Event - Untimely

[apocalypsehowmods]

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Untimely

➥ Reality Check

(cw: hypersomnia, coma, supernaturally induced metaphysical hunger, psychosomatic pain)

"We all dream," the representative from Copernicus explains, directing attention to a powerpoint slide projected onto the wall beside her. The seminar in one of the conference rooms is ADI's latest effort to combat Ava's influence and take the fight to their foe. If she's going to put them all to sleep, then so be it. Let their ranks be ready for battle there. "My boss, Zyrian Steel, is a big dreamer. Copernicus started as one. We-" She pauses as her eyes seem to catch on someone at the back of the room. "But that-that's another presentation! Suffice to say, Mr. Steel heard you were having some sleep troubles around the office and wanted to help.

"Hello, everyone. My name is Luna, and I'm here from Copernicus' Augmenting Reality group to talk to you about lucid dreaming. Now, I see some of us are here in our Halloween outfits." She smiles and poses in her 50's-style poodle skirt. "Some of you have very impressive make-up and prosthetics, I might add. I was told there might be some stiff competition for this mid-Halloween get-together. Glad to see they weren't having a little fun with me." Any non-human in the audience is given an appreciative nod. "I can see we have a few dreams brought to life here, but what about shaping the dreams we have while we're in them?"

"We're going to go through a few exercises today. The key tricks for inducing lucid dreaming include:

"One, assess your reality regularly. Even if you can't remember falling asleep, take a moment every few hours to test your reality. Dreams might look very familiar, but there will always be inconsistencies and distortions you can catch. This should help you to recognize when you're dreaming.

"Second, the MILD method or Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams. This is a method where you'll set an alarm for 5 hours after you go to sleep. Once awake, you'll tell yourself, 'The next time I'm dreaming, I will remember that I'm dreaming.' You'll also try to imagine yourself in a lucid dream as you go back to sleep. Silly as it sounds, just having that intentionality can be highly effective.

"Third, tell yourself when you go to sleep that you are going to have a lucid dream, that you will be shaping your reality, even if it seems outside of your control. Convince yourself. Convince others.

"And fourth…" Luna pulls out some high-tech looking eyemasks. "You can try one of our patented Lucidio Eye Masks. These devices help to unlock your mind and provide it with a few extra cues that you're dreaming once you enter REM sleep. We'll be handing out a limited number of samples, courtesy Mr. Steel. That's for the end of our presentation. Now, let's go through the stages of sleep…"

Whether you can stay away for the rest of the presentation, everyone will be chivved awake with increasingly harsh prods if they've fallen asleep during the presentation. There are more seminars throughout the next few days, always similar with Luna offering her guidance on lucid dreaming. Maybe it's enough. Maybe it isn't.

The music doesn't stop. As with last October, the haunting tunes extend their grasp from the graveyards and out toward the rest of Gloucester, ringing through ADI's halls, along with the Flophouse. The music induces intense sleepiness, and you might find your coworkers slumping down while they walk or you might fall victim to the music, yourself.

You awake… somewhere. It might be a place that's familiar, or one that's utterly alien. What you know is that there is something in this place that calls to you, sings in your blood and burns to be away from. And yet, you're terrified. There is something here that wants to consume every part of you, suck the marrow from your bones and leave you a husk of what you once were. You need it. You want it. You are hungry for it. For the fear it both brings and demands. This place seems to be some sort of pocket dimension, a personal hell built just for you and the things that sink their teeth into your bones and claw at the back of your mind. This is a terrifying place.

And you're not alone.

If you've been paying attention to the seminars, perhaps you'll be able to recognize this as a dream, something that isn't real. Sensations that aren't real. A world that isn't real. But with that realization comes a choice. You could try to break free of your personal hell, rip it to shreds, make it less horrific. Or… or there is something that calls to you in this place, a thing that sounds the death of who you once were, perhaps. You could call back, reshape this reality to terrorize the others trapped here with you. They'll never know if you were aware or not, will they? They don't need to know you did this to them consciously.

Just this once, what if you gave in? If someone dies in the dream, it's not like they die in real life. Right?

➥ Knead Help

(cw: blood, unsanitary food, supernaturally-induced existential dread, supernaturally-induced suicidal thoughts, isolation, dissociation)

Deathbed Bread is off the market. Thanks to a timely tip, the Health Department has finally made a slightly less timely visit to Better Loaf than Never, and were forced to shut the storefront down when their inspectors were unable to gain entry to the kitchen. The lights are still on behind the boarded-up windows, though, the smell of sourdough still permeating the air as loaf after loaf is delivered through a slot from the kitchen through the day and night, bread piling up on the counter and floor behind the register. They come at regular intervals, still warm from the oven. ADI has taken over the little storefront now and set up a tiny field office there, the higher-ups having pulled enough strings for law enforcement to look the other way and not ask too many questions about the people coming and going as efforts to break into the kitchen intensify...and as ADI staff truck away loads of Deathbed Bread to incinerate back at headquarters.

Someone has a bright (or maybe desperate) idea: if they can't get in, maybe they can at least stop the bread from coming out. Boarding up the bread slot, by all accounts, works for perhaps an hour or two as those present can still hear more bread piling up on the other side. Then there's a soul-wrenching cry of anguish followed by a violent attack on the barrier from inside the kitchen that ends with an ADI agent injured by flying debris and a cascade of sourdough loaves stained with bloody handprints. It's enough, though. Whatever supernatural seal that made the kitchen blockade impenetrable has broken, and within the day ADI is able to break down the door.

A thick, unnatural fog is all that can be seen inside the doorway. Rather than the cool of an early morning, though, the damp air is hot and cloying; those who venture inside will soon find themselves drenched with a mix of sweat and humidity from the air. They will also soon find themselves alone, regardless of what companions they might have had with them when they entered. Did you have someone with you? You must have; it would be foolish to enter alone, and yet it rapidly becomes difficult to remember their face, their voice, the touch of their hand. Perhaps you imagined them. Perhaps you've always been alone.

Dark shapes in the fog resolve into tombstones as one nears--no, into huge, upright loaves of bread jutting up from where they've been sunk into the soft ground of this strange graveyard, dry and cracked and dead. There are names pressed into them, dates of death spanning the last few weeks…and the next few. Perhaps you'll spot your own name and today's date. And why shouldn't it be today? Everyone dies, and everyone dies alone. Any action other than laying down on the soft dough of your own grave and letting it swallow you up is only delaying the inevitable.

The spell of deathly quiet over this place isn't complete, though. Keep moving, keep trying, keep hanging on to thoughts of those you love and the clear sky beyond this little world, and you might find a friend who needs your help as much as you need theirs. One or both people encountering each other may feel as though they're in a dream, unable to see or hear the other–but with persistence, with feeling, it's possible to reforge the connection. Love and friendship may shine a light on what was invisible–but so will shared anger, joy, or disgust. Any strong, shared emotion beyond the fear and sadness that permeates this place renders would-be ghosts visible, solid, and real to one another, able to move forward or turn back to escape together–or to begin tearing up the tombstones in fierce denial of their portents.

This hellish graveyard is as far as most will go. Somewhere deeper in what was the kitchen, Bryn still labors and the bread still piles up. It will be up to those few lucky (or unfortunate) enough to stumble across him to put a final end to this.

➥ Never Sleep Again

(cw: child death, body horror, violence, potential injury or character death, nightmare dream logic)

Are you dreaming or are you awake? It becomes harder to tell as the music flows through halls and streets, rooms and parks. It’s dangerous out there, people falling asleep where they shouldn’t, or finding themselves face-to-face with what shouldn’t be when their eyes close unknowingly. Perhaps you planned it, your practice made perfect and your mind set to confrontation, maybe this time you sat down with the intention of stopping this. Or maybe it was simply an accident, but you’re here now. What else can you do but fight to survive?

The hellscape of your mind's torment might be familiar or maybe it’s a new flavor, but there’s something different this time. This time, there are seams; the dream around you is sewn together and you hold the scissors. Fight your way or will your way through, and you can pass between the swatches of your dreaming landscape. Maybe you find a friend or maybe you spot the retreating form of a little girl, turning a corner that isn’t there. Except you can see it now, the corridors of this place. You can follow her.

She leads you on a chase, her laugh a ricocheting titter of joy for the game. If you listen closely, however, there’s more to hear. The further you chase her, the more snatches of sound and sensation follow you as well. Grim melodies and snatches of song, searing heat, the taste of ash in your mouth, the sound of screaming that isn’t quite familiar. Your parents? Someone’s parents. Whispered voices. Snatches of words. ‘Amber.’ yelled, called, pleaded. Hide and seek was always fun.‘Ren’ a name that holds fondness, a feeling of a hundred tiny legs across skin- Stop! A command like a pick through your mind filled with anger and fear. Maybe it isn’t just your nightmares in here…

If you catch her, when you catch her, the game is over. Cornered and angry, Ava skitters up the wall, and across the ceiling to hang above you, neck at an impossible angle and clearly broken for it. “What’s wrong? Not having fun?”.

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Bryn and Ava will both be available for NPC interaction and threading. Players who want to talk to ask Luna anything should respond to the Questions section of the OOC post. The mods will provide her answers to specific questions. Characters who die in the dreams will not die in real life, but they will experience severe fatigue and pain, and may retain scarring in the waking world from whatever killed them in the nightmares. Characters who die in real life… well, they're dead. Please bear this in mind as the game does not have an easy resurrection mechanic.
  
  
• REALITY CHECK (16-25 October) - Everyone will be encouraged (but not technically required) to attend the lucid dreaming seminar. There will be a few of them over the course of three days. Characters can also pick up one of the Ludicio Eye Mask devices that will assist them in being able to enter a lucid state while dreaming. They don't always help, of course; they're mainly augmenting someone's abilities, provided they're following the guidance provided about how to enhance your lucid dreaming capabilities. Luna is clearly unaware that any non-humans are actually non-humans. She believes everyone is just really into Halloween around here.
  
  The nightmares this go around seem to be specifically focused on the Entities that your characters fear most and/or the ones they might be drawn to. You are welcome to make up a personalized hellscape for your character with anything you'd like in it. These are dreams! Go wild! Characters will fall randomly in and out of each other's dreams and personalized hellscapes. Those who have mastered lucid dreaming will be able to traverse dreams with more purpose, aiming to go to specific people's dreams or get themselves out of ones they don't want to be in. Lucid dream experts will also be able to shape the dreams that are meant for them. In their own nightmares, characters will feel a definitive pull toward one (or more over different nights) Entity and experience an intense fear of that Entity along with the desire to feed it, even if you want away from it.
  
  Feeding the Entities in the dreams and using the dreams to torment others will not necessarily lead to an Entity alignment… but it can do. Or it can set a character down a particularly destructive path in that vein. We would just ask that players remember that ADI is very anti-magic/Entities and anyone who is caught displaying powers/Entity alignment is liable to be mistrusted, watched, and potentially killed by the NPCs if they make themselves too much of an overt problem.
  
  
• KNEAD HELP (18-25 October) - Characters may find bread gravestones with their own names, the names of people they have lost, and people they fear losing, as well as names of locals who have been confirmed dead due to eating Deathbed Bread. Some gravestones will bear the names and correct dates for people who are actually dead; others will refer to people who are still alive. Gravestone engravings may include characters back home in player characters' worlds, as well as player characters that have been dropped from the game. OOCly, the appearance of a person's bread gravestone is not a reliable indication of whether that person is actually dead or going to die. ICly, characters may or may not realize this fact at players' discretion.
  
  
• NEVER SLEEP AGAIN (20-25 October) - As characters begin to gain control over their dreaming, they will find they can begin to track down Ava the Lullaby Girl. Confrontation can occur within the dream or, with enough willpower, a character can pull a piece of Ava into the waking world to try and kill her. Upon bringing her to the waking world, characters will find themselves faced with a teenaged version of the girl they were following, Ava’s actual body. She's not a little girl at all, but someone who's just entering into adulthood. Fights are likely to result in injuries ranging from mild to severe and can include death, please keep the setting’s death rules in mind for this. Threads with Ava can start in the dreams or already mid-fight in the waking world! It will take a concerted group effort to actually kill Ava. No one person will be able to do it themselves. Only a piece of her is pulled through or fought in the dreams that any person encounters.
  
  The morning after the last pieces are killed, Ava’s mangled corpse will be found on ADI’s grounds shortly after dawn, clutching a bloody, stuffed lamb in one hand.

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(frozen comment) QUESTIONS

[apocalypsehowmods]

Please respond here.

Bake Me Up Inside - closed to Eda, Methos, and Beau

[apocalypsehownpcs]

The cloying fog thins ahead, ground growing firmer under the intrepid explorers' feet. The transition between graveyard and commercial kitchen is strangely hard to spot, but once that threshold is crossed the fog closes in and becomes solid walls. Light seeps in around the edges of the boarded-up windows, but the lights overhead have all burned out. Heat radiates off a row of ovens, and a cleared mind can see the door back to the storefront and the bloodied bread chute near it.

In the middle of it is Bryn Fletcher, feverishly punching and shaping one risen ball of dough after another. He glances toward an oven as its timer goes off, curses under his breath, and rushes to shuffle several loaves out and onto a cooling rack before they burn, before rushing right back to his work on the dough. His face is gaunt and tired, hair sweat-soaked, the skin of his hands cracked and bleeding. It looks as though he hasn't slept or even stopped moving in days, and his movements falter here and there with fatigue. He seems completely unaware that anyone is in the room with him.

[easilyamused]

The fog transitions to walls, and Methos blinks as his eyes adjust to a different sort of dimness, noting the door and windows and bloodied bread chute, and calculating just how much of a barrier stands between them and freedom. The kitchen puts him more than a little in mind of a dungeon; the reek of sweat and blood and heat only adds to the impression.

His first impression of Bryn Fletcher is dead on his feet. In the wake of the corpses that had washed up and risen on the beach, he can't help but wonder if, had they been a few days, a week later in finding their way in, this man would have been reduced to no more than walking meat, fixated on this task until the flesh finally sloughed from his bones.

"This is not a well man," he murmurs to his new companions, a lifelong habit of caution keeping his voice pitched low despite the fact that Bryn seems beyond noticing. "We need to get him out of here before he collapses into one of his own ovens."

Never Sleep Again - Ava

[apocalypsehownpcs]

For any confronting Ava needs, one-on-one or multiple characters, just clearly mark in the subject line!

Confronting Ava

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

[John is so done with these dreams. Despite having experience lucid dreaming and defeating an evil dream doppelgänger of himself back on Atlantis, this time he doesn’t have the benefit of technology to help him, nor a team to wake him up, nor Rodney to give him moral support when the chips are down.

He’s on his own. Alone. And that’s a nightmare he lives and continues to have on the regular.

Well, maybe that’ll give him an edge. Or wreck him. It’s about 50/50 at this point.

John is in a typical forest, a common sight on Pegasus galaxy planets that looks not unlike a temperate, lush earth forest—-a dream forest, dark and forbidding and filled with mist, also probably teeming Wraith and Genii and all manner of bad guys in which to fight. But he’s at least staring to break free of the lure and pull of the dreams—the forest is empty at the moment, save for the odd bird call, and he can see strange…seams, that’s what they look like, feel like, within the dream. The forest is stitched together, the piece he just came from is night, and he walks carefully into the day.

Unfortunately he doesn’t have his gun. But he does have his knife, and he tries to poke it into one of the seams.]

[aelwyn_aberration]

Hello, Ava.

[The dream they find themselves in is one of Aelwyn's. It's a house - large, two stories it looks like, with a Fallinese flag in front of it. It's burning, smoke and flames lick up the side of the house but Aelwyn remains seated. There's food in front of her and her alone, a stack of food burnt black from Aelwyn's rejection of it. For the first time since she's arrived here, she feels in control.

She raises her arm, glad to finally have access to her magic - her real magic, and she summons a translucent hand the size of a small car that attempts to grab hold of Ava, and to prevent her from escaping the dream.]

Let's chat.

[Without a word, the chair opposite hers pulls out. The one that would belong to her little sister. Her usual prey when she's at this table, aware that it's a cage match. She smiles and her pupils narrow into slits, a twisted fondness in her expression that doesn't reach the ferocious hunger for pain in her eyes.]

Just Winter

[worthallthis]

He stares up at her, clinging to the ceiling of this particular room, impassive. He's still decked out in his usual combat gear, sans mask and goggles, but he's not aiming any weapons at her right now.

"I am not very good at having fun," he says blandly. "But I am pretty sure. That nightmares are not meant to be fun. At least not for the people having them."

[musicdied]

Yelena follows Ava through metal halls and concrete bunkers and a large, lovely home that looks to be ash, stitched together nightmares of little girls who had been molded into monsters. When she corners her, finally, it's in a training room, one long, mirror-panelled wall holding a barre.

She cocks her head, the angle much more human, and smiles through the taste of ash in her mouth. It doesn't touch her eyes. "Who says I'm not having fun? I think you're just a sore loser."

Cornelius Hickey | The Terror | open!

[friendsfordinner]

reality check, the seminar
A lot of this sounds like a bunch of bunk. Lucid dreaming? That can't be a thing. There's no way that can be a thing. But Hickey attends the seminar anyway, loitering in the back of the room, listening, very much being that shitty kid who doesn't want to pay attention to the speaker. He is obviously not giving this his entire focus and needs to be poked and nudged and reminded to pay attention more often than not.

It's when they're finished that Hickey decides to bother someone. The nearest person to him gets a nod before he asks,

"You don't really believe this stuff, right? It sounds fake even for our line of work."

reality check, dream 1
possible cws for cannibalism, paranoia, body horror, gore
You're alone.

You're entirely alone.

The wide expanse of the Arctic lies in front of you, cold biting your lungs, rocks biting into your flesh. This place wants you dead—you can feel it. The hunger is biting, a creation of it's own, something that lives inside you and threatens to take you whole. This is a hunger that you've never experienced before and that you never hope to experience again. But there's also something here, creeping, pushing into you, you can feel it's breath on your neck and yet you are somehow entirely alone.

Or almost alone. Because Hickey's also there. In the middle of the expanse of nothing, like a beacon in the darkness, are some tents. There's a table set up with silverware and plates, good china, positioned in a way that it's almost a mockery of civilization. And there's a naked body lying face down on the middle of the table.

"You know what you'll have to do," Hickey points out. "It's easy. Easier than people realize. You just have to...ignore your morals for a moment."

Should have paid more attention in that lucid dreaming seminar, dipshit.

Reality Check Dream 1

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

John was overconfident.

He’d even lucid-dreamed before, successfully, though he got his ass handed to him by the dream-entity that was his doppelgänger. And McKay had been there to help him get rid of it.

McKay’s not here, he’s alone, and he doesn’t have a team of scientists hooking him up to machines and stuff.

So he thought he could do this lucid dreaming thing well. He was wrong.

It’s cold. Desolate. He’s wearing his gray jacket and his tactical vest and it’s not enough in this environment. And now he’s staring at a tent, and a table, with some poor person there like they’re ready to be dinner.

The hunger he’s experiencing is staring to worry him.

“What?”

He stares at Hickey, in mild shock.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He has an idea of what he’s talking about.

Reality Check - cw warning for this whole thread: blood, darkness, murder, sadism

[abrightboy]

Malcolm is in his father's cell at Claremont Psychiatric, the maximum security facility for the criminally insane that his father has lived in since he was ten years old.

There is a red line painted on the floor. The limit of the monster's tether. Stay behind the line, otherwise, even shackled and tethered, the serial killer is a danger.

But something is wrong. Malcolm looks up from the line on the floor to find his father's smiling face.

"My boy," he purrs.

But Dr Martin Whitly isn't tethered to the wall. His hands aren't cuffed. Malcolm blinks at him as this becomes apparent to him and he backs up a couple of steps.

"You look pale," Martin observes. He steps past Malcolm and pushes the cell door open to reveal an eerie, quiet and empty hallway beyond it.

He shouldn't be able to open the door; why can he just open the door?

"Come on," Martin beckons. "Let's go for a walk."

The hallways are only semi-lit and they're empty. The lights flicker now and then. The shadows have strange, sharp angles. His heart sits somewhere in the base of his throat. He can feel it beating.

"Where are we going?" he asks and it sounds like his own voice is coming from very far away.

"For a walk," Dr Whitly reminds him cheerfully. "Stretch the 'ol legs. See if we don't run into a few friends."

[Anyone who steps into Malcolm's nightmare will be trapped in a creepy empty psychiatric hospital prison with Malcolm and his serial killer father.]

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

It’s some kind of hospital.

Earth based, maybe, or something very close to it. John can’t tell he’s caught up in lucid dreaming again, and for all he can tell that this is real and he’s really walking through these hallways…

…for some reason. Why is he here? Is he visiting someone?

He looks down at his clothes—he’s wearing his BDU’s and tactical vest, but no weapons—if he was on a mission, something was probably wrong. Why can’t he remember how he got here?

He really hopes that he didn’t get admitted here and had just escaped somehow…

John Sheppard | Stargate: Atlantis | OTA

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

Reality Check
cw for all: body horror, insects, violence, murder, blood, injuries, weapons, potential character death in dream, death, gore, cannibalistic themes/life draining, war, war imagery, genocide, PTSD, aging-related illnesses, any other cw’s that come up will be warned in thread

1. The Flesh

Scenario A:

You’re in a forest.

It’s dark, misty, and you have the uncanniest feeling like something is following you. It might be hunting you, or it might simply be curious.

Hopefully it’s the former.

There’s a clearing. Someone’s in the center of the clearing. A man, upon first glance, crouched down, clutching his head and making a distressed noise. But it’s not exactly a human noise. It sounds alien. Almost…insect-like. But it can’t be, right?

“Get back,” comes the voice from the man, raspy with fear. You might recognize the voice. It’s John Sheppard.

Or at least, it was John Sheppard.

The moonlight clears and he looks up, and it’s clear that he’s not entirely human, either. Bright blue iridescent scales line his neck, his hands, and most of his face, lines of spikes working their way up through the patterns in the scales. His eyes are yellow and lizard-like, the eyes of a predator that hunts through movement.

If you don’t start running, or worse, stay to talk to him, he’s going to lash out with his hand and grab your arm—
—and something in his hand will bite down, sinking into the skin.

Congratulations. You’re going to become an Iratus-bug hybrid in a few minutes, too.

Scenario B:

“There’s too many of them,” John growls, shooting his P90 over the top of some rubble. You’re on a planet with him, somewhere, and you’re in what looks like an ancient, wrecked village made of stone. There’s stunned bolts flying everywhere—these aliens clearly don’t want you dead.

Yet.

You can see them amongst the crumbling walls—tall aliens with long white hair, and faces that resemble snakes—yellow reptilian eyes, sensor pits on sides of their face, sharp teeth—and worst of all, a secondary mouth on their hands where they suck the life out of people. The knowledge is there in the dream, and you just know that you’ll have a bad time if they—

—there’s one behind you and suddenly the Wraith throws you on your back, slamming their feeding hand against your chest. It bites down…and then it starts to drain the life out of you. It’s a horrific feeling, losing years of your life as you age rapidly. You look old, then elderly, then ancient–

—and then the Wraith stops, and falls over. John has shot it full of holes, and he rushes over to your side.

“Damn.” Sorry. Guess they got you. “Look, I can take you back to Atlantis…”

2. The Extinction:

The Wraith have won.

And they were stupid about it.

The galaxy is overrun, the last free outcroppings of humanity have retreated to the city of Atlantis, a marvel of Ancient technological wonder, floating on a ocean. On an ordinary day, it would have been a beautiful sight. Now it’s full of smoke, destroyed sections of the city falling into the water…

There’s Dart ships and Cruisers floating overhead. The last few Atlantean fighter ships, the Puddle Jumpers, are losing quickly. There are no more drones to fight them with, no way except to fend them off, one by one in the city itself.

The Wraith would go extinct too, soon after this. They had hunted humans too much, and John realizes what it feels like on the other side of overfishing. Once the Wraith had pushed the human population of the Pegasus Galaxy overhead, it had become a free-for-all. A feeding frenzy, in which starving Wraith fought each other for the last scraps of food. There weren’t enough scientists left to help find a solution for either party, and there wasn’t enough power left in the ZPM to use the Stargate to dial earth. Or another planet. Atlantis would be humanity’s last stand.

John looks at you, his companion, as he lays suppressing cover fire down the hallway. Several Wraith snarl and go down.

“Maybe we can get to the Jumper bay. See if there are any left.”

And go where? There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

It’s over.

3. The Hunt:

There’s something different about this one.

He had felt it in the other dreams—not realizing they were dreams at the time—but this one is calling to him stronger than the others. It sings in his blood, his soul, he hates it and wants it and needs it all at the same time. He’s aware now, realizing that this is a dream. He needs to break out, destroy it.

But it’s insidious. It purrs in his mind, telling him to have a little fun. He should learn how to manipulate this world, right? What if it happens again? He needs to be ready. He needs to know how to do this. To beat the bad guys, of course. Sorry to whoever is unlucky enough to get caught in this dream, but it won’t hurt them.

It calls to him and he calls back.

He’s in the woods again. This time it’s day, surprisingly bright and sunny and cheerful. It feels different, too, like he’s more in tune with it, as if whatever is driving this place is happy with him. Besides, this isn’t real. He can use this to train.

He can use this to hunt.

John sits there, on an overturned log, a piece of dried grass in his mouth and his sunglasses on, literally just hanging out. His P90 machine gun sits next to him.

If someone appears through the woods, he’ll greet them cheerily.

“You have a ten second head start.”

It’ll make it more fun.

2

[musicdied]

Yelena hadn't been present for the Battle of New York, but like pretty much everyone else on the planet, she'd seen the footage, played over and over and over as though familiarity could somehow dampen the horror. This reminds her of that, all alien ships and swarming monsters, so much bigger than anything she'd previously conceived of.

But there's one important difference. There are no heroes here, no gods or myths to turn the tide and force back the nightmare. Only soldiers and scientists, dead and dying.

Distantly, she knows that she shouldn't be here, that she has no reason to be here. But in the manner of dreams and nightmares, she knows the edges of where here is, knows enough of the outline of the situation to make the fight feel immediate, and important, and ultimately futile.

She slaps another magazine home in her gun, quick and efficient, and utters a low bark of laughter.

"And then what? Run until we're hunted down like dogs?" She shakes her head, and something hardens in her expression. "We should blow this place to atoms, and take as many with us as we can. Maybe we will even catch..."

She stops, brow furrowing. Catch who? It's important, but she's caught up enough in the dream narrative to not quite be able to tease it out.

Eda Clawthorne | The Owl House | OTA

[edalyn]

Reality Check | Hunt Domain

Wherever you happen to show up, the sky is blood red and the landscape is made of gigantic bones. Fog creeps around your feet. On a smaller scale, the setting varies. Sometimes you pass through twisting alleyways between shadowy, ill-defined buildings. Mostly, you’ll find yourself in the wilderness. The trees close in around you, oppressive and yet somehow, you know, not enough cover to hide you from hungry eyes.

A)
Eda hasn’t quite gotten the hang of this lucid dreaming thing. Right now it just feels like a nightmare. Like the nightmares she used to have, despite the fact those have been gone for some time now.

She’s shivering, eyes wide and back pressed against a wall. She’s hiding behind a house nestled between the trees, and it isn’t clear if she can’t get inside or if inside simply isn’t any better of an option. She looks scared, and she looks… young. People who know Eda in the waking world might not recognise the small teenage girl with two yellow eyes and bright red hair.

She doesn’t notice another dreamer at first–she’s too busy wrapping her arms around herself and desperately trying to keep silent. Trying not to catch the attention of a huge, shadowy beast that stalks through the trees, sniffing out her trail. It has four legs but the wings, head, and talons of an owl.

It isn’t the creature that shares her mind, not the real one… because it’s too busy having nightmares of its own.

B)
“Why bother, beast? You can’t keep running forever…” The voice is childlike, even sing-song, but there’s an unmistakable edge of malice in it.

A shape passes you, running through the forest. It looks like the creature in Eda’s nightmare, but it’s less shadowy, its feathers a mix of tawny gold and rust-red. And it isn’t chasing her, nor is it chasing you.

It’s not the one hunting tonight.

It’s fleeing desperately from the figure taunting it. They’re cloaked in a dark robe, the only notable features the pattern of moons and stars on the fabric, and their face is obscured in the shadows of their hood.

The owl beast is exhausted. Its paws ache and its wings burn–a dull glow is spreading ever so slowly up the flight feathers, turning them first to embers and then to crumbling ash.

Suddenly it feels a net spread over it, threads of shadow tangling around its body and bringing it to the ground. It struggles and shrieks, clawing its way out and scrambling to its feet. The chase goes on.

The Grand Huntsman is playing with it… but they always win in the end.

C)
For better or worse, the nightmares don’t last forever. The dreams bring nagging hunger, even worse than in the waking world.

The owl beast isn’t evil, but it is a predator. It doesn’t take much of a push for it to remember that it much prefers being the hunter to the prey. Something behind you shrieks, a piercing cry like a hawk.

The beast on your trail looks older, more haggard than it did its own nightmare. It’s grey, shaggy and gaunt. But it’s hungry, and it’s determined, and it shows no signs of slowing as it stalks you.

The observant–or the slow, or the careless–might notice that there’s something tied around one of its back feet. A thin red string that glimmers slightly, trailing off into the distance. Maybe help lies in that direction? Or maybe you should just run.

D)
Eda is slowly gaining control of her dreams, and with it comes a different scene than the first night.

From a clearing in the forest comes the sound of a gentle voice. Sometimes talking softly, sometimes just humming or murmuring vaguely. Eda is sitting in the center of the clearing, and this time she isn’t alone.

The creature in her lap is much less threatening than usual. While it’s clearly the same strange, four legged owl, it’s currently about the size of a house cat. It seems restless, chirping softly and turning in a circle, pawing at her arm. There’s a thin red string, tied around its paw and ending in a similar loop around Eda’s ankle.

She strokes its feathers and tries to hush it. “Come on… it’s alright. We’ve been making so much progress, right? Just… stay here. There’s a good… owl thing.”

Perhaps you shouldn’t interrupt whatever this is. But the little creature looks up suddenly, noticing they’re not alone.

E)
Things seem to be going better… until one night they aren’t.

The creature stalking you tonight is clearly a monster, but one that looks a lot like Eda. It walks on four legs, it has wings, and its eyes are solid black, but its hands are long and almost human, and its face, despite all the sharp teeth, is recognizably that of the witch herself.

It seems they’re both hungry tonight.
You could try to reason with it.
But it’s probably time to run.

B (Hulk)

[gammasystem]

Hulk was in the woods. They were dreaming, at least he thought they were dreaming. It felt like it usually does when they whisk away to the world in their head to convene but this time Hulk was alone. Puny Banner, Grey and Pa were all gone.

Hulk's lumbering form eased onto his knuckles in a crouch, much like an ape settling it's weight.

Then something whisked past- feathers and claws. It reminded him of-

"BETTY-?" Hulk barely got the name out before realizing the red wasn't as vibrant, the face wasn't as pretty. It looked like an animal, and it looked like it was scared.

The green figure whipped his head to the sing-song voice and saw its robes of stars and moons and suns.. He may have thought it a friend but as it cast out a net over the scrambling animal- a familiar sensation boiled up quickly in Hulk's chest. Anger- sympathetic anger, knowing what it was like to be hunted.

Hulk barrelled between the robed figure and the Owl-beast as he slammed a foot down and clapped his hands together. Sending out a thunder-wave of force towards the figure, hoping to knock it back further.

"GO AWAY! Hulk shouted, voice bellowing out through the trees around them.

Raine Whispers | The Owl House | Reality Check | OTA

[rainewhispers]

TW: body horror, monstrous transformation, spiders, webs, puppeteering/lucid mindcontrol/body manipulation, puppets, death, corpses/dead bodies, decomposition

Web Domain

There's a few places you'll come to when you awaken in this domain. Two in particular find you settled into their clutches as you take your first steps forward. No matter which, no matter where you end up in, you’ll swear up and down you heard the sound of a sad, weeping violin playing lull you into the dream past the point of no return. It’s the most beautiful, poignant sound you’ve ever heard.

A)

You jolt awake in a dressing room, viewing balcony, front row seats or even the backstage of a theater. Wherever you start you’ll find the theatre to feel warm and lively but the surroundings.. They tell another story.

Paint peels off the walls, lights flicker and the floorboards creak and groan with every step. The closer you get to the main theater if you aren’t there already you’ll hear applause pouring into a symphony hall. If you’re already in the theatre, or when you arrive there, you see this sight:

A grand stage that’s more opulent and bright than the rest of the theatre, it’s in pristine shape and dancing around it are giant rats with black bristly fur in accessories and showpieces as they sing and cheer in a language you can’t understand. Trying to makes your headache with no reprieve. Notably the closer to the stage you get the chillier it will be, a strange cold that shudders to the bone.

In the middle of the stage, the spotlights land on a young witch-ling with tan skin and seafoam hair, in a shoddy rat-costume. They’re adorned with a colourful sash and holding a violin that seems a bit too big- or perhaps heavy for them, with the way they’re trembling and struggling to hold it.

The theater then goes still, quiet, and all eyes seem to be on them.. For now.

B)

When you come around here, you find yourself in a dark place. A craggy cave whose walls seem to be made of bone and some hardened blue substance. You don’t know how you know this but.. You’re inside a body, of some kind. All around you as you venture through the tunnels there starts to be strands of thick cobwebs hanging and draping over the walls, then more and more these webs culminate until you can barely walk without trudging through the sticky substance.

You see things, crawling around in your peripheries, you can’t quite make them out but there’s too many eyes- or maybe legs? Or both. First small, then they get bigger as you feel more and more like something is watching you.

Finally when you push through an opening into a large open cavern it doesn’t take long to realize this was the inside of a giant skull. The openings of the eyes and the nose, between the grand teeth, were giant webs that would keep you from escaping if you weren’t first drawn to the gigantic wall of webs a bit ahead of you.

Strung up in these webs, in various states of decomposition there are bodies. Witches with pointy ears and cracked veins across their visible skin all emanating from their collectively visible wrists, of which their arms were reaching out and upwards. Those whose faces weren’t rotted off were twisted in anguish and despair.

Above them where they were reaching there was one figure still mostly uncovered by the webs, and more alive than the rest, even breathing. The craggy veins on them were still glowing though more dimly than when they first arrived at the ADI.

It was Raine. They were out of reach but they seemed to be awake, staring blankly ahead.

[edalyn]

Eda is, perhaps, the person who would be least surprised or upset by the mere fact she's in a gigantic skeleton. Her own nightmares have been set in the isles, too, though she hasn't quite realised that this is a nightmare. While she's been starting to get the hang of the lucid dreaming, that's been within her own. This is the first time she's found herself in someone else's domain.

And so the first thing she finds herself wondering is if she is, somehow, home. Something that would have been a good thing a few weeks ago, when she thought there was still hope for anyone there. Now... now she needs to know, but she doesn't want to.

She starts walking, pushing her way through the cobwebs and grimacing a little as they begin sticking to her. Eda doesn't mind spiders, she thinks they're cute, but she she doesn't enjoy the texture, the cloying feeling of the webs themselves. Nor does she enjoy the feeling of being watched, especially when she doesn't know if there's anyone left that she would want watching her.

The unease gets worse as she finally steps into the cavern, given the last time that she was in the Titan's skull. She looks up and--perhaps it's luck, or perhaps it's the fact that this is a nightmare, but the first body she sees confirms a very recent fear.

"Hunter--!" Her voice cracks as she rushes toward the limp body of the Golden Guard--of the kid she'd been trying so, so hard to keep safe in the ADI's world until he disappeared.

He's out of reach, but she doesn't need to touch him to confirm he's dead. The boy's pink eyes are sunken and unseeing. His face is twisted into an expression of betrayal and terror that makes her heart ache with anguish and guilt. Tangled in the webs next to him she spots chunks and splinters of wood that look like they may have once belonged to a carving of a cardinal.

She swallows thickly, feeling sick. She doesn't want to look at the rest of the cavern, but she can't stop herself, either. There are a few bodies she can't make out, too rotted and covered in webs, but the next one she does recognize... she wishes she didn't. "Lily..." Eda makes a small, choked noise in the back of her throat.

Her sister looks more decomposed than Hunter, and more obscured by webbing, but parts of her clothes and hair and painfully familiar, as is the staff hanging loosely in her hand, only held there by strands of cobweb. The white raven atop it is cracked down the center, as lifeless as everyone else.

She barely notices the tears welling up and then spilling down her cheeks. They just get worse as she notices other bodies she can't help but recognize. Darius, Eberwolf, the Coven Heads who were part of the rebellion after all. Their other childhood friends. So many witches she knows, or used to know.

"No, no, no..." Eda sinks to her knees, hands tangling into the cobwebs in front of her, as she starts to sob. There's no point in trying not to. There's no point in anything. It was bad enough to know, but seeing it breaks her.

At some point a small part of her realizes there's one person in particular she hasn't seen. Maybe they're safe, maybe... she doesn't want to know, but she has to. She blinks back tears until she can see and looks up, scanning the bodies for--

"Raine...?" Are they alive? They are--they're breathing--right? Eda tries to struggle to her feet, but the webs are making it difficult. "Raine!"

Mercy Graves | OC | OTA

[graveyounglady]

(cw: death, thanatophobia, existential dread, blood, body horror)

A. The Graveyard
There are no threats in this nightmare, no apparent violence or monsters to chase those who find themselves here. There is a field of lush red flowers glistening with what looks like dew beneath a wide, starry sky and full moon that paints the world almost as bright as daytime. There's a forest beyond the field with gentle blue shadows and strong white trunks. A warm wind rustles through the leaves and across the blossoms.

For those who begin to trek through the field, the scent of earthy decay will rise up with each step. Perhaps not so strange. There's a copper tang to it, though, and it will become rapidly apparent that the flowers are not simply red. They are not covered in dew, but fresh blood, bright and shining. The branches of the trees are bones rattling together. The bark of the trees are vertebrae.

A young woman is digging a grave in a clearing just beyond the trees. Her smile is warm as she looks up. "Oh! Hey, there, cousin. You're early, ain't you? Haven't finished digging. Mind waiting just here? Few more minutes and I'll get you to your Long Rest, don't you worry. It's a'coming."

B. Prophet
Mercy's never had the abilities of a bard, but her voice rings out in something like song as she roams her nightmarish domain, searching for victims. This is what Brother Earth would want. It finally feels right to be with him again, to set aside the Spring Tide and return to the roots that have dug into her since her birth.

"Lay me down among the flowers.
Lay me down upon the earth.
Where the roots will weave around me
Form the cloak of my rebirth.

Let me be among the flowers.
Let my body serve them right.
In the end our only purpose:
Be the soil for blossoms bright.

Do not look unto the morrow
When the end is drawing nigh.
Just sit down among the blossoms.
Rest your head, and dear, don't cry.
For tonight you'll say goodbye."

If you see the Prophet of the Earth, she'll see you and flag you down. It's not a person's face she's looking at, though. Rather, her chin is tilted upward. It might be difficult to tell where her eyes are when they're pure white, the iris and pupil wiped away. "Huh... well, that's an interesting number you got up there."

Prophet

[whisperedone]

It's the singing that calls him, the voice is familiar and the subject of the song...telling. He makes his way to her, ears sharp for anything else beyond the low-whispers that seem ever-constant in this waking dream.

Her voice is angled away from him and it pulls a look of confusion to his face.

"What numbers are you seeing, Mercy?" His voice is ever-even and low, but there's...some concern under it all. Something about this was concerning. Off. Like that sense that told him when he was approaching a cultist.

Not Mercy, surely...

martin blackwood | ota, i'll match your format!

[lowficharm]

i. [reality check; asleep] now, my only goal is to see / and i'm always fast asleep

[This dream, as it begins, is not overwhelmingly terrifying. Honestly, it's quiet. Wherever you were, wandering between spaces, suddenly it's like the sound cuts out from some unseen force and you can almost hear the sound of your own heartbeat. It's fine. It's peaceful.

Pressing into it will lead you into the streets of a city- those who might recognize it think it looks like London, but nothing seems to be exactly in the right place if you know the structure. A fog permiates the road and sky, but it's able to be seen through enough to see the buildings before it clouds everything else out. The other issue, of course, is that there's simply no one else here- it seems like people have certainly been there, with the lights being on and the footsteps left on the street. But it's quiet. Even you don't seem to make much noise.

That is, until you hear it. If you step into a building- a shop, a restraunt, a library- you'll start to hear just bits of people. One or two words at first, but if you concentrate, a bit more. And they're all asking the same thing.

Help. Please, help me. Why is no one helping me?

The thing is- you can't see them. The more you look around the more you might here, but there's no one to bump into, no figure to find. On top of that, the more you explore, the more the fog seems to permiate everything- indoors, around corners, almost in your own head.

Eventually, it might choke you out. But if you're lucky and keep following the voices, you might find one man. Just one. Martin, hands in his pockets, all of his colors muted by the haze, looking up at a large building that seems almost entiely obscured.

You can talk to him, if you'd like to try. Hopefully he can hear you. But maybe no one can, anymore.]

ii. [reality check; awake] it takes more than strength to find / this peace of mind

[Hm! So guess who never wants to sleep again! If you guessed Martin and also probably everyone else, you're right, but gosh does Martin never want to sleep again. It's especially bad after learning what he knows now about Ava- why she's probably doing this, how it all must feel, how this will probably end- and it's just awful. He can't imagine anyone else is feeling very good about the whole thing either, and it's really making him want to turn inward. Give in. Give up.

But he knows he can't. So instead, he's prepared a fresh pot of tea, found some cookies, and is carrying a tray over to anyone who looks particularly unhappy or tired. Once he sets it down, he is not even asking if they want a cup, and starts pouring.]

Here. Looks like you could use the pick-me-up, hm?

iii. [knead help] he needs no army where he's headed 'cause he knows / that they're just ghosts

[As soon as he hears about the people stumbling out of the fog, about how you can't see and can't remember and people who died alone-- well, he knows what that is. He knows what it is all too vicerally thanks to the previous weeks, and it terrifies him. It's one thing to know you're dreaming, to be in control of a space, but to go back there willingly? To know it's around the corner and people are stepping in--

It takes him a little time to get it together, to convince himself. He leaves a note for Jon, telling him that if he doesn't see him by tonight, that's where he'll be. And he heads off with a torch in hand, to do this right this time. Break it his way.

So if you're wandering, lost among the gravestones, you may well hear a far-off voice or see a little speck of light somewhere among the clouds, and hear a voice calling out to you.]

Hey! Hey, if you can hear me-- tell me about your, your best friend. Or the person you love, okay? I want to hear about them.

iv. [wildcard] and they can't hurt him if he can't see them, oh

[Want something else with Martin not listed here? Hit me up at cancerously, PM me, or hit me in the Discord and we can make it happen.]

knead help

[friendsfordinner]

Who says I've got someone I love? [ Hickey calls back, tenseness in his voice. His entire being right now is like a caged animal, a snake that could strike any moment. He had a bead on that Bryn fellow, he knew where he was, he could smell him...but then the fog rolled in and he found himself walking in circles, having lost the scent.

He fucking hates it. Avatar bullshit, that's what this is.

But there's a voice. There's Martin's voice. So Hickey turns all his senses, all his focus on that voice, trying to pinpoint precisely where he is. ]

Andrew Jaeger | Original Character | OTA

[bloodalwaystells]

((Will match prose or brackets!))

➥ Reality Check CW: gore, dismemberment, torture, possible dream-death, body horror/monsters, corpses

Evil Playground

Jaeger's dreamscape towers to the sky, stacks of mangled cars forming claustrophobic walls of broken glass and twisted steel. Black, jagged holes and spatters of dark liquid mark some of the wrecks, shadows draped over the ruin and forming a thousand secret corners.

It brings the heavy, ominous feeling that no one survived these wrecks. The grit underfoot is heavily stained with oil and what-might-not-be-oil, crunching and grinding with each step in a flat, echoless cadence. Sickly, sourceless light casts an unreal air on the scene, enough to see by without really illuminating anything.

And amid the stillness and silence, there's the occasional motion, quick-there-and-gone flashes of something peering through shattered windshields, reaching from twisted metal nests and hollows. Stalking, with a soft subliminal chitter, the gleam of black eyes and misshapen limbs. Whatever is here is hungry, interested, and patient enough to follow at its leisure, making itself only known in the barest of glimpses.

As the maze goes, it gets closer. Tighter. The piles loom higher and heavier, swaying where they're balanced so very carefully, the air grows heavier with a rancid, coppery scent.


The Place We Call Home

Disaster and neglect has visited what was once a magnificent manor house, reducing the corridors and grand rooms to a shadowed, hollow shell. Only the bare glow of candles lights the dark-stained walls and carpets, the furniture recognizable but heavy with mildew and rot. The house has been left to quiet disintegration, untouched except by the slow creep of decay. Here and there, there are signs of its previous glory, but all of it is caked in filth and dust and silt that conceals what was once luxuriously appointed.

Somewhere, there's the sound of dripping water, a slow and steady beat marking the passage of time like a heartbeat. With it comes the occasional soft whimper, floating like a phantom in the silence before trailing off again.

The decay gets deeper as one progresses through the house's corridors, and the scene gets stranger, more ominous. Paintings on the walls convey degradation and torment, scenes all the more sinister for the water damage that stains them dark. Hallways and doors warp and shift amid the rattling of chains, the sly and subtle clink of metal on metal and of sharp things gathered together. Groans of pain rise to agonized shrieks that could be three floors away, or right in the next room, whispered mantras carry through the emptiness.

Bloody handprints float dark and delicate like butterflies on the ornate wallpaper. The carpet grows thick and sodden, the reek of mold overwhelming. Tables with silt-filled drawers, concealing the quick sharp gleam of a scalpel, a bundle of ribbon-wrapped hair, a bag of silver coins. Through the windows is nebulous darkness, a constantly shifting sky that never quite breaks its mantle of gray and black.

And at the heart of it is a single stairway down. Into the dark...into the seething heart of the horror and madness that's possessed this place.


➥ Never Sleep Again CW: blood, gore, torture, child death

The Junkyard

Somewhere in the maze lurks shadows with teeth and claws, bloody-minded hunters and a thousand glittering, hungry eyes peering through broken holes and twisted shapes.

But maybe the chittering resolves itself into a child's joyous laughter, instead. Maybe the shapes that flicker in and out of the pathways take the form of a little girl. Or maybe there's something even darker and more vicious amid the turns and twists...

The Manor

What was previously subtle, becomes a true nightmare to navigate as the house takes on a life of its own. Doors open onto nothing, hallways stretch forever at strange and impossible angles. Stairways wind and coil like snakes devouring themselves, leading to rooms far too big for the shape of the house to hold.

It's a merry little chase through corridors that never seem to end, chasing quick dark shadows that are always just out of reach.

Until, finally, the maze resolves itself into something real, a path through that might defy logic, but somehow manages to be, anyway. The stairway down leads someplace different this time. Giggles bubble up from the darkness, chiming bright and delighted and shifting between the voice of a young girl and the older, throatier tone of an adult. Cloying shadows give way to flickering, ruddy light, a flash of searing, suffocating heat and choking ash.

Maybe it's a ruined, bloodstained basement. Or maybe it's a grand hall befitting the final confrontation. Maybe the flood has taken its toll here, too, or maybe the ruin came in the form of scouring fire. Whatever lies in the space-that's-not-really-a-space, it's there, waiting.

Wildcard

((Feel free to message me or brimstonemuse for plotting/custom starters!))

Closed - For Garner

[bloodalwaystells]

Going into a dream willing and ready is a far cry from being pulled into one by insidious exhaustion, and though it was entirely too easy to fall asleep, this time Jaeger came prepared. This time, they came prepared, a planned assault on the Dream Girl on her own ground. The form it takes might be unplanned, a random manifestation of both the subconscious and whatever dark whims their target is putting into play, but Jaeger and Garner have planned for the fight.

They are on the Hunt, determined to put an end to this horrible spectacle for good.

Jaeger's never actually been in the house, That house, but somehow, he knows it in his bones. The sound of dripping water cuts through him like winter cold, brings the hair on the back of his neck to standing and makes his skin ache with the memory of sharp, biting things dragged oh-so-carefully across yielding flesh.

Outside, the world burns, distant flickering light and clouds of stinging smoke. He can smell it, the bitter taste of char and, if he strains very, very hard to listen, the crackle of flames.

He's not sure if the screams are out there, or in here. Space is doing strange things around him, distorting in subtle, unsettling ways, and the sense that he can't trust his own feet is strong. With a grimace, Jaeger shifts his grip on his sword- an honest-to-god longsword, sharp and deadly and held in skilled hands- and looks over at Garner. One good, steadying breath, in and out, centering himself against the disorienting effects of the space around them.

Cheery laughter rings from everywhere and nowhere, before resolving itself into an echo down the central corridor. The doors that don't hang at broken angles have scratches on them, desperate panic etched into the paint.

"Be careful. This place is...not right." He reaches out to touch Garner's arm, to indicate as best he can which way the chase leads.

Yelena Belova | MCU | OTA

[musicdied]

i. Reality Check - Hunter cw: claustrophobia, mind control, violence, potential murder

The space is dim, a long corridor lit only with dull orange sodium lights spaced at two-metre intervals along the corrugated metal walls. The air is stale, smelling strongly of rust, and less strongly of sweat and old blood. There's a dull rattle and shriek of metal as the door is wrenched shut, followed by the thump of a heavy bolt being engaged.

The walls and ceiling are uncomfortably close, and should bring with them the sense of being caught in a trap - and yet, with the sound of the lock being thrown comes a sense of complete confidence. This is a trap - but it's a trap for someone else. For the quarry, the little rat being chased to the centre of this maze.

Find her. Kill her. That is abruptly the driving purpose of any dreamer who steps into this maze - and while the self-aware might notice the interference and the strong-willed question it, throwing it off may not be quite so easy. Not with that bloody, streaked handprint along one wall suggesting the prey is already injured.

Not with the flash of a sly smile from the dark-haired (no, blonde, no, red-haired) woman whose face is perfectly familiar and impossible to remember, who offers a gun and a fiercely pleased, "Come on, it won't take long to run her to ground."

ii. Reality Check - Hunted cw: claustrophobia, child harm, violence enacted by children, implication of medical torture

The space is still dim, still smelling of rust, and sweat, and old blood. This time, though, the door is already locked. This time, there is a strange chemical scent, sharp and faintly sweet, as though someone has mixed acetone with honey. It hits like an icepick to the sinuses, like the world's worst case of brainfreeze, there and gone in seconds. A hand rubbed along the wall will come away stained with strange red grit.

This time, there is no compulsion to hunt. There is just the corridor, and the faint gleam of light off of glass ahead. The way back is closed; why not push on?

The gleam resolves into a narrow window set in rusting door. A keypad sparks beside it, half-fused. The door is locked, but the curious can peer through the window into an operating theatre, and a table equipped with restraints, streaked with drying blood. A clump of hair, blonde, scalp still attached, lies just beneath the table, as though forgotten.

Look through the window or turn down the bend past it - either way, approaching the door at the end of the corridor is enough to catch something's attention. There is the sense of movement, the centre of mass strangely low, and the sudden slash of a knife at what would be the mid-thigh of the average adult.

Knead Help

From somewhere in the cloying fog comes a cry of fury, followed by a torrent of swearing. Not all of it is in English. Enough of it is to grasp the general thrust of it - fuck this, fuck everyone responsible for this, we are sick of this fucking bullshit.

A dull crunch follows, the unmistakeable sound of a woman at the very end of her tolerance putting a booted foot through a giant loaf of bread. As courses of action go, it's unlikely to do anything to solve the larger problem. But there's enough anger in it to perhaps burn off a little of the fog, to let someone likewise furious at the use of loss as a knife to flay the soul, of the use of the pretense of inevitability as a bludgeon to crush the will, to see clearly enough to find Yelena amongst the graves.

And aren't two people just a little less lost than one?

(If you want something else, PM me or hit me up at quantumvelvet.)

I.

[setthetone]

Carter doesn't know the first thing about guns.

Well, he knows them, knows how devastating they are, the damage they do. Has been threatened by them, has had patients get shot right next to him.

The bottom line is, he hates them. A lot. The one (and only, thank you very much) time Maggie had taken him to the shooting range had been a disaster and he had been so glad to hand the thing back after his first attempt.

"I, uh..."

He stares at it, puzzled, but it actually feels good in his hand. Not as heavy as he remembers. The dream pulls at his mind, trying to lull it in, put it at ease. Isn't it just an instrument? Not unlike a scalpel or a crash cart. He knows he's not a fighter and it will protect him, give him a fighting chance against her. He's pretty sure he'd stand no chance against her otherwise. That means the gun is his friend, right?

He looks over at the bloody handprint and it brings a rush of excitement. Really, he hasn't felt this energized in forever. And after all the hardships of the last months, it feels so good?

It feels good not being the hunted for once.

"All right," he agrees, nodding at his companion and suddenly he has to grin. "Hey, this is fun?"

Jonathank Sims | OTA

[the_archivist]

CW: Death, blood, canon-typical worms, eyes, suffocation, being buried alive, train crashes, spiders+spiderwebs, stalking

i. Reality Check; Awake
[This is tedious. It's not entirely inaccurate, he supposes. Dream logic can be useful. He remembers how the apocalypse had worked, twisted to suit the domains that one found themselves in. Twisted in so many ways to Jon's will. Compared to that though, it feels reductive, too simplistic.

Dreams are not just dreams when dealing with this.

He still attends the seminars though, curious despite himself. Copernicus and Zyrian Steel are names he's have to reseach.]

I wonder how many New Age self-help books were read to come up with this.


ii. Reality Check; Asleep
[The Archivist knows where he is, although to say that he is anywhere would be an error. He is where he exists so often when his eyes are closed. He wanders the dreams he has been given.

There are some which are faded like an old photograph, worn with time and being held too closely for too long; sterile metal tables which overflow with spilled blood, a train car twisted and warped from the pressure and filled with cloying dirt, hunters and a woman whose skin is pock-marked with hole through which silver worms writhe.

The Archivist walks past those. They do not offer sustenance any longer. They are relics, wrapped carefully to be preserved.

The other dreams come in flashes of terror, always shifting, always awful. A carousel, bright lights blinking as people run and run and tear each other to pieces for a moment of identity. A hotel, tasteful (it has ferns) where the room numbers are never your own and the hallways shift, but the walls are crumbling and broken. A house, innocuous, a cellar door open and inviting and you will never escape those webs.

A Tower in the distance that you can see no matter where you stand.

And above it all, blotting out the sky, the Eye. The Eye that sees all, and knows all, and clutches at the secret terrors of your heart. The Ceaseless Watcher of all that is, and all that was; the voracious, infinite hunger the tears at his soul, invoking him to discover, to observe, to experience all, and everything, and forever.

He. Is. Whole. This is the only place where he feels whole now, his realm of nightmares a meagre reflection of what had once been his.

He is all eyes and all hunger and he has seen you.]


iii. Knead Help
[The Lonely has an affinity for gravestones, doesn't it? He remembers that first dream, the moonlit graveyard. Peaceful, cool and damp, as the rolling, boggy fields stretch out in all directions.

He remembers that distant shore, the gentle fear which wished to wash him away.

No. He is spiteful enough that he will not let the Lonely take him.

He walks the fog, skirting around gravestones. An anchor. There has always been an anchor, and he keeps Martin's face in his mind as he walks and searches for people who might be lost.]

There is someone who will miss you, I promise. Think of them. Your- your mother, your lover! Your pet dog waiting at home even! Think of them.

iii.

[canofmanji]

Why do you think I have anyone waiting for me back home? [The voice that replies is bitter. Manji staring down at the tombstone with his name and today's date written on it instead of looking back towards Jon.]

Manji | Blade of the Immortal | OTA

[canofmanji]

Reality Check CW: Description of decay/rot/mold, death, passage of time
Beware those walking into Manji's dream for at first things seem normal and as they should be. The people of this small town going on with their lives. The season turning from fall to winter as decorations for Halloween begin to be changed out for Thanksgiving, but a quick turn of your head and suddenly those turkeys are coming down and there is instead the twinkling of holiday lights. The trees barren of their leaves as the snow begins to fall.

Perhaps it's best to grab the grocery shopping you came out for and head home. (Had you always had that basket full of produce in your hand?) The young man who greeted you at the door asks you kindly not to hold up the line. Only, he's not young anymore, wrinkles grace the corners of his eyes and smile. Faster than you can take them out of your basket the fruit begins to rot. They turn into festering things that flies are attracted to. Look back up and where did that young man go? Seems he's been replaced with an old man now.

No matter where you go, who you try to talk to, what you do, the result is the same. Faster and faster time speeds by. Do you seek out your friends? What of the life you've built here? Explore this world and find that everything around you changes except for a single one armed, silent man dressed as a samurai. His one good eye watching every move you make with an amused grin on his face. He is the only thing that seems to be consistent in this ever rapidly changing world. (CW: If choosing this prompt please let me know your comfort level when it comes to descriptions of worms. As they can easily be left out completely during the tread, but if you're comfortable with them then Manji may mention them/show them off if spoken to.)

Knead Help CW: Mention of death
Moving through the loaves of bread, Manji fans himself. “Hello!” He calls out to any who might be in earshot. “Where are you?!” Except who was this 'you'? He remembers coming in with someone so why can't he remember who they are?

Wiping an arm across his brow to keep the sweat out of his eyes he has to double take as he spies a name on a tombstone. Machi Saito 1758-1780. He shouldn't be surprised to see his sister's name, but it still hurts. As he begins to look a bit more closely at the owners of these graves he starts to notice a pattern. Most died either in the late 1700s or very early 1800s and each a name he knows. He had thought about looking in history books to see if his friends were ever mentioned, but never did. As doing so would mean he'd have to think about how they're all ancient history.

Ironically, that sense of death and the crushing feeling of being alone clings to Manji, up until the point that he spies his own grave. Seeing today's date listed as his day of death causes the man to laugh. A bitter, angry laugh.

Reality Check (all good for worms if they come up!)

[whisperedone]

It takes him a while to pinpoint what's happening, the visual cues lost to him and the sounds he might rely on normally seem hurried and skewed. It's the second time the crunch of snow falls under his feet in too short a time that the rational part of his mind puts a theory together.

From there, he listens for what's normal. The stillness of him helps and the familiarity of his presence feels like a prickle at his skin that makes it easy to confirm. He focuses on the feeling of his friend nearby and moves closer until he can hear his breaths. "What's happening here, Manji?"

John Carter | ER | ota

[setthetone]

[ooc: Can match format to prose if preferred!]

Reality Check

i. Doctor, doctor please (The Flesh/The End)

cw: hospitals, restraints, medical/surgical procedures, gore, blood, scalpels, syringes
note: can absolutely stay clear of certain procedures/instruments/triggers, just leave them in the comment line and i'll avoid!


[The room is green.

It's noisy in here, voices are shouting, more of them clamoring in the hallway outside the double doors. It's a hospital room and it has the blinding cold white lights shining down from overhead to prove it.

Monitors beep everywhere and whoever is unlucky enough to find themselves in Carter's dream will find that they are strapped to a gurney with medical personell moving quickly around them. Their faces remain blurry, it's never possible to see any actual features. And yet it's clear that they're stressed out and they're yelling. About what? It's not entirely clear. They want things like CBCs and blood chems but they also yell about bleeding out or EPIs. The things might not even fit together or make sense but they induce a horrifying sense of stress, of danger, of death.

Apparently you were in some kind of trauma and it's bad.

And then there's Carter who stumbles into the room. There's nothing of the calm he usually exhibits. He's younger in this dream, a lot younger, beads of sweat on his forehead, eyes wide and panicked behind the mask when the nurse gowns him up and gives him a rundown. It's just as rapid and contradictory as the things they have been shouting at each other.

Carter seems to have trouble making sense of it and he looks both more and more confused and overwhelmed. What? he asks several times, his voice getting more and more frantic, but the blurry-faced nurses just talk faster and faster.

Where's Benton? he yells at them and the answer is always the same. Taking care of that gunshot victim. Tied up in the OR. It all comes down to this: There is a patient dying on the table and no one is coming.

You have to do it, Carter. There's no one else!]

R-right.

[He stares at his patient, obviously struggling to appear confident.]

Don't worry, uh. We'll-- we'll take good care of you.

[This is just as much a nightmare for him as it is for you.

Yours is probably going to be worse though because he's moving over to the tray with the medical instruments, apparently getting read to cut.]



ii. An offer you can't refuse (The Desolation / The Web)

cw: economic hardship, financial ruin, manipulation, coercion, humiliation


[It's cold in here.

The walls are high, echoy. It's a villa, a grand one, one that almost looks like a palace. Ornate walls surround the spacious office, a grand mahogany table looming from side to side. Chandeliers are moving softly overhead and when their crystals touch they make an unnerving sound that induce fear and the feeling of being trapped.

Characters that find their way into this dream will sit in a grand leathery armchair. It's very comfortable but there is something threatening about it. Sitting in it makes one feel incredibly small and powerless. It's impossible to get out of it - and they might not want to because whatever this talk is about, it's important. It's about their future. Their life.

Carter is on the other side of the table, wearing an expensive suit and a tie with a spiderweb pattern. He's rich. Powerful. He can fix you and all your problems - for a price, of course. Or he can and will ruin your life.

It really depends on his mood. Right now he's just enjoying the feeling of control like a cat playing with a mouse.]

Now.

[It almost sounds like him, almost sounds like the usual boyish tenor. He even smiles but it's so very, very cold.]

Why don't we get down to business? What is it that I can help you with?



iii. Knead help

[He doesn't remember how long it has been. How long he has stumbled around in this fog, staring at the gravestones. Reading so many familiar names. From here. From back home. Loved ones, enemies, even the unfamiliar names. They all hurt, they all remind him of what is to come.

He's tired, he's lonely, he's sad - but he's been all that before. Maybe that's what saves him in the end. Keeps him from lying down.

It's always been loneliness that drove him. So he keeps walking, keeps wandering, the world blurry around him.

Eventually, Carter thinks he spots a figure up ahead. But it's so hard to tell, it could just be his mind playing tricks on him. Who would be here? Everyone is dead. And soon he would be. And whoever was up ahead. If there was really someone.]

Hello?

[He feels stupid calling out. He should just accept it, there was no one around, just like always...]

ii. RIP

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

[He's been here before.

Not this place, exactly, and not in this comfy yet threatening chair, and certainly not in front of Carter in this fashion, unless their shared quarters has suddenly gotten swankier when he wasn't looking, but this...situation. This scene.

His father, sitting in a large desk that looks eerily like the one before him. His brother, lurking off to the side, either with curiosity or with disdain. A disappointed note in his tone, a suggestion that sounds like he has no choice. This is your life, John. You don't have a choice, John. Think of your future.

Except now, something is wrong. He knows Carter but he also doesn't know him like this, but he's got the sense that he can help him with whatever this is. He's wearing a suit, an expensive one, but he feels uncomfortable in it. He suddenly feels very small. Embarrassed.

Ashamed.]

We're...we're not doing very well.

[The family business, of course.]

I didn't--I wasn't supposed to be in charge of it but... [Somehow he is, now. He just knows that. He's in charge and he messed it all up.] I told them, I don't know how to run a business. Just because I'm his son doesn't mean I know how to manage it!

[He shifts uncomfortably in the chair.]

We're losing...millions.

Awake Remembrance Of These Valiant Dead | The Locked Tomb Series | OTA

[rarelybecome]

Reality Check cw: body horror, contamination, Silent Hill-ass pregnancy imagery; apocalypse, mass graves (sorta); gore, battlefield imagery, child soldiers.


i.

[ The sound is almost, not precisely, that of dripping water.

Heavier than that; thicker; slower-sounding, in some way difficult to name. It carries and reverberates without ringing: a dull, flat, queasy sound, its source just outside your field of vision. At first, you might have taken it for rain on the windows; but there is no rain and there are no windows. There are only a succession of narrow, writhing corridors, the walls and the floor beneath you uncomfortably moist and yielding to the touch.

In some places, spaced irregularly, the material coating the walls seems thinner; a grimy reddish light seeps through there, and so do other things. Fist-fat knots of what looks nearly like flesh; murky veins of liquid bulging and pulsing beneath the surface. A faint film of pearlescent sweat across the surface.

You want to scrub your hands, whether or not you've touched a damned thing. It wouldn't keep your veins from blooming black, one by one by one; it wouldn't keep your flesh from corroding round them. Least of all would it keep away the sense, faint at first and inescapable, that something is at work inside you that should never be there; something is taking root inside you that is not you, that moves with your limbs, that hungers with your mouth, that will consume you.

Look too closely for too long, you can see your black veins writhe and twist and change direction, siphoning your blood -- or what's become of it -- away from your heart. Whatever is beneath your skin must be drinking from them, you think; feeding itself on you. Growing every moment. Your flesh is beginning to warp and swell, like rot, like cell division. Doubled and doubled and doubled. In you and of you and unutterably not-you, unutterably unwanted, fluttering and kicking and squeezed tight round your heart.

The walls are closer to you now, inexorably, the further along you go. ]



ii.

[ There must have been a war here, once.

There must have been so many things here, once. You can see the footprints of them. This must once have been a city, or a palace, or a palace the size of a city; there aren't enough walls remaining for you to be certain. Only shards of them, jagged as teeth.

Some of those are lapped with high-water marks, layers and layers of them surging far above your head, although there is no water here. Some of them are charred black, crumbling to the touch.

Some are almost pristine, save for the screaming shadows flash-burnt into them.

Some of them, when you look too closely, aren't really walls at all. Makeshifts at best, strung haphazardly between broken pillars. Twisted metal and plastic tarps and unpleasant tendonous rope, all woven together, all stained with the oily black ash that drifts and billows waist-high around you. So deep, it's like wading through powdery snow.

If you veer too far to one side or another, you might run up against something buried just beneath the ash: something of smoothly molded glass and metal, cool, unwarped, unmistakable. Something laid end to end to end, either side of your path, funneling you along.

No matter how hard you try, you can't sweep enough ash away from the surface of the coffins to see whether or not they're occupied.

Perhaps, you think, perhaps it was a labyrinth. Perhaps it still is.

Above you, in a dull black sky, a bluish-white sun burns down lifelessly on the nothing new. ]


iii.

[ You are holding a gun, or you are holding a sword, or what you are holding is both and neither and perhaps instead one of your own long bones.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't change how the earth beneath your feet surges and sucks and oozes into your boots, staining them a bright and impure red; it doesn't keep the ghosts from following you, and there are so many. Some of them you think you recognize. Some of them you think might once have been you.

Did you ever have a longsword strapped to your back, one so much taller than you were that you and your friends must have joked in your breaking voices as you boarded the transport? Whose were those strange iridescent knives at your hip, the ones whose chitinous surface holds the light in such a queasy and mesmerizing embrace? Whose blood can you taste in your mouth?

It can't be your own. You've been dead a myriad. Haven't you? And then who in God's name are you here to kill? You must be here to kill someone.

If you weren't here to kill someone, how could you hear the music -- the nasty skirling of bone pipes; the beat of sword-hilt on buckler; the crash of boots and the incantation of one ragged half-phrase strung to another strung to another. All the languages, all the lineages, all the names. Your dead heartbeat thrumming in your ears.

If you weren't here to kill someone, how could you be so certain that someone here needs killing? Only this one last time. Only this once more. They must deserve it -- look at the bodies strewn around you, torn meat and twisted skeletons both. Look at your own hands. Only this once more, to turn the tide; you can't give the field up to them now. Look at the plain stretched out before you, all planet-vast from side to side and all side-to-side with corpse-muck.

Look what they've already made you do. ]

i. cw: body horror, mention of viruses/infection

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

[He's been here before.

Not here, specifically, but this looks and feels a lot like a Wraith ship or some sort of Wraith outpost. In those ships there were organic...material grown over everything sturdy, cables that are like veins connecting systems but looking not unlike a circulatory system...while there was an advantage that you could have ships that could grow themselves and repair themselves, it really did feel like living the sci-fi horror life whenever he unfortunately found himself in one--which was often.

But there's something wrong here. It's not quite the same, the design is different and...it's worse, infectious, a contaminating presence. He's never been one to care about germs so much but he also feels like he needs to take about ten showers to be clean of this place. Until it turns out the corruption is right here. His hands betray him, the veins corroding, and the sense that there is something threatening to take him over.

He's been here before, too. The last time it had been a retrovirus, that turned him into an unfortunate hybrid of an Iratus bug. It didn't feel entirely unlike this, but something else is going on here. For a moment he wonders if he's relapsed, if the virus is lurking in his blood, waiting for a chance to strike. But it's also different, and he clutches his chest as he plods on, noticing something wrong with the walls.

He hits his radio, his P90 machine gun dropped to the side while he absently claws at his tac vest.]

Rodney? Teyla? Ronon? Anyone here? This has gotta be a Wraith ship of some kind, and I'm infected with...with something, I don't know...

Anyone there!?

caitlyn kiramman | arcane | ota

[clavesregni]

I. Reality Check | The Hunt (cw: implied body horror, guns, potential references to canon-typical police brutality)

[The city streets twist vertically, an intricate maze descending downward into the earth. The only lights are pale fluorescents and a few specks of colored neon reflecting dimly off the heavy smog that clings to every rusted surface. The exposed walls are painted, bright and beautiful murals almost lost in the darkness. There are people in this city, shadowy emaciated forms clawing at passersby, so distorted that they barely look human anymore, voices nothing more than a thin wail, eyes leaving trails of purple light in their wake. Despite their appearance, it's clear they aren't harmful, merely poor souls as lost and trapped as you.

As you try to make your way through this vertical city, you realize it truly is a maze: walkways dead-end in walls or over bottomless pits, stairways lead to nowhere, the layout defies all sense or logic. The deeper you go, the more treacherous it becomes, entire buildings in the process of cracking and tumbling into the void, as though the entire city is being torn apart.

You may catch the glint of light reflecting off the barrel of a rifle, or hear a floorboard creek or metal groan nearby as someone shifts their weight. But Caitlyn navigates the tortuous maze of rooftops and balconies with an ease she never could in the waking world, and you'll be lucky to spot more than the briefest glimpse of her darting through the shadows.

She hasn't realized she's dreaming yet. All she can hear is the Hunt calling to her, a howl ringing in her ears and fizzing in her blood, driving her to feed it. She knows her quarry is nearby, she knows someone here is trying to hurt the city and its denizens. She knows she has to find them and stop them, no matter the cost. Even if it tears the city asunder.

Perhaps your senses are keen enough to notice her before the gun goes off. Perhaps you can spot where the shot was fired from. Regardless, the warning shot is fired: a bullet goes whizzing past your ear, close enough that you feel it cut through the air.]


II. Reality Check | The Eye (cw: scopophobia, gore, violence, murder, aftermath of a bombing)

[In the distance, a woman is humming. It's a soft, melancholy tune, perhaps a lullaby. All around you are the remnants of an explosion. Books and papers and photographs, shredded or blackened with soot, flutter down from the sky. Corpses surround you, men and women wearing body armor that didn't do a thing to save them from the blast, their blood and innards and blown-off limbs strewn across the bridge.

Looming over everything is a rickety metal tower crowned with a massive stylized eye, its neon purple glow the only light to see by.

Most of the pages wafting slowly downwards are meaningless, should you catch a glimpse of them. The handwriting is too messy and cramped to read, the photographs are of people you don't recognize. But a few of the photographs are of you. One or two may even show some deeply private moment of yours. And if you grab a handful of the notes, you may find that they describe your comings and goings, your daily activities, perhaps even making reference to something that you thought no one else knew.

You may also notice that some of the photographs are of Caitlyn. Most are mundane - scenes of her at varying ages, sitting in a cluttered room while a man stands at a blackboard, or standing on a balcony with an older woman overlooking a forest, or drinking tea with a man who's clearly her father. Several of them show her naked back as she looks into a foggy mirror that's just beginning to clear off, revealing a drawing of a twisted monkey's face in the fog.

Every surface - the rails and supports of the bridge, the dead bodies, the piles of papers - are covered in pushpins and red string.

Should you follow the strings, they'll lead you to Caitlyn. She's standing in front of a long dining table, camera hanging loosely from her fingers, staring at a young woman, slumped over dead in the chair at the head of the table. All of the strings terminate in a bullet hole in the dead woman's chest. On the table in front of the corpse is a note, written in bright-colored chalk or crayon, the handwriting bold and messy: You sure did find your criminal mastermind, huh? Congrats, Cupcake, you're an ace detective! ;).]

II. Reality Check

[conning]

This landscape is unfamiliar. It's horrifying. After a year in this universe, the sight of bodies... well, Neal is more used to it, but he's not immune. Not by any means, and definitely not to this many. It feels like every time he takes a step back from one he almost stumbles over another.

But somehow it's the pushpins and red string that really make his skin creep.

And then it's the photos as he realizes the strings all go in a singular direction and he starts to follow them.

He snatches up the few he can get his hands on when they come close enough--childhood images of the boy Danny Brooks who had no idea that his name was Neal Bennett. Pictures of him with his father, and then pictures of his father murdering his own CO. Other shots, of crimes, abandonments, betrayals. There are too many that flutter past out of reach.

But then he's at the table, too, staring at the woman holding the camera, young enough to be a fresh-faced Quantico graduate. He doesn't know her, but he's seen her around. What's her name... It starts with a C or a K.

"Hey," Neal says softly, trying to fold up his own photos and jam them into the too-shallow pocket of his pants. He feels ill at the display in front of them, but she clearly isn't doing any better. "Are you--"

No, stupid question. "Let's go. Let's get out of here. This isn't any kind of place to stay."

Luka Kovač | ER | OTA cw: stalking, body horror, paranoia, simulated anxiety, feelings of unreality

[cuttypie]

Reality Check

He knows he promised Carter to stop, that they could find a way to stop him feeding off of fear. If there was a cure for being an Avatar, he could find one.

But here, in this dream, that promise is very far away. It couldn't really hurt anyone--it was a dream, and he could feed freely, and as much as he wants.

It just feels so good to sink into it, into basking in the fear around him, into what the Stranger wanted.

It's harmless, he tells himself.

So it's a masquerade.

There's beautiful music, a band with blank golden masks that cover their faces completely, playing songs that seem to...enhance the atmosphere. Sad songs only make people start sobbing, tense songs causes people to break out into fights, happy songs make people so giddy they can't stop laughing...

And everywhere, in the grand, gilded ballroom, are masked people. Beautiful ornate Venetian masks, porcelain masks, feathers, jesters, sequins, diamonds, glittering among the candlelights. There's laughter, lively conversation, drinks served in delicate glasses, and the center of the ballroom whirling, whirling, whirling.

Maybe literally, a little.

When you enter the ballroom, there's a table lined in velvet with different kinds of masks you can take.

You should probably choose wisely.

Once in the crowd, you'll notice that the laughter and the conversation sometimes gets a little shrill when you think about it. You'll strike up a conversation or a dance with someone but they don't take off their masks. There's something...off about every person. One person maybe moves...a little inhuman. Another speaks in a language that sounds almost like your own, but not quite. Another follows you around the whole time, mask leering at you in your peripheral at all times. The feeling of wrongness is getting more and more intense.

All the masks are staring at you now. All of them.

And then Luka is there, dressed to the nines. He's wearing a mask too, a simple black one across his eyes, his dark hair falling across it as he offers you a gloved hand.

"Would you like to dance?"

And so you do, and it's lovely. But the wrongness gets, well, wronger, and the masked partygoers around you are leering again, their smiles wider, teeth looking a little sharp and pointy, maybe that one person over there has four eyes in their mask instead of two.

You stare at Luka and he removes his own mask.

And he looks like what you fear the most.

how u feel about helping awaken something within him luka

[conning]

Neal normally loves parties. Even this one, at the start, though there's an instinct that tells him he doesn't want to stay, a sharp awareness of something wrong. A simmering uneasiness that whispers he'd be better off alone than here.

He hates that his instincts are right. Even as they all stare, the isolation of their unity gnaws in the pit of Neal's stomach.

Then Luka is there, bringing him back into the ranks of the accepted, and Neal can't help taking the opportunity, even though his instincts are still screaming for him to leave.

Luka hasn't taken his mask off yet. They're still dancing when Neal says, "It's not often my partner is taller than I am."

Methos | Highlander: the Series | OTA

[easilyamused]

Reality Check - implied violence, reference to disease, dead bodies, gaslighting

You stand in the middle of a warlord's camp, tents trampled, low groans of pain surrounding you. You stand in the middle of a plague-ravaged city, the stench of decay and smoke thick around you, wheels on the corpse-cart squeaking as it passes you by. You stand in a manor house, in a ballroom, the whirl of colour around you almost nauseating, the music too loud. You stand beneath the Eiffel Tower in a city gone dark, laughter and screams too close, too hard to pinpoint.

Or perhaps the scenes blur together: Paris filled with trampled soldiers, plague-riddled corpses dressed in their ballroom finery, a thousand different variations, shifting together and pulling apart until you can't tell where you are, or when.

There is a knife in your hand, bloodied. There is a body at your feet, someone you know. There is a dark-haired man in his early thirties watching you, frowning.

"Why did you do that?"