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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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!?

all of the above with bonus depersonalization

[rarelybecome]

[ The sound of his voice falls oddly dead in the wet, unspeakable air; but someone hears him. Someone hears everything here.

She still is someone, she lies to itself.

Around one corner or another, a figure looms; human-shaped, more or less, although what was once a pressure suit distorts and bulges strangely. Look more closely, and there is no oxygen tank; the helmet is cabled in, by grey-pink and dripping cords as thick as a man's wrist, to the fetid walls. What obscures the faceplate from within simply doesn't bear thinking about.

It's not a hand that reaches out for him. A shoulder flexes, a cord darts out from the wall -- this one only a delicate finger-width -- and coils almost gently round his ankle. ]

No one's coming for you.

[ The voice alone untouched; a husky, lovely, almost prayerful alto. ]

Deep down underneath you always knew you'd be here alone, didn't you? Under the skin you knew. They all lied to you and left you and set this rot inside you, and leading good people into it wouldn't save you anyway.

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

[There is someone here.

He brings his gun up, already so tense he's two seconds away from shooting anything that moves, but he's also not stupid enough to destroy the one chance he has at getting any answers.

Something coils around his ankle and he hardly notices, trying to figure out who--or what--was in that suit.

Except.

Except everything they say hits right at his deepest insecurities, at his deepest fears.]

No, my team, they'll--they'd come for me. They did before. They'll do it again.

[But what if? He did know, he had always known he would have ended up alone eventually. Isn't that what always happened? He flexes his hands, the awful feeling within them, within him making those statements feel truer and truer with every passing second.

They probably exiled him here, to avoid infecting Atlantis.]

And if they're not coming...it's better this way. I don't want them to...get this. Whatever this is.

[rarelybecome]

[ A laugh issues forth from the helmet: hoarse, raucous, only slightly broken up into static. ]

Is that what you tell yourself at night? That you'd rather be thrown away and left here to rot? That there's any fucking thing noble about letting them core you out and be done with you? Aren't you a good soldier.

[ The cord snakes itself a little further up his leg, slipping quietly under the cuff of his fatigues to brush against the skin.

It's wet to the touch, and fever-warm, and curious; and the tendril that breaks the skin is terribly, terribly fine, no thicker and no more strange than a needle. After all that, it feels prosaic. Clinical. Almost anticlimactic.

The matter occluding the faceplate writhes. ]

Rot divides its cells so fucking quickly, and by the time you feel it you're too far gone to carve it out of you, and by the time you're that far gone that's the good news. Don't you get it? They can't get rid of us either.

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

Pretty much, yeah. It helps.

[Was that going to happen here? He'd just rot here, forgotten, lost, alone.

Would they even miss him? He'd like to think they would, but what if they were glad to be rid of him? It's not true, he knows it, but an awful, ugly part of him deep down whispers that they're better off without him.

Something twinges around his ankle, up his leg, but before he can do anything it's over and breaks the skin. He should probably be screaming.

But he doesn't.

His body feels wrong and getting wronger, and he should be screaming about that, too.

But he just doesn't.

Don't you get it? They can't get rid of us either.]

Then what do you suggest is the answer here?

[rarelybecome]

What is it ever?

[ Set in and wait, the thing in his blood whispers to him. A hundred hundred echoes of the same reverberant voice, distorted, faraway, madly overlapping.

Set in and wait and push forward when you see the chance. You're so inimical now to all of them that whatever you touch of theirs, you'll change. Corrode. Eat away. Transform into more of what they did to you.

It's what they all deserve.

The tendril noses forward under his skin, exploratory, stretching and branching through the meat and into the blood vessels. One needletip, then another, sinks itself deeper, digging after bone marrow. It doesn't hurt. None of it hurts; but it feels at once clinical and lukewarmly, horribly intimate.

Who's indestructible now, soldier? ]

Sorry for the wait but I'd love to continue this if you would like to!

[ferriswheelsandfootball]

[He is no longer one of them. The thing that's in him, the echoing, overlapping voices, sink into his mind insidiously, completely, convincingly.

He's good at fighting back against these things, pushing back against things that get into his mind, that try to convince him or control him, but it's different--this is different.

It pries at his soul, eats at his resolve, digs into his heart.

Maybe he's already completely changed and he's just now catching up to it.]

No--no, I'm not--

[He answers the voices now more than anything else, desperately trying to hold onto something, anything, his love for his friends--

But there are things searching through him like he's a thing to be read, taking over, curious and interested, and he feels horribly exposed, his hands tearing at his clothes, his chest, as if that would get them out of him. A cry escapes him--]

I won't betray them, I won't--I can't--

[He falls to his knees, trying to tear at the veins that aren't his, at the warped flesh that isn't his, but the voices tear at him, tear at his soul.

He deserves this, his rotten heart whispers. This was what was always on the inside.]

iii (cw for inevitable mentions of civilian massacres, child soldiers, child abuse))

[aelwyn_aberration]

[The ghosts circle her, and it's nothing new. Aelwyn Abernant is a girl accustomed to being haunted. Most murderers are, she finds, at least a little. She doesn't recognize most of them - how do you remember the faces of the people you slaughtered who you never even knew? People who had done absolutely nothing to you?

Nobody had ever done anything to her. Maybe that was the problem.

The sword she's been dragging, ill-fitting and heavy, it scrapes against the ground as she trudges onward, leaving a smeared trail of blood, because of course none of it got on her expensive silken clothes. The sword - was it hers? No. Of course not. They don't give swords like this to villains. It's just another thing she's stolen from her sister. Maybe it'll be the last one, if she can end it.

One final act of murder - of betrayal - of deception, and maybe she can wear her real face. The performance reaches it's final act. It's a stupid thought, even in a dream.

The fact that she doesn't even recognize the red haired woman she's supposed to kill should stop her. It doesn't. What stops her is the need for it to mean something.]

Do you know what you've done? [Aelwyn's voice is filled with palpable contempt and outrage. Hate, really. She lifts the longsword she can't carry and drags it in front of her, letting the blade hit the floor in front of the woman.] Do you know why I'm here? What I've come to do?

[...Because she doesn't. Not really.]

[rarelybecome]

[ At times, the music is its own form of quiet.

When the air is so thick with screams and drumbeats, so heavy it's rotten, so relentless it becomes nothing but another physical fact -- at times, the music becomes nothing but a white and near-silent static.

Slowly, the woman turns.

Her hair on the carrion breeze is a scarlet banner, whipping and tangling and billowing behind her. Across her face -- her throat -- her hands -- every visible inch of her skin -- the scars rise and writhe in the shapes of letters. Alphabet upon alphabet, name upon name upon name, changing and flickering eyelash quick without a single repetition.

In her eyes, the gleam of bombsights. ]

Bitch.

[ The unmarked mouth smiles, far too wide, baring teeth like white tombstones.

What mind is there doesn't know, either, who the fuck this girl is in particular, but there is only ever one answer. ]

I know what the hell you are and I know what you're for. I'm the world, you mewling wizard brat. I'm the alpha and the omega and the death cry of the ten billion, and I'm the long kiss goodnight of the gods. And I've killed children before.

[ The sword materializes in her hands: razor bright and heavy and as long as she is. She bears it as though it were as light as breath. ]

Come at me, shitbird.

[aelwyn_aberration]

Correct.

[She sneers, and the sword is lighter. Of course it is. It's made for a wizard - and a wizard twists everything until it's all exactly to her desire. It might not be real. She might not care.

The words that this woman says are blurry, she can't quite make sense of them, but they erase any doubts from her mind. She's going to kill her, or she's going to die. Either way, what bliss.

She raises the sword - it's a focus, and it lights up and catches fire. Or rather, tendrils of flame circle it, but never touch it, as if it's calling for them. A focus. It's been so long since she's had a focus.] I am a wizard. The greatest of all time.

I've always wondered how it would feel to kill this disgusting plague of a world - all that fear all that pain as all of them get wiped away in an instant. Isn't that just the most beautiful thing you could think of? Oh, I'm just giddy with excitement at getting the opportunity. [She's not a swordfighter, but in the dream it doesn't matter, because she enters a duelist stance anyway, the fire waiting on her call.] Come on then.

Take your revenge. I only destroyed it all on a whim. [It's a lie. She wants it to be over. After this, surely the war can end.]

[rarelybecome]

Aren't you all so certain anyone cares.

[ The sword is the sword is the sword: it doesn't fucking burn or glow, it doesn't need to. It is a six-foot length of edged metal made by human hands for human hands to kill with, for bone and muscle and tendon to destroy bone and muscle and tendon. It is the purest possible extension of the will, and it is more real than anything in the world.

Its wielder falls into her stance as though she did it every day, as though the sword were another of her limbs; no. As though she were the sword, and the body wielding it a mere peripheral. A tool, an extension of her reach.

Faster and faster, the words writhe across her skin; they rise and fall, white-hot liquid fast, along the flat of the blade. Her laugh is the rattle of machine guns, and the whine of engines, and the cry of trumpets. ]

Aren't you all just dying to matter.

[ She swings the blade. Its arc is clean, inevitable. ]

i. cw body horror and ALL THOSE DELIGHTFUL THINGS mentioned above

[conning]

Another nightmare. There's a simmering anger in him that he's stuck in another nightmare, enough to drive him to lucidity in this awful space. He hasn't touched anything, no--it's revolting, he doesn't want to--but he notices the lines in his arms starting to shadow. Veins darkening gradually, the sense of internal wrongness swelling in his chest and gut like some kind of twisted gas.

"Hey!" He glances between the hall and his forearm, scratching lightly at his skin with the opposite hand as he walks. The scratching won't help, he knows it won't help, won't uncover anything he wants to see, but he can't help it. It's like he's discovered an ingrown hair and has a compulsive need to dig it out. "Hey! Whoever you are, your mental landscape is pretty fucked up, you know that?"

Neal doesn't swear in the ordinary way of things. He prefers to be linguistically precise. But at the moment, pretty fucked up seems accurate enough for this.

[rarelybecome]

The wet air around him continues almost silent: dripping, trickling, a slow and throbbing pulsation beneath it all. Like the chambers of a vast and dying heart, a long way away. Unresponsive, it might be easy to think.

But this place listens, this place is, and the rot shifts and changes and responds. Slowly, slowly, the veins in his forearm begin to writhe and curl into new shapes, driving their thick black ichor into ragged lines beneath the skin:

AND?

There is no change in the walls, in the pulsing heat of the air, but there is a shift in the atmosphere: a stillness like arrested growth, an anticipation, a blood-dark and acidic malice. Something nearby is watching; but something, here, can be nothing but nearby. A consciousness that thrums and itches within the walls like a tortured nerve.

[conning]

The movement of the veins under his skin seeds the impulse into him to just claw off his arm and throw it away. The horror runs deeper than logic, tangles into a mix of self-preservation and territorial desperation that leaves him too apalled to be sick.

He dabs his tongue against lips that feel dry in spite of the humidity of tissue all around him.

And then, cringing and looking below him to make sure he's not sitting in anything too awful, he plants himself in the middle of the corridor and glares down the hall. He has no control here, not yet, not even any idea what's happening. His only option is to try and provoke a response.