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sticksandbones2023-09-01 11:03 am
EVENT 004
It’s a calm, misty morning. The sun is peaking over the treetops, and the air is chilled, almost like the onset of fall. How long have you been here, now? Days? Weeks? Months? Everything blurs together. But so you persist… just. Not quite yet. The day’s only just waking up and so are you! Whether you like it or not. You see, as you slept, something has crept its way into your room, and as the sun peaks through windows and closed blinds, it’s finally grabbing you and pulling.
As you meet your rude awakening, the intruder is clear to see. Or rather, it’s incredibly unclear. Mist and fog and sickly-looking vines wrap around your legs and up your body as it drags you to the woods, and attacks of all sorts slide off like water on glass. There is no escape. It’s time to play, and the air is unusually, painfully hot.
The fog of the forest grows dark and heavy as you’re pulled along against your will, and as you go something seems… different. Maybe your body seems lighter and off balanced. Maybe certain features are no longer tickling your skin. Maybe the connection to the world around you has been brutally severed — all that can be said is that as you’re eventually spat out to a metal platform, you feel incomplete somehow. Magic doesn’t come when you call. Gear doesn’t activate properly. Whatever happened, you’re a completely ordinary human, and it stings.
You and your fellow denizens of the Grove stand on a seeringly hot metal platform, and the air burns your lungs. Ash and soot float through the air, singeing wherever it lands for a split second. Towering up before you is a volcano that has no right being here — but it is. Platforms and smaller spires and rocks litter your surroundings, and scorch marks are everywhere.
The only consolation is that whatever is about to happen, you at least aren’t doing this in your pyjamas.
Eventually, as sweat builds up and the wind only burns further, a too-familiar childish voice rings out: "It’s playtime! If you win, I’ll show you something REALLY cool. …Oh, but surely I don’t have to explain ‘The Floor is Lava’, right?"
It goes silent, and there’s a loud metal grind of something. The lava beneath the platform begins to rise, and so does the hateful heat.
At least there are multiple ways out. You can attempt to hop across crumbling platforms, mysteriously and magically floating overhead — though they might break after a few footsteps. You can try climbing the burning-hot, stony surface of the surrounding cliffsides, where flows of magma get a bit too close for comfort. You can take the safer-but-risky way of running through the game area’s many mazelike paths, cut into and through the cliffs, but be careful; should the magma rise too high, those pathways will be flooded. No matter what you choose, the goal is to get to the top, out of the volcanic arena and to a designated “safe zone" waiting on an overhang at the volcano's lip. Up there, an invisible barrier prevents victors from climbing back down into the game zone, and up there is where you will wait with your fellow victors if you succeed. It’s air-conditioned, as if you’re still not trapped within a volcano.
As the first of you reaches the top of the rise, a victory fanfare plays from somewhere, but the lava begins to rise faster. Faster and faster, for each person who succeeds — or dies a horrible, fiery death. You’d better hope your success doesn’t come at the cost of someone else’s life.
As soon as there are no players remaining in the game, another chime plays from a still-mysterious location. After a cheerful voice congratulates you on your victory, the fog encircles you again, as it had done earlier in the day. When you next blink, you’re back in the Grove, standing exactly where you were when you were first taken.
Those of you who died, however, will wake up the following morning in your usual sleeping quarters, be it in your bed or outside in the forest. The good news is, you’re hale and healthy despite everything. A voice whispers to you as soon as you reawaken: "Better luck next time!"
CLICK TO EXPAND!
II
What he can do is take two steps back and hold out his hand. ]
Tuna tuna. [ He makes a beckoning motion. Take his hand? ]
no subject
Thank you. [Wheeze. Up the rise they go.] Try not to fall off. I don't need both of us to fall to our deaths.
["I am stressed", those words say, if Toge is good at reading between the lines.]
no subject
It's hot. Hot enough that Toge has sweat running down the sides of his face and the back of his neck, but he doesn't complain. ]
Mentaiko. [ He's got this, don't worry. At least, he thinks he does, and if he doesn't, Gnosis had better keep going. ]
no subject
[If he thinks in scientific terms, in lines of code and encyclopaedic paragraphs, he can quash the existential dread long enough to continue their ascent. Probably.]
If we make it out of this, I'll shower a part of the grove in ice to cool us all off. Are you in?
no subject
Salmon, salmon! [ An emphatic yes, punctuated by the fact he has sweat sliding down the side of his nose. He's not complaining, or downtrodden about the heat, yet. It's the kind of thing he'd be expected to tolerate and thrive in. So he has to. ]
no subject
Wonderful. [They can have a snow day. Or... an ice day, rather.] We can make snow Sankta, ["snow angels",] it'll be like being five years old again.
[bro he is so exhausted]
no subject
Fortunately he can smile and nod and just listen.
It's fine as they go until he stumbles, catching himself with his hand. From the way Toge is breathing a little hard, the heat is getting to him. It is. He's practically melting, but he won't complain. If he can't handle this, he'd be a failure of a sorcerer. He can't afford to fail. ]
no subject
Toge has a disadvantage, too. Gnosis isn't blind to it.]
Careful. [Up they go, continuing on. Gnosis hopes they're more than halfway there, at this point... and then he makes the mistake of glancing down.] ...I think the lava is rising faster. We'd better hurry.
no subject
Salmon.
[ God, it's so hot. Sure enough though, he's going to try and scoot along quicker. ]
no subject
The volcano rumbles again, and Gnosis momentarily stumbles, catching himself against a stray stone. They're close enough now to see the goal in sight, where people are congregating above them, and he's pretty sure he sees someone else clinging to the cliff face far ahead of them.]
Final push— [he tries to say, but the volcano yet again quakes and completely cuts him off.]
no subject
Go faster, he'd been told, but honestly? He's not moving faster.
Toge is swaying. This is downright embarrassing. He should be ashamed by such vulnerable weakness. The quaking is enough to have him stumbling, scrambling to hold on because he's already dizzy.
It's already spinning. Everything is spinning. The quaking is hurting his chances and it seems more frequent?
Toge feels like he's melting. ]