Briefcase, Dream

CJ has clearly updated you all on our "gift".

I did manage to get it open. The Briefcase is about 30 cm up, by 40 across, and maybe 20 deep. Made of a heavy Plastic Material with an ugly patterning. It's completely black apart from two metal clasps on top.

Contact with the case causes an intense sensation of pins and needles, making opening the case very difficult. Any attempts to use external means, such as a long stick or gloves, causes such objects to fail in their grip - as though the clasps were lathered in some form of lubricant. However, this is not the case. With many hours of work, and the help of a crowbar, we managed to open the case. It was full of padding - sheets of paper with drawings on them, old Government files, etcetera.

But then we saw something at the bottom. It wasn't possible... It was so amazing and beautiful.

I mentioned a few posts back The Horizon's Blade.
It's real.
It's fucking real.

I held it up with both hands. There's something you just can't get from those descriptions, I tell you.

It's long with a curved end, like some weird mix between a Sabre and a Khopesh. The flat side of the blade, however, is thicker tan either type. It's made of this odd, Stained-Glass type substance -- as the myths depicted. The glass itself is odd in the fact that the different colors seem to melt into one another, there's no distinct border between the colors except at the edge. Right at the edge of the Blade, the Blade suddenly has this sort of... thin, Black line. The most defined edge to anything I've ever seen. I swear, I've never seen anything like it. On both edges, too. I see now why they call it the Horizon's blade - apart from the Autumnal colors of some sections of the Blade, the very edge of it is as thin and well defined as the Horizon.

Holding it gave off these odd whispers, but the strangest effects were when I actually tried to wield the Sword. As soon as I got my stance right, it felt almost as though reality cracked apart like an egg. I was suddenly in a field -- of course, not a real field. No, this was some weird, TV-Show style flashback or hallucination. Grays and pinks in the sky bled into the edge of the field. Before me stood a grand house, like some old asylum or the home of some kind of nobility. In the real world, I dropped the blade. My hand was jarring, as though I'd just suffered a severe impact to my elbow, except this sensation started with the tip of my fingers and felt at it's weakest in my shoulder.

Interestingly, the special properties the Briefcase manifested have faded, there's only a slight sensation of static electricity when I touch the clasps or handle.

As for the blade, the only other person who has any response to holding it is CJ. Her response is... minimal, but we hooked her up to an EEG while she held it. Fuck me, I've never seen such an amazing scan. Beforehand, she has almost entirely normal brain pattern, and then as soon as she touches the Handle? Wham. Her Brain goes completely haywire, at first I thought it was some kind of seizure or fit... but then I see what look like dreaming patterns. She drops the knife and starts gasping, and the EEG just briefly blips. CJ's brain ceased all higher activity for about one tenth of a second after she lets go, and then it returns.

And then we come to the dreams.

They'd been recurring for some days before the case. The man that CJ describes was in them, lounging in a heavy, Royal Green-upholstered chair. He's sat in the middle of an expansive office or Library, not unlike my own apart from the truly enormous windows, high balconies beside floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a roaring fire safely encased in a brick fireplace and the beautiful tables and chairs, all exquisitely carved wood, surrounding us.

He smiles deeply at me. He isn't exactly... Handsome, but not bad. A slight distant quality in his Oak-shaded eyes, with fluffy brown hair and a faint tan. He looks older than his true age, I'd say he was probably a young teenager but under that lighting, he could have been in his twenties. He wore the same grey waistcoat as when he'd met me, with his hat beside him on the desk. A Black Trilby, beautifully maintained and not at all deformed. He clapped his hands between us to draw my attention away from that hat.

"Do you know why you're here?"
I looked around me.
"Where is here?"
He grinned at the question. Reveled in it, I s'pose.
"Yes... a hard one. "Here" isn't... really, real. It's what most psychologists call a "Mind Palace", or some variant therein."
I was aware of such things, I'd even developed a rudimentary one in my youth. But who's mind palace was this, and how was it so beautifully developed?
"It's mine, don't worry. I only stole some small parts of it."
I shook my head in disbelief.
"How am I here then, if this place is yours?"
He shook is head, chuckling slightly.
"This isn't just a mind palace," he responded with a grin that radiated brilliance. "I have certain... abilities. This place is manifest, I just extended it to you."
I asked who he was.
"Judging by when you are... I'd say... It's best not to tell. Don't want to mess with the past, after all."
I looked at him long and hard, very confused.
"You exist before my... completion. Just talking to you is a bad idea in case past me starts to work things out, it could mess with my progression..."
I asked him how it was possible.
"I'm a... Conduit. The theory on your blog... it's correct. I'm the most successful, I just about managed to get away from Him."
"You're impossible."
"No, just a bit unlikely."
"Fine... I'll accept your existence. But why give me the blade?"
"Because I didn't need it, and I'm making an exchange."
"With the Giant?"
"Yes. For the life of another."
"And the Horizon's Blade also?"
"Yes. You need it..."
"For what?"
"The Convergence. I'm so, so sorry."
"I understand." (- I didn't, and during my dreams I am almost always in lucid control. I felt as though I should claim understanding, felt compelled to say it. but it wasn't true.)
"No, you don't. I need to train you with the Arcane God Slayer."
"Why?"
"Because you have so much to learn, and I have all the time in the World. I'm not in my body right now, and I need to shut out reality itself to stop the Giant from destroying everything I am. You have to go. Now."
A look of panic filled his eyes as they swept across the shelves. Light burst through the windows, the world burning away like damaged film.

The dreams are so repetitive. But at least He can't get me during them.

~/Survivor/

Briefcase

The Giant stood outside the window today.
In It's hand it held a heavy briefcase, the kind you might keep a drill or other small power tool in. Made of some kind of tough plastic at a guess. It didn't... stand, so much as lope about, moving down the garden until it came to a stop about halfway from the building.

It stood, facing sidewards in relation to the house, for about half an hour or so. It had placed down the briefcase at it's side.

After half an hour, a young man appears out of nowhere, curled up in a ball. He slowly unfurled and stood up, which meant I could see him more clearly. He wore a grey waistcoat, white shirt with collar and a black trilby. In fact, given his rather slender tone, both the young man and the Tall Man seemed rather similar. He had brown hair and looked maybe between 14 and 17.

It took me a while to realise what he is. He's a conduit, I worked that much out. Somehow his frail, mortal body and mind can handle that much power. He can teleport or whatever that thing's form of movement is at will, he even fought it back. It actually grabbed him and that didn't stop him fighting.
I think they must have finally come to some sort of agreement. The boy picks up the briefcase and moves between that place and where everyone is in the house, watching from the study. He smiles awkwardly at us, puts down the case and says:
"bye for now."

And then he reappears by the Giant.
That boy could have ported anywhere. Could have disappeared for weeks. Probably could have punched a hole in the world, if what we think about the Giant is correct, and disappeared to another. Yet he made good on whatever agreement they'd come too. He collapsed, and the Giant disappeared.

And when  he got up, he was different. Blurry at the edges somehow. Tilting his head back and forth, cracking his knuckles. He looked to us -- no, he looked at me -- and grinned, a sinister, dark grin. And then he was gone.

I woke up on the floor with a pen in my hand.

I saw a note with the words:

"HE KNOWS YOU"

This is not good.

I have to get help
but from who? /S/ has been trying to get that stupid case open all day, locked away with a knife, a soldier and a hammer.

Noone knows how to stop that thing. It was inside the boy...

Can't focus on it.

bye for now.
~CJ