what it was... a cold, powerful something that snipped at them cautiously, warning them... testing them.
"Great, my dreams have a noncorporeal guard dog. Wonderful."

Song had felt it too, if very faintly. A small part of her was momentarily amused by the fact that even in a dream, where she should have complete control over her form, she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. It wasn't at the warning alone, but at the strengthened reminder. A dream of thick, black nothingness, distant voices, and a sharp warning accompanied by a barrage of more pain than she was willing to remember.
She gave a small nod to Josiah. "This could get... uncomfortable, but I don't think we should turn back. Call me foolish, but if we don't get ourselves killed or go insane, we'll probably find something very interesting here. That seems to be how these things work, in my experience..."

"Looking forward to it," Josiah admitted dryly, although his smile belied the discomfort in his voice. He took a few steps further, trying to sense where that cold feeling was coming from. Again, he couldn't pinpoint it, but he felt that whatever it was, if it could have human emotions, was slowly rolling from mild irritation to anger.
Well, whoever said he wasn't stubborn was a fucking liar.
He quietly murmured a spell beneath his breath - not much of one, a tiny "net" of magic that maybe only worked within a few feet of him. Again, nothing. He sighed. "Well, whatever it is, it's not playing fair. Didn't think I'd have to play hide-and-seek inside my own-"
His words were cut off as that something slammed into him with enough force to send him flying to the "ground" and back towards Song. His teeth clattered as he hit and he stared blankly up at the... ceiling, his dream body yelling in protest.
"Ouch..." he murmured with a wince, even as the energy coiled back around them, surrounding them.
Leave. These memories are mine.

Now that was interesting.
Song overed him a hand up, giving him a quick look over. "Is there anything you happen to remember about possessions or similar connections to entities other than Lilith? If not, I'll be happy to try playing twenty questions with whatever just knocked you down."

"Uh...." Josiah rubbed his arm absently, glancing back over the shadows and shrugging. "No. Not even the talisman." He reached up and touched the jade pendent with the copper elven star set into that hung along with his other two necklaces. Nasser had insisted that the talisman hadn't been dangerous, and the seer hadn't even known what has caused his memory loss in the first place. He sighed. "Yeah. Other than the grimoire, I haven't come across anything like that."
The energy swirled closer to them, and he could feel the cool frustration that vibrated off the shadows. He raised an eyebrow. "Maybe I should just exorcise myself."
The shadows shuddered... almost as if from laughter. Ridiculous.
But the anger hadn't changed - this wasn't a happy laughter. (And inwardly, Josiah was slightly concerned over the fact that he thought shadows were laughing. Another notch to add to slightly unstable meter).

"Hmm. Well, let's see what we can learn." Song raised her voice then, addressing the strange energy that threatened them. "You can rough us up and yell at us all you want, but this is his mind and we won't leave you alone unless you give us a sensible reason why we should. Just tell us honestly what you are and why you think his memories belong to you. Do you have enough if a brain to manage that, or are you just some mindless monster who can't be anything better than a bully?" It was a bit risky, playing against the creature's pride, but she had gotten into the habit of taking such risks and it had worked for her in the past, miraculously enough.

The shadows around them felt as if they had began to circle them, although not outward movement was noticeable. The emotions the shadows gave off flickered from anger and frustration to annoyance again, and then back at Song's questions. Josiah felt as if the temperature, if there had been one to begin with, had dropped to hypothetical glacial levels.
'These memories are mine. They do not belong to the boy. Get out.'
Josiah grinned. "My head, remember? I think that they do belong to me. I'd be pretty grateful if you let me see what exactly I missed for a couple hundred years."
The shadows shuddered in that non-laughter. 'Years, months, weeks, days, what does it matter? They do not belong to you.'
Josiah sighed. "Yeah, you keep saying that."

Song sighed, not allowing herself to be cowed by the voice. "You're not impressing us. This will all be much easier if we know who you are and how you got here. Why Josiah and not someone else? The only way I can see his memories as being yours is if you're a part of him, somehow. Can't you just explain?"

sThe darkness shifted and then slowly began to coalesce, and again the temperature dropped a few more degrees as a solid form began to take shape. Josiah crossed his arms as a vaguely humanoid shape began to take form in front of them, although it was still as indistinct as a ghost. Something about the... creature didn't feel right, and Josiah frowned at the idea that this thing was living in his head.
The shadow-creature studied them with almost infinite patience, black-against-black eyes unblinking. "Why does it matter?" the shadow-creature murmured, its voice now obviously male with a very strong accent that Josiah just couldn't place. "I am here now, however much that inconveniences either of you."
Josiah rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Can't you just leave, and we all go along our merry way?"
A few more degrees were gone. 'No. It is not yours to say.'
"Damn straight it is."

Now, perhaps belatedly, Song was starting to worry. This being seemed very old, and probably very powerful. It - or he - certainly didn't seem friendly, and that was looking like a dangerous combination.
"It may not matter to you, but it matters to us. It's still his mind, and that makes it his right to know, at the very least."

Surprisingly, the creature seemed to consider this, falling quiet for a few moments. It's gaze fell on Song for a long, almost unnerving period of time before glancing over at Josiah. A couple more minutes of this, and the shadows began to fade away from its form - but not before it approached Josiah, who gave the creature a decidedly unfriendly look and took a step backwards.
It snarled. "You have the grimoire now. And as much as I am displeased that these are unfortunate circumstances for you, I have important work to finish, witch. Leave me to my memories."
Then, once more, that strong force of cold air, except if it before it was a strong gust, this time it was a gale, with enough force to knock both of them off their feet and further away into the darkness.
'I would rather not hurt you but what will be will be....'

Song gasped and struggled back up, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of her. The being's last words actually mollified some of her worries, but she wasn't quite ready to give up. "Wait... just one moment! If you're not planning to hurt us, then maybe we don't need to pry into your business, but if whatever you're doing will cause harm to something important to us - a life or a world - we must know. We've dealt with the First Darkness already, and you do remind me of it. I don't want Josiah to become the next Xehanort." She knew that if this being was evil, he might lie, but he might also laugh in their faces and at least give them some idea of what they would need to prepare for in the near future. If he was not, then she hoped he'd be honest or proud enough to clear up such a misconception.

Josiah winced at the thought - yeah, a future full of pontificiation was not one he really wanted to look forward to. He cast the net spell again, trying to grasp where the creature has disappeared to and if it was anywhere near them. "A name would be helpful, for starters," he suggested as the spell brought up nothing.
The shadows swirled around their legs, like a black fog but much, much colder. 'The First Darkness? Hardly. I've been called ambitious, ruthless, and callous, but never directly evil...' The fog shudder-laughed. 'At least not directly to my face...'
Josiah leapt on that last sentence. "You're human."
The darkness retreated back again with that infinite patience that hid its cool fury. 'I am not.'
"Fine. You were human."
'It doesn't matter.' The fog curled around Josiah, although if the shadows had eyes, they most definitely would have been focused on Song. 'I don't intend to become an ally of yours, or for you to understand what or who I am. I gave my warnings. Are you prepared to suffer any consequences for not acting when you did?'
The fog was cold... sheer ice, numbing his body. Josiah choked back a gasp as the shadows curled around his pulse points, but found that he couldn't move. Well, shit.

Song started. This wasn't going well...
"Let him go! We'll leave if it's that or be smothered by you." Even as she spoke, though, she tried to summon up a defense. Not a magic spell, per se, but a Light force she'd put to various uses in the past, built by her will over dreams. She had no idea if it would actually work against this entity, but she tried to nudge the fog away from Josiah with it, as unaggressively as she could.

The shadow-creature slipped away from Josiah, back towards the background that it camoflauged with so well. Josiah violently shivered - okay, he didn't think even winters in Wisconsin were that bad - and tried not to throw a small fire spell at... wherever the hell the thing went.
Through gritted teeth, he managed to say, "A name."
'Names have power. No.'
Josiah's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Calum. It's Calum, isn't it?"
Silence.
Score one for the good guys, Josiah thought bleakly, glancing at Song. He had told her of the strange name, the only thing he could remember from those lost months/years. He shivered again - despite the shadows having retreated in presence of Song's defense, it still felt as if the bitter cold was on his skin, sinking into his blood...
The darkness stayed very quiet for a few more moments. 'This is the last time I will say it. Leave me be.'

She bit her lip and met Josiah's eyes, looking quite uncertain and nervous despite her previously bold behavior. "I think we should listen this time..." she murmured. "Unless you think you can get through to him now."

"I think I'm going to have to agree there," Josiah replied, still trying to shake off the cold. "As much as I don't like the idea of this bastard living inside my head or taking my memories whenever the hell he feels like it..." He trailed off and gave Song a look that obviously said they were out of their league at the moment. With magic still recovering...
'A wise choice.' Did the shadows sound amused?
Josiah rested a hand on Song's shoulder. "You okay?" he asked, even as another shudder passed through him. Yeah. Definitely looking for exorcism spells after this one.

She didn't answer his question, but gave the shadows one more disapproving glare before drawing herself and Josiah out of the dream with enough force to break through whatever was left of his sleep spell. They needed to talk, without Josiah's creepy shadow-self bullying them.

Lilith was waiting for both of them as they woke up, her strange blue eyes glaring darkly at them. She frowned, as if sensing something, and moved next to Josiah, placing her finger against his right temple. "You're cold."
Josiah nodded. "Understatement of the year."

Song sat up stiffly as if rising from a nightmare, then slouched and covered her face with a hand. "Well, that was bloody terrifying... You alright, Josiah?"

"As fine as I can be after finding out I have an evil dual personality living in my head," Josiah said, as a wave of light-headedness swept over him. He got to his feet and headed to one of the cabinents, pulling out a container of aspirin and shaking out two pills. He held it up for Song to see. "Need any?"
"Dual personality?" Lilith echoed, raising an eyebrow and giving Song an incredulous look. "Really."

She waved away the medicine without comment, simply becuase she wasn't in the habit of using it. "Calum, was it? You said that was your name, right? It makes sense, I suppose..." She straightened up, regaining a bit of her composure. "I think you need to do some research on this. There must be some sort of clue as to how this all came about - what he is and why he's here. He should probably be left alone for now, but if he causes you any more trouble, we'll go back."

Lilith's eyes widened at the name and she blanched a few shades lighter than was probably healthy. But Josiah didn't notice - he was rubbing his eyes wearily. "Looks like I'll probably have to head back to Narnia again - that's where this all started, after all." He rubbed the talisman between his thumb and index finger. "But man - trying to track down an asshole demon named Calum? Who could be from any of the worlds?"
He made a face. "If I start acting like an idiot again, just throw some garlic at me or something. That should shut... him..." He trailed off suddenly, his eyes going distant and staring at something that extended far beyond the loft's walls.

Song had been nodding slightly at his comments, trying not to appear as drained as she felt, but it took her longer than it should have to notice his strange behavior. "Josiah...? Is something wrong?"

"I..." He stopped, looking around the room, a surprised and confused look appearing on his face. His gaze then settled on Song, and he offered her an apologetic smile.... a smile that was friendly, but not overly warm. "I'm sorry - this is gonna be a weird question. But... do you know how I got here?"

She stared at him with narrowed eyes for a span of several seconds. "... Do you remember what we were just talking about?"

He gave her an abashed smile. "Sorry, no." He then hesitated and laughed. "Alright, I guess I'm gonna go 0 for 2 here, but... I didn't catch your name either."

One good, solid facepalm later, while glaring at him from between her fingers, she tried to answer in a tone that didn't sound too exasperated, "I'm Song... Robin, whatever. You wouldn't happen to be Calum, would you?"

Josiah gave her a strange look. "No... the name's Josiah. Uh... nice to meet you Song or Robin or whatever." He looked around the loft again. "Geez, I must have really blanked out. This is what I get for staying up til three in the morning..."
Lilith glanced at Song, her face once again very neutral and very calm. "Well, this is an interesting turn of events."

She shot Lilith a dark look, but didn't answer her.
"If you're Josiah, I'd expect you to remember me... unless... what is the last thing you remember?"

Josiah blinked at her, and then drummed his fingers against the tabletop. "I don't think I know you from college... but uh..." He made a vague gesture with his hand. "Arguing with cousin about the weird weather we've been for the two days or so..." He shrugged. "Must have just zoned out right afterwards."
Lilith rose to her feet and met his eyes straight-on. "You don't know me?"
Josiah blushed and coughed. "I think I would have remembered you."

Song sighed heavily. "I'm guessing you don't remember anything about videogame monsters invading and consuming Earth, either. Or about being stranded in Paris, or helping to save the universe from a heartless man possessed by the incarnation of darkness itself. In fact, I bet I sound absolutely crazy saying such things. Am I correct?"

Josiah's blank look was probably an answer onto itself. "Wait, what happened now?"

"Go look out a window, love. You're in the lovely city of Radiant Garden, newly restored after we helped Sora the keyblade master defeat Xemnas. Please don't faint."

Josiah raised an eyebrow at that, but decided to play along anyway. He walked over to one of the windows, and glanced outside. He stared for a good two or three minutes before turning back to Song, and jerking a thumb towards the window. "That's Radiant Garden?" Without even waiting for a reply, he let out a whistle beneath his breath. "Maybe I just went to sleep and I'm dreaming. Because that's the craziest thing I've heard."
Lilith gestured to the hollow her neck, and nodded at him. "Where do you get those trinkets from then?"
Josiah looked surprised, and pulled all three of the necklaces from around his neck and frowned at them. "That's a good question. Probably a prank..."

"Well, it isn't a dream. I can assure you of that, as they're my area of expertice. You've been having memory problems, Josi. I came to try and help - using dreams, no less - but... Well, you just forgot the last two years, and I really hope I'm not the cause of that..." She chewed on her lip again, eyes shifting between him and Lilith searchingly.

Josiah looked down at the three items held on cords - a cross, a prayer book, and a talisman. Quickly placing the necklaces back on, he smiled a bit at Song. "Memory problems, huh. Alright, I'll play along - all things considering, might as well." He glanced at Lilith. "So if she's the dreamweaver, are you her sidekick?"
Lilith gave him a disgruntled look. "No. I'm a succubus, bound to your heart and soul by the grimoire."
Josiah blinked and then looked at Song. "...there's a story behind that, isn't there?" And from the look on his face, it looked as if he REALLY didn't want to hear it.

She nodded rather defeatedly. "There are quite a few stories. For once, I'm really not in the mood to tell them. I'd dig around in your head again, but I think that may have been what caused this, and I really don't have the strength for it now anyway. Lilith..." she looked at the demon pleadingly. "Is there anything you can try? He did share his soul with you..."

Lilith shook her head, a faint look of fear flashing in her eyes before she quickly smothered it. "I don't think so. I'll let the other girl know - maybe she can fill him in."
Josiah sighed, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. Bunch of weirdos... but honestly? He had dealt with stranger. Probably.

"Lilith..." Song's gaze was piercing, though not without concern. "Can you tell me anything I don't know yet? About Calum, or anything else that might be part of this?"

"If I knew anything important, I would have said something by now," Lilith replied cooly as she headed towards the door. "I will be back after I find the girl." And she slipped out the door silently.
Josiah scratched the back of his head, staring at the door for a few seconds. "A sex demon... geez."

Song stared dully at the door through which Lilith had disappeared. "Yeah, well... she's not that bad. She's a good friend, really, even though she tended to annoy you a lot."
She pulled her legs up close to her body and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees and letting her messy hair fall around her face. "Bloody hell..."

"That's one way to desribe it,' Josiah said cheerfully.

footfalls echo in the memory...

OOC of course

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