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[broughtwhiskey]

spam.

[In the early days of the port, Philip is down in the basement. He's commandeered himself a sword that isn't going to be missed by anyone living. Not his first choice by a long shot, but that will be a conversation with his warden for another time. He holds his own just fine in the servants' quarters. He's smart enough to try and avoid a fight if he can and even smarter to avoid touching any of the webs, but he does fine even when there are two or three spiders interested in what they think will be an easy dinner.]

[He makes relatively quick progress until he reaches the opera house. There he has a little more trouble moving on or back to the safety of the mezzanine. He refuses to stop and watch any of the "plays" being performed, but it's impossible for him to avoid being roped into a performance. Faced with the ghosts of his daughter and the woman he blamed for her death, he stands stock still, his sword falling from his hands with a loud clatter.]

[One way or another, he manages to escape the opera house. He's shakened by what happened there, even if he will not admit or show it to anyone else that might find him after that little "performance." He's not even trying to make it past the broken stair right away. Time unravels here as he seems to endlessly wander up and down until it seems to no longer matter. He can't keep going up and down forever though, so eventually he does take a seat on one of the steps. He's not giving up, but he needs to figure out which way is actually up and which way is down. He just...needs a minute.]

((ooc: You're free to pick anything from the library and down even if not mentioned explicitly here!))

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[fireincarnate]

[Jean isn't afraid, exactly. She doesn't think anything in this place can truly harm her, deeply and irrevocably. She's not sure anything can.

But she's disturbed. Distressed. There is death here, all around her, memories of life caught like flies in amber. There are breaks in time and space, calling out for her to mend them. There are gods trapped in stone, screaming in her head. There is terror and grief and despair and it never stops.

She knows she's going in circles. It is, in part, a conscious decision; she doesn't want to leave anyone behind. Not her friends, not her family, not her Inmate. But she's losing track of time, of purpose, of herself.

At some point, she manages to focus, to grasp a sense of Philip amidst everything else. It leads her downwards, into the opera house, and she's there when his sword clatters to the floor.

Jean strides forward, refusing to let her mind catch on anything else as she calls to him.]

Philip?

[surfaceshine]

[Dean has been careful to stay on the move; it's the key to this kind of battle, when the exact nature and number of the enemy is unknown, when allies are few and far between, unreliable. He's used to only being able to rely on himself, though, even if sometimes he thinks that's just a factory default setting he's stuck with: no one should rely on him, not even himself.

But he's trying. Between himself and the few other Barge residents that are actually working to clear out this tower and extract their less well adapted fellow residents, there's a space in the servant quarter, cleared of spider webs and spiders that he's warded and circled with salt to serve as a safe point while he investigates the rest of the guard tower. This is the point he retreats to when he encounters something he can't overpower or banish.

Like the pair of haunted armor suits that have chased him back this far. Dean is holding a sword, of course, but it won't do him much good against two opponents that actually know how to use theirs; so he runs, not in a panic but deliberately, with purpose, leaping the line of salt and slowing only a few steps into the cleared space to turn and see what effect the line of protection has against his pursuit.

Regardless of who else might be in the room, for now.]

[broughtwhiskey]

[Philip is too quickly and too rapidly being pulled into the drama of his own memory to take too much notice of Jean as she arrives. Penny rasps and gurgles, rocking back and forth as she uselessly tries to free her hands from the straight jacket, unable to move forward with Michonne's hand on her shoulder. He's too focused on his daughter, on the katana in Michonne's hand, to give much attention to Jean until she speaks to him.]

[He holds up a hand quickly without looking at her, although Michonne's gaze quickly darts to Jean.]

Don't. [He takes a breath.] Don't...

[But is he talking to Michonne or to Jean?]

[broughtwhiskey]

[At the sound of hurried footsteps followed by much heavier, louder footsteps, Philip backs right out of the room again before he can breach the threshold, his grip tightening on the pommel of his sword. He doesn't know who or what is coming, but he's not looking to be the center of its attention for right now.]

[Somehow, he's not surprised to see it's Dean leaping in. If there's anyone who's likely to be at the center of violence around here, it's Dean. But he's not inclined to help Dean out, at least not for the moment. It's nothing personal, regardless of their encounters during breaches, but Philip isn't all that interested in lending a hand to anybody. If Dean can stand more on his own two feet? Maybe there will be something to work with. But for now, Philip stays out of sight and watchful.]

[Dazzle him, Deano.]

[surfaceshine]

[Unlike the majority of the people around here that are actively running away from fights, Dean is not panicked when he turns around; he's breathing hard from the exertion, he's sweating, but he's focused. A few months of relative peace on board the Barge cannot take away months of living in the kind of worlds they both come from; he would understand, if he had attention to spare to notice Philip right now. If he presented himself as a threat that would change but here, now, the hunter is focused on his pursuit.

And the fact that it is the salt line, not the line of wards a few inches in front of it, that they slam to a stop in front of. He mutters under his breath because that makes this harder, that makes them ghosts instead of demons, and while he'd rather deal with ghosts than demons any day, it does complicate banishing them significantly.

Dean steps back when their swords swipe over the line anyway, calmly, just out of reach. He feints back with his own idly, a distraction tactic to keep them riled up and unfocused but still focused on him while he thinks. He hasn't enough accelerant to set them on fire and besides, that might not do anything at all except create another threat; he doesn't know where their remains are and hasn't the time to work it out. They don't look like the speaking type and none of the spirits here seem to really be capable of peaceably moving on for one reason or another.

Dean's own sword ends up back in its sheath at his hip; he's safe enough as long as he doesn't get too close and as long as the salt holds, and he needs both hands because what he does next is back up to one of the cobwebbed barrels by the wall, hoisting it free and taking it with him to the edge again. It hurts, he flinches, but he doesn't hesitate; when the next sword comes at him, Dean hefts the barrel into its path and, when he hears it splinter, twists viciously with both ends of his own makeshift shield; when the sword sticks tight in the rotted wood, capable of cutting through but not immediately, he wrenches it back and free of the guardsman's hand.

Then he throws the remains at the other one. One disarmed, one to go, and then Dean isn't really sure what.]

[fireincarnate]

[She stops, lets herself be frozen by the aching desperation in his voice. This all feels wrong, in a different way than the rest - it's real but it's not, it's an echo, a farce, an effigy - ]

Philip - [Her voice is quiet, strained, battered.] It's not real. [It's hard, to reach out with her mind - it aches like a muscle run ragged - but maybe she can break the trance, break the spell.] She's not -

Redd!

[Her head whips around, and she sees a boy - barely a teenager, she thinks - reaching for her with that same desperation.]

What's happening to you? You and Slym are leavin', aintcha? DON'T!

[She feels herself turning from Philip, from her responsibilities, and she doesn't know why; she doesn't know where the ache in her chest is coming from, why tears burn her eyes as she holds out her arms.]

Oh, sweetie - we don't want to, but we can't stop it! Oh, baby - let me hold you one last time -

[broughtwhiskey]

[He should walk away. In fact, Philip thinks of doing just that and does a little more than consider it. While Dean is keeping the guardsmen distracted, Philip moves quietly in the room, careful to avoid any unnaturally thick webs and not to draw any attention towards himself. He's almost to the doorway Dean came from originally when he manages to disarm one. It gives Philip pause. He's not likely to slow Philip down if he can keep that kind of pace up. If nothing else, he'll serve as useful fodder when things actually end up getting tight.]

[But even with one disarmed, Philip's not looking to get all that close to them. He glances around until he spots a broken piece of stone from the floor. Dean was onto something with throwing the wood, but he needed a more refined throw and a little more weight behind it. Philip switches his sword to his left hand temporarily, crouching down to grab the rock. The lighting down here isn't the best, but he can see the rust on the armor that's currently trying to figure out how to get past the salt and to Dean. Standing back up, he aims low and straight for one of the knee joints of the armor still with sword. It was a gamble, but the throw is just hard enough that the guardsman has no choice but to drop that knee to the ground.]

[You're welcome, Dean.]

[broughtwhiskey]

[Some part of Philip, deep down, knows that none of this is real. Michonne, wherever she is and regardless of whether she's alive or not, is far, far away from this place. And Penny? Penny's long-since been out of his reach. But there's a part of Philip that doesn't want to believe it's not. Even though he knows what comes next, what he can't stop, he wants to stay frozen in this moment forever. When there's still a piece of Penny left, before everything fell apart and he lost himself.]

[He only spares Jean a glance out of his periphery as she's pulled away, sucked into her own fragment of a memory. It's almost enough to pull him away from his own, just for a brief moment. He doesn't know who the boy is or who he's talking about. There's a natural, morbid curiosity that this room inspires, but Philip has always been so stubbornly adamant about not getting to know people that he wants to look away as well. But before he can make up his mind for himself, there's another rasp from Penny and his attention snaps right back to Michonne whose grip on Penny seems to be tightening. He holds his other hand up to show that he has nothing, he's not armed as he takes a few small steps closer. He stops when Michonne straightens.]

It's me you want.

[He just glances over at Jean, wanting help and not wanting to ask for it either. He just wants his daughter safe. Even like this. But no. He doesn't want that, does he? He knows better. But she's there. She's here.]

[fireincarnate]

[Most of her mind is caught, overwhelmed by emotions she hasn't felt yet - grief, regret, guilt, fury. She's raging at the unfairness of - of leaving her son, he's her son.

Out of the corner of it all - of her eyes, of her thoughts - she sees Philip, frozen in his own helplessness. It reaches for her, but she can hear - ]

Sorry, Jean. He can't hear you. We're on an altogether different plane of existence now.

[Her gaze is dragged back, and instead of a child there's a woman - a woman with her eyes. She speaks of war and protection and family, she tells Jean she's dying, and she knows she's lost her daughter too, and it's almost too much to bear.

She turns her head, and her gaze locks with Philip's. She lets his thoughts flood her mind instead, and it's enough; she can turn her back on these phantoms of the future, and march over to someone she can actually help. It doesn't matter that the tears haven't yet dried.]

It's not real. [Her voice is firmer, this time, louder.] She's gone, Philip. There's nothing you can do.

[broughtwhiskey]

[Philip's attention is almost pulled in two different directions. There's a morbid curiosity, the pull of watching someone else's drama if only to avoid his own. Because the loss of a child matters so much less to him when it's not his own. But there's a stronger pull on him than Jean's struggle, a struggle she pushes past far quicker and stronger than Philip ever could out of his own. Because it's so hard to separate reality from this illusion, especially when he's not all that eager to separate the two in the first place.]

[When Michonne shifts, he holds up a hand for Jean to not get any closer.]

She's right there.

[surfaceshine]

[Dean learned it long before here, but here specifically too he's not expecting any kind of assistance; it's just not there, and if it is, if there's anyone out there that can help him, they should be helping other people. Here, Dean is not helpless, not by a long shot.

That doesn't mean that when help comes out of nowhere he wastes any time at all staring at the suddenly much shorter guard; he registers what happened, of course, knows there must be someone else in the room but that's not important. What's important is they took a shot at the suits of armor, not at Dean (or they missed Dean in an extremely useful way), and he has a very short window of time to take advantage of that.

His sword is out again in an instant - somewhat clumsy with lack of familiarity with this weapon in particular but plenty serviceable, plenty functional - and he puts all his not inconsiderable muscle behind the downward swing of the sword for where a mortal opponent's neck would meet their shoulder. Sparks fly, but he pulls back and does it again, and again, keeping it down until finally something separates and the helmet rolls away to the floor.

He can't tell if it disables the ghost right away, but it does seem to confuse it long enough for him to turn his attention back to the other ghost. If they think they're alive, if they think they're guardsmen still, maybe they'll respond to the same weaknesses. Falling back a moment to catch his breath from the other, he finally chances a glance over his shoulder, just in case.]

Nice shot.