Hope RP (
wizardseason) wrote in
pajamabox2019-11-13 07:35 pm
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Day 6: "Monster Arrival"
Afternoon: 12:00noon - Evening
[ IRL Timeframe: November 13th -Following the events of the morning, with the Wizard and Protector locked in a heated duel, Gyre has paved forward with his plan to gather all the heroes to show them something. Be proud of him, he texted EVERYONE!
The fight between the two powerful entities continues, they won’t be joining anyone just yet. Sxicq, meanwhile, is… somewhere. No one really kept tabs on them, even social media has lost sight of them.
The Weather
- Clear with a few clouds.
- 52°F / 11°C
- Bring your heater, the chill continues!
Prompts:
- 12:30pm Mounain, General Post:
I.
Gyre arrives early to the main hiking trail at the base of the mountain. There’s a big sign advertising where it starts, and he sits against one of the legs of the sign. His legs are neatly folded, his arms crossed over his chest. As people begin to arrive, he greets each of them, standing after a second or third has arrived.
Once they’re all gathered, he raises a hand to get everyone’s attention. “Is this everyone?” he asks, clearly counting heads. A flicker of angst crosses his face as he realizes how much smaller they look without Rory and Web and Gail. As he counts, he realizes Zafika and Joanna are missing as well. He wasn’t able to talk to either of them, so he supposes he’s not surprised, but there is a little bubbling concern in his chest. He’ll have to address it later.
He waves at the lot of them once he’s done counting, gesturing for them to follow, “We’re going to the top. I’m going to move quickly so we can get back down before dark. If you need help, ask me. Rely on each other,” is all he says before he turns and heads up the trail.
The ground is worn enough to make the climb relatively easy, but it’s still climbing a mountain. How is everyone taking it? It’s a long trip. There’s time to catch up now that they’re all together again.
II.
This is the top of the mountain. When the heroes arrive, they’ll find Five and Ten seated at a small foldable table playing cards. Five is wearing jeans and a black hoodie with a computer error screen printed on it. She looks at the group of heroes arriving, giving a small wave once she’s seen some familiar faces-- but she immediately moves to hide behind Ten when she sees Luka.
Ten, meanwhile, is wearing a shirt with a picture of himself wearing a shirt with a picture of himself wearing a shirt-- you get the idea. How did he pull that off? The shirt is printed with a picture of him here, on the top of the mountain, outside this cliff door. Did he plan for this? He gives a wave at the group, greeting them with a Microsoft Sam voiced phone message:
“All around me are familiar faces. Ha ha, hello.”
Did he just reference a song? He definitely did. That was definitely “Mad World” by Jary Gules.- 12:30pm Onward: Mountain, The Mountain Cave Entrance:
When the heroes decide to descend into the cavern, what they’ll find is a strangely winding corridor that’s barely lit at all. The ceiling is rarely higher than six feet, sometimes shrinking down to four feet and even three feet near the bottom, and most of its length is only wide enough for two people to fit through. The floor is slick with water, the slope of it acting as the perfect place for water to drain into from above. This means the descent is cramped, dark, and slightly slippery.
Good luck, heroes.
The corridor suddenly opens up at the bottom into a wide-open cavern, the walls spreading out too far in every direction and disappearing into the darkness of the cavern. The walkway into the space narrows as it crosses over a massive pit that surrounds a central circular platform. There aren’t any other walkways leading to the middle.
The circular platform in the center has twenty-seven metal rings that make up the floor, smaller ones in the middle surrounded by one massive ring around the outside. It'd take a lot of counting to see the 27 rings but, believe me, they're there. What the heroes will be able to spot, though, is that a few of the rings on the floor are rotating very, very slowly. It would be easy to miss, but once noticed it’s clear that there are exactly ten rings moving and seventeen that are not.
Surrounding the center platform are twenty-seven raised platforms in a big circle around the center. Floating above four in a row are bright yellow blobs with one, two, and three eyes respectively. The fourth and fifth have the slain bodies of Four and Five. Four is wearing the game show garb they’d worn on the day of their games. Five is wearing a set of heavy black robes, not the assassin garb she’d worn on her day. The other side has five occupied platforms each with knights floating in them. Web, with Aqrisqi floating above them. Rory, with Sefaq floating above her. Gail, with Giqra floating above him. Joanna, with Fius floating above her. Zafika, with Muraj floating above them.
Wait. When were Joanna and Zafika defeated? Both of them have a single red mark above where their hearts are like they’d each been stabbed with a blade.
Five and Ten have followed everyone down to this room, looks like they’ll be able to answer questions… maybe? But everyone knows that neither the Wizard nor the Protector will be here, they’re still fighting up on the island’s beach.
Procedure:
Reply to the appropriate toplevel comments for events below. Indicate if a post is a private conversation with "Private" in the subject otherwise all threads should be open to interaction with others. Plan OOCly how you'd like to toss everyone around.
12:30pm Onward: Mountain, The Mountain Cave Entrance:
Good luck, heroes.
The corridor suddenly opens up at the bottom into a wide-open cavern, the walls spreading out too far in every direction and disappearing into the darkness of the cavern. The walkway into the space narrows as it crosses over a massive pit that surrounds a central circular platform. There aren’t any other walkways leading to the middle.
The circular platform in the center has twenty-seven metal rings that make up the floor, smaller ones in the middle surrounded by one massive ring around the outside. It'd take a lot of counting to see the 27 rings but, believe me, they're there. What the heroes will be able to spot, though, is that a few of the rings on the floor are rotating very, very slowly. It would be easy to miss, but once noticed it’s clear that there are exactly ten rings moving and seventeen that are not.
Surrounding the center platform are twenty-seven raised platforms in a big circle around the center. Floating above four in a row are bright yellow blobs with one, two, and three eyes respectively. The fourth and fifth have the slain bodies of Four and Five. Four is wearing the game show garb they’d worn on the day of their games. Five is wearing a set of heavy black robes, not the assassin garb she’d worn on her day. The other side has five occupied platforms each with knights floating in them. Web, with Aqrisqi floating above them. Rory, with Sefaq floating above her. Gail, with Giqra floating above him. Joanna, with Fius floating above her. Zafika, with Muraj floating above them.
Wait. When were Joanna and Zafika defeated? Both of them have a single red mark above where their hearts are like they’d each been stabbed with a blade.
Five and Ten have followed everyone down to this room, looks like they’ll be able to answer questions… maybe? But everyone knows that neither the Wizard nor the Protector will be here, they’re still fighting up on the island’s beach.
open
This room is awful. It would be awful enough if it weren't for the fact that she slipped and fell right on her bottom in the stupid passageway- her clothes and perfect white gloves are both dirty. But to stand in the middle, with everyone else like this... And-- Rory, Gail, Zafika. She hates this room. She wants her friends down here, with her. She wants more than anything to teleport away from here, but she can't, not with everyone else in the same awful place.
She's never been one to hold back on her sorrow. It shouldn't be too surprising to hear the weeping that's coming from her. This was all supposed to be an adventure- pretend. It's become all too real.
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But she's distracted from her own feelings by Matilda's weeping, and fishes around in her jacket pocket. She finds a paper napkin from the cafe she went to earlier and hands it to Matilda silently, giving her one gentle clap on the shoulder.
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It fails. Severely.
"T-theres... so... many--" She sobs.
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Matilda Hamilton is crying.
His strides toward her are composed and confident while his eyes dart around the room, around his allies, current and... floating. Web. Rory. Gail. Joanna. Zafika. Wounds near two of their hearts. He wants to cry, to scream, to get answers, but whatever answers he gets won't change the fact that Matilda Hamilton is crying. So in those last steps, he finishes unbuttoning his dress shirt and pulls it off of his body. Don't worry, he's wearing something underneath, he's no savage.
"I..." Garrot's voice is trying for compassion, but it's decidedly more hollow. Like he's been in her shoes before. But he takes a moment to put one hand on her shoulder while the other offers her his shirt. She can turn it into a tissue, something to bury her face into and scream, whatever she needs it to be. "I'm so sorry."
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She takes the shirt from him, staring blankly at it, like what is she supposed to do with this? But it's better to look at than her friends floating bodies, so she focuses on that while she continues to cry. "S-so many..."
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"I know it hurts, but..." The compassion is there, but it's exhausted and very lacking, because he's still dealing with it himself. Joanna and then Zafika of all people, they're just... gone? No heroic moment, just... stabbed in the heart, just like that? What the fuck?!
"We gotta make sure there aren't any more, okay?" The words come easily, honeyed with parental instinct and warmth and an unspoken confidence that he'll keep her safe. "They wouldn't want that." The grief sucks, and Garrot's glad he's got years of medical experience bottling his emotions, because he's definitely gonna need some alone time later.
Open
He had barely met Web, but the rest he'd interacted with properly and they'd all been so nice to him...especially Zafika. Seeing them there is painful shock, like someone had just stabbed him with a knife.
He doesn't make a sound because he can't, as there are tears falling down his face, that otherwise looks strangely unaffected. It's a strange look for sure. Like he wants to bawl his eyes out but doesn't know how?
Shakily, he types without looking: "What thhe actual hell?"
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"I--- I know. It's so awful..."
Open (?)
When the group reaches the wide area containing the platform, Luka breathes an audible sigh of relief. The horrific sight of their allies bodies is spared from him, naturally.
"Is this it?" He asks aloud, to no one in particular. "Please tell me this is it."
But then the reactions of his companions start to come in. Something here was clearly wrong here.
"Hey..." Luka starts, cautiously. "What is it? What's here?"
Ten -> Luka
At the bottom, the other heroes start reacting to the scene around them. Luka, on the other hand, has literally no idea. So Ten chimes in with a voice-to-text explanation.
"This is the place it all started." The explanation begins, getting a little louder as Ten steps closer to Luka.
"There are five defeated monsters, five defeated heroes. All suspended here." He leaves it at that, letting Luka guide where he wants the conversation to go next.
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'Suspended'. It could mean a lot of things, but based on Matilda's crying, he's going to assume it's a rather gruesome sight that he is perhaps lucky to be spared.
"Wait, five?" He asks again, piecing together Ten's information slowly. Sure, some of their team had been AWOL. He knew, likely, that a few had probably been captured by the Wizard. He didn't think they would be... 'defeated', as Ten put it. "Are they dead?!"
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"Close enough to dead to be dead." He answers, the monotone voice-to-text offering absolutely no emotion to help that bit of information.
"Rooster. Tiger. Horse. Sheep. Snake."
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He feels an urge to get closer, to inspect the scene in the few ways he can. Luka wants to know everything about whatever this all is. But his uncertainty of his own surroundings stops him from making any movements, and he's left with only questions.
"Did the Wizard do this to them? What's the purpose of having the bodies on display?"
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"Two killed Horse, Three killed Tiger and Rooster. Someone killed Sheep and Snake. Not us." He explains, before getting to that other part of it.
"Have to be here. Part of the system. It's better to be alive. Not suspended." He shakes his head, hoping his re-use of 'suspended' made sense. This was just where the bodies ended up. Most years had all twelve monsters here like this.
It sucked.
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open?
Instead, he sees two new bodies there and his eyes snap to Zafika. He takes a deep breath in through his nose, holds it for a moment. His face is completely blank, his eyes only widening very slightly as he takes in what this means. They're dead? They're dead. Five of them are dead and one of them is Zafika.
Without a sound or a comment otherwise, he turns away from the group and walks back up the way they came. He's out of here. There's about thirty seconds to stop him before he's gone.
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"Where are you going?"
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"I... Away," he answers, stumbling over his own words as he takes another step away from her.
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“You’re the one who brought us all here. We’re supposed to be in this together!”
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"Something killed them while we climbed a mountain! I'm leaving."
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He listens, briefly, for some sort of reaction. But Luka's feeling impatient and proceeds on regardless.
"How much did you know about this place before you brought us all here?" Luka tries not to sound accusatory with the question.
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The question catches him a little off-guard honestly, and he takes a few steps back towards the Princess. His voice is decidedly shaky as he says, "Some. I've been here before. I told you what I learned when I was here. I wanted to..."
He trails off, his gaze helplessly drawn back to the two new bodies. "They weren't here before today," he adds, softer.
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He pauses, stepping closer to Gyre with an outstretched arm which clumsily finds its place somewhere near his upper shoulder.
"Are you, ah... okay?" It's a well-meaning, if awkward, attempt at providing comfort from someone clearly unused to the role.
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"The Wizard knew. The companions were the ones who suggested it," he says listlessly, his thoughts clearly miles away from here. "It's different with those two. The others, I think the early monsters attacked them. Two, and Three. The old woman, and Zafika, they have this mark on their chests," and he reaches forward, drawing a line that mirrors the one on the bodies over Luka's heart.
"I don't know why they'd be different."
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(Not really private but also not really open..?)
His movements are slow but certain as he steps close to the suspended forms on both sides and gives each individual one a considered look for several seconds. Afterward, he moves on to treat the rings in the floor and the chamber as a whole to the same scrutiny. Meanwhile, he's most certainly listening in on the conversation between Luka and Ten as well as any other tidbits going about the room. Thankfully, he's only taking notes mentally.
Even as everything quiets down and the Princess urges the knights to leave, Terrence is compelled to stick around for a while longer and will likely be the last out if not directly forced. There's something they're supposed to learn here! Even if it's just a warning or misdirection, there's something to be learned from the very fact that was presented to them as well. It's macabre, but he's going to make the most of this trip.