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.

Comments

Aelwyn Abernant | OTA

[dangerousmind]

[There's a disturbing calmness to Aelwyn, as everyone panics and weeps and explodes with emotion, Aelwyn feels... nothing. Maybe this is what they mean when they talk about the lightless flame.

She remembers conversations with Jon, where she would arrogantly put forward her theories to the archivist and he would shoot her down as someone misunderstanding and blundering her way with preconceptions of "ways to win" or "free will."

The Spider wants her through that gate, she's sure of it, and she wants to brutalize the Spider. She wants to roast the Spider over a roaring flame and feast on it's charred flesh.]

This is the only way we can win, you know.

[There's a madness in her. How long has it been there? How long ago did she become a monster? It wasn't during her trip, when she'd committed yet another act of murder, and it wasn't even after she arrived here.

That same megalomania that brought Penelope Everpetal into an early casket has always been in Aelwyn. The fire has simply nurtured it within her.]

Reyes and Bonnie are idiots - in over their heads. But for once, the Entities are too. We can - I can lead them like pigs to the slaughter. [Her mouth twists into a grin and she laughs. She doesn't even notice the tears A relief. An ache. She'd resigned herself to giving up on it. Giving up on Adaine and... well, that's about it. Who cares about the rest of the universe in comparison to the two people she has any love left for? Mercy and the mere concept of a sister she treated with nothing but disdain.

She just has to find and kill her mama and papa.]

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

[Sheppard hears that and turns back to Aelwyn, drawn by the Hunt. He's been struggling with his own nature, having embraced it but also knowing the limitations of it. He's devolved (or maybe evolved) into a beast (though he finds his own more more aesthetically pleasing that Hickey's) but there's still a part of him that pretends to be human, that tries to grasp quickly fading morals, and he's dimly aware of it. All he cares about is protecting his own (Rodney) and those he'd call his friends.]

You sure about that?

[He's aware enough of his own nature that there is no winning, sometimes. And all there is, is the Chase. Or maybe he just recognizes the destruction in Aelwyn.]

[dangerousmind]

None of you have even the slightest comprehension of the sheer scale that we're dealing with.

[She can barely hold herself back from laughing - they're all so stupid. It's all so massive, so huge that even the Vast would be lost in it, so huge that she could pluck the sun from the sky and burn it to cinders.

There are beings bigger than them, and there are beings bigger than the beings bigger than the beings bigger than the beings...]

Do you really think - in the grand scale of infinity that the Entities would win against everything in the entire cosmic multiverse? They can die. We just need to reach them.

[Never-mind the sheer amount of terror that would feed the entities when brought to a planet connected to thousands of others, connected even further into infinite infinities. She can't think of that.

They've given her power, and by bringing them with her to the slaughter, she'll become a God. She'll rip the Nightmare King off His throne, and steal his place. She'll build the world anew, build a world where nobody can turn out like her.]

You can't ever catch them by thinking like prey. [A chase is a thrill, it is the point of the hunt, but by no means is it endless.]

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

I've been prey for a long time. [Before here, the moment he stepped foot in the Pegasus galaxy. He knows what it's like to be Hunted.]

Are you just speculating? Or do you have a world with something neat that can tear them apart?

[Because, well, he is listening.]

And then once that happens, what about the worlds the Entities still exist in? What about the other worlds that don't have these...Entity killing things?

[dangerousmind]

There's monsters, demons, angels and heroes alike who would want the Entities destroyed if they crossed into my world.

The magic here is built on the building blocks lain here by the Entities themselves, every single hole in the world is created by fear. In a world full of magic, built off magic, there's a lot of other options. I could create a portal. I could build a gateway and bring with me the force of a God, if I had enough time...

They aren't fully in this world, they're just peeking into a lot of others. If there's a place where they all are - a world of their own, we just need to find a way to kill them there or to fully seal them away...

[That's what heroes do, right? Heroes break down the barriers between worlds and murder cosmic horrors the likes of which no mortal could ever glimpse without falling into madness.]

I can't be certain that it would be that easy, but I can be certain that it's not impossible. Nothing ever is in the world of magic.