Event - Apocalypse How

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Apocalypse How

(cw: spiders, manipulation, brief physical control/restraint)

All at once, it's over. The last room–you know it is the last–and whatever lies beyond it. You and your companions or you, by yourself, open the door and find yourself faced with a grand, circular ballroom. There are too many doors leading off from it–around the walls, in the floor, in the ceiling–and they all seem to open simultaneously to reveal the other off-worlders who entered this house. The ones who are still alive, anyway.

The space you look upon must once have been host to extravagant balls and feasts… if it ever actually existed. Now, its gold and blue gleam are smothered beneath thick, ropey webbing. At the center of the room is an archway of webs along with two familiar faces: Reyes Amador and Bonnie Gale, the latter with a half-healed cut over one eye. The pair are hugging one another, but pull apart as they find their solitude broken.

Reyes flexes their fingers and for just a moment, your body is not your own. You can see faint strands connecting to each and every person to their fingertips. The spider silk simply holds people in place, rather than forcing them to do anything.

"My friends," Reyes says. "We have found it. We have done it. We have created a way to get out of this place. To get home. Thank you for coming when we called. When my Bonnie and the house called." Bonnie raises her hand awkwardly before wrapping it around Reyes' arm. "Witness now. We are ready to make this happen. I learned from someone who came to this world the same way we'll exit. I know what we must do."

They take a breath, then turn to the archway. Reyes raises the arm Bonnie isn't holding and speaks, their voice reverberating unnaturally in the space as the webs vibrate and hum and seem to draw something from everyone.

"Upon a wide and open plain, there sits a house that once was famed for fifteen windows tall and thin, designed to let intruders in. Twisting round this white-washed frame are vines and thorns and metal chain… and links that rust in dusty brown and burn and bite into the ground. Come to this house and see inside, all ups and downs and side-to-sides. And feel the things we fear the most in broken self and time and ghosts. Come here upon this hallowed ground and hear my voice, my call, my sound. Hear me now, oh, dreadful things, the blood that sings inside my veins:

"Hear me now, you things that bite,
And rot and dig and flee and fight.
And burn and hide and change and know
And bleed and fade and spin and show
A side that is not truly there
And stretch the endless, cosmic tears.
Hear me now, you things that weave
Who pull the strings to let us leave!

"Hear me–hear us. And exit!"

A deafening sound rips through the room at the same time everything is overtaken by a blindingly white light. The power holding people in place is gone, severed with the burst. When sight and hearing return, the ballroom is shaking, the webs straining and snapping in places, but at the center, in the archway, is a bright, sickly glow of deep purple energy. Bonnie is holding Reyes where they seem to have partially collapsed on her shoulder.

Reyes lifts their head. "My friends… go! We must go while we can."

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Players may speak with Reyes, Bonnie, and/or each other here. Ultimately, they are going to have an ICly limited amount of time to make a decision about what to do. You may tag in for NPC threads until 11:59 PM Pacific Time on 8 January. Players are welcome to tag in for threads with each other beyond that!
  
  The choice is to stay or to leave. For those who wish to leave, they will be able to do so before anyone can stop them. If your character would choose to stay ICly, but you OOCly want them to leave, easy enough to say a friend pulled them or the power of the portal dragged them in because they were too close.
  
  For those who wish to stay, effort will need to be made to get out of the house before it collapses or you may find yourself dead. If your character would choose to leave ICly, but you OOCly want them to stay, easy enough to say the portal destabilized before they could get through for one reason or another. There's no fear gauntlet to face on the way out of the house. All of the Entities are pressing at the barrier to the places beyond this world that have opened up. However, it is still dangerous as the house falls down around your ears.
  
  A final post will be made after the results of the poll that will provide an overview of the world anyone who stays will be stepping into. For those who leave, your ending is your own to choose, whether that's another DWRP game, going back to your own reality, or going to a different reality. Regardless, if you leave, you are marked and you carry some piece of the Dread Powers with you to infect the next world you arrive in. Perhaps they get there before you or perhaps it's after, but they will be present in this new reality now, whether or not your character lives to see their rise and potential fall.
  
  Please be sure to vote in the OOC POLL so that we know where characters will be going to decide the endgame state. The date to respond to this poll is the same as the NPC tag-in cut off: 11:59 PM Pacific on 8 January.