2017-10-26: The Wind Carries Us

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  • Log: The Wind Carries Us
  • Cast: Cyre H. Lorentz, Catenna, Ida Everstead-Rey, Rosaline Calice
  • Where: Baskar Colony
  • Date: October 26, 2017
  • Summary: Four Drifters go on a strange and terrifying journey via the magic of Cyre's herbal expertise. In the process, they all remember things they would have much rather have forgotten.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

The time has finally come. The promised hour is at hand. Cyre called the others to a small room built onto one of the Colony's local inns. He has made the proper preparations. Small, clay braziers burn at all corners of the room, wafting fragrant, blue-grey smoke into the air. It filters upwards in a thin set of contrails, curling towards a small porthole carved into the ceiling. He sits at the center of a dirt floor, the colorful blankets that normally decorate the room have been hung up elsewhere-- one drapes over the doorway. There should be nothing here that will catch light. Not today.

"Come on in," Cyre would call as the others appear, carefully attending the central brazier. He's... Not wearing his robes. In fact, other than his pants, he's not wearing much of anything at all. Lines and patterns of chalkdust and powder have been drawn over his bare skin. A pile of herbs and a filled waterskin are sitting, tucked up right next to him.

"I'm just getting ready to start. Once everyone's in, we'll close the door... And open the mind."

He makes little finger-wiggly motions.

<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Cyre isn't alone. Catenna got there a minute or so before Ida and Rosaline did.

She also isn't wearing much, truth be told. The patterns on her skin, painted in white, resemble those on Cyre's, though a simple pair of shorts and a bandeau top preserve her modesty as she sinks to her knees. Her hair has been let out; even her usual bangles have been removed, the normal braid she wears pulled over one shoulder left to merge back into the thick waves of the rest of her hair.

Quietly, Catenna sets out a few sticks of incense before her, laid in a loose geometric pattern around Cyre's herb heap.

"Man koloh," she murmurs in her own language, barely audible. "'Atma koloh. Rashta koloh. We go back to the bones of our grandfathers."

When she lifts her head, her pale grey eyes are clear and steady, her expression poised and utterly calm as she locks her gaze on Cyre for a moment. Drawing in a breath, she lets it out slowly through her nose, centering herself.

"Please," Catenna says in a low voice. "It will be more comfortable if you sit."

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Last night, Ida made camp a safe distance outside Little Twister, and spent a while watching the stars with her alien boyfriend. It was something of a needed break after accidentally melting a priceless artifact and before going to help the owner of said artifact in his junkyard. Ida got the day's tasks over with, and made the journey up to the Baskar territory. Truth be told, it's not that much different from the surrounding settlements--the houses are a little different, and there's different religious paraphanelia, but you can find Guardian-worshippers in most places if you shake them hard enough. She's not sure what she was expecting, other than 'exotic'. After stabling Grey Lady, Ida made her way to the inn.
Now, she steps into the room. She's barefoot, and wearing a sleeveless shirt and loose slacks tied with a cord. She takes a moment to look around, eyes lighting up with curiosity--and more than a little anxiety. This is a serious ritual. It makes her feel like a trespasser, sort of.
Nevertheless, she takes a seat, unties the drawstring of the lone pouch on her belt, and sets it down on the ground before her. She takes out the Medium, and sets it on the ground before her.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline is very open-minded for an Ethos nun. Really. Really!!

No, seriously. Most would scoff at the concept of... whatever Guardian faith ritual was about to occur here. She didn't catch all of the details. She at least strongly considered trying to dissuade Ida, but in the end, settled for accompanying her. She figured she could watch over her soul that way, to make sure it didn't go anywhere... well, darker than it already is.

And besides, she's curious about what is going to happen. Though you know what they say about curiosity and cats.

She's wearing exactly as much as she always does, and tries her best not to look too put off by the two shamans' state of relative undress as she comes in. She's trying to be open-minded, she really is! Her ears twitch a few times in alarm, but that's it.

"Hello... I'll just, um... I'll sit by the side if nobody minds..." she says, very quietly. She opens her bag to take out her Solais Emsu medium, as well as a small cushion, gently placing the former on the latter as she sits. There are several books in her bag, to pass the time, a sign that the fledgling Etone may be gravely misunderstanding her place in the proceedings.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

And there are their guests now! Guests. Plural. That sure is a Rosaline there. Cyre quirks a brow and twitches an ear at her entrance. "Oh, hey. Uh. You might want to take... some of that off. Maybe."

Beat.

"I mean, it's going to get pretty hot in here--"

Beat.

"Ugh, even when I'm not trying to." Cyre groans and nods to Ida as she enters. "Come on, sit, relax, get comfortable. This is going to be an interesting adventure, I think."

He gives Catenna a smile before taking some of those herbs-- it's some kind of... thick, green paste. He squeezes it between his palms, fluids dripping down his arms and into the flame. "Fa-Sa-Tie-Vea-Ra--" He begins, wringing the herbs dry before hurling the heap into the flame. It billows high, the heat builds, surging, filling the air with gentle smoke and cloying warmth. "--Fii-Da-Tai-Xalu-Si-Ad--"

The world seems to waver and twist. Those closest to the flame see it first, how the colors are blurring together. How the walls seem to crawl higher with every passing moment. The only light in here is the flame. "Baa-Re-Qai-Rea-Bi-Si-Taaa---"

The only light in here is the flame.

The only light in here is the flame.

The only light in here is the sun

The world seems to turn inside out. You feel as though your bodies begin to burn away- the very sensations-- the vital tethers-- the seven senses that are so critical to anchoring your mind and soul to the world turn to ash and float away with the smoke and blaze away in the sweeping solar winds.

Cyre's voice resounds.

Now I am going to forge a hymn
Make a stem flowering with music
Oh my friends!
Gather, myriad souls
We are all naught but songs!
DG: A party led by Cyre H. Lorentz is now entering Spirit Quest.
DG: Party formation is now over. An Entry Challenge will now be drawn and displayed to the party.
==============================<* Spirit Quest *>==============================
=====================<* CHALLENGE - The Madness Begins *>=====================
|Type: Entry       |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          | 
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 However it is you've found yourself here, your poor fragile mortal mind       
 probably isn't properly equipped to deal with it. Adjustment isn't always     
 easy when the rules of physics as we know and understand them no longer       
 apply. This is the realm of the mind and the imagination, where up can mean   
 down, down can lead into a maddening spiral from which there is no recovery.  
 Do you have the stamina to endure? Can your body withstand the otherworldly   
 sensations as your mind and soul are thrust into the unimaginable?            
=Dungeon Conditions: Madness==================================================
DG: Cyre H. Lorentz has used his Tool Invigorating Vapors toward his party's challenge, The Madness Begins.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Catenna lifts steady, unblinking eyes towards Ida and Rosaline as the two move in to seat themselves. "You may sit wherever you are comfortable," she assures the poofy young Etone.

Gently, Catenna lays out two mediums before herself. She smiles back at Cyre, then reaches out, lightning up her incense with the touch of a match. The sweet, evocative scent of it mingles with Cyre's green drippings, the two shamans bowed over the flame. Her eyelids lower as she chants in unison with him. Their voices blur together until they are one voice, neither male nor female. The only light in here is the flame. the only light in here is the flame.

Or perhaps something more.

There are no eyes for her to open anymore, for there are no eyes for her to open anymore. She does not concentrate on herself or her breathing, for there is no herself to focus on. Tongues of green flay away the world in rippling coils.

She can feel matter peeling away from her. A butterfly about to swell from its cocoon.

She breathes in something that is beyond air.

The dessicated husk of herself begins to fall from around her. A pair of vast, shimmering white wings unfold, trembling at first, and rise from within the spine of the snakeskin-like construct. Ethereal wingfeathers stretch out.

What begins to rise out from the shed body is a slender and brown thing, Catenna-like but for those huge white wings.

DG: Catenna has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Madness Begins.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

"I-I'll be fine," Rosaline says, avoiding looking at Cyre. "This thing can breathe much better than it seems." Those big shoulders? Heat sinks.

She watches cautiously, as Catenna and Cyre speak in a tongue she's unfamiliar with. Cyre makes gestures, squeezes herbs into paste, and...

Now, you see, Rosaline has never, in her life, heard the term "hotboxing".

"Um. What's happening?" she asks, her voice already getting drowned out as her senses are being burnt away by the Sun. She falls and falls and falls, struggling against the unfamiliar sensations at first but powerless to resist them, and soon she is no more.

For a moment, she is naught but a song, or at least this is what the voice is telling her. It must be true. She must be a hymn to Granas, perhaps, maybe, hopefully, but then it increasingly feels as if there is no Granas here.

Rosaline is alone.

Song be damned, she is a wordless scream. It punches through the meta-space like an explosion-- hoping to snap something, anything into focus, so she can hopefully rejoin her companions.

DG: Rosaline Calice has used her Tool Blessed Bomb toward her party's challenge, The Madness Begins.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida knew that there was going to be some sort of... psychedelic experience here, but wasn't sure when or how it was going to happen. Having never done this sort of thing before (accidentally inhaling mushroom spores does not count), she's not sure what to expect. She tries to divide her attention between Cyre and the Medium, but the man performing the actual ritual is the more interesting of the two. The herbs hit the brazier, and not long after, the smoke hits Ida's lungs. She coughs, reflexively--it's thick and pungent--but she focuses on her breath, feeling the gentle rise and fall of her chest. The smell becomes less overpowering. She expects her head to start spinning, to collapse into dreamland, but that never happens. What happens instead is unlike anything she was anticipating.
Everything starts to melt together. The light of the fire glimmers on the face of her Medium, as if soaking it in. Ida finds herself staring at it, enraptured; it's growing hotter, hotter, as if soaking up the energy from the flame. And then, it is the flame, and the flame is it. Ida reaches out to touch it--
The flesh starts burning off her hand. Muscles, nerves, and blood vessels unravel into smokeless flame as the fire spreads up her arm; fire pours out of her chest as the flame devours her heart and lungs. In seconds, all that is left is bone, and that, too, joins the flame.
Ida does not die. She can feel everything dissolving, but it's distant--her mind is doing things she cannot explain, or put words to. It is liberating in ways she thought impossible, and also terrifying in ways she thought impossible. She cannot sing. She cannot even speak.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, The Madness Begins.
==============================<* Spirit Quest *>==============================
=====================<* CHALLENGE - The Madness Begins *>=====================
|Type: Entry       |Dungeon Ability: Brute     |Challenge Rating: 2          | 
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 However it is you've found yourself here, your poor fragile mortal mind       
 probably isn't properly equipped to deal with it. Adjustment isn't always     
 easy when the rules of physics as we know and understand them no longer       
 apply. This is the realm of the mind and the imagination, where up can mean   
 down, down can lead into a maddening spiral from which there is no recovery.  
 Do you have the stamina to endure? Can your body withstand the otherworldly   
 sensations as your mind and soul are thrust into the unimaginable?            
=Dungeon Conditions: Madness==================================================
=========================<* Spirit Quest - Round 1 *>=========================
=======================< Results - The Madness Begins >=======================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyre H. Lorentz                     0 --(20)--> 20                 Fail
Invigorating Vapors                 1   Brute   Effects: Cleanse              
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosaline Calice                     0 --(20)--> 20                 Fail
Blessed Bomb                        2   Brute   Effects: Strengthen           
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catenna                             0 --(20)--> 20                 Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC                
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ida Everstead-Rey                   0 --(20)--> 20                 Fail
Force                               0   Brute   Effects: BASIC                
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Cyre H. Lorentz             0 --(10)--> 10                 Fail
Conditions: Madness
Effects: Cleanse|Strengthen(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Cyre H. Lorentz has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

It's a terrible, terrifying experience. As liberating as it might be, having not done this in a very long time-- or never having done this at all-- means the ascension is an unnerving, unsettling process. It takes a moment to find one's center- to right oneself along a new axis. Whether bursting from a cocoon or exploding from a dark void or drifting in one neuron at a time, the mechanism is rapid, jarring.

The sun gives way to a warm, brilliant void.

Within, you can all see one another. And there, next to Catenna, is a figure of rippling, twisting wind and preadatory might. Like a perfect fusion of man and beast. It is definitely Cyre, but in the clouds and the winds that roil over his limbs, it's obvious that there's... something else there as well.

He smiles, and walks down the path.

There is no Granas here. Only these myriad, gathered souls.

DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has drawn a new Challenge.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
======================<* CHALLENGE - Nightmare Fiction *>=======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 2          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 The world shakes apart. It shakes you apart. Your mind comes unspun. Dozens   
 of fragments of memories, thoughts and emotions float in the void all around  
 you. But something is wrong. Some of those aren't right; can't be right.      
 There are lies mixed in with these truths. Conjured calamities, imaginary     
 futures past, events you feared would come, but never did, dance amidst the   
 truth. Put yourself together properly, or you might just leave this place     
 more broken than when you entered it; but that might be hard when it feels    
 like your brain's suddenly gone numb.                                         
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
There is fire.
It's a bonfire, unbanked and untamed--but there is no sign of Ida within it. Her thoughts spiral off in different directions, along different planes.
WHITE LOTUS OVERRIDE
And then it's like something grabs the tail end of all of those thoughts and yanks, pulling them back towards their point of origin with violent force. When they connect, it's like a head-on collision between two trains. Everything spills across the desert--instead of shattered wood and twisted metal and broken bodies, it's memories, feelings, emotions. Ida--if there is an Ida at this point--finds herself a presence of some sort with no form in this world. Instead, there are pages from textbooks and letters and Memory Cube messages and hateful looks and Wel bites and spent bullet casings and nights under the stars.
An empty biscuit wrapper lying on the floor of a cave on the outskirts of Wayside, waiting for Kalve to pick it up. Waiting for Kalve to show up and take it to its proper place.
An empty biscuit wrapper in a dormitory trash can.
A packet of biscuits in the hand of a young girl who is offering them to a titanic beast--a hundred-foot-long Metal Dragon with teeth like knives and nuclear breath that could melt a Gear to slag.
Octavian? Ida thinks. The girl is her. The dragon reaches down with claws that could tear effortlessly through steel. He takes a biscuit, daintily, and eats it.
And then the dragon is there, in the dream world. Despite his fearsome appearance, there is absolutely nothing menacing about him. He feels like an old, old friend.
Ida begins offering him the bits that do not belong. They come to rest before him, and obediently, he begins torching them from existence.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has used her Tool Chocolate Biscuits toward her party's challenge, Nightmare Fiction.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline is not having a good time at all, that much is certain. But in the brilliant void, at least she has company. At least she has a form, too.

The two shamans project more abstract self-images. Rosaline, at the end of the day, has a more prosaic mind. This is why the figure that appears is simply Rosaline, nothing more and nothing less. There's just one major difference: She appears no more than eleven or twelve years old.

Child Rosaline (Kitten Rosaline?) wears no nun's habit, instead the ill-fitting clothes she could scrounge up from the donation bin. She has no robes to hide her bestial feet, nor does she bother with gloves. Her oversized, grotesque clawed paw-hand hybrids on full display would give her an outlandish appearance, were it not for this place being an abstract mind experience.

It should also be noted that her hair-to-person ratio is even greater than it is nowadays, or at least it may seem that way since she's not wearing any sort of headpiece at all.

She also seems to be in a hurry.

"Hello there, everyone," she waves a paw, "and hello there, Mister Dragon! I'd ask if you want to play pirates, but that's kid stuff, and besides I need to deliver these pancakes first."

And she enters the bedroom, holding her frying pan.

Sunlight streams in through the curtains, where a lone boy is sitting up in bed while the sound of children can be heard outside. He turns around as Rosaline comes in, but his face is too backlit to see clearly.

"Hey, Toby. I brough, um. Apology pancakes. Chocolate chip, your favorite."

'Toby' doesn't answer. This may be because he's still mad at her, or it may be because the orphanage has caught ablaze.

Rosaline looks down in her hands to find, along with the frying pan, a matchbook. She grimaces, trying to make sense of it all.

"Oh no... Oh no... This can't... be happening..."

DG: Rosaline Calice has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Nightmare Fiction.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

The heavy white feathers tremble for a moment. Wresting herself free from all of this is a task that feels like burning. Yet soon enough, those huge wings splay, flecked with dark spots along the backs, like the wings of a vast snowy owl. A few smaller feathers drift through the air.

Hanging in the air beside Cyre, Catenna is pretty obviously Catenna. Her bare figure would be indecent if not for her doll-like lack of anatomical details. There is no roiling wind around her, but the grey colour of her eyes has changed, pupils centring a subtle pattern.

Her irises are twin moons. Her lashes fall over them for a moment.

The huge wings fold closed again, and wrap the slender figure up and out of view.

Behind ida and the immense, friendly metal shape, a crease etches itself in existence. Long lashes lift above the world. The shapeless naturalist and her beloved terror hang in the lighted crescent of an otherwise shadowed eye. Like little sparks.

Ida can feel it. A sense of gentle warmth.

It is fleeting. Those long lashes close again. Catenna lifts her head and looks up from where she is kneeling. She turns her eyes up towards the figure standing before her.

The shape looks a lot like an older Catenna. Moonlight hangs in the air around her, pale and blue. There is not a sound, the light too dim to see much more than the arc of a smile as she holds out something. A stone tablet.

Catenna holds her hands out and clasps it. She cradles it to her heart.

Like a comfort blanket.

Behind her, she can feel an immensity. Dozens of pairs of eyes staring at her back. Shadowed figures looming behind her. A few faces can be made out, all of them looking like Catenna's. A man who looks a little like her. A few vast, looming monsters, powerful and inhumanly twisted, their forms defying the imagination. They too stare at her.

Intruding on the senses, then, comes something. A soft sussurus. Then a little louder. A murmur.

Laughter. Derisive. Cruel. It swells. Catenna's wings fold around her, and she looks down at the Medium. Laughter seems to pour from it, and hang in the smile of the woman who had gifted this thing to her.

Her eyes lower further, to the small creature sitting by her feet.

A small baby owl, gruesomely mutilated by a shotgun round through its chest.

DG: Catenna has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Nightmare Fiction.
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

They say that those of Cyre's caste are close to the Guardians. The Nahual of Wehaca are they who channel the very primal forces of the world in the most direct of ways. Their bodies, their souls, molded into conduits for the divine. Cyre stares at the scenes playing out before him. He watches as an adorable kitten goes to bring a special something to a friend. He watches as a cute little girl feeds a terror of ancient and impossible nature. He watches as a life unfolds in slow motion before him, before rising with laughter. The wind howls. A cool breeze blows that rises into a tremendous hurricane of memory.

It's like this every time, he thinks. The rain and the gale whip. Blood-red sands flow like water over the landscape. He looks to his left and sees a young man, not much unlike himself. But opposite. Black where he is white. Strong where he is weak. He reaches out, the image dissolves, fading into black-red ribbons as the storm comes. Its arms reach out, the eye widens, swallowing the world.

Wind and thunder war. Cyre feels it, a deep, primal feeling more real than anything else. The sensation of flesh tearing beneath his claws. The feeling of blood erupting across his chest. Life burning hot, the chase, the pursuit. He feels it overcome him-- he opens himself, lets it pass through.

He sees his twin standing before him, more and more figures rising from the sands, emerging from the winds. All arrayed before him. All familiar faces, all things he knew, once.

He turns.

He takes a step.

The cliff takes him before he realizes he is falling.

DG: Cyre H. Lorentz has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Nightmare Fiction.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
======================<* CHALLENGE - Nightmare Fiction *>=======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 2          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 The world shakes apart. It shakes you apart. Your mind comes unspun. Dozens   
 of fragments of memories, thoughts and emotions float in the void all around  
 you. But something is wrong. Some of those aren't right; can't be right.      
 There are lies mixed in with these truths. Conjured calamities, imaginary     
 futures past, events you feared would come, but never did, dance amidst the   
 truth. Put yourself together properly, or you might just leave this place     
 more broken than when you entered it; but that might be hard when it feels    
 like your brain's suddenly gone numb.                                         
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify==================================================
==========================<* Spirit Quest - Round 2 *>==========================
========================< Results - Nightmare Fiction >=========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyre H. Lorentz                     20 --(10)--> 30                Fail
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosaline Calice                     20 --(5)--> 25                 Pass
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catenna                             20 --(5)--> 25                 Pass
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ida Everstead-Rey                   20 --(5)--> 25                 Pass
Chocolate Biscuits                  1   Wits    Effects: Cleanse              
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Cyre H. Lorentz             10 --(20)--> 30                Pass
Conditions: Stupify(2)
Effects: Cleanse
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Cyre H. Lorentz has passed this challenge! The party gained 20 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The eye.
It should be terrifying. Instead, a young girl stands with her father outside the Boneyard, far enough away that the city lights might as well not exist. A perfect, starry night with the moons high above, and the great arc of the galaxy spread out like a blanket.
"Are there people out there?" she asks.
Her father considers it, for a moment. "They say that the Dragons came from the stars, a long time ago. They also say that the Demons came with them. Some people also say that we came from the st
disjunction
King Justin's breath gurgles up his throat. A golden, glass-like blade protrudes from his chest. Kalve drops the man's body as though it were a piece of trash. One of his hands clutches a jewel that glows like the sun. He turns to Ida and
Nuclear fire scours the false memory from Ida's mind. More join it. Rosaline may fear fire, but this is a cleansing flame. It is not the stuff of nightmares.
Ida... reconstitutes, for lack of a better term, after what feels like an eternity. She's more abstract than Rosaline, but less so than the two Shamans--she is herself, rising from within a great white lotus with petals of steel. A smaller, identical flower rests in her hair, its roots tracing down her temple, and down her neck. She is barefoot, and wearing humble linen clothes.
An immense steel something swoops beneath Cyre as he falls, catching him. Octavian returns to his best friend's side, kneeling--insofar as dragons can kneel--to let the Shaman disembark.
"You certainly picked an interesting place for us to go on this adventure," says Octavian. His accent is posh. "But there is nothing we cannot solve so long as we stay together." Ida smiles, and gives her friend a hug around the muzzle. She looks more at peace than the others have seen her... ever.
DG: Catenna has drawn a new Challenge.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
=======================<* CHALLENGE - Fathom the Flame *>=======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 3          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Your arms are bound to a stake driven into a vast field of fire. The flames   
 whip and whirl, whispering in the language of sunlight and judgment, of       
 castigating heat. It speaks in accusations which set your pyre alight,        
 burning through your soul like candlewax. It spits slander at you, judges     
 you for sins real and imagined. It is the thoughts you know are in            
 everybody's heads- what they would say, if they were truthful. It is          
 anxiety, guilt, self-loathing. It is the flame that burns from the inside,    
 consuming all that you are. Defend yourself from it. Refute its lies.         
 Acknowledge its truths. Know where you are innocent, and where you are        
 guilty. Be sure of your sins, accept them for they are yours, and in so       
 doing, rise from the flames.                                                  
=Dungeon Conditions: Madness==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Vast white wings sweep out to either side of Catenna, then fold around her again. The mocking laughter trails behind her like stardust behind a comet as she begins to ascend towards the moon. Gauzy blue silk materializes around her, shimmering, then solidifying into the dress she wore the day she stepped off the boat.

A man with pointed ears is standing at a table, staring lasciviously at her legs, unclean thoughts and violence in his eyes. Catenna closes her eyes and beats her wings, flicking away the memory.

She knows that is a doubt not worth entertaining. Not when some of the souls with her are at peace. Catenna lifts lunar eyes towards the massive steel dragon, posh and sweet. The girl embracing him. Slowly, she begins to take a step towards Cyre.

In her vision, she draws no closer. She can only see Ida's back for some reason, despite the fact that she could see her face a moment ago.

She takes another step towards Ida, but it is as though Ida is receding away from her. With every step, the distance grows. Catenna's wings stiffen with alarm. If she still had a chest, something would seize within it. Lifting her eyes away, she turns towards another shape. The man standing at the table, staring at her.

The man with the pointed ears leers at her a moment longer. And then he begins to turn away. He coils an arm around the waist of a woman in an Etone's robe, though it is not Rosaline. He coils the other arm around the waist of a dark-haired woman with potions at her waist. All three of them spare derisive, pitying glances over their shoulders.

With smirks, they turn away from her. Catenna starts towards them, but each step pulls her further away.

She turns again. A woman who looks a lot like her smiles a sad, pitying smile, then turns away. Recedes into the distance. A woman surrounded by soft white feathers smiles at her with derisive pity. Fades away into the distance.

Small teardrops dance in the air like little stars as Catenna lifts her eyes to the moon. A blue-winged figure sits astride the crescent.

She is holding her hand out to Kourin the priestess.

The moon shrinks, slowly, in the sky. Fading away into the distance. Only little echoes of silent pity linger. Catenna slouches to her knees and wraps her arms and her wings around herself. She wants to hide.

is it hiding
if no one would miss you
DG: Catenna has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Fathom the Flame.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"Onward, then," says Octavian. Ida, the grown woman with the lotus in her hair, starts walking along beside her childhood friend. The Dragon's gait is like that of a stalking cat, all predatory grace, but there's nothing but innocent curiosity and excitement in the air. Ida is a tiny fraction of his size, but she's able to keep pace with him easily. Tiny lotus flowers spring up from around her feet with every step, and the 'ground' shimmers and ripples like a pool of water.
She looks behind her, a smile lighting up her face as she gestures to the others to follow--
They're slipping off, receding into a darkness that wasn't there a moment ago. Ida suddenly feels cold, alone. She looks around, but Octavian isn't there. Instead, there are rows upon rows of little corrugated-tin shacks, interspersed with smaller, frontier-style structures. The ancient, battered hulk of a water purifier rests in the middle of everything. "Cyre?" Ida says. Figures begin to emerge from the buildings. "Catenna?" They're broken. They're missing body parts--limbs and organs have been replaced with crude machines. It's impossible to tell if they're human, or something else. "Rosaline?" Others join them--humans. Demons. Figures Ida recognizes. Elena is there, and Lily and Sephilia and Talise and Dean and Avril and June and everyone she's ever felt like she's angered or disappointed or hurt. She can't find Kalve among them. "Octavian?!"
Someone who is very much not Octavian answers. It's Riesenlied, crowned with a beatific golden halo. Her draconic parts look misshapen, and grossly out of place. She raises her hand--the one with scales and claws--in a gesture of warding. Two small, frail-looking human children huddle behind Riesenlied's skirts, as if terrified of the monster their adoptive mother is facing down.
The monster is Ida.
Riesenlied says nothing. Ida finds herself rooted to the spot. The broken figures advance, and begin placing blocks of wood around her feet. June lashes her hands to a stake. The Trial Knight douses the logs with kerosene, and throws the empty can at Ida's knees.
Riesenlied kneels at the pyre. A grotesque parody of dragon's fire issues from her lips--cold and weak and sickly instead of hot, righteous, and pure. The wood catches flame immediately. Ida is burning alive once again, but this time she is not becoming the fire--the fire is consuming her. She tries to give voice to protest, but she can say nothing.
Liar. Brute. Thief. Desecrator. Monster.
A biscuit wrapper sits on the floor of a cave, waiting for Kalve to come home.
You deserve this.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has used her Tool Chocolate Biscuits toward her party's challenge, Fathom the Flame.
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

Cyre lands hard and with unusual substance on the enormous, photorealistic dragon's back. It's a rough fall, for as much as falls can possibly be rough in a place like this. He looks down, pale green eyes considering the colossal dragon with deep and burning curiosity. He reaches out and touches at its all-too-solid frame.

The plates ripple like the surface of water or like a mirror of molten flame. He feels himself disappear into the metaphor. A sensation he recognizes as scorching heat batters at his senses, swallowing up all the rest of the world. Again he finds himself before that cliffside-- no. A different one. A mesa and the building hewn into it stand before him. His eyes widen as he feels a slick sensation on his fingertips.

His eyes fall, finding a melange of crimson and quicksilver dripping from terrible, bestial claws. His eyes rise to find a field of blood, and a monster supping from the body of dusky, shredded flesh. Its maw splits and grins, a wing dripping mercury hanging like a scrap of food caught in its gums.

Suddenly the wind takes him. It hurls him with tremendous force, launches him forward, inexorably, irresistably. The beast's maw unhinges; it swallows him whole.

He watches as he hunts. His eyes are its eyes. Life bleeds away where his claws pass. He moves like the spark of a wildfire. Cities burn. He watches the buildings come down. Cathedral-spires collapsing to dust. He sees a familiar face, a woman he knows, a woman he hates. He sees her face, her hands clutching her egg. His jaw closes around her skull, and he finds that he enjoys the taste.

Is hatred all that you are?

He reaches for something. Someone. Anyone. His hands reach out, they search the darkness within the flames within the beast. Where is it. He knows he is more than this

Where is it

DG: Cyre H. Lorentz has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Fathom the Flame.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Atomic fire washes over the orphanage, cleansing away the destructive flame to make way for warmth and reassurance. Rosaline is back with the group, and her own age again, she still wears the same urchin clothes, the edges of which glimmer with a few persistent embers, along with the tips of her hair. This is fine.

She looks up to the dragon, still unnerved but grateful. There Ida is, by his side, looking happier than she's ever seen her. Maybe this was worth it, Rosaline briefly thinks, only very dimly aware of what 'it' even is at this point.

She looks back down, looking for her frying pan... only to find her hands bound. The lack of gloves hits her, with a twisting feeling in her stomach.

Flames roar back to life all around, separating her from the rest once more. She sees, amidst the inferno, many hooded shapes, both familiar and not.

"We are gathered here for the trial of the Wrathful Beast, Bringer of false hope," says the leader of the pack, the diminutive, elderly Etone, Mother Oba. She speaks with an intensity accurate to her real-world counterpart, but a cruelty born from Rosaline's rich imagination.

"She claims to heal but only destroys, promising respite but only bringing ruin through her selfishness, her incompetence, her weakness, her ignorance, her cowardice, her laziness and idiocy-- Does she even know what she's doing half of the time? Do you even know? Don't pretend you haven't seen the blood on your robes!"

The beast is leaning against her post, crying.

"Please... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry... I'm doing the best I can, I swear..."

The crowd's insistent murmur grows in intensity. Soon it becomes a cacophony of shouts, familiar ones, accusations she hears every single day.

"I'M SORRY! I-- I only want to kill the bad ones... If I don't, they'll make people suffer... I'm not taking pleasure in it, you have to believe me. You have to understand me..."

They don't. How could they? One word stands out from the rest, chanted again and again. 'Monster.'

"I know... I know. I don't want to kill you. I don't want to yell at you. Somebody... Anybody... please..."

DG: Rosaline Calice has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Fathom the Flame.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
=======================<* CHALLENGE - Fathom the Flame *>=======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits      |Challenge Rating: 3          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Your arms are bound to a stake driven into a vast field of fire. The flames   
 whip and whirl, whispering in the language of sunlight and judgment, of       
 castigating heat. It speaks in accusations which set your pyre alight,        
 burning through your soul like candlewax. It spits slander at you, judges     
 you for sins real and imagined. It is the thoughts you know are in            
 everybody's heads- what they would say, if they were truthful. It is          
 anxiety, guilt, self-loathing. It is the flame that burns from the inside,    
 consuming all that you are. Defend yourself from it. Refute its lies.         
 Acknowledge its truths. Know where you are innocent, and where you are        
 guilty. Be sure of your sins, accept them for they are yours, and in so       
 doing, rise from the flames.                                                  
=Dungeon Conditions: Madness==================================================
==========================<* Spirit Quest - Round 3 *>==========================
=========================< Results - Fathom the Flame >=========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyre H. Lorentz                     30 --(20)--> 50                Fail
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosaline Calice                     25 --(20)--> 45                Fail
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catenna                             25 --(20)--> 45                Fail
Investigate                         0   Wits    Effects: BASIC                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ida Everstead-Rey                   25 --(20)--> 45                Fail
Chocolate Biscuits                  1   Wits    Effects: Cleanse              
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Cyre H. Lorentz             30 --(10)--> 40                Fail
Conditions: Madness
Effects: Cleanse
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Cyre H. Lorentz has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
DG: Rosaline Calice has drawn a new Challenge.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
=========================<* CHALLENGE - Race the Sun *>=========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 2          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Your destination lies beyond the distant horizon, in the domain of the sun    
 itself. It might permit you entry should you prove swift enough to outspeed   
 it. Pursue the sun, outrun its very rays, behold the infinite dark that       
 waits where light has yet to reach, and claim for yourself the treasures of   
 the first and final night.                                                    
=Dungeon Conditions: Treasure=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Catenna lifts her head. Only the narrowest sliver of a moonbeam hangs behind, a thin line of light slashing across the winged figure like a swordstroke cutting up the middle of her face and across one eye. The world is quiet for a long time. Everything seems to take place at a great distance. She can see the spark of Ida's pyre burning away.

She watches through an eye set within metal plates that simulate the look of human skin. Lifts her hand to run it along the cold living steel. Riesenlied is there and Catenna is not murdering her yet. Ambrosius is in the distance and Catenna is not killing him yet.

Her fingertips press into the steel. Run along the seam of it. The distant spark of the flame winks as she curls her nails beneath that seam. Blood pools in slow drips around her eye socket. It runs down her cheek.

It burns as the metal begins to rip away. She closes her eyes.

Flames lap at the edges of whatever manner of consciousness this is. They carry the scent of accusation, of sin. They lap along Catenna's cheek, burning their way up the streak of blood running down her cheek. She closes her eyes and experiences the pain, knowing that she is not suffering alone.

i mean nothing.

The vast wings rising from her back settle, and flatten out across the ground beneath her. Nothing else is around her - only those distant sparks. She can only know their suffering from this distance, because everyone walks away from her.

The flames stream up and around Catenna now, billowing into a halo, pouring down her limbs, dimming her. She begins to crumble into herself. What substance exists of her is laced through with crisscrossing, fiery lines. Everyone in her life has left the campsite. The moon has vanished beyond the clouds and the fire has gone out.






Until, from the ash, comes a vast surge of white. Sparks of something shimmering dance in the air. The fires begin to dim away. Brilliant white intrudes on the vision.

A vast beast roars - and as it reaches out, a slender hand slides past the beast's maw.

Catenna's fingers slide in between Cyre's. So lacking in form is she that her essence actually begins to phase into him a little. Their fingers interlock and become one - and as she whirls out of the dying embers, she reaches for the first person she can think of.

stay with me, cyre.
i need you.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Catenna has found Cyre. Ida and Rosaline are not so fortunate. The flames consume them.

And yet, here we are.

Rosaline is back in the desert, looking very much the worse for wear. She's wearing her old habit, the one Ida met her in, although ripped in places and completely drenched in blood. Behind her, the scene of a battle. A middle-aged, male Etone's corpse, riddled with bullets, and a handful of bandits, shredded beyond recognition.

She has the Etone's ARMs and horse, but isn't riding the latter, instead only leading it towards the presumed edge of the desert. She looks forward with a fixed stare, muttering under her breath.

"Where are you, Ida? I just did something terrible... I'm scared of who I am, Ida. Please... please, where are you?"

She looks up for guidance, and sees only the Sun, which is heading straight for...

"PLEASE COME BACK, IDA!" Rosaline yells out, letting go of the horse to break into a near-quadrupedal run. "Please, you need to summon your dragon so we can outrun the Sun! We can find the others and all hide in the night where we belong!"

DG: Rosaline Calice has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Race the Sun.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida burns to ash as Riesenlied watches. The wind carries the ash from the pyre, and with it goes Ida--but not before one of the orphans asks Riesenlied a question:
"Is the monster gone, Mommy?"
"Yes, dearheart," says Riesenlied. "It cannot hurt anyone now."
An eternity passes. Ida blows across an endless desert, swept along on winds she cannot control. She sees everything around her, but can do nothing whatsoever to affect it. Finally, she sees something--someone--familiar. Rosaline, crying out in heartbreaking despair.
Rosaline It's Ida's voice, soft and faint. I'm here--
But there's nothing else she can do. Nothing except stirring the wind around her, trying to speed Rosaline's flight. It feels like trying to change the course of a runaway train. Ida has to try.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Race the Sun.
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

Dreams are strange things. This place is stranger even than that, and infinitely more harrowing. The things that a soul is exposed to here are terrible; it's the magnification of every insecurity, every possible crisis. Souls burn in their own fire.

And yet, it's something else, too. A place of healing. Wounds must open first before they can be mended.

It's a place of communion. Where one can become one with the world, and with others.

Cyre feels a hand wrap around his own. He is drawn out of the beast, the behemoth monster falling apart into ribbons of primal fury and bloodthirst. His fingers slip through Catenna's. He touches her. Two become one.

The nightmare gives way. Castigating flames are shed in favor of a bright, shining sun. Cyre knows. Instinct guides him. He knows what he must do.

Catenna feels him disappearing, vanishing from her grasp. The mental construct that is Cyre dissolves with a smile into whorls of cloudstuff and a gentle breeze that sweeps down over the plains and flows through all which its currents touch.

The wind rises. A great, swelling gale builds to a triumphant crescendo. It's a guiding wind. A breeze that presses at your back, ushering you forward towards wherever your path leads.

Rosaline would feel it whip through her hair towards the distant horizon.

Ida would feel it gathering her, pulling her back together with every twist and swell.

Catenna would feel it beneath her wings, moving faster than the sun.

I am happy to become your wind.

DG: Cyre H. Lorentz has used his Tool Reverse Parachute toward his party's challenge, Race the Sun.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

For just a moment, Catenna's essence seems to melt into Cyre's. Whatever she is now - no longer a body - she can feel that he is just the same.

It's warm. It radiates through her like sunbeams.

The touch begins to break down. Whispers into breaths of wind. Catenna's hair stirs around her as the billowing stream that is Cyre spills across her, coursing over her shape in coils and tendrils, like a touch. it builds beneath her.

The soft, flecked feathers of owl's wings stir, vast and thick. Catenna spreads them out. The air catches beneath them, lifting her towards the sky.

And I to soar upon you.

Beneath the screaming sun, so full of terror, a little white speck soars, held aloft by that wind. Coils of something else weave through the air. They weave through that breath of wind, twisting and spinning slowly, gracefully, like strands of pure pale light. Cool and calming, as though soft moonbeams could somehow exist within the radiance of the sun. Rosaline Calice flees from the horrible dawn.

Strands of moonbeams weave down to embrace her. To embrace the soaring Ida. And, buoyed by that billowing wind, Catenna begins to lift herself upwards -- upwards.

She is so close to the sun that it could burn through her. She stares upwards.

I am a small, sad thing, and unworthy.
And I ask you to trust me.

The radiant terror of the sun sears at ethereal skin. The edges of snowy wings begin to fray and char. Catenna closes her eyes and feels the weight below her - and the surge.

She lets him become her wind.

And then the light passes - and with a slow, serene beat of those immense wings, Catenna, with Ida and Rosaline woven into a cradle of moonbeams like babies carried by the stork, sails higher than the sun, into the dark, starlit sky beyond. So high that the sun is a mere speck below, and only the moon, singing in soft, lonely silence, watches them.

DG: Catenna has used her Tool Grappling Hook toward her party's challenge, Race the Sun.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
=========================<* CHALLENGE - Race the Sun *>=========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 2          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Your destination lies beyond the distant horizon, in the domain of the sun    
 itself. It might permit you entry should you prove swift enough to outspeed   
 it. Pursue the sun, outrun its very rays, behold the infinite dark that       
 waits where light has yet to reach, and claim for yourself the treasures of   
 the first and final night.                                                    
=Dungeon Conditions: Treasure=================================================
==========================<* Spirit Quest - Round 4 *>==========================
===========================< Results - Race the Sun >===========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyre H. Lorentz                     50 --(5)--> 55                 Pass
Reverse Parachute                   1   Agility Effects: Rally and Quicken    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosaline Calice                     45 --(5)--> 50                 Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catenna                             45 --(5)--> 50                 Pass
Grappling Hook                      2   Agility Effects: Quicken              
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ida Everstead-Rey                   45 --(5)--> 50                 Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC                
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Cyre H. Lorentz             40 --(25)--> 65                Pass
Conditions: Treasure(1)
Effects: Quicken(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Cyre H. Lorentz has passed this challenge! The party gained 25 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
DG: Cyre H. Lorentz has drawn a new Challenge.
==============================<* Spirit Quest *>==============================
======================<* CHALLENGE - Escape the Earth *>======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 3          | 
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 Before you stretches a vast mountain range. Beneath you is the greatest       
 among them. Beyond them is the way forward. Within you is the strength to     
 vault the very mountain peaks themselves. Distance is only an illusion to a   
 mind willing to go further beyond- but can you truly abandon the world to     
 transcend it, or will your soul be weighed down by gravity? Make your choice  
 quickly. The land beneath you is giving way; the earth will swallow you if    
 you do not stay one step ahead.                                               
=Dungeon Conditions: Cripple==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline's cry for help is answered at last. It isn't in the way she expected, but expecting anything here is a fool's errand to begin with.

Friendly voices make themselves heard, dimly at first, but soon assert themselves as the murmur of ash-carrying wind becomes a roaring gale.

"Thank you," she says, her voice gentle despite the roaring wind and her own visible extertion. "I can't do this alone. I'm not strong enough."

Rosaline's bloodstained habit billows and flaps in the wind as she runs, at first seeming to impede her but soon stretching into an impossible trail of fabric that stretches on farther and farther as she picks up speed. The wind and the Moon's gentle beams cool her down from the harsh desert soon, from the fire that's been eating at her, and from the still-warm blood all over her, which finally begins to wash off and dissipate in the air around her, floating off as if in water.

The Sun turns, several times, around Filgaia, unable to keep up with the feline woman's speed bolstered by friends who have been undergoing their own trial and coming out worse for wear, but not defeated just yet.

And then, the Sun disappears to make way for the starry sky. Good thing Catenna is there to carry the group, now reunited once more-- but for how long? Rosaline wants to stop and catch her breath, but this seems unwise. Hiding in the night will have to wait a bit.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.
Forward, forward, ever pressing into the distance. The sky disappears from overhead. The sun, the stars, vanish into the far-off horizon. But the earth remains. Even here, where the arc of the sun has yet to shine, where there is only tomorrow and over there and all those things that have yet to come, the earth still is.

So what lies beyond the earth?

Their destination is not so easily grasped. It is a place, a moment, that cannot be restrained by simple things like distance and time. It is a place that has yet to be, that has yet to be defined.

The world churns below. Where the sun raced lazily through the heavens, the world IS the earth. The infinite, endless earth. Wherever they might go, the earth was already there.

But still, they must go beyond.

The wind gathers strength as the mountains surge upwards to capture their flight. Cyre pushes, his wind howls as he attempts to trade one infinity for the next, to imagine a place-- and impossibility-- a hope that is just out of reach.

He can see so many things. So many roads that he can follow. He sees a flourishing world. He sees a warm home. Family, friends, so many things. Beyond. Ever beyond. Imagination is the only limit.

Stretch beyond. Grasp impossible dreams. Even if you fail, even if you fall and the earth swallows you whole, that you strived is enough.

There is no fear. If our legs break, we will someday stand again. Come. Rise. Even if we may fall, rise!

DG: Cyre H. Lorentz has used his Tool Reverse Parachute toward his party's challenge, Escape the Earth.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

With the wind of Cyre strong beneath her wings, Catenna feels like she could carry them for miles.

But would they truly care...?

The thought is entertained, then discarded. She can feel the care beneath her wings. Pure wind, howling and churning beneath her, lifting her so far above the earth that the sun could not even begin to chase them. Only the arc of the moon, and a vast mountain peak beyond it.

Those huge white wings beat strongly against the air, working with the wind to lift her higher. Those corded moonbeams weave and crisscross, embracing the phantoms of Ida and Rosaline once more, dancing through the wind, as though to carry even Cyre along with her. A glittering trail of sparkling moonlight radiates behind her, like the aurora of an angel.

And yet... that immense peak. It seems higher and higher the closer Catenna gets. She strains, but it is not a body that strains. She can hear her breath rushing in her ears, louder than the wind, as her pale grey eyes search the mountainside.

Then they rise. Far above the mountaintop, the crescent moon hangs bright in the sky. Or perhaps not so far at all. The peak of the mountain stretches so high that it seems about to physically touch the moon. It strives to get there. At the tip of it, tiny figures can be seen reaching out. One of them is obviously Kourin.

Catenna strains and flaps as hard as her soul will allow her to, though part of her knows it is futile. You see things so clearly sometimes, and yet of all of them, you are the most blind.

But I cannot turn away from you.
I would not.

Straining, struggling to lift the weight of her friends, Catenna clenches her teeth and forces herself higher, higher. She's flying vertically now. Gravity works against her. The stranded moonbeams threaten to snap. The world itself - the power of the Moon upon the tide, upon existence - conspires to pull her earthward. She knows in her heart how it works - how the Moon acts upon all things in this way. It is simply its nature. To pull.

She never takes her eyes off of the Moon.

Even if it hurts.
DG: Catenna has used her Tool Grappling Hook toward her party's challenge, Escape the Earth.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The ash starts to come together, guided by eddies and gusts of wind--Ida's guiding it as surely as Cyre is. It forms a cloud, and then the cloud condenses into a human silhouette. Ida sucks in a breath and lets it out, and the ash coating her blows away in the wind. The pure white lotus at her temple is unstained, as is she.
Ida runs beside Rosaline, keeping pace as best as she can. She looks over to her friend, and smiles a hopeful little smile even as her eyes glimmer with tears.
"I'll go first," she says. She leaps. The earth stretches out beneath her, to infinity. She takes hold of the moonlight, lets it carry her, but something else has its hold on her. She looks up at Catenna, at Cyre, and realizes--
You only weigh them down.
Ida breathes out, lets her life-force flood from her lungs in a billowing golden cloud. It's enough to give them all a little extra lift--enough, at least, to resist the pull for a while longer. But will it be enough? Will she need to fall so her friends can fly onward?
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Escape the Earth.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline did it. She beat the Sun! But she isn't done racing. It's just a matter of changing her point of view. Everyone is back. Even Ida is hopeful. This might just turn out fine.

Cyre tells them to rise above, to forget their fears. Rosaline is terrified, how could she not be? But she has no choice but to try. She doesn't even want to contemplate what would happen if she didn't.

She grasps upwards.

"I can do this. I can definitely do this. I swear, I will work hard and be..." She pauses, steeling herself to blurt out words she has trouble even believing. "An adequate Etone!"

She rises a bit... and begins to fall. She must try again.

"I swear, I swear... For every person I've harmed, I'll heal twice as many! Or I'm going to die trying!"

Although morbid, the thought seems to give her lift, propelled by a truly impossible amount of cotton candy-colored, shoujo-styled floof billowing out behind the nun.

And then, she sees Ida entertaining the possibility of dying trying. Don't ask her how she knows. Maybe it's pure projection.

"I am not letting you fall behind-- That's not what I'm fighting for!" she declares, extending a lethal-looking, clawed hand towards Ida. Taking it might hurt, but what else is new?

DG: Rosaline Calice has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Escape the Earth.
==============================<* Spirit Quest *>==============================
======================<* CHALLENGE - Escape the Earth *>======================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 3          | 
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
 Before you stretches a vast mountain range. Beneath you is the greatest       
 among them. Beyond them is the way forward. Within you is the strength to     
 vault the very mountain peaks themselves. Distance is only an illusion to a   
 mind willing to go further beyond- but can you truly abandon the world to     
 transcend it, or will your soul be weighed down by gravity? Make your choice  
 quickly. The land beneath you is giving way; the earth will swallow you if    
 you do not stay one step ahead.                                               
=Dungeon Conditions: Cripple==================================================
=========================<* Spirit Quest - Round 5 *>=========================
========================< Results - Escape the Earth >========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyre H. Lorentz                     55 --(20)--> 75                Fail
Reverse Parachute                   1   Agility Effects: Rally and Quicken    
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosaline Calice                     50 --(20)--> 70                Fail
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC                
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catenna                             50 --(15)--> 65                Pass
Grappling Hook                      2   Agility Effects: Quicken              
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ida Everstead-Rey                   50 --(20)--> 70                Fail
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC                
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Cyre H. Lorentz             65 --(10)--> 75                Fail
Conditions: Cripple
Effects: Quicken(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Cyre H. Lorentz has failed this challenge! The party gained 10 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

It's not enough.

The earth rises, faster than the wind. Faster than the clouds. The mountain is infinite. It does not grow. It is simply always already there. Always already waiting. One step, two steps, three steps ahead. Always, always beyond.

It's not enough.

Though Cyre rises beyond his means. Though Ida gives everything she has, though Rosaline carries them all, surging, toward the infinitely distant peak.

It's not enough.

But the moon--

The moon is the secret.

The moon, further beyond even than the mountain. Tethers of moonlight draw them upwards, pulling them into the sky, into the heavens. Their strength is spent, their will depleted. And yet--

And yet.

The mountain shrinks below them. It disappears into the infinite before-times, screaming and begging not to go, to stay in its embrace, to stay safe at home.

To not go, boldly, into the infinite dark.

DG: Catenna has drawn a new Challenge.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
================<* CHALLENGE - Breathing on the Black Mirror *>=================
|Type: Climax      |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 3          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 At the beginning and end of all journeys, the ultimate obstacle is the self.  
 With your destination in sight, you feel all those things holding you back    
 suddenly begin to manifest in one final bid to stop you from reaching your    
 goal. It was inevitable. By staring into the mirror of the soul, you must     
 after all come face to face with the darkest parts of your very self. Your    
 surroundings darken, the world seems to tear itself apart as trauma,          
 nightmare and raw id are unleashed and congeal into a form that your twisted  
 minds can comprehend. But what you can comprehend, you can fight against.     
 What you can fight against, you can defeat.                                   
=Dungeon Conditions: Injure, Tire=============================================
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Try though she might, there is only so high Catenna can fly.

The weight of them is too much. Moonlit tethers fray. White wings tear away from Catenna's back. A stream of blood pours from the root of each wing. She lets out an agonized wail, lurching through the air, knowing that she has failed. Failed all of them.

And yet, the moon draws closer. Gravity reverses itself. They rise away from the mountain, into that crescent. An elegant woman sits perched upon it, her hands out and her head bowed. Vast, shimmering blue butterfly wings fan out behind her as she smiles down at the rising four. Perhaps you can be forgiven for being as you are.

Perhaps.

The moonlight goes brighter. It shimmers in waves past Catenna. She soars up into the arms of Celesdue. Her eyes close.

A shadow crosses in front of the Moon.

Gravity sets in. It grips the four figures. They descend away from the Moon with a sudden scream of force. Like meteors, they plummet through the clouds, trailing flame. Catenna nearly shatters as she slams bodily into the earth, the cold grey rock and much shattering beneath her. Blood and mud streak the ground behind her. Groaning, she claws at the ground. She lifts her head.

A cold rain sheets at the earth, the sky grey and shadowed. A grey mist billows across the muck and rock. But ahead of them, a pair of shadowed figures stand.

"I am not like other demons, I am afraid," comes a soft, feminine voice, quiet and pained. "Injury comes easy to me..."

Kneeling in the muck, Riesenlied presses a hand to her chest. In her other arm, the Metal Demon woman cradles a child. Her smile is sad, but kind, as she looks up at another figure with dark, long, streaming hair. The other person's back is to the group and they cannot be seen.

The unseen shape lifts a hand. The air itself begins to vibrate menacingly. Muck pushes up around Riese, forming the earth into a shallow crater.

The woman gasps and sinks to her knees. Catenna widens her eyes.

The unseen figure holds out that hand - and slowly, with sickening bloodiness, Riese's arms begin to pull away from her shoulders. Her torso begins to compress sickeningly. The crunch of shattering bones can be heard.

" I am sorry too," whispers the dying Riese as her body is slowly crushed, skin and bones cracking, blood running from past her smile. "But I am... glad you did what you did.... Because you... showed me your conviction...." Something snaps; her legs begin to crack like twigs.

That sad smile doesn't escape. "... and it is that brightness within your soul that will help lift us towards a future where everyone can flourish...."

The vibration in the air mounts and mounts - and then there's a hideous sound.

*SKLRPCH*

What's left of Riesenlied is a bloody, fleshy smear resembling the byproduct of a metal grinder. Steam rises from the surprisingly fleshy metal heap. Catenna watches, sobbing silently, her hands clutching the turf, as the other figure stares into the wreckage.

The shape turns, slowly.

The other Catenna locks cold grey eyes with Catenna's, her face coldly neutral. They are abominations. They must die. And you shed a tear for her.

That is why you fail.

DG: Catenna has used her Tool Celesdue Medium toward her party's challenge, Breathing on the Black Mirror.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
It's all for nothing. Ida falls.
The ground rushes up at her with terrifying speed--but even then, it's not fast enough to beat the little voice in the back of her head. It's her voice. It's her thoughts. You should have let go. Now, everyone will fall.
Ida hits dirt. The impact is like that of a meteor. Clods of earth and rock go flying every which way, scattering for what seems like miles. Smoke rises from the crater, thin and acrid. Ida lies at the bottom, stunned and bleeding, but--for some reason--not dead. Death is very strange in this place. She hears a familiar voice. Her lips peel back from her teeth, instinctively, at the sound of it. The white lotus at her brow crumbles to ash in the heat of a painful white flame, which traces its form on her brow like a tattoo. Ida stands up and staggers out of the crater just in time to see the apparition of Riesenlied gripped by gravity. Ida watches, rigid and cold, as the bloody scene plays out. Gobbets of crimson splatter her face. It should feel cathartic. Instead it makes her want to--
'Go back to the hell you crawled out of, you wretched, self-righteous sack of shit.' That's what you wanted to say, right? Or 'I hope you join your beloved ancestors in Valmar's loving embrace.' That's more polite. More civilized. What about 'Fuck you, you crippled waste of flesh.'
Someone takes Ida's hand. It's a second Ida, dressed in fine, tasteful clothing that would be opulent if it weren't dripping crimson and quicksilver. Her eyes are wild, and her smile is cruel. Ida--the real(?) Ida--is suddenly holding Devil's Due. The other Ida thumbs off the safety, and starts forcing the gun towards Ida's brow while she's still holding it.
But she's just a distraction. The real problem here is you.
Ida's grip tightens on the gun. She tears free in a sudden surge of strength, but Devil's Due comes apart, trailing pieces of Demon-metal. Ida is left holding something like a tiny star, and it burns her fingers, even as her hand clenches around it.
K.K. was right about you. You have nothing. You are nothing. You can fix that weapon, but you will still be unarmed. You can seek tutelage from every quarter, but it won't fix your problems. You're broken. You're a parasite. You're a monster. You will die, and the world will be a better place for it.
Ida roars. The sound that tears from her throat is enraged, inhuman, monstrous. The tiny sun shines through her fingers as she drives her fist right for her double's chin.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has used her Tool Flare Grenade toward her party's challenge, Breathing on the Black Mirror.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Despite Rosaline's extended hand, Ida falls. They all fall. Of course. How can she help anyone if she's even worse off herself?

Flames sear her yet again as she plummets towards the earth once more. She crashes in a spectacular impact, but that much is secondary to the flames that persist on enveloping her.

In front of her, a Riesenlied apparition, and a scene of terrible violence that only begets more. The nun is horrorstruck at the sight, but she is very soon distracted.

The embers that had been eating away at Rosaline burst from the seams of her habit, snaking away and coiling into a single figure. A double of the beastwoman forms, made of living flame. It lurches forward, inhumanly, holding out claws like knives, each of them white-hot.

Rosaline draws in a sharp breath. She's faced a doppelganger before, and it did not end well for her. And whereas the one she once faced was a simple parlor trick, this one is ironically enough much more real to her. The terror is plain in the nun's face.

Her double shows no hesitation. It lunges towards her, relentless. Rosaline draws her ARMs and begins to fire, meeting only flames that are only disturbed very briefly by the hail of bullets.

The monstrosity closes the distance, swiping its claws with enough force to slice the nun's head clean off. She dodges once, narrowly, and then again, coiling her body to go into a run. She has to keep moving.

"Stop! Please, I'm begging you!"

The flaming beast doesn't listen, of course. The exchange continues for a moment, with more narrow dodges and failed attempts at harming the creature of pure rage.

Until it begins to rain, that is. This doesn't halt the burning catwoman's assault entirely, but it at least gives it pause. Perhaps this is what the nun needs to turn the tables, or at the very least escape her attacker.

"It's going to be all right. Why can't you see that?" Rosaline asks, through rain and tears.

DG: Rosaline Calice has used her Tool Holy Water toward her party's challenge, Breathing on the Black Mirror.
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

Here, again. Cyre stands again on that barren, broken mesa. The wind-nature is lost, scattered with the reassertion of gravity. He is here, now. Alone.

No.

Not alone.

The jet-black sands whip at his face, dancing through the infinite darkness. That's the trouble with the secrets beyond the reach of the sun, beyond the grasp of the earth. You grasp them, you learn them, the words etch themselves into your brain. But whether you stay there or not, when you fall again to earth, you bring them with you.

The darkness can find a way to follow.

Shadows creep across the earth. Cyre stands on trembling, weary legs as the sky twists and spirals above him. Two powers clash in the near distance. A tower of ebon lightning. A pillar of scarlet wind. The shockwaves batter at him as they draw closer, his eyes straining against the fathomless darkness surrounding him. Do you even have strength left to stand?

The twin disasters approach. He can feel the crawl of charged air crackling up his limbs. He can hear the howl of angry wind screaming in his ears. How can you have any hope to face this, when you cannot even face reality?

Cyre's hands tighten around his staff. Golden eyes pierce the darkness as the calamities appear, blending, fusing, merging into a single, unified beast, roiling with the fury of the thunderstorm, wroth with the fury of the galestorm. A single, enormous monster, greater than any creature to have ever walked the world.

A Disaster made manifest.

Child whose flesh is stained with indignity, weakling who thinks to embody the will of a god, there is no hope to be found here your sins will not disappear just because you turn your face

We will forever hunt you

Cyre exhales. His body shudders as he takes a step into the storm.

I know
DG: Cyre H. Lorentz has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Breathing on the Black Mirror.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
================<* CHALLENGE - Breathing on the Black Mirror *>=================
|Type: Climax      |Dungeon Ability: Combat    |Challenge Rating: 3          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 At the beginning and end of all journeys, the ultimate obstacle is the self.  
 With your destination in sight, you feel all those things holding you back    
 suddenly begin to manifest in one final bid to stop you from reaching your    
 goal. It was inevitable. By staring into the mirror of the soul, you must     
 after all come face to face with the darkest parts of your very self. Your    
 surroundings darken, the world seems to tear itself apart as trauma,          
 nightmare and raw id are unleashed and congeal into a form that your twisted  
 minds can comprehend. But what you can comprehend, you can fight against.     
 What you can fight against, you can defeat.                                   
=Dungeon Conditions: Injure, Tire=============================================
==========================<* Spirit Quest - Round 6 *>==========================
==================< Results - Breathing on the Black Mirror >===================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyre H. Lorentz                     75 --(5)--> 80                 Pass
Fight                               0   Combat  Effects: BASIC                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosaline Calice                     70 --(10)--> 80                Fail
Holy Water                          1   Combat  Effects: Cleanse              
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catenna                             65 --(5)--> 70                 Pass
Celesdue Medium                     2   Combat  Effects: Embolden             
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ida Everstead-Rey                   70 --(5)--> 75                 Pass
Flare Grenade                       2   Combat  Effects: Embolden             
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Cyre H. Lorentz             75 --(0)--> 75                 Pass
Conditions: Cripple|Injure(2)|Tire(2)
Effects: Cleanse|Embolden(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Cyre H. Lorentz has passed this challenge! The party gained 0 exploration! If anyone needs to use party
management commands, do so now. Otherwise, the next round's GM may begin the next round with +dungeon/draw.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Rain sheets around Catenna and Catenna, driving against the turf. It leaves puddles in the ruined muck, filling the muddy crater in which the bloody quicksilver gore that used to be Riesenlied lies in a ludicrously gibbed splatter pattern. Catenna finds herself staring into it before looking up at Catenna with lips apart.

Looking down at her bleeding, kneeling counterpart, the more grim of the two Catennas levels her hand. The force of gravity takes ahold of Catenna. She can feel her limbs being torn out of their sockets and her organs being steadily pulled downward. Struggling against it, she screams, but the sound comes out choked and helpless.

This must be what it felt like for Riesenlied, that day in the square of Adlehyde.

That day now. Amid the muck, villagers blur, fleeing in terror. Metal Dragons, flickering with light, fly insubstantially through Ida. Gebler soldiers fight Drifters in the distance.

The cold Catenna continues to compress Catenna into a disgusting meat package. Blood seeps from Catenna's eyes as she struggles against it.

Knowing that she deserves this fate. All Shamans know the truth about Metal Demons. They are monsters and anathema. They have no place in Filgaia.

You understand, do you not?

"It is... more... more than that," rasps Catenna the Weaker. Her shoulders strain. Her hand falls into the muck and grips something. It is her shortsword, sheathed. She surges upwards like a roaring wave against the catastrophic wrench of gravity itself. Against her own nature. And with a scream, she wrenches her sword from her sheath.

It's no longer her sword. It's the blade Riesenlied once carried, and it tears through the colder Catenna and rips her up the middle. Shadows and moonlight erupt out of her, bursting forth in the form of a vast black butterfly laced with blood.

The husk of her shadowy self slouches to the her knees. The vista of Adlehyde fades away.

As tears stream down Catenna's face, cold Catenna laughs a wet, dying laugh.

It's easy when they cackle and lust for blood, isn't it?

The shadow slouches backward; the dreadlight butterfly rips free of her and lofts towards the Shadow Moon.

Catenna stares, weeping for a moment, before she slumps to her knees. Her throat quivers. Horror builds up behind her eyes and in her throat.

Unable to hold it back, she gags, then pitches forward and vomits out a stream of bloody midnight butterflies into the night.

DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has drawn a new Challenge.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
========================<* CHALLENGE - Paradigm Shift *>========================
|Type: Final       |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 2          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 However it is you've gotten this far, one way or another you're going to be   
 leaving this place with a new perspective. Your shadow is exhausted and       
 scattered, your most terrible demons vanquished. But these things are part    
 of who you are. Your fears, your guilt, your anxiety, these are as much you'  
 as all else.                                                                  
                                                                               
 Suddenly the world begins to tremble. This place has begun to fall apart.     
 Fantastical landscapes shatter and crumble to dust. Vivid memories turn       
 sepia and return to the depths of your mind. In the distance, a pillar of     
 light erupts from the dissolving dream.                                       
                                                                               
 If you run, you can make it in time-- but can you abandon this place,         
 leaving so much of yourself behind? If you stop to gather what you have       
 broken, will you reach your goal? Remember the lessons this place taught      
 you. You are all that you are, and you are capable of so much more. Whatever  
 your choice, outrace the collapsing inner universe, go towards the light.     
=Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
Ida's fist slams into her double's face. It crumples inwards, but it's oddly bloodless--it's like she struck a ceramic pot, and not something made of flesh and bone. The sun lets loose a second later, the eruption of light blowing what's left of the duplicate's head clean off. The headless corpse crumples to the ground with a sound like glass shattering, and begins to dissolve. As Ida watches, it turns to powdery ash, the wind carrying it into her face. Suddenly, the ash is pouring down her throat, into her lungs. She doubles over. She coughs and coughs, but none of it comes back up. It's back inside her, now.
Her duplicate hit the ground hard enough to crack it. The cracks begin to deepen, growing into full-fledged rifts. Above, the moon is a hole in the fabric of the sky, like an exit-wound. It's not safe to stay here any longer.
"Run," Ida says. She crouches, and then springs into the air as the earth comes apart into drifting, floating chunks. A pinprick of light rises in the distance, and Ida makes for it with all the speed she can manage. She springs from rock to rock, the world collapsing around her.
DG: Ida Everstead-Rey has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Paradigm Shift.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

"It's not. It's really not," Rosaline's double rasps out. The nun has nothing more to say.

The beast plunges towards her, claws cleaving through her torso, leaving trails of flame that likewise spills out from Rosaline's bisected halves. Their light glows until it's blinding, engulfing the two combatants...

And a moment later, Rosaline is standing once more, wearing a battle-damaged version of her Etone-in-training habit, looking very much worse for wear herself, injured and most of all emotionally drained. The flames, at least, finally appear to be gone.

Ida gives a piece of monosyllabic, very good advice. Rosaline turns her head to hear it.

"Frick," she says, most blasphemously but without inflection.

And once more, she takes off, leaping after her friend from stone to stone, escaping this collapsing world with every remaining ounce of energy she can muster. Amidst this debacle, this is at least one skill she has, one thing she can be proud of.

She is very good at running away.

DG: Rosaline Calice has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Paradigm Shift.
<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.
This does not absolve your sins

The red, the black, give way to white and green and gold. The colors of the wind Cyre grew to love. The colors of the world at dawn, when the sun first rises over the horizon. He opens his eyes as the world around him begins to fray and burn away, even the darkness turns to ash.

I know

The great beast turns, its wings spread wide. Its claws grip the fading world as the pinprick of light shines in the heavens. The storm sings in his ear.

You know w hat you must do

With a flash of light, the beast takes to the air. It bounds off invisible walls, whirls of stark white ink swirling away from its every footfall. Its silvery form flickers through the sky, rising, rising--

Yes

It sees the others. The others see it. The beast surges into the sky. The wind follows, gathering them, pulling them upwards, upwards, upwards--

"Come on, everyone," the tremendous, white tiger says in all of everyone's ears. "Let's go home."

DG: Cyre H. Lorentz has used his Tool Reverse Parachute toward his party's challenge, Paradigm Shift.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

Catenna, wingless and bleeding from two points on her back, doesn't run right away. She bows over the remains of Catenna and lets her tears join the raindrops and blood pools in the cold grey muck.

Someone is screaming to run. Everything is beginning to shatter. Beneath the viscera of her double and her friend, the world splits and cracks in front of Catenna. Ruddy light streams from within the ground, soon brightening to a sunlit hellfire, as if the sun itself lived within the earth. Flames gout from those vast crevices.

Catenna doesn't move. Not yet.

I do not deserve to leave this place.

And then Rosaline Calice, the innocent Etone, says the mildest form of the F word.

Catenna snaps her head up from her mooning and stares at Rosaline in disbelief. It completely interrupts her train of thought. She blinks twice, and looks down at herself for a moment. It takes only a few seconds, but it seems like it takes months for her to centre herself and remember. She lifts her eyes towards the moon.

And yet you find ways to remain here.

Catenna's eyes widen.

With a flare of brilliant moonlight, strands of lunar energy pour out of the wounds on her back. A thousand strands of moonlight wind themselves outwards. Blood resolves into quicksilver streams, pouring out into wingtips and flecked feathers. Vast snowy owl wings reshape themselves from pure ropes of moonlight.

Catenna beats her wings twice. The sheer force that spills from beneath them blasts muck and flame out from around her and forms a deepening crater. An immense sonic boom roars out from below her as she hurtles skyward at an insane speed. Each wingbeat picks up more and more speed. She sets her eyes on the Moon. On the elegant figure perched atop it, with butterfly wings. It grows closer and closer. Fills her vision.

Catenna's pale grey eyes are absolutely intent.

You do not seek me.
But you have me.
I come to you.
DG: Catenna has used her Tool Grappling Hook toward her party's challenge, Paradigm Shift.
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
========================<* CHALLENGE - Paradigm Shift *>========================
|Type: Final       |Dungeon Ability: Agility   |Challenge Rating: 2          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 However it is you've gotten this far, one way or another you're going to be   
 leaving this place with a new perspective. Your shadow is exhausted and       
 scattered, your most terrible demons vanquished. But these things are part    
 of who you are. Your fears, your guilt, your anxiety, these are as much you'  
 as all else.                                                                  
                                                                               
 Suddenly the world begins to tremble. This place has begun to fall apart.     
 Fantastical landscapes shatter and crumble to dust. Vivid memories turn       
 sepia and return to the depths of your mind. In the distance, a pillar of     
 light erupts from the dissolving dream.                                       
                                                                               
 If you run, you can make it in time-- but can you abandon this place,         
 leaving so much of yourself behind? If you stop to gather what you have       
 broken, will you reach your goal? Remember the lessons this place taught      
 you. You are all that you are, and you are capable of so much more. Whatever  
 your choice, outrace the collapsing inner universe, go towards the light.     
=Dungeon Conditions: Save Point===============================================
==========================<* Spirit Quest - Round 7 *>==========================
==========================< Results - Paradigm Shift >==========================
Player                               Exhaustion                      Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cyre H. Lorentz                     80 --(5)--> 85                 Pass
Reverse Parachute                   1   Agility Effects: Rally and Quicken    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosaline Calice                     80 --(5)--> 85                 Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC                
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Catenna                             70 --(5)--> 75                 Pass
Grappling Hook                      2   Agility Effects: Quicken              
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ida Everstead-Rey                   75 --(5)--> 80                 Pass
Rush                                0   Agility Effects: BASIC                
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Cyre H. Lorentz             75 --(35)--> 110               Pass
Conditions: Save Point(1)
Effects: Quicken(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: You have overcome the dungeon's trials! This run is a success!
DG: The party led by Cyre H. Lorentz has successfully explored Spirit Quest!
===============================<* Spirit Quest *>===============================
====================<* CHALLENGE - The Long Dark Teatime *>=====================
|Type: Discovery   |Dungeon Ability: Conclusion|Challenge Rating: 1          | 
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
 Having defeated your inner demons, you now find yourself face-to-face with    
 them, but they seem more compliant this time. Or at least, less willing to    
 try and violently tear your psyche apart to usurp control over your body.     
 After all, they're you- and you're them. Getting to know the darkest parts    
 of yourself, and understanding that they might not be nearly as terrible as   
 you feared, can have all kinds of positive effects on the mind; maybe a few   
 old vices are going to be easier to break for a while, or maybe you can       
 finally snap out of that addiction plaguing your pocket book. Those pesky     
 incarnations of your inner darkness will probably still pop up to seriously   
 mess with you later on though. That's kind of what they're there for.         
=Dungeon Conditions: Treasure=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The ground falls. The wind rises.
Ida and Rosaline race towards the light, and the wind aids them--it blows the chunks of earth and rock into something resembling a path, one that can be followed with some effort. Catenna and Cyre take to the sky, and find themselves at home in it. 'Let's go home', Cyre says. Ida turns to him, and smiles a smile that is equal parts exhausted and hopeful.
"I couldn't agree more."
An immense shape, all gunmetal and gold, rises in the air before her. Ida leaps onto Octavian's back, and the two of them fly off into the l i g h t
Ida sits in a chair upholstered with plush velvet, in front of an antique table. On the table is a full tea service, complete with jam and scones and biscuits. A butler in an immaculate suit stands at the ready. He has no face. Ida's double sits across the table from her, her teacup halfway to her lips. The steam rising from it looks and feels like the breath of a dragon. This is Aunt Anna's office--it's where she goes to steer the ship that is the Everstead-Rey ARMs and Munitions Company. Aunt Anna is nowhere to be seen.
"You're more like her than you want to admit to yourself," says the double. Her voice is free of both mocking derision and the cold, caustic certainty of depression. "You love her. You admire her. And yet, you feel conflicted about her--you feel as though you're being forced to be her. No one can force you to be her."
You do you.
That's Id's voice. He's not here, but Ida hears it, clear as day.
"He was right," says Ida's double. "About that, even if he was wrong about everything else. No one else can fix you. They can help, but--"
"In the end," Ida says, "it's up to me." The thought is terrifying. It scares her in ways she hadn't even considered. And yet--
Riesenlied is seated beside the two of them. She holds up a pure white lotus. Both Idas reach out to take it from her--
Ida stirs. She feels like she's freezing, but she's covered in sweat. Her head is swimming. She doesn't open her eyes for fear that the sudden, horrible wave of nausea will make good on its threat to make her vomit. She groans, groggily, as reality starts to trickle back.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.

she finds herself in a place she has known before.

gentle moonlight streams through the canopy. there is a woman before her. a woman much like herself, yet older. wiser.
in her hands, a tablet of stone.

one she has known before. and yet has never known.

i grant you this blessing, not because you are my favourite.
nor because of the circumstances of your birth.
but because
you of all of them
understand
what it is
that you must do.

but i do not know, she hears herself speak.

i do not know it at all

(and she smiles, mother does, that kind smile that feels like a hug enfolding her like it has since the day of her birth, and she said)

when the time comes (butterflies flutter in the dark)

you will understand




Catenna does not open her eyes right away. Breath rushes into her lungs, then escapes in a slow, semi-lucid rush. She has been through this enough to know to focus on that through the sickening disorientation. Her thoughts peel away from her as she focuses on the feel of it.

Breath in.

Out.

<Pose Tracker> Cyre H. Lorentz has posed.

Catenna and Cyre and Rosaline and Ida rise into the heavens. The shaman gives them all a smile. 'I knew you could do it,' the beast seems to say as everything goes white.

Cyre finds himself sitting, as he is wont to do, on a well-proportioned slab of rock. The sun hangs low in the station of dawn, rising at his back and casting a long shadow against the red, sandstone wall.

Cyre turns his eyes up towards the shadow as it emerges, resolving into a figure he knows all too well.

"So," the shadow says as something steps out from within and takes a long moment to stretch out on the warm stone. "That was fun, wasn't it? I rather liked the bit when you were all on fire."

"You almost screwed things up for us pretty bad, you know that?" Cyre sighs, rubbing tiredly at his forehead. The figure across from him smiles a mischevious, but simultaneously utterly innocent cheshire grin. "Hahahahaaaa, yeah. That's how it goes though, isn't it? We screw things up for ourselves all the time. It's how people work."

There's a beat. The shadow stares up at the sun as it continues to rise. "Well. You know, the fact that it's me here and not someone else-- you know what that means, right?"

"Yeah," Cyre hears himself say. "I know. You're me. I'm not my brother. He's not here." The shadow chuckles as the sun's light shrinks his form away, "That's right. You're me. I'm you. Neither of us are him. So maybe it's time to deal with that chip on our shoulder, huh?"

Cyre feels the ground on his face and the air on his back. There's a feeling of... lightness in his head, and horrible, twisting heaviness in his gut. With a groan, he reaches for his hip and pulls out... a familiar censer. His hands move by memory, because gravity sure isn't helping him. With a quick motion, he sets the thing alight.

The vapors will help.

Him.

The vapors will help him. Also probably Rosaline, if she's at all nearby. Just them, though. He prepared a little something to take the edge off. Just enough of a little something.

Just, you know. A little bit of the giggles is better than vomiting all over the village.

<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline races towards the light. Finally. Finally.

And now she's sitting in front of the orphanage's still-smoldering ruins. She revisits that place often. Perhaps she never really left it. Sitting with her back against her is the beast, her flames at least tamed enough not to actively harm the other one.

"So that's it, then, isn't it?" Rosaline says, sounding extremely tired. "I can't deny you anymore."

Her other self doesn't answer. She's never had much of a way with words.

"I don't like you very much, you know."

Silence, again. The feeling must be mutual.

"We should come back here while we can, I think. And maybe show some people. Maybe... Maybe then they'll understand."

More silence. Approval, hopefully.

And Rosaline stirs. She blearily opens her eyes, taking in reality, which briefly feels alien to her. The vapors do help! Whatever they might be. She doesn't want to know and isn't in much of a state to find out, anyway.

Her first order of business, while she's still half-conscious, is locating her bible. She seems to have knocked it several feet away from the pile of books she brought, at some point or another. The others may expect her to be mad, or at least have some sort of strong opinion about the whole experience, but not now. Right now she's too tired for much of anything.