Event - Untimely

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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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Comments

[whisperedone]

The sound is distorted here and trying to find his baring is...a trial. Yet not one he intends to let get in their way. They're here as a united front, an unyielding force of determination against something that promises to dance and doge from them.

Still, it's hard to focus on that, on the space around them, while the fire roars outside. He can't feel it in these halls, but he remembers the scorched air and choking smoke. How he'd walked through it without consideration for himself or care for those who clawed their way through molten debris. Most of the screams are outside. They're the same ones in his nightmares. This nightmare.

Jaeger's hand at his arm is centering and he takes one off his glaive to lay it over top and squeeze in gratitude. "It is disorienting on purpose...but it is a dream, yes? We can shape it now, will the environment to bend as we need." In theory, anyway. Garner was not...especially good at it himself, but he was good at rationalizing, and that seemed to help.

He takes a step down the corridor where the echo follows, the house's dilapidated (or broken maybe?) surroundings making for an eerie stage. "This place is yours, isn't it?"

[bloodalwaystells]

Breathe and focus. This is his dream, this is their operation. Jaeger has been trained for his entire life to manipulate energy, to control his magic. This is just an extension of that, a new application of familiar discipline, and he'll be damned if he lets his fear get the better of him.

He glances at Garner, only hesitating a second before he speaks. Garner knows enough already: a little more won't hurt anything, and if understanding this place helps, well, it's worth the revelation.

"I was never in the house itself. Prisoners were kept in the guest house," he says softly, starting down the corridor and willing it to steady. Something about the water-stained pattern on the wallpaper reminds him of elegant, curving lines and whorls of scar tissue, and he flinches, looking resolutely forward instead. "And...there was no fire."

Is that part Ava's? He's not sure. He read Yelena's briefing, but it's hard to tell in a shifting, uncertain dreamscape.

[whisperedone]

Garner doesn't see the way Jaeger flinches, but there's a small one in him and his hands tighten on his weapon. "The fire is mine...if it is true to reality, the screams will stop in another twenty minutes. The fire won't burn out for three more hours...but this is a dream. I doubt either will end."

He turns slightly back towards Jaeger, his focus on his friend easier to tend to than the ghosts of his sins. "I will help you through this, Jaeger. I have your back. Would you like me to take point?"

[bloodalwaystells]

The chill still slides down his spine like melting ice, but Jaeger takes another breath and he's a little better, a little steadier.

His gaze flicks to Garner at the other man's statement. "Somehow, that's not reassuring." His next words are a little softer. "It's dramatic, at least."

Humor, though dry and bitter as dust.

"She's leaving a trail for us. But you might be able to navigate the halls where I can't." The visual input from the house is distracting...would Garner be able to make their way through more adeptly by relying on his other senses? Jaeger is willing to give it a try.

Because the giggles still echo, over the relentless beat of water drops and quiet creaking of wood decay. Jaeger shifts to let Garner take lead, moving to cover his back while leaving him just enough room to maneuver freely.

"I'm right behind you. The hall continues down for a ways, but I can't tell how far. Something about this space is...warped. Distorted." He pauses a beat. "Dream logic, I suppose."

[whisperedone]

Dream logic. That was exactly what had gotten him in trouble in nights before, trying to anticipate changes based on the fantastical he wasn’t so easily able to imagine. Maybe that wasn’t the way to go about it.

He steps forward with a small nod and shifts his thoughts as he moves forward. Not dream logic, just logic; the sheer will that this hallway had to obey the rules every other hallway did leading him.

The hall seems long, but it’s not. Not really, halfway down (is it halfway? It goes on forever..) Garner stops, turns, and puts a foot up onto air that shouldn’t support him, but does as he moves up with that step. “This way, I believe. The next floor, not too far now.” He pauses and turns partially to his friend “If it is easier for navigation, take my hand or shoulder.”

[bloodalwaystells]

The ringing laughter continues, as does the occasional whispered rhyme or scrap of a music-box tune, but somehow they seem less oppressive, less maddening when the corridor collapses itself back down to...something like reasonable. There are still doors, there are still paintings, but it resolves itself into something less nebulous, more concrete. It's still haunted as hell, but it squeezes itself to fit into some kind of definition of reality, and that's good enough for now.

Jaeger didn't expect the stairs, though, and he blinks when Garner's foot finds purchase on empty air. He pauses, then nods automatically, following it with words. He's getting better about that, making note of his own visual cues and filling in where of course Garner wouldn't detect them.

"That would probably be best, yes." It's only a moment of pause before Jaeger takes the other man's hand, a curl of rough, calloused fingers in a gesture too practical to be intimate. It's a little strange, still, but Jaeger is committed, and this way he's not feeling his way along alone.

He doesn't quite give in to the temptation to close his eyes, to experience the dream without the burden of a distorted and compromised sense. It's there, but he trusts Garner to guide him, and that's good enough.

"I'm right here," he promises, taking a chance on the invisible stairway with his own booted foot.

[whisperedone]

Garner nods, his grip firm on Jaeger's hand and entirely unbothered by the contact. "Good. I do not think we are safe, just on the right track."

The urge to offer that he would protect Jaeger is there, but he keeps it from rising higher. While the sentiment might be appreciated, practically, the other hunter didn't need it. Not like most people Garner worked with. He would protect Jaeger of course, if it came to it, but there was a comfort in knowing the man at his back was more than capable on his own.

So they ascend, the steps remain firm under their feet as slowly Garner leads them up each one, onto a curved landing, and up more steps. Half way up the second flight, Garner pauses, his fingers curling tighter around Jaeger's for just a moment. "I heard something."

Under the music box chimes and the occasional laughter is the small titter of a giggle and the feeling of hot breath just by Jaeger's ear.

"Found you!" The high pitched voice sings out and the floor itself seems to buck and split.

[bloodalwaystells]

No, not safe at all, not by any means. They're in the belly of the beast and they both know it, a treacherous and uncertain territory that they're exerting only partial control over.

He might not accept protection from Garner, but Jaeger does have faith in the other man having his back, in that shared trust and reliability of fighting beside someone he knows will do their part.

Jaeger pauses when Garner speaks again, ready for...he's not sure exactly what, and that means he's not completely ready, doesn't it? The gust of breath, the joyfully malevolent words make him jump, and he has to let go of Garner to go for his sword again, because guns aren't going to do a thing.

Focus and will. He's been trained to use his sword as a spiritual extension of himself, to put his power into a melee weapon in a way that he can't with a firearm, and it's just as applicable here. The stairs have become treacherous, though, broken as they are, and he has to brace himself, ready for both an incoming attack and the instability of the dreamscape itself.

[whisperedone]

The voice puts Garner on edge as well and he turns as he takes a step back and another up the stairs to put distance between himself and his friend, the glaive on his back quickly in hand and trailing across his left forearm to activate his blood maledict. A radiance spills from the blade and then lines it where his blood rests as a little girl's soft steps alight upon the broken banister.


Ava stands there, a stuffed sheep in her arms. "You should rest a while. You look tired." She coos and an innocent smile is sent Jaeger's way as she sends pain flaring through his thigh and neck and pulsing through every old injury he's ever suffered.

Cw: violence, blood, torture

[bloodalwaystells]

Everything in that voice tells Jaeger that he should run, or attack, to take some action to preserve himself and Garner from deadly and immediate danger. Sweet as it is, it turns sickly in his mind, and carries with it razor blades, the promise of a sleep too dark and deep to contemplate.

Except...he is so horribly tired, isn't he? Tired of running. Tired of fighting. Tired of hurting, and a hundred pains make themselves known as a reminder of that. All of it snaps into horrible focus, a lifetime of fighting crystallized into perfect awareness of just how much hes been through. How much hes suffered.

The aching cold of blood loss, the raw sting of carefully drawn ritual wounds, the deep gnawing fire of gunshots.

The choking tightness of a noose, the acrid sting of corrupt magic...the wet red rush over his shirt and the horror and panic of so much blood, too much of it, choking and drowning and-

There's a lot of old wounds there, recorded in scars that flare into new, fresh misery. It's staggering, overwhelming, enough to bring the sting of tears to Jaeger's eyes...even as he struggles still to surface from that narcotic promise. He teeters, too overwhelmed to even breathe, his sword wavering at his side as he tries to fight the compulsion.

[whisperedone]

She's underestimating him, he can hear it in how she barely looks over at him, her focus on Jaeger instead and there's a protective flair in him even as he knows this is useful. Good keep eyes off him.

He swings his glaive around, the metal singing through the air as the radiant light bursts just ahead of the contact he makes with her side.

Her shriek is more of surprise than pain, but there's blood from the wound and that counts for something. Her ire turns on him, the same treatment causing his arm to sear in pain for all the scars there, but it's nothing compared to pain in his eyes and face. He's not expecting it and he gasps, the end of his glaive biting into the stair to keep him upright as Ava turns her attention back to the other interloper.

"I don't feel like playing with you two, you're boring. Just know your End is coming." An unnatural ripple shakes through the stairs and threatens to throw them both from their feet. Garner grits his teeth and makes a grab for her, their original intention still swirling in the back of his mind.

[bloodalwaystells]

Overwhelmed as he is, there's nothing for Jaeger to grab to balance himself, no sense of stability to hold him when the dreamspace pitches suddenly and violently and his bad leg crumbles beneath him. The fight in his head is tearing at him, and when the ground falls out from under him, he pitches off his feet, into a rolling tumble down the stairs.

Maybe something breaks. It's hard to tell. His sword slips from nerveless fingers and that's a small benefit, because wouldn't *that* be an embarrassing end, but he still falls with all the cruelty of gravity to land in a heap at the bottom.

Breathless, stunned, and completely uncertain how badly he's injured, he hears the shriek, the echoing, eerie words of a child's temper, and oh, he wants to close his eyes for just a little longer.

He wants to, so badly, but...there's a fight. There's still a fight, and he's never given up before. Silken wings echo in his head, the shadow of a fallen angel singing wicked hymns in the deepest underground, and it stirs him.

Once more through the dark.

[whisperedone]

His fingers snag the hem of a dress and she snarls an inhuman sound at him as she tries to kick out at his shoulder. A kick that's too hard and too sharp for a normal little girl.

The sound of weight shifting and wood groaning followed by the tumble of flesh on wood seizes Garner's throat and heart. "Jaeger!"

No. He needs to end this. The sooner he ends this, the sooner his friend is safe. Mercy's warning rings through his mind, her assertion the 'countdown' over his head was dwindling. Very well. If it was him or Jaeger, the answer was never in doubt.

"Let go!" Her sharp kick tears through his shoulder wet and bright in pain and a second one tears through the skin on his cheek and through part of his ear as he dodges as best he can while holding on. Something causes her to tense as Ava's attention shifts to Jaeger. "What- What are you doing?" She calls down to him, some fear entering her voice.

The bloodhunter uses the distraction and pulls on her as his glaive comes up to bury into her gut and he arches around to pin the girl and the blade into the stairs as they begin to shift and crumble beneath them. "Jaeger...Wake up!" Garner calls.

[bloodalwaystells]

The sound of a 250-pound man hitting the floor is pretty damn distinct, and Jaeger is dimly aware, after a few frozen seconds of shock and pain, that Garner is likely aware of what's happened.

Garner is also now alone against an Avatar, unless and until Jaeger can collect himself.

Everything hurts, from the memory of past abuses to what may very well be freshly broken bones, but it's not the first time he's pushed away grievous injuries and if there was ever a time for it, it would be now.

Some days, his will is all he's got. But he's managed, by some combination of stubbornness and sheer, searing spite against the world that's damaged him.

Jaeger sucks air in, breaking through the shock with a deep, gasping breath, and forces himself to roll. To get his legs under him, never mind the protest of bruised or cracked ribs, and lever himself to his feet.

His sword is still on the stairs where it fell, and with grim determination he braces himself to climb, to make his way back up. To the fight, because they're going to have to pull her, kicking and screaming, out of the dream to gain any sort of advantage.

"Playtime's over," he mutters grimly, as much to reassure Garner of his presence as anything.

The space around them buckles, bending and warping, and for a moment he can feel the close, crackling heat of flames against his face and hands, the enormous presence of the dreamspace and the horror beyond the windows. A clatter of discordant sound, like a music box falling down the stairs (ha!).

Jaeger focuses all his will, his power into breaking through that barrier, dragging himself and everything else back into waking. Letting the dream crumble, and replacing it with the clarity of consciousness.

cw: reference for mass murder and eye injury

[whisperedone]

For a moment, the heat is everything and he knows it against his skin as surely as yesterday. The buildings had torn apart like paper, he could remember that so clearly. Soot and ash and flame had made his single functional eye water even as he reigned flames and pain and death upon the townsfolk. They screamed and pleaded, children burned, fused to their mothers where the flames were too fast, and the wetness of his one eye had left a trail down his face, the other too acid-scarred to produced much. They'd brought this on themselves, hadn't they? All they'd needed to do was give him the ring and he would have left them alone.

The screams of his victims fade as the dream breaks and the shattered glass of reality cuts back in. No. He'd done that to them, that had been his decision. 'If they have it, retrieve the ring by any means necessary. He could have chosen other means. He could have simply returned empty handed and report there was no ring. Their blood was on his hands-

He blinks and the room smells not of ash but of Jaeger and his hand is full of blood, but there's something solid beneath it. A body. His glaive is gone, lost from the dream, and where he'd been stabbing her before, his hand is wreathed in the light of his maledict as he digs his fingers into the wounds she still bears. The wounds they all still bear if the pulsing in his cheek and shoulder indicate anything.

Before he can draw breath to say anything more, she shrieks something horrid and unnatural and her body shifts under his hand as she seems to try and draw away from him.