2018-08-13: The Umbral Mirror
- Log: The Umbral Mirror
- Cast: Riesenlied (as Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R), Avril Vent Fleur, Dean Stark, Rebecca Streisand, Lily Keil, Fei Fong Wong, Ida Everstead-Rey
- Where: A dream...
- Date: 13th August 2018
- Summary: A few Drifters, drawn by circumstance, are pulled into a shared dream. What awaits them within?
===========================<* The Umbral Mirror *>============================
=========================<* CHALLENGE - Shattering *>=========================
|Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
You're falling, plummeting into nothingness at terrifying speed. Below you
is a darkened, mirrored surface, like black glass. Your body slams into it,
and it shatters. The fragments fall alongside you, even as the skin of the
mirror flows back to seal the holes.
It feels like you're sinking through icy water, but it isn't long before you
hit bottom, and gravity reasserts itself. You can breathe, and each breath
rises as a plume of mirror-bright bubbles. You can see scenes from your life
playing out within them. The bubbles drift off on an invisible current. You
can follow them, but you'll have to keep your wits about you, because
they're small and fragile and the icy cold is sapping your strength.
Where will your memories lead you in this darkened place?
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify, Exhaust=========================================
<Pose Tracker> Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R has posed.
There was once a girl who was born without a name.
No one deemed it fit to give her a name.
Her creator looked at her, shook her head, and then turned her back upon her.
She plummeted, down a deep and unending pit at terrifying speed; below, the reflection of all that was failure awaited her, slicked upon the surface of a dark and pitted mirror the colour of obsidian.
The girl slams into the mirror-- it cracks, and shatters as she continues to descend--
--the many reflections of a thousand moments recollected upon her void-bearing head, a gaping hole where there should be a face.
Somewhere, up in the surface, someone called Riesenlied is suffering from acute Metal Demon poisoning thanks to the sinewy spikes of a poorly-translated villain. She remains unconscious still, though she will survive her encounter with poison due to the timely and graceful intervention of an ex-communicated Water Seraph.
But this someone is not her.
The little Hyadean flails as she weaves through water, her limbs small and her clothes tattered; her platinum blonde hair caked in frost. She's huddling and shivering, whimpering a small echo out of her facelessness as she tries to flail and find something resembling balance.
I never had a sister.
The little Hyadean grasps onto a shard of ice and starts to cling onto it, as she gazes upon a bubble nearby where a girl in nomadic clothing smiles.
Do you... want to be my sister?
She jitters further, huddling onto what little support she can find. The little Dragon Unit, so deemed unworthy to have a name...
I don't have a name...
Please... give me a name...
So I can be...
Anyone...
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Blue, blue. The sky, the sea, his eyes... From a mountaintop, he can see anywhere. The sky, the sea, his hair... Blue, blue. He leaps forward like he can fly, and he can fly, but then he's falling, falling, falling, down, down, all the way to the ground, all the way through the sky, all the way to a glassy mirror sea, all the way through, breaking, splintering, shattering, like shards of ice, like ice water, like falling into a pond in wintertime and drowning, and this is a thing he knows even though he has never fallen into a winter pond, but he does know the sensation of drowning, drowning, drowning, he's never once managed to learn how to float, he only sinks down down downdowndodwndowndnodwnodnwodn until suddenly he *hits* bottom, and the air bursts from his lungs, and he can breathe somehow but his lungs are burning, and the cold burns, and it burns, it burns it burns it burns it burns, and he's a child, a ten-year-old boy, an age so long ago yet somehow not so long, and he reaches out for any piece of warmth, any warmth he can manage--
Something in his pocket glows. His breaths are wet and ragged, but they smooth as he tucks his numb hand into his pocket and pulls out something warm, something from a piece of ancient technology, something as warm as the sunlight he found it in even though it hasn't seen light in ages, something that breaks through the chill to send tendrils of comfort through his tiny hands, perhaps even through his entire body--
He smiles and cups his hands around his treasure: a single Golem bolt.
Then he looks up and all around, breath bubbling up from his lips like he's underwater, even though he can breathe. "I gotta get back," he says, "or else I'll drown," even though he can breathe just fine. He gets up to his feet, and then there is a little girl, a girl he knows and doesn't know, huddling and shivering and clinging to ice. The sight of her makes him forget his own peril, and he runs over to her immediately.
"Hey!" he calls. "Hey!" he calls. "Are you in trouble? Here, take my hand!"
And he reaches out a hand to this stranger, whom he doesn't hesitate to help, despite his own danger, despite knowing nothing about her, not even her name.
DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Standard Cartridge toward his party's challenge, Shattering.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
There was once a coward.
There was once a murderer.
There once was a fake.
The coward watches on as the other two fall before deciding what's on TV is better and cuts off that avenue of connection with an ease shrug of his shoulders. There's nothing in the Umbral Mirror for him.
The fake can't stop his plummet. The murderer falls down gracefully and lands on top of the water. The fake plummets below the surface, frantically splashing his arms around in a panic.
The murderer is a blood splattered little boy who wears his long hair down. 'Unit' is the only one here who has met this particular fellow but it's just as likely she won't remember him in that form. It's not the one Unit has met, not exactly.
The boy, in irritation, lifts Fei out of the water. It's just...Fei. Fei as himself. He chucks him to the side afterwards almost immediately and this time Fei does land on the surface rather than plummeting below.
"Of course," The blood splattered boy says. "This shit would happen."
"Whuh?" Fei says, confused. "I dreamt Ida... It's because I touched the evil orb isn't it?"
"Of course it's because you touched the evil orb." The boy grouses. The two of them see Unit sinking and the boy says, without looking back at Fei. "I'm going to see what this is all about."
He starts sinking through the water. Fei waits on the surface for a while before...
"Are you coming?" The boy asks, somehow reaching his ears despite him beingunder water. Fei rubs at his face a bit before nodding and sinking in after them.
The water does not clean the blood off the boy's face. If only it were so easy. A tiny little see-through submarine ripples around the boy's body, composed of thin stick figure like lines.
Someone is begging for a name. The boy offers one out but it's not the obvious choice, "How's about Prague?" A personal joke for himself alone.
DG: Fei Fong Wong has used his Tool Artist's Toolkit toward his party's challenge, Shattering.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
There was once a little girl who was found among the dead, and brought to live with a family of soldiers.
Lily Keil is ill, in a deep sleep attempting to recover, frayed at the edges after her encounter in a certain castle. But she is asleep. In dreams, she was wandering, wandering, but there was a crack--
Watching will find falling, falling, falling...
And the little girl crashes into the strange surface that shatters around her, sinking, sinking. And it is so, so cold. She is recognizeable fairly easily. She does not flail when she sinks, she just hits the ground and pauses, bending at the knee and rises again. She frowns in thought. Her golden eyes are brilliant, her black hair long and braided back. She wears a black dress with thick skirts, soft boots. She doesn't have long sleeves except with the jacket over her skirt, the small red ribbon at her collar the main spot of color. Memory...
A battlefield lit with gunfire flickers by. ...A scene of the girl meeting a boy.
Her breath bubbles around, and she blinks in distant curiousity. ...And finds herself shivering. She lifts her hand, palm up, and orange circuitry springs into being on her bare hands, from her fingertips down past her wrists into her sleeves. A fireball erupts, crackling warm, and the little girl smiles in satisfaction before glancing to the others.
"<You're bloody>," she says to the boy in an old, old language, tilting her head at him without seeming particularly upset. Then a glance to Dean, and the little Unit...
The markings linger as the flame does, and then little Lily pauses--and abrubtly the fire goes out, as do the markings. She seems guilty for an instant.
At that moment, from one of the bubbling memories leaps a little dog, hardly more than a puppy, black and furry and leaping about little Lily's feet. She blinks down and--
/Beams/ immediately, leaning down and ignoring everyone else to give Dog scritches.
DG: Lily Keil has used her Tool Dog toward her party's challenge, Shattering.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Darkness.
For an eternity -- or nearly long enough to feel like it -- there is freedom. Freefall. Wind rustles through hair, rips at clothing.
Nothing can be seen. Nothing can be felt but the air, marked by passage of the body as it plummets, onwards. Downwards.
Logically, in a sense, she knows that someone can't fall forever. But she can't see anything--
When the impact comes, it's abrupt, ripping a scream from the depths of her throat. She ought not to-- father said she ought not to-- But it hurts, and she doesn't know where she is, and it's cold, and she's sinking, opening her mouth to scream again and taking on water and, and she's still sinking and she has to break free and
another breath, and bubbles escape her lips. Her fingers lift upwards, reaching for the shattered edges of black glass that she can somehow see, light against the deeper black.
And she thinks, I can breathe. I can breathe water!
And she thinks, What did mother say about the elements?
Oh yes. That's right.
Her feet touch the bottom -- smooth, like the bottom of a swimming pool, she thinks -- and she kicks upwards, just like her instructors told her.
And then, just like her teachers taught her -- like mother and father taught her -- she focuses and forces her will upon the water surrounding her.
When she emerges from the water below, she's perched perfectly upon the pillar that brought her above the lip of the water and steps down with all the grace a young girl -- about 12 at most, to judge from her appearance -- can manage. Ice crystals shed in a rain from her as she takes one step forward and brushes off her clothes and hair, sodden no longer.
"Whatever are you doing there? Have you drowned?" the young girl asks of the girl in the water. Her clothes are fairly elaborate, suggesting that it would take at least one dedicated servant to properly dress her in the morning, but not so far as to suggest this is some sort of formal attire.
"It is possible to drown and live, you know," she adds, in the manner of a child who has read a too much and is a little over-eager to share.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
Light. Light. Light. It gives the vague impression of spotlights and sunlight and starlight. It's like she's on stage and back at home and sitting on her rooftop under the night sky. It's like her mind hasn't made up what it wants to dream of tonight.
BGM Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-vUSrrU4Ss
And then all of a sudden - she's falling.
And all the memories of learning to fall are sieving away like sand. The first thing an acrobat learns how to do is - fall.
They seem distant though. Like they're still there but you can't access them.
That's not to say she doesn't remember falling though.
It's just now all of her memories are scraped knees and bruises and pain - pain - pain. And tears.
Don't cry. Some distant vestige of herself tells her.
That's stupid though.
She's scared. She's scared. She's /scared/.
And that's before she impacts into black glass - shards fragmenting each showing a fragment of some part of herself.
She's sinking into icy water and she can swim but she's freezing cold. And she hurts. And she's crying - it's hard to see it because she's underwater. But the sounds are unmistakable.
Until she hears - "Duh-Dean?" She says as she clings to fragmented ice, rubbing at her eyes as something bubbles out of her mouth. The familiarity at least eroding away some of the terror and staunching the tears. "Did you fall in too?" Chewing on her lip. Dean remarks he might drown, "This is bad. You can't swim at all." In her dream logic she can seem to comprehend that since she can swim - drowning is harder. "We're going to get in trouble - real trouble."
Dean however rushes to the aid of another girl. A girl she doesn't know. Climbing up on the hunk of ice she's clinging on and paddles over to Dean's ice as if she was going to lend a hand, "Dean shouldn't be saving you since he doesn't know how to swim."
She points out once she's closer. "I think we both fell in. And nah. He hasn't drowned yet because he's still talking." She replies, "I'm Rebecca by the way. And Dean can introduce himself." She says without any irony of the fact she's said his name twice. "What's your name?"
Before she catches the glimmer of something in Dean's hand. That causes her to tilt her twin-tailed head to the side in consideration. "We have to get back though. There's... something I left. Something important. And we could get in trouble." She's not sure what it is but... it's right there on the edge of her memories.
There's a certain reluctance to offer her into her friendship duo with Dean so easily. To go anywhere with her. Something about her though... Instead of asking her to come, she instead asks, "You're not staying here right?"
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
A bubble darts back and forth in the current, glimmering with an iridescent patina. It's a tiny spot of joy in this cold, dark place, but it doesn't seem to have come from any of those gathered here.
A little girl sits on her father's shoulders, and even then she can't see eye-to-eye with the massive, reconstructed beast before her. The girl has long, dark hair tucked back in a braid, and she's wearing a dark green dress accented with lace. Her father is still in his thirties, with the look of an ARMs Meister to him even though he's in a suit and waistcoat. The beast is a reconstructed Metal Dragon, about fifty feet from nose to tail, with its posture hunched and curled up so it fits in the exhibition hall.
"It's frightful," says the five-year-old girl. Her father looks up at her as best as he can, perhaps gauging if he needs to remove her from the room before she starts to cry. The look on her face, though, is one of awe. "Was it really real?"
"Not all of it," says her father. "Those parts painted black were made, because they couldn't find the parts that were in the Dragon. But yes, dearheart." Something resembling childlike wonderment glimmers in the father's eyes. "It was real."
There once was a little girl who loved Dragons.
The bubble speeds away.
DG: Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R has used her Tool Dragon's Tear toward her party's challenge, Shattering.
DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Standard Cartridge toward his party's challenge, Shattering.
DG: Avril Vent Fleur has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Shattering.
DG: Lily Keil has used her Tool Dog toward her party's challenge, Shattering.
DG: Rebecca Streisand has used her Tool Rebecca's Travel Diary toward her party's challenge, Shattering.
DG: Fei Fong Wong has used his Tool Artist's Toolkit toward his party's challenge, Shattering.
===========================<* The Umbral Mirror *>============================
=========================<* CHALLENGE - Shattering *>=========================
|Type: Entry |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 2 |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
You're falling, plummeting into nothingness at terrifying speed. Below you
is a darkened, mirrored surface, like black glass. Your body slams into it,
and it shatters. The fragments fall alongside you, even as the skin of the
mirror flows back to seal the holes.
It feels like you're sinking through icy water, but it isn't long before you
hit bottom, and gravity reasserts itself. You can breathe, and each breath
rises as a plume of mirror-bright bubbles. You can see scenes from your life
playing out within them. The bubbles drift off on an invisible current. You
can follow them, but you'll have to keep your wits about you, because
they're small and fragile and the icy cold is sapping your strength.
Where will your memories lead you in this darkened place?
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify, Exhaust=========================================
======================<* The Umbral Mirror - Round 1 *>=======================
===========================< Results - Shattering >===========================
Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fei Fong Wong 0 --(20)--> 20 Fail
Artist's Toolkit 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark 0 --(20)--> 20 Fail
Standard Cartridge 3 Wits Effects: Fanfare
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur 0 --(5)--> 5 Pass
Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lily Keil 0 --(5)--> 5 Pass
Dog 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 0 --(20)--> 20 Fail
Dragon's Tear 1 Wits Effects: Cleanse
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand 0 --(5)--> 5 Pass
Rebecca's Travel Diary 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 0 --(20)--> 20 Pass
Conditions: Exhaust(1)|Stupify(2)
Effects: Cleanse|Enlighten(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 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.
DG: Fei Fong Wong has drawn a new Challenge.
===========================<* The Umbral Mirror *>============================
===========================<* CHALLENGE - Trial *>============================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
A tiny point of light appears in the icy depths, and unfolds into a
brilliant, burning figure. Each of you see something different in
it--aspects of something or someone that has judged you for your actions. It
raises a hand, and mirror fragments bearing unpleasant memories emerge from
the darkness. Within moments, they've knit themselves into a high, glassy
wall, studded with spikes of raw emotion. The figure stands atop the narrow
column it's made, looking down, judging you.
Waiting for you to climb up, to free yourselves.
=Dungeon Conditions: Slow, Tire===============================================
<Pose Tracker> Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R has posed.
There is a kind boy. A boy that encouraged Riesenlied through thick and thin, whose words she still remember. A boy that this nameless girl has only seen through the thick veil of un-waking, through the wool in one's eyes that separates fantasy and reality.
He calls to her. 'Hey! Hey! Are you in trouble! Here, take my hand!'
The nameless girl shakes her head, clinging closer to the ice even though it's sharp and dangerous and likely will only hurt her more.
"i'm scCCARed..." Her voice sounds like a synthesizer set to 'industral mix'. She starts to pull her hand out, but timidly draws it back. She hesitates. "i dDON't wANt to lEt go..."
You can't advance and be safe.
She hesitates further, the void in her face exuding a timorous reflection of fear.
You can't have it both.
The murderer knows that voice. It's a familiar voice to him, and it's not terribly surprising that the corpse-girl would be present in a dream... albeit not in form, at present.
Prague? She doesn't understand the reference. It's not a bad name, because it's a name. Any name would do. It's probably a miracle she didn't adopt the name 'Trash' when Berserk found her.
It's going to hurt, sometimes.
Rat-tat-tat, the sound of gunfire prompts the little Unit to whimper, clinging further towards her ice shard.
She knows Lily! She remembers her... she's so brave, the way her fingertips erupt into flame... so cool...
But...
Dog is over there too. She wants to be over there... ...
Whatever are you doing there? Have you drowned?
There is a very intelligent-looking young girl who's approached her. It is possible to drown and live, you know, she shares, and that causes the little Hyadean to pause. It seems to help her.
Then Rebecca comes, with all the confidence that befits her. Dean? Dean... it's a familiar name, as is... Rebecca...
What's your name?
Rebecca speaks of important things, as does Dean when he shows that trusty bolt of a Golem. A Golem...
Everyone's encouragement gets through to her--
"...waAAAAaa..."
With that not terribly brave squeak, the little Hyadean lets go and starts to flail with a motion that may very well be called 'Dog-paddling'. Given that Dog is also present in scene, it may be appropriate.
She makes it, to Avril's pillar, where she clings onto the side, as if finding a new source of strength to hold onto.
She gazes onto that bubble as she passes. A little girl with her father, who is gazing up towards a Metal Dragon... a Dragon...
"You are /not/ a Metal Dragon," hisses the figure in the lab coat. "To call you one would be a disgrace to our old, and venerable. To Lombardia and her ilk."
The figure steps forward.
"What you are... is a failure."
What is your name?
The little Hyadean huddles on the pillar and looks at Rebecca, having the exact body language of a child who's in distress. She sniffles and--
"... i dDOn't HhhAAAvEEE ooNNee..."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
<"...I'm surprised you aren't,"> The blood-splattered boy says, switching easily to the old tongue. <"Have you forgotten who you--"> He trails off because Lily has BEAMED and is now giving a puppy scritches. The blood splattered boy doesn't comment any further to the little girl with the red ribbon, just exhaling. Probably the best sleep Lily's going to get. Won't hurt to let it keep going for now, he supposes.
"Lily..?" Fei begins and the boy gives him such a look that he clamps his mouth back shut.
The two make their way onward, though the blood-splattered boy's concentration fails him and the submarine shorts out not too far out. It's just as well. It'd be strange to have a conversation with that around him.
"Why is everybody babies." He asks of Nasrin even though she's not any more likely to know why than he is. "I don't know how much of their teen angst I can take."
"Oh you're one to talk," Fei mutters under his breath as he advances forward to lend this Hyadean a metaphorical hand rather than a literal one. "Come on now, it's not so bad not having a name, you get to pick one." He looks over to the boy for a moment before looking back to Unit. "Why if you're not careful, you'll have more names than you know what to do with."
A tiny pointy of light appears in the icy depths suddenly. Fei shields his eyes, but you see someone besides what Fei sees when he finally sneaks a peak.
There's plenty of burning figures he sees. Id (not the boy, the one you know and love), Grahf, Siegfried, K.K...they all hover just ahead of him extending their hands as they offer badfeels in numerous quantity.
But eventually the figures dissipitate, there's a column, now, embedded with spikes of badfeels.
This time it's just a strange cloaked man in a mask.
Fei frowns and starts climbing. The blood-splattered boy, looking bored, doesn't bother climbing. Any spike Fei touches will just go into him anyway. No point playing this game.
The blood-splattered boy sees beautiful boy Dean in the distance and floats after him for a moment, a sudden vicious grin appearing on his lips as he raises his fist into the air and then aggressively noogies the beautiful boy Dean. That's what he gets!! THAT'S WHAT HE GETS!!!
He hates Dean so much.
DG: Fei Fong Wong has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Trial.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
The boy sees familiar faces. One of them he knows very well. "Rebecca!" he cries, lighting up upon recognizing his best friend. And she calls him-- "Yeah, my name's Dean!" he tells the Unit, still offering his hand to her. "I can save whoever I want!" he protests to Rebecca. "Just because I can't swim doesn't mean I can just ignore someone in trouble!" Typical Dean logic. And another girl, a girl he knows very well somehow, a girl--Avril? "I haven't drowned yet!!" he protests. Still, the Golem bolt radiates a soft warmth--not enough to warm up his whole body, as it happens, but enough to stave off some of that numbing cold. The Unit will get some of that when she grabs his hand and doggie-paddles over to the other ice pillar, though it may not last very long.
Rebecca says that he'll drown sooner or later because he can't swim. "Yeah, it's a problem!" he says, worried. But then Avril says you can drown and live, and he perks up. "Really?! Then I'll be okay! But we should get out of here anyway, because it's freezing and because Rebecca forgot something. This cold is terrible!" Even if there is a "PUPPY," Dean yelps, lighting up when he spots Lily playing with Dog nearby.
A bloody boy offers the name of Prague to the Unit. Dean stares at him. There's something about him that's really familiar. Really familiar... "Prague's a good name!" he says. "It sounds like Progress. That means to go forward! Golems are progress. It's super-cool!" he enthuses. "If you don't have a name already, d'you like the name Prague?" he asks the Unit.
Then there is another ice pillar, a pillar for the climbing, a pillar for advancing, a pillar for pragueress. It's spiked over with badfeels, but Dean looks at it and he remembers a good ice, a good ice that freezes over pathways and creates a way forward, and ice starts to form over those spikes to smooth out the pillar to make it a gentler, easier climb for Feis and Feice alike, until--
"WAAAAAH! Why're you noogieing me?!" Dean yelps, flailing as the bloody boy rubs his knuckles into his head for unknown reason. He flails and flails and flails like a boy being bullied by, perhaps, an older brother. "No faaaaaaiiiirrrrr!!" he whines.
Then he counters by reaching for the boy's sides and going for the dreaded /tickle attack/. Is someone going to need to break these two up?!
DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Freeze Ray toward his party's challenge, Trial.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
There's a memory shard lodged in the wall about halfway up, glowing faint red. It doesn't seem to belong to anyone, either.
The girl from the museum is now a young woman. She stands before a large, oaken desk, her posture almost military-straight as she looks at the man behind it. "It says here," says the bespectacled academic, "that you are interested in study in the Department of War Antiquities. Now, I've taken the liberty of conducting a thorough review of your academic career thus far. I've spoken with Doctor Oxford."
The young woman's outward expression is calm, though inwardly, she seethes. This man holds her future in his hands, and he seems to be treating it much like a child treats a toy.
"But regrettably, I haven't seen anything that could convince me you would succeed there. It's far more competitive than anything you've seen. Not everyone has the proper disposition for field work, and the Department of War Antiquities demands the best of its students. Perhaps botany would be more your speed?"
...but no one would listen to her.
"I understand, sir," the young woman says. She doesn't feel upset so much as /numb/. She turns from Dr. Bridges's desk, and walks off.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"Yes, really," she answers Dean. "It just means you have water in the lungs. So you drown and live. ...Whyever does it feel as if I know you? Have we met?" She squints at Dean, her gaze fixing on Rebecca next, a similarly baffled expression on her face. There was something-- --dear friends? but where? when?
"So you've just drowned, then? Good, it would be a pity if you had become dead. Even the best doctors can fix death, you known." She's put her arms akimbo, her head tilted only just as she regards the faceless girl. "My father made my uncle die. That's how I know. Anyway," she says without missing a beat, "whatever has become of your face? Did you lose it somewhere?"
She makes no move to help the poor Dragon Unit, only watches as if she's intrigued rather than worried or scared. "Maybe we can find it if we all escape together. I feel like there was somewhere I was supposed to be, or something I was supposed to be doing." She pauses, twirling about as she takes in the expanse around them. "Anyway, I do not like it here very much. I want to go somewhere else."
Which is the point where her attention settles on Lily, Fei... and the other one. "You are not from this nation, are you? I do not meet people from your country very often, you know. Mother and father are always talking about it and..."
She trails off in her chatter, her gaze fixing on a distant figure.
A tall woman, clad in formal robes. From this angle, it's hard to see her face--
The silver-haired girl takes a hesitate step backwards anyway, before as if remembering herself and her station lifts her chin defiantly, stubbornly, and stares the silhouette back.
"I don't know who you are, but I am Avril Vent Fleur," she declares to the shadow, who seemingly vanishes in flames, burning still. Emboldened, the girl takes a step forward, only to stop dead at the sight of the lot of them--
Ghostly, ill-defined, they are still recognizable at a glance for what they are: Filgaia's Guardians. They stare balefully. Setting down their verdict.
"You... you are not permitted to look at me so!" the girl states, as if to plead her own case. "Besides, I-- I do not know whatever you are implying! I have done nothing wrong!"
As if remembering something, she reaches out, beckoning...
And one of the Guardians breaks away from the rest. Lucadia, Guardian of the Sea, swims out towards her, to her side.
Is that right? Look again. The Guardian opens her jaws wide as if to swallow her whole.
DG: Avril Vent Fleur has used her Tool Sea Medium toward her party's challenge, Trial.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily glances up at the bubble that darts forth, the little girl and her father and the Metal Dragon. She watches, thoughtfully...
And then turns her head to the little Unit. "<You're...>" Lily pauses, frowning, and seems to have to concentrate. "You're afraid," she repeats after a moment. "No name..." She seems thoughtful about that. "I wonder... Is 'Prague' all right?" But at the same time--The little Lily laughs, looking up from her puppy, and looks back to the boy. "<I cleaned up the blood. What do you mean?>"
Then she looks up at Fei and tilts her head. "...Yes...?"
Now that she's closer, she looks even younger than the little Unit. Perhaps eight, at most. Avril's reply to her gets a look. "No," Lily says, getting smoother with the language. "Father brought me here... You're not the first person to notice." She stops, then. She looks up. And she looks up with too-sharp eyes towards the point of light. The figure /burns/ in her vision.
A black-haired woman wreathed in faint flames stares down at little Lily mercilessly, her golden eyes unblinking. ...She stands beside a man, older. Her hand rises. The column begins to coalesce...
"<No!>" a little girl's voice echoes, and little Lily--not much smaller than she is now--hides with her hands around her knees in the corner of her bedroom, shaking her head. "<I don't want to go outside! I don't understand!>"
Faintly, she can hear the reply. She doesn't understand the words, though. "...Give her time," a woman's voice suggests. "We knew there would be bad days. She was making progress on our language..." The little girl puts the puppy in the crook of her arm and starts climbing. Where her hands aren't enough, flashes of power and circuitry mark her carving her own handholds. It's hard going.
The next shard appears, and that same little girl, now about her current size, has leapt onto another student and is punching, punching, punching as hard as she can until the teacher /drags/ her off of him. "Shut up!" she snarls. "You don't know anything! You don't even know how--" The memory starts to fade... but climbing, there is blood on little Lily's knuckles now. Another shard...
A masculine voice crackles over the radio, as Lily looks down at the displays on Hellerune's controls, preparing her next salvo. "Who doesn't desire power, boy?" her Father asks Fei. "We live in a world where we're quashed under foot -- or we're strong. If you pretend to have a choice, then you have the strength to enjoy that luxruy."
Lily grits her teeth as she keeps climbing, and one of the /spikes/ seems to pierce entirely through her hand. She cries out--and then stops herself, suddenly. She pulls her hand off the spike and it gleams red as she begins to heal it. ...And begins moving upward again.
Death. Death, all around. The halls of Bledavik's Palace run with blood, and Lily floats past the bodies in her wake, lowering her hand from where she put a spear of ice through a man's throat. She stares into nothing, exhausted. She is bloody.
She stops, and turns, looking down at the little Unit. "...Come on. You can pet the dog if you climb with us."
Her voice is still distant, unemotional for a little girl, and her hands are still bloody. She climbs.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
There's strangeness here - like Lily's fire. "Wow! That doesn't hurt?" She doesn't even question how she's doing that underwater. Though she decides that maybe it doesn't hurt her because it's underwater. "Dean be sure to ask permission if you want to pet her puppy." As she knows that him petting it will probably be coming later.
However then there's a sobbing - sniffling girl who looks like she's in distress says that - it's weird that she doesn't have a face too.
Her initial reaction is. 'That's ridiculous. Everyone has a name.'
And yet. Rebecca has a hard time making that thought come to her lips when she doesn't have a face. She has a hard time being mean to any girl in fact. "You don't have one - at all?"
She waits for an answer, then looks towards Dean and Avril. And...
"Dean don't drown to help someone." She sighs, "If you come with us - maybe you'll figure out a name? Then it'd be okay!"
There's a pillar of ice. She's hesitant to start climbing though because she doesn't want to fall again. Plus there's someone up there and she suddenly feels all insecure. Like whoever is up there is judging her. There's just bad feelings everywhere and she doesn't want to climb.
And then- "Hey!"
Rebecca doesn't float. Instead she actually just climbs up so quickly it's like she's teleported up to right beside Dean. And instead she reaches out to try to grab his ear and twist his earlobe, "Don't pick on Dean! You don't know him well enough to get to do that!"
Like the right to tease Dean was something only Rebecca had earned from years of knowing him. And then noticing he's covered in blood, "Yuck - You should wash up too! If you're cut somewhere get a bandaid or something! You don't want to get all infected."
However. Avril's conflict to the shadow draws her attention. "Huh? Is someone giving you a dirty look?" She looks up again, "Whoever you are up there stop it. You're not her mom! You don't get to punish her!"
And then a big serpent comes down towards Avril and she shrieks - blurting out, "Donteather!"
DG: Rebecca Streisand has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Trial.
<Pose Tracker> Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R has posed.
Whatever has become of your face? Did you lose it somewhere?
"... i don't know... i feel like i lost... something important somewhere..."
Rebecca suggests that if she comes along with them, maybe she'll find a name. There's one for her out there, somewhere... isn't there?
"...okay..."
Prague. It sounds like Progress. That means to go forward. Like a Golem... the Golem of Prague... She listens to him further, but also as Dean encourages her and thinks it's a good name. Lily isn't quite sure, but...
"okay... i'll be Prague, then!"
That was easy. Too easy, even. As if any name, any at all, will do.
There is a shard up there, that Prague gazes into for a moment with her lack of a face. She gazes at it. A girl is being rejected, even though she loves Dragons. That museum director...
"...he rejected her too..." Why does that seem so familiar to her?
That point of light appears, with a burning figure that the little Hyadean Unit called Prague gazes onto...
... and, despite being a figure ensconced in flame, there is one figure that is immaculately caked in blood and frost that no flame can truly melt.
It is the dead girl, the girl with the nomadic clothes now tattered, with her form rotted and frozen.
Why is everybody babies, asks Id of Nasrin.
"Is their adult angst not even worse?" Nasrin has to ask, genuinely. She turns back mockingly, towards the little Hyadean, and lifts up something that draws her interest.
It's a mask. A mask with the face...
...of a Hyadean, the heart of Wayside who seeks a new world where everyone can flourish. The purest form of an identity she can wear...
"...tTTHAT's MmmINNe...!"
The bile just rises from Nasrin, as she looks down towards her.
"You want it so bad? Try working for it. Or maybe you want to just be Prague? What will Noeline think about that? Noeline doesn't know anyone named Prague," remarks Nasrin, rather knowingly goading her along.
"...w-will she hate me...?"
No-longer-Prague-and-now-nameless-again is about to climb when--
When blood-splattered Murderer starts giving Dean a noogie?! "...waAAAhh... stop fighting...!" she flails and tries to move onto their side, but she's tiny and not of much help with playful scuffling. And lets out an 'eek!' as the Guardian of the Sea makes a motion as if to swallow Avril whole!!
Little Unit is distracted...
Nasrin pauses, and then grumbles, "Okay, /maybe/ I find it annoying too, Id-- you're not helpinggg!"
Fortunately, Lily is helping. Because she encourages little Unit to climb-- and she perks up as she goes, "...iII can pet dog if I ccLIMB... okay!"
And with that, she reaches up and begins to climb, ever so clumsily.
DG: Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Trial.
DG: Lily Keil has contributed a Agility Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Trial.
===========================<* The Umbral Mirror *>============================
===========================<* CHALLENGE - Trial *>============================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Agility |Challenge Rating: 2 |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
A tiny point of light appears in the icy depths, and unfolds into a
brilliant, burning figure. Each of you see something different in
it--aspects of something or someone that has judged you for your actions. It
raises a hand, and mirror fragments bearing unpleasant memories emerge from
the darkness. Within moments, they've knit themselves into a high, glassy
wall, studded with spikes of raw emotion. The figure stands atop the narrow
column it's made, looking down, judging you.
Waiting for you to climb up, to free yourselves.
=Dungeon Conditions: Slow, Tire===============================================
======================<* The Umbral Mirror - Round 2 *>=======================
=============================< Results - Trial >==============================
Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fei Fong Wong 20 --(23)--> 43 Fail
Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark 20 --(18)--> 38 Pass
Freeze Ray 2 Agility Effects: Quicken
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur 5 --(18)--> 23 Pass
Sea Medium 2 Agility Effects: Quicken
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lily Keil 5 --(23)--> 28 Fail
Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 20 --(23)--> 43 Fail
Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand 5 --(23)--> 28 Fail
Rush 0 Agility Effects: BASIC
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 20 --(10)--> 30 Fail
Conditions: Slow(2)|Tire(2)
Effects: Quicken(1)
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 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> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Id--let's just call him Id since Nasrin did--isn't really known for being a helper. Still, he has to admit that their adult angst is way worse than this, though his eyes seem to glaze over when Dean provides his reasoning as to why 'Prague' is a good name. That's the problem with the baby angst really it's that herding these people into figuring out how to stop this bullshit is going to be incredibly difficult.
"Ugh," He mutters as Unit discards the name Prague with a rename card. "I am not calling someone 'Unit'."
He is distracted by Lily and Ida's memories and in that moment, DEAN STRIKES.
"Gahh!!" Id shouts. "What are you doing!?" He starts clobbering Dean's head with both fists but his fists only moderately hurt due to this being a shared dream, his unwillingness to actually murder anybody through this method, and also because he has tiny fists.
Then Fei touches one of those EMOTION SPIKES and Id jerks just enough for Rebecca to seize up Id's ear and start twisting it. He is going to kill everyone here.
"Gahrrrkk!! He likes golems I know everything about Dean!!" Id says, "Let go I will eat your--" He pauses, jerking away suddenly from Rebecca. "Don't touch it!!" He shouts. "That's all I have left of her. That and--"
He trails off before adding, "...Whatever. I know why you're giving me grief. It's because you want to be Dean's golem wife. REBECCA LIKES DEAN EVERYBODY! SITTING IN A TREE, OH I'M TOO MODEST TO SPELL IT OUT!"
Fei meanwhile is looked at by Lily and he reddens faintly. "Hey." He tells Lily. "Sorry. Um." He doesn't seem to speak Zeboim, but he does seem to understand it. Even so, he has something to say to Dad.
"Elly doesn't." He mutters. "There has to be another way besides the strong crushing the weak...otherwise what's the point? It's no way to live."
He steps forward and then the dreamscape gets annoyed everybody's taking so long and Lucadia eats everybody.
DG: Avril Vent Fleur has drawn a new Challenge.
============================<* The Umbral Mirror *>=============================
==========================<* CHALLENGE - Sacrifice *>===========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 1 |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
The way ahead is blocked by a single, massive mirror, marked by shadowy
cracks but hard and unyielding. Scattered below it are fragments that look
as though they could fit, but only if assembled into larger pieces. Each one
is a painful memory. Each one will wound, again, when touched. Touching them
is the only way to reassemble the fragments, piece the wall together, and
open the way.
Endure the pain again.
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken, Injure===========================================
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Some of the shards on the floor don't seem like they'd fit. They don't belong to anyone here.
In one shard, the woman from the professor's office says a tearful goodbye to a trusted traveling companion. He has to be leaving soon. His family needs him. His mother is sick, and needs his help. The woman grasps his hand, and does not let go for a long time--but it still doesn't seem like long enough. The man turns on a heel, loud poncho swirling around him, and walks off. The woman curls a hand around the gift he's given her--a little multitool. The memory feels of sadness, regret, lingering betrayal.
Another ragged scrap of memory. A Beastwoman talks with the young lady in a hotel room. 'Recall what you've taken up that ARM for,' she says, 'and what it is not for... do not let those flames consume you.' It's raw. It's angry, but most of that anger has curled inwards with time.
A tiny shard of a much larger memory. A man's voice hisses to the young woman. The man himself is invisible in a cloud of smoke. 'I am neither dead, nor a monster.'
One day, the little girl got what she'd wished for, and met her Dragons for real...
Another shard. The woman tosses and turns, unable to sleep. 'The Metal Demons will return,' she remembers. But... is it true?
But she didn't tell anyone. She didn't think anyone would believe her.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Rebecca pleads for the sea serpent not to eat Avril.
In a fashion, the Guardian obliges:
She consumes everyone, swallowing them up in a great gulping mouthful. Here is a darkness beyond darkness, one where no light or sound or anything can penetrate: an eternity of silence within the depths of the sea.
But even eternity must end. In the logic of a dream, the abyss loosens its hold on the lot of them; darkness gives way to the even greys of a twilight.
The light catches on something ahead, the only 'thing' in this sea of stars. A great mirror. Broken. Lost shards...
No. They're not stars. They're pieces of the mirror, millions of them strewn across the featureless plain. Do they... need to be put back?
No matter how carefully they're picked up, they will cut.
Avril stoops to pick up one such shard, gasping at the burst of recollection that comes with it.
She's speaking to a pair of people, both very near and dear to her heart, in a place she--'
She doesn't recognize this place. Is this really /her/ memory? Why do they look so very much like her friends? ...Friends? ...who...?
She's traveled a very long way with them, for a very long time. And yet, she knows she won't be able to travel with them much longer. There's a promise she must keep.
The girl wobbles, then falls to her knees, sniffling and clenching her teeth. Blood trickles from her hand, still wrapped tight around the shard. Her shoulders shake.
Father said never to show what you feel--
She does anyway, bawling big ugly tears. "No! I don't want to!" she blurts out, face red and blotchy. "I don't want to go!" Rising to her feet in a rush, she runs at the mirror, shoving the piece back into place.
"I don't want it!" she shouts inelegantly as she turns away from the mirror, and in doing so realizes she's not alone here.
With as much dignity as she can muster, the silver-haired young girl lifts her chin and stares the others down as if to dare them to say anything. Her blue eyes glitter with unshed tears.
DG: Avril Vent Fleur has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Sacrifice.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
It's then that Dean notices the bubble racing about and the memory shard plugged partway up, showing a girl and a Dragon and a woman and an obstruction. These things, too, seem awfully familiar. Why do they seem familiar? The girl with the Dragon had seemed happy enough, but the woman seems unhappy, and Dean is sensitive to when people are upset, to when they need help. He's a boy who always wants to help others, even people whose names he doesn't even know.
But Avril speaks to him, and she speaks of a familiarity of her own, and he lights up at her. "Yes!" he says. He pauses. "I think?" He pauses again. "I feel like I know you, too. Like I've met you before..." He brightens and grins. "Weird, huh?"
Perhaps not as weird as how he doesn't so much as blink at the Unit's lack of face. But she's a girl, approximately his age, in obvious distress. She could be a formless lump of metal and that wouldn't matter to Dean. Besides, it's one of those things that just feels like it may as well be that way. Sort of like if they were in a dream. "If you don't like it here, then let's all leave together!" Dean declares to Avril, nodding fiercely, as he holds a hand out to her.
Rebecca tells him to make sure to get permission to pet the Puppy. "She said if we climb, we can pet her puppy, so it's fine!" Dean counters, nodding fiercely--then looking at Lily. "Right?" But then he's getting noogied and he attempts to tickle back and the bloody boy Id tries to punch him but it's really just a boyish scuffle and "What're YOU doing?!" Dean counters and Prague-Not-Prague is trying to break it up and Rebecca grabs the bloody boy by the ear and scolds him. Dean laughs. "Thanks, Rebecca!" he says. "Thanks to you too, Not-Prague-Anymore!" he says. "Who's Noeline?" he says--but then the great sea serpent that is Lucadia swims up to swallow Avril whole. "Watch out!!" he shouts, trying to swim to her rescue. But, of course, he can't swim. He can only climb.
And there is fire and blood and blood and fire, and a girl taunts the Unit with a mask... Does the boy have any bad memories? The worst happening to him is getting noogied, is watching as a girl he just met is in danger and he can't help.
Then Id is yelling about the blood being all he has left, which is strange enough, but then about Rebecca liking Dean. "Of course she likes me, we're best friends! We wouldn't be friends if we didn't like each other!" Dean counters. "And of course I like Golems, Golems are the best!! What do YOU like?" Somehow, this seems like a completely logical counter-question to ask.
And then Lucadia eats them all, and all is darkness. Oops.
In that darkness, there's another shard of memory. And another, and another... There's familiar faces in there, too. There's words that he doesn't know in there. The little girl found her Dragons, and kept them hidden away because she thought no one would believe her. Why?
"Just tell them," Dean tells the air.
And then all is twilight. There is a great broken mirror at their feet, and all the shards cut when touched. Avril picks one up, and she cries, she cries, she cries that she doesn't want to, she's come so far and gained so much but she's about to lose it all and she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to go, but she does anyway, she runs at the mirror and places the shard back and glares at all of them at if to dare them to say anything. Her eyes glitter with tears.
There was a woman who shed a single tear--
He didn't understand what it meant, and he's wanted to badly ever since to understand--
He thinks, in this moment, this moment where he stares at her, that he might understand.
...understand what? (and then the moment fades, that something he nearly grasps vanishes from within his hand)
He shakes his head. "It's okay," he reassures her. "Glass is sharp! So you have to be careful about touching it. That's why, when I dig, I use a shovel!" And then all of a sudden there is a shovel, as if it's the most natural thing in the world for him to possibly have. He beams at her with a great, warm grin, and he shovels up a pat of mirror slices. No matter how sharp they are, they cannot cut him if he doesn't touch them. Perhaps that shovel then represents that he doesn't have any truly harrowing, hurtful memories? Perhaps it's the protection that naivete affords him?
Whatever it is, he takes that shovelful and brings it to the mirror, where he then gently tosses them into the air for them to wheel around and float and gently insert themselves in the mirror. "There! Don't worry; I'll help you!" He grins at Avril. "Promise!" He moves a step or two closer to her. "So don't cry... okay?"
DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool The Trusty Shovel toward his party's challenge, Sacrifice.
<Pose Tracker> Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R has posed.
"eeeeeEEEEEEKk--"
Lucadia swallows them whole.
It's dark... it's so dark. But in a way, Unit isn't scared of the darkness, because darkness is where she's resided by herself for so long.
But this darkness scares her.
The little Hyadean gazes upon that memory. A Beastwoman, in and out of itself another disguise -- to most people 'Riesenlied, the Beastwoman', but also 'Olivia Carver', at times...
"... i disappointed you ..."
She bristles, at the anger, lowering her faceless head.
Would it have been any different?
The littlest Hyadean moves next to Avril as she bawls and sobs, her heart aching. She steps by her side and sits next to her, curling up with her arms around her knees.
"do you have to...? if it hurts you... do you have to face it?"
She tucks her head down further.
"...even if it hurts..."
You didn't fail her as a Dragon.
Little Unit looks to Fei and Id, before looking surprised as she looks to Rebecca with a small nattering of, "y-you like someone? ... i do too..."
She tilts and bobbles her head. She looks at the mirror.
"... it's okay. dean has his golem that he trusts in, right? and puppy is here! let's get out of here and pet her, lots. and well..."
Little Unit pulls out a softly glowing green flute. She puts it to her face to begin to play it...
... but lacking a mouth, finds that she
cannot.
"...oh..."
Cucco...
You failed her as a /friend/.
She lowers her head, and then remarks, "... i want to play..."
She brings it up to her face again, and this time, despite there not being any form or function about her that should let her play it--
Something /round/ hearkens this way.
Little Unit turns around, looking excited. "look, avril...! cucco is here to save us!"
The round creature, so magnificient -- moreso in dream where minor details like /reality/ cannot deign to touch it -- raises its one wing as it descends upon the mirror as a celestial body would upon the Earth.
DG: Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R has used her Tool Flute of the Cucco Queen toward her party's challenge, Sacrifice.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
"The fire doesn't hurt unless I let it touch me," Lily answers Rebecca shyly. "Just being close to my hand like that is okay." She glances to the side, "...But I'm supposed to keep it secret." She pauses and nods to Dean, "I think she'd be okay with you petting her too. But don't be too rough. She's small." Dog(?) barks happily under Lily's arm.
A"Wife?" Lily asks skeptically, looking between the boy and Rebecca. "It's not like that's something hard to talk about. What's the big deal?" She frowns. "Do you need punching?"
Fei, meanwhile, reddens, and he apologizes and Lily blinks at him. "...What are you apologizing for...?"
Memory Father doesn't answer Fei. ...But little Lily does. "...I don't have to want power," she says softly.
But the Guardian strikes. The little girl looks up in shock, but then they fall into the sea... And suddenly it's not so frightening anymore.
Lily closes her eyes, still the small girl she entered this place as. She closes her eyes, and drifts through the deep in comfortable silence. She could not say how long it is. But when the dream moves on, the twilight starts... And Lily only closes her eyes when the light catches more brightly. The mirror; the /light/, ahead. So, so many. "Mm...?"
Lily is standing on the ground suddenly, though there is no ground. The child does not know Ida, but the memory speaks to something deeper. A single memento... A question of purpose. Of anger.
And Little Unit has her flute, and the round thing. "...Cucco...?" She tilts her head. "Should we call you Cucco, too?"
But she moves for the shards herself. "It's okay," she says to the others. "...I'm not scared of being hurt. I can--" Her hands were already bloody before, the hands of a little girl covered in it from the knuckles spread around, but when she reaches for a shard--
The hot sun of the Avehan desert beats down on them all. Bodies of Avehan soldiers litter the ground, but they are not all dead. One bears down on a Lily in uniform, the insignia of 2nd Lt. emblazoned on her jacket. ...But her jacket is torn, and bloody, and her beautiful rifle is on the ground. Leon is locked in combat himself, and it's only the two of them. The man she's struggling with has hold of her arm, and she grits her teeth, looking at him--
Before he compresses his hand, and her combat knife falls out of her hand as she grunts in pain. A darkly relieved look on the man's face sees him raise his sword, /hack/ down towards Lily with the curved blade with all his might--
And Lily /catches/ it straight on the blade, the metal sinking through the fabric of her glove and biting through flesh. Her eyes flash in pain or focus, and the man looks in surprise--before he starts to bear down harder. ...But it doesn't last that long. It doesn't last long because Lily breaks his grip and snaps out her hand towards his chest. As she reaches, her hand /ignites/ in flame, and the man's look of shock is the last expression he will ever have as her enspelled palm bursts right through his chest with the awful, awful stench of burning flesh and blood.
Lily is smiling when it happens, and only stops when she realizes it, eyes widening and expression turning to nausea.
The little Lily blinks, tensing, /flinching/ from the memory. "W-what?" she asks. "You must be..." She reaches out again, and picks up a second. There's another flash.
"Yes Mother, Father," Lily--a teenage Lily, in a fine red dress inclining her head to her parents before she takes a seat in the sitting-room with them. They are of course, already seated. She smoothes out her skirt and sits up straight. Dietrich Keil sits in one chair before her, older, serious; Marie Keil beside him, in her own wheelchair, somewhat softer. Both seem for the moment to be careful with something.
But the conversation is indistinct, until it reaches a particular point:
"...So it's time that we told you," Marie says, "...That we adopted you, when you were young. You don't remember, but--"
Lily blinks, looking between the two. "W-what? What are you talking about?" The distress eyes is unmistakable; the crack in hr voice through all her discipline is awful. "But I'd--"
They all keep talking, but the memory begins to fade now that it's delivered enough of its poison to wound. Little Lily blinks away tears, shaking her head. "I..."
She takes a difficult breath, "<I have to keep going...>"
She picks up another. A flash of vision; Lily's arms are covered in blood, but she wears sterile-looking clothes, a mask over her face. ...There's a boy on the table before her. She couldn't be more than eighteen, and he no older. His eyes stare sightlessly up. "No!" Lily says. "No, it's--it's not over yet!" She reaches her hands, compresses them over his heart, pushes, pushes--
But the wounds he's suffered are just too great.
Another, and Lily is watching Adlehyde burn.
Another, and it's a woman this time on her table. Another, and another, and another. The memories become more muted; the blood they draw less, and less.
...Chains about Lily's neck holding runes start to glow as she picks them up. Power crackles about her, and flames begin to melt the shards together to help form the wall.
DG: Lily Keil has used her Tool Rune Chain toward her party's challenge, Sacrifice.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
Rebecca nods thoughtfully Lily's way, "Okay. I'll keep it a secret then." Before commenting to Dean, "Just be gentle Dean."
"So!? There's more to Dean than that! He only just found that bolt!" Rebecca protests but the blood-spattered boy's comment causes her to let go from startlement, "Huh!? Blood is all you have left of-?" It doesn't make sense to her. Especially not right now.
Still it startles her out of that fight. And then. "WHAT!? I DON'T LIKE HIM LIKE THAT! YOU TAKE THAT BACK!" She shouts as she balls up a fist and says quickly, "I DON'T WANT TO KISS DEAN! WE'RE JUST FRIENDS!"
And right now it's even true. Mostly. Oh sure Rebecca at this age has thought about it. What with the towns people and her parents subtly hinting that they should get together for years. She's still at that age though where she's not really /attracted/ to him though - hasn't actually figured that out.
And then she's swallowed - shrieking.
-=-=-
And then there's a great mirror. There's shards everywhere. It's like a mess she's made and knows she has to pick up. She's a responsible child. So she always picks up her messes.
And yet she doesn't want to.
She doesn't want to.
It's gonna hurt.
Slowly she bends over to pick up five shards.
Leaving is always frightening. Leaving behind everything she's ever known. It's what adults do though.
However - she's so gorgeous. And Dean just dropped everything, left his whole life behind to go help her.
What does she have to offer? How can she possibly compete with that?
Don't let that boy out of your sight Rebecca. Because just like that - he'll be caught up in his own sprint. And you'll lose him forever.
Growing up by myself. It's the last thing I'd want. So please. Please don't leave me alone.
Rebecca drops the shards as if they'd cut her as droplets of water well up in her eyes. And she shakes her head back and forth in denial as a painful tableau of the others memories rise up in front of her. Lily learning she was adopted. Lily unable to save someone. Chains...
'No! I don't want to!'
'I don't want to go!'
'I don't want it!'
It's sounds like what she wanted to say. It has the same feeling to it.
Yet she couldn't muster that kind of defiance in her eyes if she wanted to.
And there Dean is picking it all up with a shovel. It's so /him/. And eventually she wipes her eyes, sniffling, and walks over to Avril and Dean - and the girl with the cucco. Wondering about how a chicken like thing could save them.
"M-Maybe you're right Dean."
Before she looks to Avril, holding up a hand as if to help her up, "Maybe it won't hurt so much if we do it together."
Maybe that's what it's like for growing up too.
DG: Rebecca Streisand has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Sacrifice.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
More memories, more memories, but whatever Fei is experiencing seems to not be so readily shared with the rest of the class. And strangely enough, he seems to notice this. "Why is it only their memories...?" He murmurs.
Boy Id is asked what he likes and then chuckles briefly and says, "Well...wouldn't you know it, I like 'Golems' too. After all...there's few things more capable of destruction than Gears and Golems. That's what most of them are built for after all. Little more than purveyors of mass destruction, much like myself."
Maybe that will finally get under his skin, Id thinks.
Fei considers Unit's words and nods slowly. "Yeah, I do. You know, it's funny, I think I said something like this to a guy I know once, but seeing you all here like this...I guess it's true." His smile widens into some truly goofy nonsense. "We are children, each one of us." Well duh Fei can't you tell how adorable everybody is???
"For being a bother, I suppose." Fei tells Lily. "For placing a burden on you I figure you don't really want." He smiles faintly and adds, "But you're right. You have all the power you need." He points towards Lily's heart. "...I know what you meant but, well, I think what's in there will get anyone through most problems."
Id says, "I don't take anything back that's covered in cooties. Don't want to catch them." No Id hasn't mentally regressed he's just being a dick.
But perhaps he sees something in Rebecca and gives him pause and he doesn't comment further. Or maybe it's just because everybody got eaten. Or maybe it's because Lily threatened to punch him. It's a mystery.
Boy Id crosses his arms and floats within the belly of the beast, frowning deeply. There's a lot of painful memories but he's honestly kind of tuning them out now. It's just too much all at once and the last thing he doesn't want is to snap their threads.
Fei is kind of rolling with the punches. He's an old hand at being at the whims of an awful weird dream. They both look briefly at Marie and Fei exhales a sigh of relief for no apparent reason, but strangely the one memory that draws his attention the longest is Lily failing to save someone on the operating table.
Fei approaches a shard, compelled to pick it up. A voice resonates. Anyone can hear it but it's Lily who gets to understand it.
Is that a good enough reason for that child, or those dead people? It wasn't much of an operation. It was difficult, but there was enough chance to win...We'd have won if we had better equipment...That child would have been saved if there was electricity.
Fei drops the shard. A name tries to come upon his lips but it fails to, it dances just out of reach of his mouth. He hadn't felt many memories like that before.
Id was asked, not so long ago, about what he likes. As he looks at the mirror, raises a hand, and charges a chi blast--intent on solving this problem through explosion magic--he decides finally to answer Dean further.
"I also like murders." He says as he launches the energy blast.
...But a part of him notices from Avril's memories...these people, at least, maybe he can relate to them. He doesn't like thinking about that, since then what does his own behavior mean? But if anything, there's a lot of asshole parents out there. It feels like he underestimated the count. Maybe that, in of itself, is reason enough to destroy it all.
DG: Fei Fong Wong has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Sacrifice.
============================<* The Umbral Mirror *>=============================
==========================<* CHALLENGE - Sacrifice *>===========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 1 |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
The way ahead is blocked by a single, massive mirror, marked by shadowy
cracks but hard and unyielding. Scattered below it are fragments that look
as though they could fit, but only if assembled into larger pieces. Each one
is a painful memory. Each one will wound, again, when touched. Touching them
is the only way to reassemble the fragments, piece the wall together, and
open the way.
Endure the pain again.
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken, Injure===========================================
=======================<* The Umbral Mirror - Round 3 *>========================
============================< Results - Sacrifice >=============================
Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fei Fong Wong 43 --(15)--> 58 Fail
Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark 38 --(10)--> 48 Pass
The Trusty Shovel 2 Brute Effects: Stalwart
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur 23 --(15)--> 38 Fail
Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lily Keil 28 --(10)--> 38 Pass
Rune Chain 3 Brute Effects: Stalwart and Efficien
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 43 --(15)--> 58 Fail
Flute of the Cucco Queen 1 Brute Effects: Cleanse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand 28 --(15)--> 43 Fail
Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 30 --(10)--> 40 Fail
Conditions: Injure(2)|Slow(1)|Tire(1)|Weaken(2)
Effects: Cleanse
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 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: Rebecca Streisand has drawn a new Challenge.
===========================<* The Umbral Mirror *>============================
=========================<* CHALLENGE - Multitudes *>=========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat |Challenge Rating: 2 |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
Shards of mirror appear from nothingness, and then race forwards,
positioning themselves around each member of your group. When you look into
them, you see nothing but yourself, reflected to infinity--and then, each of
those reflections steps forth. One by one, they begin to change, taking on
the forms of what-ifs, could-have-beens, and might-bes. Each of you has been
separated from the others, trapped in a corridor with dozens of duplicates.
Only one iteration of you can escape, and each duplicate is determined to be
the that iteration.
=Dungeon Conditions: Wound, Secret============================================
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Id's plasma shot bounces off the mirror frame and strikes him in the face.
This is why he hates being sucked into this bullshit.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
The piece is difficult to stick, as if it wants to be with her, wants to cling to her hands for ever and ever and ever. But it eventually does remain, pushed back where it ought to be after much defiant pushing. Smeared with a thin streak of blood.
Even though she stares them down, her lip quivers, casting the girl in the sullen defiant silence of a child standing on the cusp of adolescence.
And that boy -- Dean -- says to her:
That's why he uses a shovel.
"A... shovel?" Avril utters, watching him in some mixture of wary confusion as he demonstrates, shuffling a whole host of those glittering shards up and towards the broken mirror.
They find their requisite places. They stick easily, a pure demonstration of dream logic if there ever was one. "You... say you are the one who will help me?" she echoes, sorrow giving way to her bewilderment. "..."
There is a long pause. "I would be remiss to refuse aid," she says, drawing herself up as if she were an older, more refined lady and not the tear-stained girl standing before the boy with the shovel. Standing before the twin-tailed redhaired girl, who says simply that they should put in the pieces together.
"Together... I feel like I have heard that before. Was it in a book...?"
And her gaze turns towards the heavens at Little Unit's call. There is Cucco, here to save them--?
"Oh... I have never seen such a large bird before!" Which is followed by a pause as Avril glances over at Little Unit. "Um... would it not be dangerous if it crashed into the mirror?"
Another pause. "I think that we should move," she tells Dean and Rebecca.
Unbidden by anyone's hands, a few stray shards begin to lift, hovering as if carried by an unseen hand to lock into their places into the mirror's frame. They merge with the few that Lily -- woman, in memory, child, in memory, desperatepainedsorrowfulshocked -- welds into place, forming a smooth unbroken surface. Just here and there.
Cucco catches fire, like a meteor from the heavens above. A terrible missionary sent from an uncaring universe-- Well, no. Cucco is here to save them, only...
...only...
It crashes into the mirror, shattering the frame and sending the shards flying. The added impact damage from the blast of chi -- catching a pile of mirror shards like a wave of lifetimes of pain before it rebounds -- is the metaphysical equivalent of getting kicked while one is down. Shards -- some small some as large as person -- spiral off into the endless expanse, dancing like leaves on the wind.
Leaving only a mirror-shaped hole in the world.
And a million pieces of light.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
"Uh. Maybe. Dean says something like it all the time though and he barely ever reads."
A cucco crashes into the world and she doesn't move again. A million shades and hues of light.
They fly by like shooting stars. And everyone else disappears into light.
A corridor of mirrors appears on each side. A reflection unto infinity.
And there is-
Herself in a wedding gown - older. Walking down the aisle - a bouquet in hand. Her hair fashioned in one long braid.
Herself in circus garb. Hastening down the hallway in a series of acrobatic flips that seem part of her routine.
Herself as a Veruni slave. Dirty from her work in the mines - but there's an opening for escape. Hope. She has another chance at life if she can just make it.
Careworn and middle aged - holding the hands of two younger children as she strides along.
An even smaller child again growing up somewhere else. Racing amongst a horde of friends.
Two women walking away hand in hand from a grave as they comfort each other...
And in another she's running from a woman with such cold eyes in utter panic... eyes she can't possibly know.
All towards the end.
A singular point where it's all joined in the distance.
And Rebecca is scared all of a sudden. Facing up against all this possibility.
She trips at the start - and lands heavily. And crys out in despair as all of them get a lead.
Is choice - so frightening?
It's not exactly a voice. It feels like hers - and yet not.
To know that everything in your life wasn't decided for you - and won't be?
To know your decisions might lead you to happiness and bliss - or to places dark and terrible - or to somewhere in-between?
"I... I..."
If you're feeling overwhelmed - just sit there and cry about it.
That choice of phrasing grates on her - as she rubs her eyes and picks herself up. "I'm not crying!" She shouts - and starts to run.
DG: Rebecca Streisand has used her Tool Sky Medium toward her party's challenge, Multitudes.
<Pose Tracker> Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R has posed.
Dean's shovel, Lily's power crackling about her chains, Id's shot...
Then--
Out of the mirror--
--steps an impossibility. Because once more, Nasrin steps out from within that mirror that should only reflect the self. Thus is borne once more that pertinent question:
What does it mean that someone else has such a grip on your psyche?
Nasrin stares down towards her. Her arms withered and rotted, her hair frozen, as it is always. As she always appears. A corpse. A reminder.
Then... another one steps out. And another. Another and another and another still... from a million shards of mirror, a million Nasrins, each of them reflected upon a different facet of memory. Some of them are filled with life, with the colour of flesh and blood. And some of them, dead and rotted like the one she's so familiar.
The centre one peers down at her.
The priestess sits next to the Hyadean with a carefree smile on her face. "You don't have a name?" she sounds surprised. "That's weird!"
Little Unit squeals and holds her hands to her head. "no... nooo... where is everyone? am i alone again...? where..."
Nasrin lowers herself and murmurs, "... at some point, you're going to have to learn to rely on no one but yourself."
The Unit trembles further, something dripping out of the corners of where her face stops. It looks like tears.
The priestess beams as she yanks the Hyadean by her arm, trekking down towards a nearby sun-filled patch on the tundra. "It's fine, it's fine! If you don't have one, then..."
A faint, glowering expression. "That includes /me/ too."
The little Hyadean stares upwards, grasping her hair tighter and tighter. She writhes and trembles, the tension taut on her shoulders.
"I often wish... I was not an only child. That I had a sister. ...do you... want to be my sister?" There is a cheeky grin, the kind only a child could have. "Nazgul?"
Nazgul al-Rashid lowers her head. It nearly touches the ground.
"... i wanted to be... but... but..."
Flash
There's that knife again.
Her hands are trembling... as she stares at it on the ground. A ceremonial knife, slightly curved with the classic tassel of the Fereshte binding its grip.
It's stained with blood.
She stares forward. Forward... there is a grand mirror at the back of the room...
"... there was a /mirror/ there too ..."
Nasrin looks surprised. Genuinely so. "... and?"
The Hyadean once christened Nazgul sniffles. "... no more... no more... waaah..."
Nasrin frowns and grips at the little child's shoulders. "Not today. I've given you what you wanted, but not TODAY, damnit! Now think!!"
Flash
The pretending Hyadean, garbed in the dress of the Fereshte slightly too large for her, stares with shrinking pupils.
Down there, on the floor... the body of the priestess with a bloodstain on her chest...
"... i killed you... i killed you... didn't i, sister?? did i kill you...?? i don't know... someone tell me...!" burbles Nazgul with a desperately broken voice, pitch skewed as she rends her heart out.
But where Nasrin had been, only a clammy hand awaits. She has no one to listen to her. A body slumps onto her shoulder and prompts a whine from the little Hyadean.
Once more, I am back to having no name...
Because all that's left are the bodies of a myriad of dead priestesses around her.
No one to give her a proper answer...
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The struggle begins. As the mirrors break, releasing strange, alternate selves, they release something else, as well. Glittering shards fly past, one after another--each one a split-second decision, a what-if, a possibility. In all of them, Adlehyde is burning, dragons soaring in its skies.
Because that's the one possibility she was too much of a coward to change.
...and so, people died.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean asks Id what he likes. He beams when Id says Golems--but that changes into an appalled look when he says it's because Gears and Golems excel at destruction, just like him. (he and his friends are crossing a battlefield, and a great Golem shoots a beam across the desert, and he's delighted until he sees that beam shoot down an airship that goes down in flames, and then his heart is filled with horror) "No!! Golems aren't supposed to be for destruction!! They're good and kind--they shouldn't be used like that!!" he insists. When Id goes on to say he loves murders, then shoots at the mirror, only for the mirror to bounce that power back in his face, Dean adds, "See?! Trying to act like violence and murder is the way to go just ends up getting yourself hurt! You're better than that, I know you are!! I know you are because you helped her, even though you didn't have to!! And you're a kid like me, and you're hurt! You've been hurt, just like you've hurt others! So stop trying to pretend you're just a monster and nothing else!!"
'Her'? Id will of course know Dean means Ida--but if Dean stops and thinks about it, he won't know how he knows that. He won't know why he's so certain that Id has hurt others and been hurt in turn. It's the intuition of a dream, fed by the knowledge of the subconscious mind. But in the moment, of course he knows that. He only knows what he knows. Call it faith, perhaps.
The faceless girl tries to play a flute, but calls up a cucco regardless. "Wow! What a round, fluffy bird!" he declares, lighting up when he sees it. Lily tells him that Puppy will be happy to play with him, and he practically vibrates. "Yay! I can't wait! She's so cute!" But there's also sadness and heartbreak of memories, of violence and blood and sorrow and abandonment, and Rebecca is placing the shards in, and Fei resonates with a voice he can't understand, and Avril--
'You will be the one to help me?' she wonders.
"Uh huh!" he says with a firm, unquestioning nod and eyes clear as the vast blue sky. She accepts his aid, and he gives her another warm, lopsided grin before reaching out a hand to take hers, if she lets him. "Then just stick with me, and you'll be okay!" It seems like, however much Id had tried to antagonize him earlier, he's already bounced back. Because Avril is here? Because he has someone to help? Maybe it's because of how much they care about one another... Maybe it's because they have a bond that transcends the conscious and the unconscious, transcends time and space. Maybe. Either way: "Rebecca'll help, too! She's always helping me, so she'll help you out for sure too!" He nods to her firmly. It looks like he has just as much faith in her. Even if she *does* call him out on hardly ever reading. He puffs out his cheeks. "Not true!! I read if it's a book about Nightburn! Or Golems! Or both!!"
Then Avril tells him and her they ought to move. Cucco catches on fire. It crashes, the mirror sets on fire, shards spiral off--and Dean jumps to try to shield Avril with his smaller, younger body, as eternity glitters with a million points of light.
When the lights fade, he's surrounded by mirrors and an infinitely extending string of himselves. Himself as a boy, himself as a teenager, himself as a man-- himself as a country boy who's never left the area around Capo Bronco, who spends the rest of his life digging for Golem parts in a ruin that's been turned over hundreds of times since before he was born--himself as a teenager, bright-eyed and enthusiastic protege to his hero Nightburn, who sends him on increasingly confusing missions for the Golem Hunter Guild that he nonetheless never questions-- himself as Nightburn's successor in the most straightforward of ways, a sole human who has climbed the wall to join the Veruni, and has jadedly come to sneer down on his fellow humans--himself as a champion for the humans, fighting back against their Veruni oppressors, toppling that wall and dragging the Veruni down into the pain and suffering they visited on his people--himself as Johnny Appleseed, the representative of the humans who inherited the title from the representative of the Veruni, who uses that title to bring humans and Veruni together in a new era of peace-- a boy who drowned, a boy who burned, a boy who was shot, a boy who was strangled, a boy who landed on his head a little too hard, a boy who died a hundred thousand deaths over and over in a six thousand year loop--a young man who saves the world--a child who couldn't save anything, who watches the world waste to nothing-- a boy with a pair of guns, fashioned by technology that Filgaia hasn't seen in millennia, who uses them and his will to pave a path forward no matter what.
No matter what, even if himself as a bright-eyed child is in the way. Even if a city he never knew burns while dragons wing through the smoky skies.
And he is also that boy whose future expands before him endlessly, who no matter what, no matter when, no matter who, will never give up. Whose still-beating heart will never give up the fight.
You can do anything, as long as you don't give up. Even accept that all of these, no matter how exalted, no matter how pathetic, are you.
DG: Dean Stark has contributed a Combat Basic Action toward his party's challenge, Multitudes.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily tilts her head at Fei, finally answering now that she's had the time. "You aren't bothering me," she says. "But..." She shakes her head, for a moment. It's past the memories, now, and when she looks back to Fei, she looks into his eyes. "There isn't anything in there," she says simply, placing a hand over her heart. "But that's okay."
Little Lily has a lot of experience with punching, frankly. ...But that's far away, now. Far away. Far away, behind memories, behind...
Lily hears it. She hears the shard in Fei's hand, hears the voice. She blinks, turns towards him. ...She steps closer, reaches towards him. "...I'll take care of you," she says, as if she weren't perhaps the youngest here. "I hope we can be saved."
But among the shards, little Lily forges their entrance. ...But it all shatters. There is a /hole/ in all things, and Lily is no longer with the others. There are mirrors everywhere, reflecting her; but is it only her, in her youth? She tilts her head thoughtfully... And the mirrors become gateways. .
Lily Keil, in her early twenties, in dark reds, a soldier in all things, marked by her circuitry as always but with a new insignia--a golden wolf. She carries a rosewood rifle, beautiful, and stares with the gaze any could recognize of her--she is without mercy. "...Father was right," she says simply. "I'll destroy you, and return. ...It's nothing personal."
Out of another mirror steps a figure wreathed in shadow, too tall for Lily. One of her taloned hands shows up first, each finger ending in a terrible claw. Her skin is pale to the point of death, grayish, her eyes utter black with strange, circuit-like irises and pupils--the same circuits that run up from her talons, disappearing into the black fabric and lace draped about her form. Her smile is sharp, sickle-cruel; she could as easily be a walking corpse. "...Do not fear the emptiness," the Hellion speaks. "It will soothe you..."
The next, when she changes, wears an eyepatch over one eye, but she is dressed in strange clothes indeed. Violet, a top that bares her shoulders but otherwise sleeves her arms, paneling in white. It is remarkably similar to the uniform of Gebler's Elements, but a woman who looks like Lily wears it. "...Unfortunate for you."
Lily in her preferred dark military attire from the next, pulling an ARM from inside her jacket. She glances around, warily, a blade of darkness appearing in her off hand.
More, many more, step out of their own mirrors. When they cross through, they change. Some in Lily's soldiers' clothes, some in civilian attire, some in unexpected looks. Dozens. And the last...
A final Lily steps out of another mirror; an adult. She is dressed in short sleeves, a violet top with a bit of a neckline under a gray coat with a white collar and cuffs. Her hands are perfectly smooth and pale, without a single marking on them. The top ends tunic-style, over her black pants, which are tucked into gray calf-length boots. Her hair is worn long. ...When she escapes the mirror, she rolls her shoulders luxuriously. ...There are no markings on her collarbone, either. Her golden eyes have a bit of a spark to them. "Really?" she asks.
All stand before the little girl, with Dog barking wildly at one of them in particular, protectively before her. There is a moment of calm.
"Come now," speaks the Hellion, a sickle smile on her face as she looks to the others. "...We know what we are, do we not?"
The little girl stares. ...It is not she who answers, as Dog barks louder and louder, but the Lily in gray who inclines her head. "...Yes," she answers. "I suppose... 'we' do." She smiles, lightly, and stretches forth her hand.
The light disappears. The chamber in which Lily stands alone with herself is plunged into utter darkness. Only after a few moments swallowed in silence is there another sound.
"Shhh, little girl," Lily's voice says gently. "...Sleep now."
There is the awful sound of stone cracking.
DG: Lily Keil has used her Tool Sea Medium toward her party's challenge, Multitudes.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"Hmm," Avril considers, giving this all the thought it requires. "Perhaps it is something he thought of himself. My teacher says that even a fool can produce wisdom once in their lifetime."
That's not a very nice sentiment, Avril.
"In any case, perhaps it is worth a try together," she declares.
Before the Cucco hits the mirror.
Before Dean, she notices, shields her even with his smaller body.
When you stand between two mirrors, it's quite the dangerous place to be.
There's no avoiding it here: any given point, everyone here is caught between a multitude of mirrors.
Here, one's self can echo out into eternity.
Changed.
Altered.
Every different choice and every different possibility, playing out against the river of time.
A woman, eyes widened in shock as she watches her friend, unarmed, cut down by a powerful pale-haired man with a face as cold as any demon's.
A woman, glassy-eyed, seated in silence next to that same man. There had been something she had been trying to do, but to even recall it now is a struggle.
A woman, reaching desperately to grab for the hand of a falling woman. She misses this time (this time?) and horrified, can only scream as the red-haired woman falls from the mountainside.
A woman, traversing an endless expanse of ice, pressing deeper to find what she fears locked in these depths.
A woman, watching--
as they die and they die and they die and they die again
and she remembers that--
...Does... time flow like a river?
A woman, who makes a golem implode with a single expression of will.
A woman, who bears a blade with the power of light itself, able to cut down all who stand against her.
Even here. Even now.
Time isn't a river. Time is--
There is again, light.
DG: Avril Vent Fleur has used her Tool Beam Whip Mode toward her party's challenge, Multitudes.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
A million shards of light. Fei and Id both step backwards and then, of course, there's a multitude of selves bombarding them from all angles. It's not as if they don't understand what's going on. On the contrary, they know all too well what's going on. It is a familiar sensation. Too familiar. THEY OUTLIVE DEAN? It's a dream but maybe a dream is more real than the reality anyway. In reality there is little you can do but dreams last longer than your life. When you're dead, you dream forever. An ocean of experience compared to the ripple of existence.
In a now of sorts, Id is grimacing as he holds his hand to his forehead. Dean is denouncing violence and murder and is flat out yelling that he's better than that. "You barely even know me...! You don't know what I've done!" Id yells at Dean. "Even the others don't know me! Even I don't know me!"
He hates him so much, that Dean. The way he reminds himself of what it was like to have hope, to look at golems and airships and gears with wonder, to not realize the end all these wonders were truly made for.
Fei says, "Good and kind..?" He lowers his head. "...Then why did Weltall...Why didn't Weltall stop me? Why didn't it know I didn't want to hurt anybody. I didn't know what I was doing but..."
He trails off, looking over to Lily. "...You really think that?" He asks of her. "Look, I am...I can't keep..."
He doesn't manage to say much else, words stumbling over themselves.
But Id has had enough. When he sees some alternate timeline Feis starting to flicker into existence through the mirror shards he says, "/NOPE/." and he grabs Fei's hand with one, and says, "Sorry we're skipping this one."
The screen pulls back revealing an edge and he steps outside the window with one leg, and then the other, dragging Fei along. He walks back to a previous screen where Nasrin is shouting 'Now think!!' and Id calls down to her. "Hey Nasrin we're skipping this one! You want out?"
He reaches down, scarcely waiting for an answer, and intends to pull Nasrin up into the wooden chair zone alongside him and Fei.
They'll probably meet back up with you later even as the Fei's around there start playing rock paper scissors with themselves to decide who is the real Fei even though the real Fei has long vacated the premises. Seems like they'll be catching up with you later.
"Last thing I need to deal with," Id jerks a thumb at Fei. "Is more of this asshole. Let's take five and meet back here at the next horrifying revelation."
DG: Fei Fong Wong has used his Tool RPS Badge toward his party's challenge, Multitudes.
===========================<* The Umbral Mirror *>============================
=========================<* CHALLENGE - Multitudes *>=========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Combat |Challenge Rating: 2 |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
Shards of mirror appear from nothingness, and then race forwards,
positioning themselves around each member of your group. When you look into
them, you see nothing but yourself, reflected to infinity--and then, each of
those reflections steps forth. One by one, they begin to change, taking on
the forms of what-ifs, could-have-beens, and might-bes. Each of you has been
separated from the others, trapped in a corridor with dozens of duplicates.
Only one iteration of you can escape, and each duplicate is determined to be
the that iteration.
=Dungeon Conditions: Wound, Secret============================================
======================<* The Umbral Mirror - Round 4 *>=======================
===========================< Results - Multitudes >===========================
Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fei Fong Wong 58 --(5)--> 63 Pass
RPS Badge 3 Combat Effects: Rally
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark 48 --(10)--> 58 Fail
Fight 0 Combat Effects: BASIC
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur 38 --(10)--> 48 Fail
Beam Whip Mode 3 Combat Effects: Fanfare
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lily Keil 38 --(10)--> 48 Fail
Sea Medium 1 Combat Effects: Cleanse, Rally, and L
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 58 --(5)--> 63 Pass
Bella Aeterna 4 Combat Effects: Fanfare and Efficient
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand 43 --(5)--> 48 Pass
Sky Medium 3 Combat Effects: Rally
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R 40 --(15)--> 55 Pass
Conditions: Secret(2)|Wound(2)
Effects: Cleanse
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Dragon Unit No. 1 Type R has passed this challenge! The party gained 15 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> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
It doesn't matter if you won't give up if you're dead.
It's just a niggling thought as all the versions of Dean Stark converge into a singular dead one. Like an intrusive thing that comes into your head at the most inconvenient of times.
It's there. Then it's gone.
The woman who made the golem implode with a single expression of will turns towards Avril. Eyes expressionless. There's another expression of will-
As if she were trying to kill the 'her' that she is now.
It's necessary.
The blackness closes in and Lily feels herself going to...sleep. And then everything explodes. As all those versions of herself rip through her head like a searing slideshow.
What's a little more trauma though to someone like her?
For others it's less dramatic. Rebecca comes to the end of her race. Diving - just in time to beat the dirty version of herself. It glares at her in desperation - like a chance stolen. Then it all fades.
Id totally skips it and a unit without a name suddenly hears a voice... dispelling the illusion of the bodies.
And then they're all together again. Just children... huddled in the dark. Awaiting the next terrible light that might come.
DG: Lily Keil has drawn a new Challenge.
============================<* The Umbral Mirror *>=============================
==========================<* CHALLENGE - Falsehood *>===========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 1 |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
Glimmering mirror-shards fall from above, forming a spiraling curtain that
stops you in your tracks. Each one contains a memory, or a piece of a
memory--some of them seem perfectly normal, but some of them seem wrong.
It's like bits of your memories have been fused with bits of your
companions', and none of the memories involved are good.
The memories won't stop hindering your progress until they're returned to
their rightful owners. Even still, do those owners want those memories back?
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify==================================================
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
...Mostly children, huddled in the dark.
What's a little more trauma to Lily? Perhaps all of it has been enough, has forced her to grow up as surely as it did in her life. ...Because when the illusion is gone, the child Lily is gone as well. In her place is a woman with black hair, a a gray coat over a violet tunic and black pants, with gray boots and no strange markings at all. She looks around the group, considering.
"...Are we all right?" she asks, kneeling down beside little Unit and putting a hand on her shoulder. "Don't be afraid, little one." Her voice is the same--but the way she talks is different. ...And her gaze lingers on Fei for a moment.
She glances up, and there's a little fascination in her eyes as more shards fall from above, spiraling, spiraling, a curtain. They fall beside all of them, memories, muddled, mixed; the shards make it hard to see, impossible to step forward without being torn to shreds. "Ah..." She glances at Unit, and there's a tiny gesture at her side--just a little shift of her fingers.
A shard falls beside the little Unit, and she remembers, suddenly, time in the courtyard with her father. He's a tall man, with dark hair, a military bearing and uniform. "...And so you see, Iris," he begins, "I know you have difficulty with this, but that accident is a chance to demonstrate tactics, as well--to demonstrate the knowledge you need to lead your soldiers to success."
He turns to Unit, looking her over. "You can become emotional about it--or you can consider: what is more necessary in the moment? A solder who can fight, or one who will only lay on the ground, unable to help the others?"
"...What is more useful to you among the enemy? A dead man, or one who can crave revenge one day?"
Lily watches Unit quite carefully in that moment.
DG: Avril Vent Fleur has contributed a Wits Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Falsehood.
DG: Fei Fong Wong has used his Tool Artist's Toolkit toward his party's challenge, Falsehood.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
They face each other down as the multitudes of Avril Vent Fleur wink out, as if the universe has winnowed down its possibilities to two versions of this woman. One stands coldly determined and defiant, a light trailing from the weapon in her hands. The other stands with her back to the other, whirling around from the Golem she has unmade with her sorcery to face herself.
Not just determined, not just defiant. She is cold, cold as the heart of winter. Power flares from her fingertips--
A younger Avril can't help but cringe, however much a brave face she attempts to plaster on. She's still a child: whatever lies ahead for her has yet to occur. She has not become her, not just yet.
But even those phantoms fade, before the sorceress can do more but prepare for the final blow. The world becomes dark, then swathed in a curtain of tinkling crystal.
Shards. Glass.
Diary, I remember the day she arrived, crashing into our lives.
The image flickers to that of a mountain, as the enormous arm of a Golem crashes into it. Snapping over to the moment both child Dean and child Avril creep up to the closed Golem's fist, which slowly opens to reveal the sleeping form of the red-haired girl. (was that how it happened? was that when it happened?)
What could we do but take her home to the village? Diary -- she could not remember anything! Just her name and her dream. She wanted to--
(what was it again?)
Find her memories? Was that me? Marry Dean? No, that was my dream. No, that was never mine. I-- Joinfinding Johnny Appleseedthe circus my past my future
my...
She's taking him away from me. I do not want to go but if I don't-- I will lose. I will lose him! I will not see him again. I know that. I will be left alone. There is no one else here -- there is nothing here. Do I truly have no choice? Must I follow simply because I cannot bear the pain?
Which one's real? The life where she grew up Dean's friend and met while young a mysterious red-haired girl from the sky who dragged the two of them from a sleepy life into a dangerous world? The one where she awoke from a dark silent sleep to enough memories that could be closed up in one clenched fist? (when had that happened? who was that girl who remembered nothing?)
don't leave me behind alone
An ordinary life... with friends. But that ordinary life... The anguish cuts so deep, deeper than she'd thought possible.
Avril hunches her shoulder, breathing hard as she stands amidst the storm of glass. Regal -- no, imperial, she lifts her chin as if to make a proclamation -- one that she does not truly have the authority invested in her to make, not just yet. Ice rimes her hands, crystallizing into a barrier, a moving glacier of a wall to push the shards away from her to a place where she can no longer be touched.
This isn't mine!
And she voices her decree: "I remember -- I remember now! I am Avril Vent Fleur! You there-- Rebecca!" That girl, that girl she knows, somehow (where? when?). "These memories are yours! They are not mine to keep!"
That dear girl. That poor girl. An ordinary life... now she understands. No life comes cheaply.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
Don't worry about me Dean. We will see each other again. I pROmiSE I won't cry.
A twelve year old Rebecca spins her gun. Like she's performing target practice.
Lining up the sight - she pulls the trigger. Being an adult means not crying anD dOInG wHaT iS necessary.
Only for a rebel - she knows it's a rebel somehow to gasp in horror as their body hits the floor.
A small Rebecca looms over another. Now you beg for mercy? There is none within me. She says as she raises a glove - Not a single tear shall I shEd. And snaps her fingers.
Rebecca Streisand views Dean Stark on the ground with a head injury, "What happened!? What did she do to Dean!? What did she DO?
Rebecca turns to face a small sickly looking Veruni. Her expression that of a displeased monarch. You. How dare you. This is the manner in which you treat someone who reaches out with an open hand? Instead you hurt him. I won't forgive you!
Rebecca lays on her bedroll, staring up at the sky. At the constellations on this strange world. Rebecca Stark. Rebecca Stark. She repeats to herself. Let's face it. It might not happen. He might never confess to you Or... you confess and he thinks it's weird and rejects you? What happens then? What happeNS?iF tHAt hApPEnED tHeN I would desire nothing more for my life to end by his hand.
The youngest of the Quarter Knights fights desperately against Rebecca and others besides, I'm . . . S t i l l . h e r e. Rebecca Streisand is wounded. She advances and with every footstep ice spreads and lingers. She raises her ARM and aims it point blank at the Quarter Knight's head. As, am I.
Even if she feels any sympathy. She does not hesitate to pull the trigger.
Rebecca is held back by the spiral, whimpering. Losing a sense of who she is with every passing moment, with every memory. Who is she?
Where does she end and this other girl begin? A small child reels at things she should not be thinking - should not have to be thinking. And tries to sort it out as tears well up in her eyes.
Looking at Avril right now she's not sure if that's her face or hers. When she says it though. 'I am Avril Vent Fleur! You there - Rebecca!' It triggers something. Thoughts. Memories. Feelings. Surprisingly out of her /own/ head. Memories that inspired her... to write about an extraordinary girl
BGM Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDd_C_uy4Wg
Hee. Hee. Well I have no intention of abandoning either of you.}
That's her memory. She doesn't know when.
Let us all be stupid fools. Together.
That one too! That one too. Memories /of/ the other girl. She remembers writing about each of those. She remembers each of those moments clearly.
They might not seem like much to anyone else but Avril just made her feel so good. In which she didn't feel so afraid anymore of being cast aside.
And she realizes the answer to where Rebecca ends and Avril begins was right there all along. In those eyes. In that smile. "You found them? I - I thank you!"
And soon enough little Rebecca is on her knees in front of Avril. Offering to her a pile of shards with eyes full of tears. "I... I think these are yours too. I..." Her voice falls, "I don't like them very much. They're not very nice."
The child says as her tears fall upon them to stain them. "They're not mine to keep either. If you want them back - they're yours. But I understand if decide you don't want them either." She says suddenly shy, "...but no matter what you decide."
Tear-stained eyes look up into Avril's as she says it outright, "I want to be your friend." For some reason - she feels like she is already. Still she has to say it aloud. To accept her. To welcome her into the duo of Dean and herself properly.
"And that means means even when things get bad or one of these comes back. I've been there for Dean's scraped knees and broken bones... and when that stray kitty died. And um... I'll be there for things like that with you too." Her voice drops to something that's almost inaudible, "If you want me to be."
DG: Rebecca Streisand has used her Tool Rebecca's Travel Diary toward her party's challenge, Falsehood.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
What is more necessary at the moment? A soldier who can fight, or one who will only lay on the ground, unable to help the others?
...I don't ever want to see you do that again.
She hears the voice of that friend who cared for her. After what had happened at the Kaiser's Summer Palace...
Disappearing into my Gear was bad enough--tearing out your own heart to go after that machine directly was suicidal.
That's right. She became a soldier who can fight, because she thought that the only way to help the others was to become...
A machine...
The /least/ that you can do is stay back and help us with the talents that work for you. The /least/ that you can do is not make me watch another friend have her heart torn out in front of my eyes.
A machine...
But the Unit pauses, as she looks up towards a... shard, which transforms into a mask. She sees herself in it, gazing into its eyes. They reflect the gleam of the mirror's shard upon her.
...
"Ladies, gentlemen," the blonde Hyadean steps out, dressed in a crisp Kislevi uniform that signifies her as an elite member of the military. She bows. "My apologies to have made you wait."
She lifts her head with a confident smile. The room claps.
"My name is Riesenlied Keil of the Kislevi Department of State. I understand that you have been speaking to my father, Colonel Dietrich Keil..."
...
Riesenlied's head droops, her mouth hanging open gently. The wires criss-cross around her, trailing up her body, ending with little circular pads taped to various nerve and vessel endings.
"... increase the intensity."
She spasms, forcefully and painfully this time. Her mouth hangs open a little harder. She tries to keep drool from leaking out.
"... so this is a Metal Demon's ... fascinating ..."
...
Riesenlied's cheeks colour as the handsome Captain holds her hands. "Don't worry," speaks Noeline as she brings her forth in a bold and vivacious twist onto the dance floor. All eyes are upon them.
"I can't dance. I'll just step on your--"
There is a laugh as Noeline brings them apart, held only by a hand--
--and Riesenlied bumps into a nearby dancing couple. "Oh!"
...
"... why ... why?" the diplomat of Kislev finds herself scampering, huddled behind a still-standing piece of the hotel's walls. She's bleeding from one side... from where a stray bullet had grazed her. Her eyes widen as she hears loud metallic stomping--
--the scanning noise of an ominous quadruped killing machine not far away...
She casts her eyes one way. Captain Noeline was still fighting for her life -- but her dear friends, her companions... one of them -- impaled upon the claw of the ruthless automaton known as 'Gryndille'--
...
"... this..."
Unit's head droops as she takes the mask off.
"...this isn't my mask..."
She looks towards Lily with a quiet whimper. She lowers her head. "... these are important memories ... that you shared with me ... but ..."
A pause. "... it's backwards... it wasn't 'noel', it was... 'leon'... was it not..."
She holds the mask out to Lily. "... this belongs to you ..."
DG: Riesenlied has used her Tool Dragon's Tear toward her party's challenge, Falsehood.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
And in another place...
...
Nasrin steps out of the shadows as she looks towards Id and Fei. She lowers her head for a moment and steps closer towards him. Her expression is pensive.
"Yeah. I'm joining you..."
She quietly takes a seat on the wooden chair next to him.
"... tell me... Id... do you ever think of a day when you and I..."
A pause, as she has a quiet smile. It looks... proud, and at the same time, resigned.
"When we won't be needed anymore?"
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"Yes I do!" Dean counters, yelling right back at Id. "Maybe I don't know everything, but I know you were kind to someone who was in pain, when you didn't have to be! That means, no matter what else you've done, there's good in you! I've seen it, so I know it's true! So you ARE more than what you think you are! You ARE better than that! SO THERE!!" The child seals this assertion with a stomp of his foot.
But there is a Fei, and while the young Dean hasn't quite been able to manage to focus in properly on him or Nasrin, he lifts his head and looks around in confusion, as if hearing his questions about Weltall from far away.
But then there are infinite reflections, some old and some young and some in between. Dean jumps to protect Avril, but then the light overtakes him. A child may have an infinite future, but some of those futures have already closed off, because choices have been made and the future has become the present. The him that is a bright-eyed child, the him that is in the middle of his adventure, the him who has become the leader of the world... all of those are--him.
So when the lights die down, he is simply himself, Dean Stark, the daring boy with the twin ARMs. He looks up at Lily, who's no longer a child either, and gives her a nod. "Everyone's got so many painful memories," he observes, sounding sad. Then he shakes his head. "I'm okay, but--"
But then shards of mirrors begin to fall like razor-sharp snow, and Dean looks up at them. They swirl around him, shining light in his eyes, glinting like
a swaying bolt
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei's mind is stranger than most.
"She's looking at us," Id asides to Nasrin fwumping into a wooden chair. He materializes a second one for this purpose. "Is she like Midori...?"
Nasrin asks a question which draws Fei's attention. "Not needed anymore...?"
"Don't get too excited," Id tells Fei before looking back to Nasrin, shaking his head. "Once upon a time maybe... But this coward isn't worthy of being our existence. But Riesenlied isn't like us..." Id does manage a small smile. "I hope you feel that warm embrace." He cares for Nasrin but in a way it's because of that care that he wants her to not exist anymore. Of course, it's not as if she REALLY won't exist and it's because of that Id can think this way in the first place.
Then something strange happens.
The location shifts suddenly to a cave and Fei finds himself in a cave watching a golem arm. Somehow, he is filled with an excitement that he can't control because he sees a golem arm! An actual golem arm! That's right, Fei, you too used to think these creatures were 'cool', didn't you? You used to feel great empathy for the golems, for what they were made to do because of foolish humans.
"SUH-WEET!" Fei shouts and throws his arms to the side like he's an airplane, laughing as he runs for the golem arm. The screen shifts back towards a red-haired pale man in pigtails.
"How foolish of me," Idbecca says, watching this. "Sticking around to watch what would happen... He's no different than he ever was."
Fei embraces the golem arm, rubbing his cheek against it. "So big, so heavy, so shiny...I think I'm in love..." Fei says. "Come on, kid, you gotta check this out! It's awesome!" He looks back to Rebecca, grinning widely.
Id placs his hands on his hips. "Are you crazy? This is someone else's memory. Don't you get it? If we don't do something soon, they'll die. Like before."
Fei looks at Idbecca for a moment before he hears the golem arm moving. He runs back a few feet to get out of the way and within that arm....
It's...Elly? But why is her hair white? No, no...
"I..." Fei begins. "I wanted to pretend a little longer..." He curls his fingers inward. "I wanted to live his life again, just a little bit longer..."
"Not even our mind is truly our own, fake." Id says, taking Fei's by the hand. "Come on. We have to hurry."
The screen pulls back away, revealing that in truth they never left the room with the wooden chair. Nasrin has an ample supply of mind popcorn if she'd like.
Dean has made contact. But he's not the only one who has made contact. Lily is making light contact, looking through the screen that should be one way. Riesenlied or Unit--they can't see behind the glass, but there's a screen for them as well. And Dean observes these screens. And these screens include a screen for Dean. Fei is observing Dean and Dean is observing Fei observing Dean and Dean is observing Dean observing Fei observing Dean observing Dean and also Fei observing Riesenlied observing Lily observing Riesenlied.
The chain continues infinitely. Causality ties itself in circles. It erupts in fractal patterns through Dean's eyes, expanding ever outward and ever inward. It keeps growing and growing and it doesn't stop. It can't stop. It's like one of those pictures that keeps going on forever by design but it's in your head and it keeps growing, and growing, and you can't shut out the memories, you can't adapt the memories, you can't filter the memories. Each one shines painfully like hot knives in your neural matter.
Something is coming.
Something is starting to emerge. Fei is slow to act, but Id is quick to move, his form rapidly turning back to normal as he tackles Dean out of Fei's mind, out of Fei's memories, out of Dean's memories, out of Riesenlied's memories, out of Lily's memories, out of the memories of memories of memories of memories of memories of memories of memories before that something can arrive, moments before it can arrive. All it would take is one look to damn Dean.
Just one. And Id won't have that. He hates Dean so much.
But he doesn't hate Dean that much.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
screens upon screens upon screens like the image input windows of a
Golem, he sits inside a Golem, fighting an enemy Golem in the middle of Capo Bronco is this capo bronco? he doesn't know this town, he doesn't know these people
(maybe that's just because he doesn't remember?) And there's pain, there's so much pain, his head is throbbing and he screams and clutches it, he has to help these people, he has to protect them, he has to (crush them) (isn't it fun to hold up a magnifying glass and watch ants burn?)
and Dean slumps and there's something *wrong*, there's so much that feels wrong, but he feels his lips crease up and the Golem explodes with power and the enemy falls before him and everything becomes ash.
Dean can only watch in horror as everyone he's ever known, the town he spent his whole life in (no one he's ever known, a town he's never been to before) is reduced to a wasteland in but a moment. And in that moment, in that throbbing agony in his chest, there is another emotion, alien and familiar and frightening for both:
excitement. a release like "finally!" at how easily they fall to his power.
"No, that's wrong," he says aloud in the cockpit of his own personal Golem, the one thing he's always wanted, always dreamed of. but it's "That's wrong!" so painful, everything is so painful, like infinite needles all working in under his skin and nails and eyes and "This is ALL WRONG!!"
and
the Golem's bolt glints, and something bubbles up, something rushes up, something towers up like a tsunami about to hit land, and it's so dark he can't see but in another moment he will
and
Id tackles him, tackles him right out of there, out of that Golem and away from the screens and out of Fei's mind and out out out /out/ and they land hard, land back in what passes for reality, at least in the place where the six/seven/eight of them are joined together. The breath knocks out of Dean's lungs, bubbling up through the nothingness, but it's okay because he's already drowned but you can drown and still live. His vision blurs, and he shakes his head, and he peers up at a double image.
"Fei... Wait--" He looks between Fei and the bloody boy, back and forth, back and forth, until Id's form melts and reconfigures to the entity he knows him as. Though this is a dream and conventional logic has no place here, Fei had told him just the other day that he'd come to the village of Lahan in a state just like this boy's. And in that Golem's cockpit, he'd seen a vision of a little boy, bloodied up, in just the same way. And in the dream, there is a flash of something, and he has to ask: "--are you two...?"
And then his head slumps back from the lingering echo of a migraine, and his eyes shut. "Ugh..."
DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool Standard Cartridge toward his party's challenge, Falsehood.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Something /strange/ happens.
Nasrin's jaw drops, and it's not because her facial muscles are rotten and missing either. She also suddenly almost can't see, not because she's suddenly blind or ensconced in magical darkness or anything but--
--but because she's got a massive cowboy hat with an absurdly long brim flopping over her face, and it's only the bullet holes that allow her to see through it. The rest of her is dressed in a blue work shirt with a vest and pants with a leather side-coat.
"... who the hell am I supposed to be???"
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei is quiet. He doesn't answer Dean's question, instead walking away a bit, eyes closed.
"No," Id, the bloody boy says, crouching by Dean and by Id's perspective he isn't lying. "You're wrong."
And with that he straightens up and adds, "Be glad you're still alive. It was a close one."
He does, honestly, feel a strange affinity with the acrobat. It honestly does feel like he's keeping a bunch of idiots from doing extreme dangerous stupid things all the goddamn time.
And in that moment of reflection, he gives Rebecca a long look before moving on.
The shit he goes through for that Ida.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"Yes. They are all right here."
With a gesture of a hand, an inflection of her will, Avril sends that barrier about herself crashing down, buoying up the shards that are not hers to claim in a vessel of light and ice.
Like a bird, in midflight.
It soars across the distance, a mastercraft of sorcery and a child's imagination, before as all ice does... It melts away, returning Rebecca's memories gently.
"They belong to you. Isn't that right? Grandmother always said... it's wrong to keep what isn't yours to keep."
She steps lightly, approaching Rebecca, a shy smile melting the frost clinging to her demeanor. "And mother always said, you should treasure what belongs to you. So even if they're bad and painful, I will be taking those back." There is a pause, and even the child of royalty it seems can look sheepish. "...Thank you."
And she reaches out her hand.
"It's so strange. We've just met, but it feels like I've known you and Dean all my life."
"I want to be your friend, too."
DG: Lily Keil has used her Tool Dog toward her party's challenge, Falsehood.
============================<* The Umbral Mirror *>=============================
==========================<* CHALLENGE - Falsehood *>===========================
|Type: Exploration |Dungeon Ability: Wits |Challenge Rating: 1 |
---------------------------< Challenge Information: >---------------------------
Glimmering mirror-shards fall from above, forming a spiraling curtain that
stops you in your tracks. Each one contains a memory, or a piece of a
memory--some of them seem perfectly normal, but some of them seem wrong.
It's like bits of your memories have been fused with bits of your
companions', and none of the memories involved are good.
The memories won't stop hindering your progress until they're returned to
their rightful owners. Even still, do those owners want those memories back?
=Dungeon Conditions: Stupify==================================================
=======================<* The Umbral Mirror - Round 5 *>========================
============================< Results - Falsehood >=============================
Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fei Fong Wong 63 --(5)--> 68 Pass
Artist's Toolkit 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark 58 --(5)--> 63 Pass
Standard Cartridge 3 Wits Effects: Fanfare
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur 48 --(10)--> 58 Fail
Investigate 0 Wits Effects: BASIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lily Keil 48 --(5)--> 53 Pass
Dog 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riesenlied 63 --(5)--> 68 Pass
Dragon's Tear 1 Wits Effects: Cleanse
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand 48 --(5)--> 53 Pass
Rebecca's Travel Diary 2 Wits Effects: Enlighten
-----------------------------------< Party >------------------------------------
Leader: Riesenlied 55 --(30)--> 85 Pass
Conditions: Secret(1)|Stupify(2)
Effects: Cleanse|Enlighten(1)
===============================< Dream Chasers >================================
DG: The party led by Riesenlied has passed this challenge! The party gained 30 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: Fei Fong Wong has drawn a new Challenge.
===========================<* The Umbral Mirror *>============================
=========================<* CHALLENGE - Reflection *>=========================
|Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
Something strange has happened. The way ahead looks identical to the path
behind you, as though you'd passed through an invisible line of symmetry.
Time seems to compress as you move forward, facing challenges identical to
those that brought you here, but mirrored. Cracks start to appear in the
labyrinth, revealing thick, inky blackness, and tendrils of Malevolence. You
have to hurry.
The final obstacle is the surface of the mirror, far ahead. Swim upwards
through the inky blackness, shatter it, and escape this nightmare.
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Lily in gray looks through the invisible walls, the screens, and considers Id and Nasrin both, thoughtful. But she does not speak to them. She returns her attention to the little Unit, to her memory shards, until she is forced to contend with those that land close to /her/. ...They are with her. She watches the little Unit as diplomat, masked, dancing... In pain. Dispassionate, she turns, and looks--
...
Lily Keil, a child, grits her teeth and chatters under the cold, arms crossed and trying to warm herself. The gigantic Dragon Fossil beside her is little help on this front, and the flames she's conjured before her are barely enough. She stares into it, willing herself to stand, to try again. ...But it's hard. She's small, and young, and frail, and it's so big, but...
But she isn't alone. Lily blinks as a great figure in armor approaches her, looks down. They exchange words--
He removes his cape, and drapes it over her shoulders as the fire winks out. ...She starts to stand.
...
Lily looks out over the Photosphere again, and knows that he's not coming back today. Leon would not know, after all, would not see. ...But it doesn't matter. She looks out over the Photosphere, here in the gutter, and she clenches her hand. ...Down the stairs she goes, picking up her great weapon along the way. ...Her weapon like Father's.
...
Stretched out on the table, Lily doesn't show her pain as the surgeries continue, the attempts to strengthen her body for what must happen. There is blood, /red/ blood, the wrong blood, and still she waits. She is a soldier. She is a machine.
...
At the head of an army, Lily Keil stares out over the burning buildings and smoky air of Adlehyde, riding her dragon down, down, down into the square. She lands there, looks out over the Golems, the people assembled.
"...Surrender now," says the woman in armor, "And you will be spared. Fight..."
Lily slams the butt of her great spear onto the ground. "And you will be /cleansed/."
...
"Father!" Lily calls, stepping back into a ready position, her spear held out before the great armored Hyadean before her. Siegfried is impossible to face down, she knows that, least of all for her tainted flesh, her /organic/ nature under the machines. "...You don't understand. This place... This place deserves the chance to live! To try!"
It all turns to violence. It always will. She cannot escape her nature. How could she think she could be a peacemaker?
...
Lily looks down to the little Unit who takes off the mask, having gathered up shards, picked up each of them. Important memories, the Unit calls them. "...It's all right," she says, with a small smile. "I don't mind. ...Was it nice, to try on being someone?" Lily offers the handful of shards towards the Unit. "Careful. They're sharp." ...In turn, she takes the mask, looking it over... and slides it into an inside pocket.
By this time they have all been returned, and Lily looks to the assembled group, the children huddling together. "...Fragments of mind..." She seems thoughtful, as she looks forward. She walks. She steps forward, and forward--
And ahead, the path is where they came. Time compresses, and the Lily walking feels it, lifts her hand to notice the difference, feels a /ripple/ within herself. Cracks start to appear. They must hurry.
"...You have no more power here," she murmurs with a little laugh, lifting her hand. Lily does not redo the challenges ahead of her. The shards, mirrored, reversed, approach her of the memories, the ex-soldier's recollections. The chains hang at her wrists now, at her hands, as if binding her. But she lifts one; the chains are loose enough for that. She lifts it--
A column of darkness erupts from her hand, engulfing each meant for her, shattering the obstacles before her. ...Again she looks at Fei, before she moves forward.
"...Hm hm," she comments, and blasts again. It is magic like Lily usually uses, but there is something far more advanced about its feeling, complete, /controlled/.
Still she moves forward. Still, she annihilates obstacles in her path.
DG: Lily Keil has used her Tool Rune Chain toward her party's challenge, Reflection.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean stares at Fei and Id. Fei only walks away. Id tells him he's wrong.
/You don't even know what I was going to ask,/ he thinks, but a part of him has a feeling that he *did* know, and that's why he told him he was wrong. And Dean, pure, honest, straightforward Dean, sincerely doesn't know if that means he really is wrong or if he actually is right.
Id straightens and Dean sits up. Dean's still staring at him. That feeling of the tsunami about to crush him and everything around him still prickles on his skin, like he'd felt the first drops of saltwater caving in on him before Id had tackled him out of the memory. The other aspects of the memory he still remembers too, and that leaves him with a sickening feeling, but that--that had been impending doom at its purest.
Dean... smiles.
"Yeah. It sure was," he says, rising to his feet. "Thanks for saving me, Id. You really are a good friend."
And then he jogs on over to Avril and Rebecca, now freshly released from their own intertwined memory cycle. "Guys! You okay? I had a rough time of it but I made it out all right!" He pauses as he actually takes in the sight of the two, the way they hold each other's hands, what they say about wanting to be each other's friends. "What d'you two mean? We're all already friends!" he declares with a bright grin, because some things about Dean will never change.
Other things change very clearly. Dean blinks over at Nasrin, dressed in a familiar extremely-floppy hat with vest and jeans. Then he grins again and elbows his two best friends. "Hey, Avril, Rebecca, look! It's Greg!" He waves jauntily at Nasgreg. "Hey, Greg! I didn't know you were here on Lunar, too! Probably Lunar, anyway! Nice seeing you again!"
... is he serious, or is he joking around? It's hard to tell for sure.
Together, the group advances forward through... the dream-mirror-ice-ocean? Is there a point in trying to define this place? Perhaps so, since that at least provides some reference--especially when the group passes a certain threshold, and suddenly they seem to be moving backward while still walking forward.
"Huh? Didn't we just--?" Dean utters, looking over his shoulder. But it's not exactly same; in point of fact, it's in reverse. And the further they go on forwards, the faster what they've already seen come back to them--
Id drags him before a tsunami that ebbs away, leaving him before a town that rebuilds from ash before his very eyes, thrill to horror beating in his heart, as he sits within a Golem--his present day self falls back within a battle of wills against all his other selves, crumbling apart like a poorly-baked muffin, until there's only a young boy left--a broken mirror rears up before them, and he pulls his shovel from its surface, taking away shards and scattering them on the floor--and then he lets go of a faceless girl's hand, leaving her behind to cling to a pillar of ice, as he runs away and floats up, up, up, to the surface of the sea, the frozen north, the frozen heart, the surface of the mirror--
The mirror is cracking. The sea is cracking. The labyrinth is cracking. Purple-black tendrils of Malevolence waft in, whispering in among the currents, looping lazily around Dean's waist and wrists and ankles. There's space yet to swim out of them, the loops are so wide... but they're closing in. If he cannot break through the mirror, they will surely drag him back down, where he will drown and, this time, die.
If the chick cannot break through its shell, it will die without being born.
With a shout that sends bubbles spraying from his mouth, Dean pounds his fists against the too-smooth glass. Pound, pound, punch, slap--and when he draws his hand back, suddenly his shovel is there once again, ready to dig through the air as it is through the earth. Dean's eyes gleam bright as he realizes its presence, and he takes its handle with both hands and flips himself upside down, as if he were standing on the underside of the mirror.
'You have no more power here,' Lily says nearby as she brings her own form of strength to bear, and Dean smiles.
And then, he begins to dig a hole.
DG: Dean Stark has used his Tool The Trusty Shovel toward his party's challenge, Reflection.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Nasrin has a faint little grumble under her breath as she watches Id take charge of the situation, grapples Dean and pulls him out of that memory before it's too late. She's genuinely confused, instinctively--
No, it's another person's instincts. Like an impression of someone brought upon by--
Dean. It's Dean's memory, isn't it? It's confirmed as Dean addresses her as someone called 'Greg'.
"Heh... always up to trouble, aren't you? You never change, Dean," she speaks in a drawl that isn't quite /hers/.
Wow, this is a lot more natural than she thought it would be. She needs to snap out of it before she gets sucked in--
--and peels through as Id brings them before the maelstrom of thoughts, feelings. She lets it happen. Slowly, the peripheral memories start to wash away, as she reasserts her own identity as a subconscious facet of... the right person.
"... that was a trip," Nasrin admits.
~*~
The little Unit looks towards Lily and-- tucks her head down, looking bashful. She had to admit, Lily was right. It was nice to try on another mask, but in doing so, she learnt about something important...
How precious her own memories are. Even if she thinks she herself isn't living them because she has no mask on...
"... father ... looks proud of you," she admits to Lily, having gazed upon the shards that Lily hands her. "... father ... i want to call him 'father' ... one day ..."
Even after all that's happened? After the inexcusable things Siegfried has done? ... She can't rationalise her feelings to what actions have happened...
"everyone...!" little Unit sounds so relieved to be together with others again. She couldn't gaze into all their different memories, but knows that they experienced a similar experience. "everyone is here together... again..."
Nothing, it would seem, would make her happier than that. And that's a very familiar sentiment in her waking moments, isn't it?
A weave of Malevolence emerges before her, owing from the cracking sea and the Mirror before them. But she's ready this time. She remembered that there too was a mirror...
In that place. That important place she has to go back to.
"it's okay. i know how to be strong here..."
And that, to Unit, at present, seems to be...
...playing her flute--
--and an enormous spiraling bundle of cuccos emerge from out of the nether. Their eyes gleam with a vengeance as if their flock had been harmed -- and in this dream-space, their flock means the bundle of children (and Lily) that have gathered in the darkness.
"if you mess with my friends you'll get the cucco!!"
DG: Riesenlied has used her Tool Flute of the Cucco Queen toward her party's challenge, Reflection.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Id says, "I didn't do it for you." to Dean. "You'll know why some day." But of course he'd say that, right? Because that's how he talks to friends and all? Well, regardless, he seems to be turning inward right now. Metaphorically. He looks over ot Nasrin for a moment before adding, "It's almost over."
Fei shakes his head, clearing it out. He gives the Unit a small smile, at least, as she plays that familiar melody. "Riese..." He says. "You're starting to remember yourself, I think!" He then starts swimmingthrough the way ahead. It looks so similar. Cracks are starting to appear throughout the labyrinth. Malevolence. There's malevolence in here. What is he going to DO?
So many memories. So many conflicting thoughts...but Fei just seems to swim through them all as swimmingly as anything. He doesn't seem to have difficulty keeping track of which is which which is strange in of itself. Lily can give him looks, but Fei seems to be so relieved by the thought of the exit, that his full focus is on that.
But he doesn't do anything to break open the way. He hesitates, in fact, because a shadow has fallen over him, and frankly the rest of the group. He looks up.
And then he quickly ducks as a giant Nisan cross swings through the air and towards the surface of the mirror. By coincidence or whatever else, it is about to slam full on. And it has both inertia and mass supporting it in its endeavour to wreck mass destruction.
"Wh..what..." Fei says.
"Ha! Yes! This should not be! DIE!" Id screams. "DIE!!!"
DG: Fei Fong Wong has used his Tool Mother's Cross toward his party's challenge, Reflection.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean just keeps smiling at Id. "Why *did* you do it, then? Why'd you do something kind that you didn't have to do?"
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
The bird returns to her - melting, leaving a warm feeling inside. "Thanks for bringing them back to me." Before nodding firmly, "Uh-huh. I'll treasure them like my diary- not a golem bolt." Sorry Dean. Even more grow up she'll still thinks its super weird that's your treasure and that normal people don't have treasures like that. "It is strange." She says shyly as she puts her hands over Avril, and entrusts the shards back with such a simple gesture, "I feel the same way though."
And then Rebecca is herself again. It happens so suddenly. A resolution as all of her memories conjoin together again to make a semblance of sense. And suddenly what she was doing doesn't seem to make too much sense. Down on her knees - this position causes her cheeks to catch on fire.
"I know that!" Rebecca says all of a sudden as she rises to her feet and rubs an arm looking away self-consciously, "I just got kind of caught up in the moment and... wished we'd been friends even sooner maybe."
Like they'd grown up together perhaps. That Avril had joined them before. That she'd been a childhood friend - just like Dean. It's a stark difference from the memory Avril just experienced. Her fear of Avril taking Dean further away from her. Despite the fact that she's still running into walls rather than making her decisions.
And then Dean calls attention to Nasrin and - Rebecca points at them "Dean that isn't Greg! That's just someone in Greg's hat!" Good thing she didn't see Idbecca right? "And another thing!" She suddenly points at Id - and suddenly too embarrassed at the thought of calling anything out - she just says the first thing on her mind as she looks away from him, "... ... ... You got the braids wrong. Let me braid your hair next time."
Other things happen. Around her. Everything is cracking. Malevolence sweeps around her in all of its eddies and currents.
All of those memories coming back in reverse.
But it's okay.
It's okay because there's a memory at the forefront of her mind.
'You can do anything as long as you don't give up!'
She wouldn't believe it if it were just herself. She absolutely wouldn't. She couldn't. She doesn't have that much reckless unbridled confidence on her best day.
Let's be stupid fools together.
Join it together and it feels like some things which are impossible - some stupid reckless things can be possible as long as they don't give up... and as long as they're together.
As the cascade of shards comes at her. One of them - one of the first resembles her practicing with that old can on that old shooting range she set up.
Drawing her revolver, shots start ringing out. One after the other. Each with impossible aim and reflexes in this strange dream bullet hell.
The shards wisp away as the shots continue on their trajectory, peppering the mirror in their inexorable path.
Unlike reality. She doesn't have to reload.
DG: Rebecca Streisand has contributed a Brute Basic Action toward her party's challenge, Reflection.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Id says, "I wear my braids as I please."
Dean doesn't even get a response tsun tsun.
<Pose Tracker> Rebecca Streisand has posed.
"And how you please is all wrong!"
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"I didn't want to look like Pippi Longstocking." Id says, summoning an image of the cartoon character in his hand so Rebecca knows.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Hands interlink; for a moment, both girls are as if they had just met while they were still small, gazing into each other's eyes-- And things click back into place, their memories restored again to the point where they should be. Ah. That's right, isn't it -- it's no wonder it's as if they knew one another. They do, as Dean points out. "It really does feel as if I have known both of you all my life," she repeats, a smile more akin to her adult self's resting on her lips. If they had met when they had been children... grown up together... ah, if only.
Before she, too, turns and blinks as Greg appears to-- No, that isn't Greg. "You are a little too short to be Greg," Avril points out, before smiling a little too kindly. "Perhaps next time you might get it right?"
But it's Lily's approach, actually, that thefts Avril's attention. The young girl's gaze rests on her as if captivated. Her brows burrow. Her lips press thin. It's about as close to dead-serious as a girl her age can manage, and her back straight she takes an unerring two steps towards Lily.
"...Who are you? You were not here before."
There may not be time to linger on the matter long though--
It's as if time had suddenly decided to turn backwards. In stuttering motion like a backwards-moving zoetrope, Avril has the strange view of herself as if from the vantage point of a skybound third party. Her hand parts from Rebecca's. A bird of ice reforms and returns from whence it came, shards scattering as a wall of ice reforms then pulls in towards her. Vanishes again. Glass spirals off in a dance, reflecting a million interations of the same woman across an infinity, then is itself dragged back towards the mirror. She pulls back a shard into a bloodied hand and backs away from the broken pane of silvered glass.
The mirror, which then vanishes into darkness, the darkness of the depths of the sea -- the Guardian releases them from her mouth, a judgement that becomes undone and gone in the blink of an eye. Then she's back walking along the sea of glass, then she's perched again upon the ice floe as if it were her throne, and...
Drops back into the depths.
Everything becomes undone in time, wound back to one point as if it were to then loop around again. Floating, her arms wrapped loosely around her legs, Avril changes. Growing. Ageing. Unfolds, even this form running backwards/forwards to reach the starting point once again. ...Starting point?
She opens her eyes.
Ah, there's Dean, she thinks, watching him as he tackles the matter of that which must break head-on, caught in a stable float, just for the moment. That's... what I like about him.
And there's Rebecca. Dependable, unwavering -- even if, she thinks, the thought like a pulse for her in the dark, even if she had come because she felt she had to. Maybe... both of us can stop being lonely now.
That's right. Back to the starting point.
I'm... so tired. When I wake up, I hope that I will see the both of you again.
Bubbles trickle from the corner of her mouth. And once more she closes her eyes as if falling into a deep sleep in the dark.
A golem's arm crashes from above below? from where? towards the glass. And just like the last time, wrapped safe in its fist sleeps a young woman.
DG: Avril Vent Fleur has used her Tool Remote Golem Override toward her party's challenge, Reflection.
===========================<* The Umbral Mirror *>============================
=========================<* CHALLENGE - Reflection *>=========================
|Type: Final |Dungeon Ability: Brute |Challenge Rating: 2 |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
Something strange has happened. The way ahead looks identical to the path
behind you, as though you'd passed through an invisible line of symmetry.
Time seems to compress as you move forward, facing challenges identical to
those that brought you here, but mirrored. Cracks start to appear in the
labyrinth, revealing thick, inky blackness, and tendrils of Malevolence. You
have to hurry.
The final obstacle is the surface of the mirror, far ahead. Swim upwards
through the inky blackness, shatter it, and escape this nightmare.
=Dungeon Conditions: Weaken===================================================
======================<* The Umbral Mirror - Round 6 *>=======================
===========================< Results - Reflection >===========================
Player Exhaustion Pass/Fail
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fei Fong Wong 68 --(5)--> 73 Pass
Mother's Cross 4 Brute Effects: None
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Stark 63 --(5)--> 68 Pass
The Trusty Shovel 2 Brute Effects: Stalwart
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avril Vent Fleur 58 --(5)--> 63 Pass
Remote Golem Override 4 Brute Effects: None
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lily Keil 53 --(5)--> 58 Pass
Rune Chain 3 Brute Effects: Stalwart and Efficien
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Riesenlied 68 --(5)--> 73 Fail
Flute of the Cucco Queen 1 Brute Effects: Cleanse
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Streisand 53 --(5)--> 58 Fail
Force 0 Brute Effects: BASIC
----------------------------------< Party >-----------------------------------
Leader: Riesenlied 85 --(35)--> 120 Pass
Conditions: Weaken(2)
Effects: Cleanse
==============================< Dream Chasers >===============================
DG: The party led by Riesenlied has successfully explored The Umbral Mirror!
===========================<* The Umbral Mirror *>============================
==========================<* CHALLENGE - Insight *>===========================
|Type: Discovery |Dungeon Ability: Conclusion|Challenge Rating: 1 |
--------------------------< Challenge Information: >--------------------------
The surface of the mirror shatters, once again, and its hold is broken.
Whether you awaken or remain asleep, the rest of your night holds no further
terrors, and the insight you've gained helps you put the ordeal in
perspective.
An image lingers in your mind, even after you're awake. A mass of horrible
memories, streaming out from the minds of three tormented souls and sinking
deep into the lifeblood of the Earth. Above, a castle stands vigil on a
lonely, Malevolence-choked mountain. Something has been feeding the
memories, and the Malevolence saturating them. Very soon, they will reach
critical mass.
You have to stop it.
=Dungeon Conditions: Treasure=================================================
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Much like anything else, the journey in the mirror must come to a close at some point.
The rush of Malevolence threatens to overwhelm them. But even in a dream, even as children huddling in the dark, one thing has been made clear to them, to their bonds... to their thoughts.
That they won't be overcome, no matter how sordid and painful the process is for them. That, as Rebecca thinks with that thought in the forefront of her mind, that they can do anything as long as they don't give up...
So let them all be stupid fools together.
It only takes a single fool to change the world, after all.
Nasrin has a quiet 'tssk' as Rebecca and Avril call her out and says, "Just because I don't have the height to be a dashing Golem Crusher? That's /heightist/," with a fond little grumble.
... it might've felt good to pretend to be part of a group, for once, for the girl who only exists now in memory.
Lily pushes through with a confident challenge. It does not have any more power over her... and as the chains lift, the columns of darkness erupt and dispel away the darkness. Fire with fire. That's the way of the Witch.
Dean does what he always does best -- he digs. Dig and dig he does; with each of his shovels, so fondly named, they become a symbol of what his personage is, much like the golem bolt that he so clearly treasures.
Fei swims through, pushing through past the Malevolence and lets that giant Nisan cross -glint-
--and slam onto the surface of the mirror. There's a resounding 'wwwHHHAMMMmmm' that is louder and more powerful than it should, because of the power it has in this space.
And the girl descends, upon that Golem's arm. Which girl would that be? We have seen so many here, in this dreamspace that does not adhere to the tenets of logic, continuity and rational thought.
But it's all right, because--
As that Golem arm crashes, they know...
That they will see each other again.
The mirror is crumbled, as the last of Rebecca's bullets and the final swarm of cuccos finish into a photo-flourish.
As that dreamscape starts to crumble... the image lingers within them. A mass of horrible memories, streaming out of the minds of three tormented souls too familiar for some... sinking deep into the very soil of Lunar. A familiar castle, standing vigil upon a Malevolence-choked Mountain. A very familiar sight to some.
It will reach critical mass soon.
Unit gazes up towards the darkness, towards the castle, and... even as her own form starts to fade away as the dream begins to dissolve and reality reasserts itself...
"... i'm sorry."
A pause, as she looks up to nothing in particular.
"... i wasn't attentive enough to your own needs. i was pretending to be someone... and that someone just turned out to be hurtful to you."
She tilts her head one way.
"i want to improve. i want to keep trying. i will keep trying. and maybe, just maybe, next time, if you can listen to this..."
A pause, as the little Unit's little point of light gleams a little bit brighter.
"... next time ... maybe i won't have to wear a mask ..."
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
It's okay if Id doesn't give Dean a response. Dean's smile tells him he already knows he's right.
"Oh, you're right," Dean says, peering at Nasrin closer when Rebecca and Avril point out there's something not quite right about 'Greg.' "Wow, they were really convincing for a sec there!" He grins at Rebecca and Id arguing over whether Id's braids are right or not, platonic affection palpable; then he turns a fond smile to Avril. "It *would* be great if we'd all grown up together, huh?" ...and brightens. "But that's fine! We've got the rest of our lives to be together!"
Ah, sweet summer Dean.
But he digs, and Rebecca shoots, and Fei wields a cross, and Lily wields her chains, and Avril returns to the gentle grasp of a Golem's arm, and the Unit, who began this journey and pulled the others along with her, brings it to a close with a flurry of cuccos. But it's not the end, because they'll all see each other again someday--maybe even as soon as tomorrow.
When the mirror shatters, in the moment before he awakens, Dean sees the castle where three tormented souls reside. He considers all three his friends, but there's one to whom he's unmistakably closer than the others, and as his gaze lifts, he can feel her pain on the wind like the stench of burnt... something. "Ida..." he murmurs. "We're coming to help you. I don't know if we'll succeed... but we'll do everything we can to try. I promise."
And promises are to be kept.