lifeaftr | January Event: Setting Fire to the Sky

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January Event: Setting Fire to the Sky

JANUARY EVENT: SETTING FIRE TO THE SKY

Who: Everyone!
What: The sun dies, and the creatures of the night emerge from the depths
When: January 21st - January 28th
Where: Everywhere! Ensō, Monsun, Chol, and the Islets
Warnings: Character death, possible body horror and violence. Please mark any additional warnings as needed!

So We Can Take the World Back From the Heart-Attacked

The night of the 21st, the sun begins to dim. It dips in the horizon, sinks to nestle itself in the center of Chol like a star falling in slow motion, where it begins to smolder quietly - massive, smoking, and hot, like a massive egg. The night grows colder, the sky reduced to an inky black. The surface of the surrounding water is still but for the occasional ripple, the odd, strangely subdued wave, with not even the hollow lights of distant stars to glint off its reflective waves.

The Jormun gather around the sunken, dying sun with their scaled hands on their weapons, their expressions grim. They fan out across the island of Chol with arms in hand. Their fortifications have settled around the island's center in a dense ball of bristling weapons. They have been preparing for this. They are ready to fight.

Are you?

No island is safe. From the well-trodden mainland of Ensō and its islets to the stark dichotomy of Monsun to the craggy shores of Chol, all manner of strange things have begun to haul themselves, dripping, from the watery dark.

No more preparation. No more running.

From here on out, it is fight or die.

One Maniac At a Time, We Will Take It Back

As the Storyteller has promised, there is sanctuary in their temple on Ensō, which will keep out the worst of the creatures. It will not, however, protect characters from the cold and dark, and so they will have to keep themselves warm some other way.

The Jormun fight fiercely, but they do not fight alone. Aside from the help that the willing of your number have offered, you may glimpse the Storyteller battling alongside the rest in a flurry of strange, shifting animal shapes: a heavy-antlered reindeer, a shrieking owl with outstretched talons, a slavering grizzly bear with the Storyteller's signature tome strapped across a broad, furry back, to name but a few. Those creatures that the Storyteller defeats will burst into a flurry of paper and dark, spattering ink, rather than being felled in the conventional manner. How odd.

As this is an event with a high risk of death, the Storyteller will impose death penalties for one week only. However, deaths succumbed during the event will count towards the character's total.

Then I'll Raise You Like a Phoenix

Come the sunrise on the 28th, the sun will launch itself into the air with a victorious shriek, its wings trailing plumes of fire behind it. The phoenix takes flight, reborn from the ashes.

The shores of Chol are littered with corpses, both shadowy and scaled, along with an even smattering of crumpled paper and splotched inkstains. Despite the triumph of the fight, it did not come without its costs. The Jormun gather their dead and prepare to mourn them quietly. Those who perished in the fight will not see the sunrise from this unique perspective, watching the murk of the night tint to soft, milky yellow and pink, and then to a glorious new day.

Munin will greet the survivors with a mixture of solemnity and relief, thanking them profusely for their help. There is not much more that her people can offer you, at this point - they must grieve their dead, and she must return to the sea to prove that she has cemented her worth as a leader in the eyes of the other Jormun - but that does not mean that your stories will part forever.

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] January 20th: Monthly Storytelling occurs as usual
[ ♆ ] January 21st: The dark arrives, the temperature drops further, and the first hostile creatures begin their assault
[ ♆ ] January 28th: The dark ends and the sun rises
[ ♆ ] January 30th: Those who perished are revived, suffering from a reduced death penalty

Event Specifics

[ ♆ ] If you have any questions, feel free to look over our OOC Info Post.
[ ♆ ] Feel free to make your own logs if necessary!
[ ♆ ] If your character perishes in this event, please let us know!
[ ♆ ] Item trades with the Jormun can be found on the OOC plotting post here! Even if you were only recently accepted, you are free to participate!

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[It's hard to be sick when he knows how many millions of people he assisted in murdering or in some ways, directly did murder. Or maybe that's him not thinking too hard. It can all come crashing down on him when he's out of the battle. He blocks an attack with the shaft of his ax and socks another in the face with bone-crunching force. It costs him a little energy, but he can rest later.]

Yeah, I am. Went home for a while and got answers. Wait, he actually asked around about me?

Your buddy? Yeah. Wanted to know if anyone saw you.

[One of the Murk swipes at his arm with a ghostly wail. This is why he switched to the spear; the pole weapon allows him to thrust at the thing to keep it back and maintain a safe distance from it.]

[Hinata closes the distance between himself and the Murk staying clear of the spear as he swings at its side to weaken it. It definitely keeps him busy so he doesn't think about the fact Komaeda went looking for him.]

...after the way things went on Monsun I'm surprised he did. [His tone has a faint edge of pain. He turns, kicks out catching a Lufkin before it can move in.]

Heads up, we're going to get a lot more company soon.

Yeah, well. I guess that's kinda what that side of the island does to you.

Makes you a jerk.

[That'd be his cue for an apology in the vein of the one Hinata just offered, but he doesn't get the time. Instead, Tim sighs, shaking the knapsack off his back and letting it slide with a dull thump to the ground.]

Can you cover me real quick?

[A smile is there and gone again on Hinata's face. He drops his pack down at his feet and sweeps the axe once.]

Do what you need to do. I got you covered.

[It's going to drain him a bit but after that? He'd be a true jerk not to put his best out there. To him, the world is abruptly different because he's moving through it like a shadow or a ripple of water. He knocks a Murk away with a savage kick ignores the bright sting of pain from something's claws to turn and cleave its arm off. His hip hurts but he can patch that himself in a minute.

While Tim does whatever he needs to, he keeps the night at bay. But he's not stupid about it, he moves on when he has to. Slapping down resistance and staying put in that spot. At least he'll sleep like a rock when he needs to.]

Edited 2018-01-27 20:13 (UTC)

[Tim does whatever he needs to do.]

[That's the bottom line.]

[A heavy ceramic jug unstoppered and uncorked, and the rank scent of rubbing alcohol cuts through the cold. He lets the liquid splash out across the ground surrounding them in wide arcs. It's funny, the way it plays out, the way two memories war to be included in the muscle memory, the way a third skims its way along the top of it.]

[Liquid spatters, hitting the ground, hitting the swirling smokelike not-flesh of murk and of lufkin as they drive uncomprehendingly on, as Hinata keeps them at bay. And there's no preventing it - the swirling knife-plunge of his own memory, sucking like a chest wound.]

[He forgets too much, and not enough.]

[Because a lot of people died in that fire.]

[Refusal to set lighter to cloth and watch it catch aflame. The pain driven like a nailspike into the center of his head until he complied, until he did whatever he could just. make it. stop. The choking thickness of smoke gathering in his throat, in his nostrils, in his lungs, as a child waited for the walls to crumble or for the ceiling to cave in or for the door to open, or for the fire to swallow him whole - whichever would come first.]

[When the fabric burned, it was easy. He didn't have to hear the screams. But no one really made a sound, either, as the lighter clicked and the unholy shriek of something dying and dying without bleeding echoed across a room with a chandelier. Water might have saved it. But it wasn't water. It was cooking oil.]

[It was The End.]

[It wasn't really an end at all. Not here. Not there.]

[Don't relive it. Don't relive it. It wants to nudge itself in, deeper, a hornet burrowing into skin to lay its grisly eggs, but there's something to be said for using someone else, for prying them open like a split clam.]

[He used them to escape himself once.]

[It's time to return the favor.]

[It's time to twist the oiled steel, and use his own memory to escape theirs. There's almost a sort of poetry to that.]

[The rancid stink of gasoline soaking the carpet beneath his feet, as the complete and utter pitched calm of another man issuing the blame where it would lay dogged him across the halls - as he dripped it all across every room, around the hoards of instruments that took years to accumulate, around whatever remnants and odds and ends he didn't think to pack and throw into the trunk of a car.]

[The hiss of a struck match.]

[Everything going up in flames.]

[So it happens like this.]

[He empties the entire jug.]

[He pours it all out across every inch he can cover, until his lungs are heavy with the burning scent of it, until the night is soaked with the sting of alcohol.]

[Light and heat, everyone says. These things can't abide it.]

[Thumbing the spark wheel on a lighter, and the click-hiss of it spritzing to life, and he touches the flame to the lip of that rainbow-oil swirl coating the ground in its fervent stink. If he were fully entrenched in himself at that point, perhaps he would have had the wherewithal to leap back in preparation to the heated rush of flame, to the curtain of orange-red that erupts from the ground and screams its way along the coating of rubbing alcohol, roaring in an unbridled, blistering rush.]

[Whoosh.]

[Some of them start to howl as it happens, as the conflagration sizzles them away. Some make no sound at all. The Murk - those are the worst, he thinks in isolation, because they hardly protest, hardly make a sound. They simply fold like houses of cards, wavering shoulders slumping in defeat.]

[One by one, it will eat them all alive.]

[It's what fire does.]

[And Tim stands there.]

[And Tim stands there, staring at the mire of swirling-hot, as the gusting inferno threatens to touch at his skin, at his jacket, at his hair, and he watches it consume each and every one of them, watches it tear through in a jagged knife of rank-smelling red, hands limp at his sides with the lighter curled in the center of one clenched fist.]

[Embers sizzle as they spit across the ground at his feet, hiss at the skin of his hands, at the cloth of his shirt, at his hair, at his cheeks, and still - ]

[He doesn't seem to be able to look away.]

[He'd gotten the hell out of the way of the flames once they started. Hinata snatches up his pack and looks at Tim and stops. The expression is hauntingly familiar. He can recall how it felt on his own face. The details are as crisp as if he were the one standing there watching it all char and turn to ash, the world moving but he hadn't. The lingering price of becoming far more than man ever should be.

Hinata shoves aside the memories but they linger in the back of his mind. The crack of bricks breaking under the inferno class 77b's rampage of despair had set. The entire world had burned and he'd only stood watching it all unfold while knowing every twist and dip in the road ahead of them all.

He says nothing, simply stepping between Tim and the fire, letting the only danger be to him and him alone. The millions class murderer who had had the hubris to reach too far for all the wrong reasons. He registers the pain the same way he used to register small details, they are there but boring, unimportant. He faces Tim, his expression hard to read.

Regret. Guilt. Sorrow. All of them are there but behind them, is resolve, to move into whatever the future has.]

...we need to go. This is buying us time but we only have until this dies down.

[It'll burn bright and hot, but not for long. There's no fuel for these flames; nothing but the living and the not, who continue to writhe, absurd parodies of the smoke the lingering tongues of that inferno kicks up into the air. There's someone in front of him, speaking calmly. The words register as though through a fog.]

[We need to go.]

[They do.]

Yeah.

[It won't last forever. They need to go.]

Let's go.

[He glances at the flames once and slings his pack up onto his shoulder. He doesn't want to think of dry, breathy laughter. Or see the world crashing to ruin in his mind's eye but here in the dark its all he can think of. He deliberately turns his back on it and strides away ax in hand.

He did terrible things. He'll never deny it. But he doesn't have to let that rule him.]

We're done here.

[Where will the future take them? He doesn't know. But...that's okay.]

[He starts to cough.]

[It's probably the smoke, he knows. Maybe it's just the smoke. Maybe there's nothing wrong at all. But his lungs cramp and seize and his throat hitches like static caught in his chest, and he can't help but remember - ]

[He stops remembering.]

Yeah.

[It's time to go.]

[It's time to peel out and away from the conflagration, and leave the dead to burn.]

[He can feel exhaustion starting to creep in like icy fingers. Luckily they hadn't ventured far. He walks on, putting one foot ahead of the other. He'll need to check on patients when he gets in. Patch people up before he crashes.]

I have a whole jug of that stuff if you want to stock back up. I'm not using it. Be better in hands that can use it.

[He almost regrets offering. There's some history in that staring not seeing anything gaze he'd caught. But, if giving Tim his jug he hasn't used at all is something that could keep him alive.

Well. Everyone has their demons and he's sure Tim can ward off his own.]

...

[That kind of offer is due for an answer. There's an itch there - fire. Gasoline. It's good to be prepared.]

[It's good to be prepared, in case you need to set something else on fire.]

I've got...flare guns. If you need one. [He doesn't have much else to trade. Not on hand. He has weapons, but he can't willingly give up something that might save his life in a fight. That's too important.]

I'll take one.

[He's not the really joky sort. But he has a brief immature mental image of a flying nightmare getting a surprising flare in the gut. ]

If I need to, could use it to really upset one of those flying things day. Night? I'm losing track of time here.

[It's just been an endless flow of people coming in and out of his little clinic. That's what this week has been and what it will brand itself as in his memory.]

It's for emergencies. If you need to call for help.

[He's speaking normally. He's speaking regularly. It's all right. He'll live. It'll be fine. The fire is burning, and it's shielding them from the worst. The heat's still at his back. His skin prickles.]

[Or maybe that's just the chill.]

We don't have phones here, so we gotta make do.

I know. If they get as far as where I've been helping out things are bad.

[It doesn't mean there's no hope. Just things would be bad. To spare any questions he taps his chest and laughs, but there's no humor in it.] I'm our medic.

[As they get closer to the lights and to the defenses he wonders if he should say something. Tim's face, as he watched things burn, is stuck in his head. He...can't let it go. It would bother him to see him out there with that familiar look. He'd know it anywhere and he'd put fire back into his hands yet hadn't said something to help him. That feels wrong.]

...hey, make sure you have someone with you next time you need to burn another pack like that. [There isn't a shred of judgment in his tone, just a faint concern, and too much wisdom. He keeps staring straight ahead. He doesn't want questions asked. This is just about silent support.]

[He's a doctor. There's a spurt something like that old rabbit-kick of paranoia to the heart, a solemn shiver down his spine. Maybe if he weren't already numbed to everything else, it would coalesce in his gut with a little more weight.]

...yeah. [He doesn't imply anything more. It's an acknowledgment; neither a confirmation nor a denial. He knows he's...it's a sure sign, isn't it, that he's still not all the way there. Not screwed on all the way tight. Still a little loose, still rattling in his cage. Still straining against a boundary he can't cross.]

[Still unstable.]

I'm not hurt. [He's singed, actually, but nothing too noteworthy.] I just - there's people I need to find.

If you need to rest any time I keep a fire going back behind the lines. [He needs it warm for people bringing in the wounded and the wounded themselves. He doesn't ask or push. He never will. Too many of his class have their own scars and no one brings them up.

They all just close ranks and walk together.]

Want the jug now or do you not have time to grab it? [He's giving Tim an out to escape if that's what he needs.]

[No. That's right. He needs...he needs more flames. That's the only weapon he has. He doesn't have anything else.]

Yeah. Yeah, I do. Gonna need all the - all the firepower I can get. [He didn't mean for that to be a joke. But it sure sounded like one regardless.]

[They pass the boundary. The pricky sense of danger is a breath away eases up until all that's left is the sounds of battle and the shifting all around him. He moves through it, not entirely with it.

Sometimes his head isn't on quite right either.] Back here.

[There's the jug tucked beside the bedroll he doesn't get to use much. Hinata circles the fire that's kept burning. Some helpful soul has set sea water to boiling while he was gone. He rolls up his sleeves. Someone probably needs his hands. He grabs the jug of rubbing alcohol and holds it out.]

Take care out there. I hope you find them. [Those people he wants to find.]

January Event: Setting Fire to the Sky

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