Chapter Text
He actually feels rested, jelly-limbed in that pleasurable shy way he feels little shame in when his conscious mind slowly draws back into his body from a fortunate, deep, and what had been a dreamless sleep. Levi notices nothing is at his back. Nothing's warm at his side. The air lacks a smell, no, it doesn’t lack. It’s empty, around him is like a void. Unseeing, he senses the open expense endlessly stretching around. An icey green light was just barely blocked by his closed eyes.
There’s wind whistling mutely in his ears.The sort that he knows to mean for sure that he’s somewhere up high, and Levi can feel it in the pit of his stomach next just how impossible high up his feet are from the ground. There’s nowhere to run. Although he feels stone slabs solid beneath his shoes, every fiber of his being distrusts its support. Something rots nearby and he regrets the ability to smell. A low buzzing is starting and it’s climbing higher in his ears.
The light ripples in hues of peach and green, glowing brighter and colder behind his closed eyes, beaming down from on high, the freezing touch is starting to burn. Levi feels his body is not his own. Levi tries to think, tries to move but the static is loud, overbearing, scratching and clawing at his mind, suffocating his thoughts. He can’t tell if he’s breathing.
Something shifts underneath your skin.
A pointed pressure is building under your brow.
“ I’m here again. Will it be like this every time ?” Levi’s mind is abuzz with static, the ringing so sharp and oppressive it feels like it’s locking him into place but finally, he’s able to move and his first action is to clutch at his head, as the ringing recedes to a lower, almost tolerable noise. He knows it's over when he's thrusted back in control of his body, and the shock of being; has the young man slightly doubled over in a silent cry of pain, spittle wetting the rough and cracked skin of his lips as he gasps for a steady breath.
The tender dry skin of his lip opens painfully from the moisture, the vertical lines of his mouth split, welling with beads of coppery red blood. He could taste the pearls running into his mouth, Each a vision to his inner eye. It’s the other contestants, their faces carousel in his mind. There’s little time, visions flee fast, but now he can match names to faces, “ Great, nobody dead. Even that douche is alive.” Unpleasant as the man had been, Levi’s, glad to see their numbers are still the same into the night. It gave him a brevity of hope that they could all get out. “ although the solution for him is still gonna involve a bullet.” Levi mentally sighs and sees Marcoh among their numbers. There's a bit of joy at seeing that the man’s all right and the ex-soldier wonders which face belongs to the botanist he was helping. He catches a glimpse of silver curls and his heartbeats queerly and tight. There comes a final flash.
Blindly he reaches out towards the sky and his eyes at last open and sees . Sees hanging above him, overtaking the dark cosmos that expands lonely and empty around them in all directions. The glowing yellow grinning malice of a Rher moon, his servant below. Who, although standing several feet away from Levi, seemed as big as his master.
The jester’s eyes are flat and round as a dead fish,
“Fourteen souls are still left… Let the blood flow and open the celestial court’s gates. Haven’t you seen it ? Haven’t you seen it? How lovely it looks in the moonlight?” Little bells dinged on the points of green velvet slippers. Barren of humanity, Per’kele’s wide-blown eyes crescented with mean-spirited mirth as he raised a large boney blue painted hand in mocking to his thin curling lips.
“Tch.” Off put by the request, Levi clicked his tongue and involuntarily shifted a step back, averting from the Jesters' invasive gaze, hands into his jumpsuit pockets. His temple burns a bit. “ No. Don’t puss out.” Levi sucks in a bit of air and looks at his stained sneakers. His fingers touched something smooth. His left-hand palms the object, it’s round and glossy. Levi glares back up defiantly.
“Oh?……Ohohohohoh.” Blue and white paint peeled in flakes off of Per’kele’s face as he laughed with his shoulders, there was more paint was underneath, “ I see we’re getting serious, are we now? Wow, such fire, such spark. Are you ready? How can I help ?” Per’kele’s long shadow, a dark road between them.
Levi drew the soul stone from his pocket, its surface, glossy like oil in the moonlight. He stared at it for a moment “ for magic but I don’t have any magic, so what can I do?” The notion of what to do came easy. “ Strike fast. Hit true. Never miss a mark.”
“ Interesting… Here you go.” Per’kele never stopped smiling but no one could say if the humanoid was happy. His shadow trembled, and before Levi was a table engraved with a single thick black line that ended in a dip. Entrance, he lifted the stone in his hand up to the table and it glided, almost on its own out of his hand; rolling directly into the pocket on the table.
The stone fits perfectly.
Your skills feel reinforced.
“Now what” Levi reminded himself to keep a firm look. Leaving was somehow always the awkward part. The young man mutely stares and vibes his request to leave. Refusing to speak to the host. The Per’kele, amused no matter what bows with all the showmanship due to a ringleader, giving Levi a mocking goodbye. “ off to party so soon?”
He doesn’t have to answer, so Levi doesn’t answer. Just closes his eyes and waits for the jester to let him.
When he opens his eyes next, Levi sees bare plaster walls. Haphazard piles of boxes stacked against the walls all in a dark quiet room. He’s back, he’s back in the bookstore, where he fell asleep but his party member isn’t here.