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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!
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( ... even with the werewolves and the flowers and the labyrinth, yes. )
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Such cruelty... I cannot understand it.. What does it get out of our fears, out of our... Dread..?
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How do you find the pain of others entertaining? She can understand that, the pain of others can feel relatable. That through performances her people have done in the past, where stories that are like tragedies. One can find themselves feeling admist those performances, the same they would if it happened to them in person. Caoimhe knows, it is possible to find entertainment this ways. Whether it is people understanding the dark feelings of ones heart, so they can over come them or - ]
SO then... Truly they need our help... If they do not understand why forcing another to endure these trials is not right, then how do they know better? They dont... They clearly do not understand.
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Maybe... [ She frowns - actually a part of her suddenly thinks. Maybe this is the truth - ] I just realized... Perhaps this is a God, this would make so much sense.
[ If this is a God, then are these trials? Is she failing them? In her small scape of a mind, that is desperate to rationalize things she clings to this idea. ]
If this is a God, and they are testing us - then we need as mortals to do better.
[ Yes, she pushes onwards with this thought in mind. ]
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( there's something furious burning inside her now. )
I didn't think you'd find something that pisses me off more than trying to redeem the damned thing, but- we need to do better? Are you fucking kidding me?
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[ She offers her hand towards Felicity, still calm and composed. ]
No matter the anger that swallows you whole now, or your beliefs. We must keep going.
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A god that doesn't protect the people in it's domain- that actively harms is not a god worth acknowledging beyond killing it.
... If you want to roll over and show your belly, go ahead. But don't you ever tell me to do the same. I'm done with that life.
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[ No, that's wrong, she can - some of it as she is now. Maybe not all, but one day too, Caoimhe will understand all of it as well. Even so, she will never come to the same conclusion that the other does. Merciless, and exacting the same sort of anger from within that replicates a God's fury. ]
But in the same light - I have lived 200 years, Felicity, and have seen the worst sort of men bend beneath Gods, use Gods for their own glories, Kings that care not for their people, and other people who care not for each other.
Even my own people had forsaken me, and a girl so much like you. Tried to take my life, because she too felt the same urgency and remorse in your words. Saying that people like me, will do nothing but let the wrong sort of people live.
She was my sister Maeve, and I will tell you, what I told to her.
[ Both of her hands open up willingly, and she seems to give herself to Felicity. ]
If I am so wrong, [ She seems so sad, as she says this. As if truly, she is so alone in the universe. More alone than Mizuki himself. ] then you are welcome to end me. I will not fight it, there is no need...
I will not live in a world where I cannot believe there is not another way. There always is. For Gods, and their people. For the forest beckoning to us, to the God that wants to consume my realm and the others. It may not be in this life, and not without punishments for those who are cruel, and truly unsightly.... B-But I will believe in a greater realm, where everyone can change for the betterment of each other.