December Event: No Rest for the Wicked

[lifeaftr_mods]

DECEMBER EVENT: NO REST FOR THE WICKED

Who: Anyone and everyone
What: Your trials by fire
When: December 15th - 18th
Where: On Maati and Ensō
Warnings: Character deaths and violence are both likely - please mark as you go!

The Trials: Only Then Can We Begin

As noted in the OOC info post, your Trials will all begin on December 15th. As many of you will not be deposited into your trials with food and water (or any items of your own at all, in most cases), the Trials will last only as long as December 18th. If you've failed to complete your Trial by this deadline but have not used up all the deaths allotted to you, you will awaken by Maati's mana pool at the event's conclusion. If you have not failed your Trial by using up all your deaths, this will not count as a character death, and you will not need to submit for a penalty; you simply won't be able to obtain the reward you would get if you had succeeded! When your character wakes in their allotted Trial, they will discover that their starting chamber has been inscribed with the name of the Trial, the names of those participating, and the number of deaths they have remaining - though the latter aren't labeled in any way. You'll simply have to learn it the hard way; every time your character suffers a death, the number will go down by one. If it wasn't obvious what those numbers stood for at first, by the time the dying starts properly, it certainly will be. And you probably don't want to see it go all the way down to zero...

Should you reach the end of your Trial, you will step out onto the rocky cliffs of Maati, exiting from one of the seven doors set into the cliffs at the seven points of the island's star shape. You see, those doors you discovered earlier weren't the entrances to the Trials at all. They were the exits. And set into the towering cliffs...why, those house the winding mazes that comprise the Trials themselves.

There will be a top-level below for each Trial. Remember to plan with your groups and communicate with your thread partners! Whether you choose to do mingle-style threads or lengthier group threads is up to you.

Once you know the outcome of your Trial, success OR failure, please do let us know so that we can ensure your character gets the reward that befits their triumph...or lackthereof.

Remember also to let us know if your character uses up ALL their deaths during this event. While death penalties will not be inflicted during Trial deaths, if you use up all the deaths allotted to you and die for real, your death penalty will NOT be reduced.

The Water: Don't Let Them Get Away

The rest of you have plenty to contend with as well, of course. If you've opted out of this month's event, be advise that the waters creeping across shores of Ensō, along with the rest of the island, aren't going to take evasion kindly. They'll seek you out, spread along every inch of the island if they can, until they can find you. There is a top-level below, if you're intrigued! Though if you end up top-leveling yourself, we may very well reach out and find you anyway...

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] December 15th: The Trials on Maati begin, and the water begins to rise.
[ ♆ ] December 18th: The Trials reach their end.
[ ♆ ] December 19th: Those who have "perma"-died in their Trials are revived.
[ ♆ ] December 20th: The monthly Storytelling occurs.

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[thegoofball]

But I do. You can do anything I can. Muscle memory, right?

[Or in this case, brain...memory?]

I don't - I don't know! I never asked!

[postictal]

It's not...I mean, is it mental memory?

[Now's a bad time to say it, right? Now's a bad time to say it. He shifts on the spot, glancing down at hands that aren't his and a body that feels all wrong and maybe, he thinks, this is how that thing feels every time it wakes up in his head.]

[Maybe he could have a little sympathy for it after all.]

I can't...I don't do well with things in my - head.

[thegoofball]

I've done it before.

[So that's a yes.

Lance presses his lips together - it's not quite a frown, not quite the face he'd normally be making, but he's all wrong and there's nothing he can do about it. Not until they get out of here. If they get out of here.

This could very well be the end of the line.]

I...It'll be okay. Red won't hurt you. He just wants to help you - help us.

[postictal]

What did it do? Did it...break you out, or -

[He's avoiding thinking about it. He's avoiding concentrating on it, because he can feel it now that it's being called to his attention, a unspooling trail of something rumbling, nudging luminescent gold into the texture of his thoughts. Those aren't his thoughts. This isn't his life.]

[He's going to lose himself again. This wouldn't be a bad thing, except that the chance this might bleed over into Lance is one he can't afford to risk.]

[He's already ruined one person's soul with his own muddied thoughts.]

[He can't do it again.]

[thegoofball]

It helped.

[It was more complicated than that, when it was happening to him. Admiral Sanda gave them up, but...

The rest of the Paladins, the rest of the Lions, they're not here. Even if they're on the islands, they're not here. They're not going through this with him.

But Red can do this - Tim can do this. Lance knows he can, even though he's not sure why Tim's hesitating.]

You just have to believe in him.

[postictal]

[No. No, he can't - he can't explain, can't fucking articulate just how completely and wholly he cannot do this. Not again. He doesn't mind, necessarily, destroying himself for this. He doesn't mind tearing apart pieces of his soul, divesting himself of that tentative scaffolding he'd finally erected underneath and around himself. He doesn't mind that, really, because he's done it before - ]

[He just can't guarantee it won't bleed over into someone else.]

I can't.

[He remembers it. The cage. The taste of rain and sea spray, and the feel of a knife in his gut. The phantom glare of another person's soul, the way he seized on it and brought everything he could remember of them forward - ]

I can't risk that.

[thegoofball]

Risk what?

[He wants to understand - he wants to help. Not just because he wants to get out of here (even though he does) but because there's something here he's just not understanding. There's something Tim's worried about that he just can't see, that he just doesn't get...

And he can't help Tim if he doesn't know what Tim's afraid of. Maybe it's not his right to know - but they don't have time to wait. They only have so long before it happens.

Hard reset. Lance knows what'll happen if they don't get out of there in time, and he wants to make sure that doesn't happen.]

[postictal]

[Risk what? Risk letting someone else bleed into his head, mostly. Risk someone else coming away with all the little fucking pieces of him - the pieces that would tear them apart, make their lives hell, infect them with little burning patches of static and a rasping cough and bouts of insomniac restlessness and night terrors that leave them screaming their sanity into the midnight air, fingers knotted into sheets stained with cold sweat.]

[He can't do this. Not again. Not to anyone else.]

[His breaths are sharp, tense. Almost hyperventilating. Almost, but not quite.]

I can't risk someone else - in my head.

[thegoofball]

[This is...more than Lance thought was going on. He frowns, glancing around the gathered people in the room and the walls of the cell, before turning his focus back to Tim.

He doesn't understand any more, but... There's not enough time.]

They're not...Going to be in your head. They're not even a person.

[He takes a deep breath, shaking his head.] It's a connection you need to form, but it shouldn't - it won't linger. You just have to trust Red.

You can do this.

[postictal]

[The instinct to laugh isn't his and it doesn't belong to him and so he doesn't indulge it - but it festers, regardless. It's a knife-cut grin, a white crescent in the dark of his face blurred by sheeting rain, and the hollow laughter that came from forcing a blade deeper into himself because the thought of relinquishing his hold on a weapon was intolerable, even if the weapon was currently buried inside him.]

[What does he say to that? He's not about to disclose it, his history, his history of appropriating the brainwaves of people who are unfortunate enough to rub souls and minds and thoughts with his. What happens the next time he's backed into a corner? He'll tear his way out, self-destructing all the way, because that's what he's best at. It's what he's always been best at: self-immolation for survival, a fox gnawing through its leg to escape the trap.]

[It's easy to do it. The hard part comes from living with it after.]

[It's not fair.]

[It's never been fair. Life has never been fair to him.]

[Tim breathes. He breathes it out, counts the space between the swell and exhale of his lungs.]

How much time do we have?

[thegoofball]

[Lance's uncertainty is clear on his - Tim's - face. Lance has never been good at hiding things - he's tried, all the time, came up with all the excuses he could - but he's an open book. That's just how he is.

He grimaces at the question, looking away. He doesn't know how long they have. He's not even sure how long they've been in the cell.

It's only been a matter of minutes, but Lance knows very well that the Galra don't have much patience.]

I don't know. [He bites it out, before letting out a sigh.] But I don't think we've got much time left.

[postictal]

[The pace of his breath hikes up, almost to the point of hyperventilation - a visible, pained metric for the heightened degree of the anxiety that he can't escape. They don't have time for this. They don't have time for Tim to have another fucking crisis. If he just lets this lie, if he stalls them all out - they'll probably all die here. Temporarily, yes,but they'll have to bear the penalties for that for god knows how long. A month, at most.]

[If he succeeds, the risk of bleedthrough, the risk of Its influence leaching into Lance's - ]

[That doesn't go away. Surely the short-term consequences are acceptable, while the long-term aren't?]

[He stops, forces the rhythm of his lungs to slow.]

Okay. [Quietly.] Okay.

[He shuts his eyes. And, despite every instinct that rides against it, despite the screaming in his brain and the feeling of surrender that he's not completely certain of, that could be in his head or psychosomatic or purely imaginary, despite the fact that he's certain, certain that this is some kind of fundamental mistake that will haunt Lance's subconscious for the rest of his life, he reaches in and this part is easy, this part is easy because he's done it before because it's as simple as just letting it happen. He only has to coax it forward before it's flooding in in a haze of scarlet and gold, synesthetic bursts of foreign patterns mapped across his own.]

[He brings everything of it forward.]

[He thinks he says something as it happens. He thinks he says it, soft and almost inaudible - "I'm sorry." He thinks he says it, but he doesn't know.]

[thegoofball]

[He doesn't know what Tim's feeling right now - all he knows is how it feels for himself. He knows what it's like to open himself up to Red, to let the lion in and help him, but...

Is Tim feeling that? Can Tim even manage that? He can't see the trial as being something impossible, but he has to wonder. Is it the same as if he was doing this himself back home? Can such a thing be perfectly replicated?

Lance bites his lip, nervous, but he takes a breath to steady himself. He has faith in Tim. Whatever it is that's holding him back, it's not bad enough to kill them all.

They'll come out of this okay.]

Can you feel it? You know what you have to do, right?

[Does he feel that bond?]

[postictal]

[He knows what he has to do. He knows because it's immediate and it's not painful by nature and it feels, currently, completely natural. Maybe it feels natural because his mind was made for this. Because it was built, he was built, to open to foreign influence and always have a backdoor ready for It to slide free when It's done with him. It's not painful by nature, but it's difficult. He's making it difficult.]

[The tin-rattle thump of metallic feet against whatever compound comprises the floors, the walls, the - ]

[He can feel it the closer in it moves. He can feel it arcing closer until it's flooding him and he can feel every inch of its impossibly large, impossibly fluid shape superimposed upon a mental image of utter blackness scattered with stars: every locking joint, every interlocking mechanism, an inflorescence of arcing gold, an unmistakably leonine growl that shakes the center of the soul he knows that he has.]

[It's red. He saw it, once. It's red. Maybe this is why he and Lance are paired the way they are. A straight switch. One to one. No one else was so lucky, so unlucky.]

[More than anything he wants to pull back.]

[More than anything he wants to scream.]

[He can feel it and it's not just one consciousness, not just another soul held in apposition to his own; it is sprawling and tremendous and ancient and there is so much of it that he'll never be able to keep track of with any precision but if he doesn't he risks crushing himself and more importantly crushing everyone else.]

[It's not a terror that paralyzes him, exactly, because he's lived that before. He's lived limbs locked by fear and the broken, agonized tearing of vocal cords until there's nothing of him left. It's trepidation. It's anticipation times a thousand, the knowing of what's coming next and knowing that he's ruined this all over again, by buying into a short-term solution with long-term consequences so horrifying, so fucking unbearable that no one, no one should have that inflicted upon them and what has he done? What has he done he's inflicted it on them on yet another innocent on the man who has his body and his muscle memory and not his actual memory thank god but that's not about to save him now and maybe it never will yes well that's just not tenable anymore because it's not just his life on the line but the lives of others the lives of Frisk and of Chip and of Shion and of others others he doesn't know and can't name and maybe could if he could fucking focus for two goddamn seconds but he thinks that of all of them maybe Frisk would know the most why he's trying not to panic because they've never been there they've never felt it but maybe they know enough and maybe he'll be lucky and he'll die here before it all just ]

[Tim gasps like a drowning man when it happens:]

[A thunderous clang of some great force impacting the exterior of the ship, or the "ship," or whatever has been made to look like the ship.]