[ There's nothing like waking up to too much light and a stiff back. Stone underneath him, sunlight too warm to be anything other than direct... he's outside. What happened? Heavy night at Kamar-Taj, passed out in the courtyard? A groan and crack of one eye says... no, actually.

This isn't Kamar-Taj at all.

There's a merciful stretch of seconds spent taking in the beautiful tourist trap in which he finds himself where the whole thing is still just weird. Funny, almost. Go to sleep in his own bed and wake up in the Med? Sure. Why not? A week or so ago he was piloting his own corpse across a mountain range, shit happens. But then he swipes up with a hand to change from street clothes into his robes and— nothing.

He tries again: nothing. The last fog of sleep slips. Dread, stone-heavy, drops somewhere in his stomach, and his hands dart through a simple pattern. The shaping of it hurts more than it should - none of the usual passive support for his crooked joints from channelled ambient magic. Even before he's finished he knows it's just movement, just gesture.

All at once he realizes he can't feel the world beyond the boundary of his skin.

Stephen totters the few steps to the fountain, leans heavily against it, surroundings rendered irrelevant as he coaxes his hands through spell after spell. He tries everything: mutters incantations, tries complex and simple and so easy a child could do it. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

No. No. Consequences he understands, consequences of course, but not this. Surely not this.

Distracted as he is, he won't notice he's not alone until someone's presence gets too obvious to ignore. ]

[ Sometime later he stands by the archway looking out into dense mist. There's a beer in his hand, a crate with a further five bottles and an opener at his feet, and this time he doesn't need an introduction to sense somebody else's approach.

He doesn't turn around, just bends down to grab a bottle by the neck and the opener by the handle and hold both out for whoever it is that's wandering down the hill. ]

[ After his third horrid dream he'd learned something close to a lesson. That's how he ends up sitting at his first floor window instead of asleep when a straggler trudges by through the endless shimmering sea, drowsy and fighting for consciousness on their way to somewhere it doesn't look like they'll have time to arrive.

The window opens and Stephen leans out to raise his voice for the ears of the person below: ]

Hey. In here. Before you drop.

[ The door to the street is open. Downstairs is a wash, but the height of his window promises the refuge of another floor. ]

[ They've been running for what feels like hours. Darting from building to building, hiding, darting again when the dogs catch their scent or the sounds of something worse drift in on the wind. For the last five minutes, this space between buildings has given them refuge from a chase that had felt like it would go on forever. Back pressed to the wall, no longer concerned for the blood that congeals on his clothes and matts in his hair, Stephen takes what precious seconds he can to fully catch his breath.

Somewhere beyond the alley's mouth, hardly any distance at all, a voice calls, the sound of it reaching out like ripples over water. Or maybe it's a chorus of voices. So gentle and well-synchronised that it could almost be just the one. ]

Please. Let me help you.

[ It's his voice. All his voice.

Wide eyes search for his companion, blood-stained palm lifting away from the wall to gesture sharply back the way they'd come. They'll have to risk the dogs. ]

( anything else you want to try out just hit me up with a starter and I'll dive in! or if you'd like to chat it through first, feel free to find me at miscreates )