Day 9: Morning

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

[ IRL Timeframe: June 14th - Onward, 2020 ]

When your characters check their phones, clocks, calendars, or any other timekeeping implement they'll find that the year is 00 AW, forty years before the present day. The year before the Wizard's first game was held, the year before it came down to only two knights and the Princess facing off against the Wizard. It was before all of it.

Everywhere your characters go, there are no people. Their devices will not connect to the internet outside of the island, their companions will not appear, the Wizard and Monsters will not answer, but they can text each other without difficulty.

Outside, the heroes will not be greeted with the sight of the sky from Day 3. The sky lacks the massive vortex over the center of the mountain. Honestly, it all looks fairly serene. The only thing that seems amiss is the rumbling of the ground, the constant feeling of an ongoing earthquake. There are no fractures in the ground yet, though, no splintering of the planet.

Because nothing has happened yet.

Ninth Morning Event: The Past, Pt.II

The Weather
Stillness.
48°F
No wind.

Prompts:

6:00am The Arrival, All Cities: Gyre, Olivia, and Luka arrive flat on the ground. They wake on their backs, facing up to the stars, just outside of something that has never been on the island ever before.

They're at the top of the mountain, right beside where the mysterious doors were in the current day. But right now there's a wide-open metallic stairwell. It looks unnatural, like someone copy-pasted it into place. From beneath, there's a blue glow and steam rising up from below.

Guess it's time to wake up, make a plan, and walk downstairs?

?:00am, Unknown Location: This post will consist of one single long thread that progresses through the plot for this post. As discoveries are made, additional information will be uncovered.

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.

Activity Check: June 2020

[ IRL Timeframe: June 1st - June 30th, 2020 ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gyre, Olivia, and Luka arrive flat on the ground. They wake on their backs, facing up to the stars, just outside of something that has never been on the island ever before.

They're at the top of the mountain, right beside where the mysterious doors were in the current day. But right now there's a wide-open metallic stairwell. It looks unnatural, like someone copy-pasted it into place. From beneath, there's a blue glow and steam rising up from below.

Guess it's time to wake up, make a plan, and walk downstairs?

Luka groans, rolling on his side as he slowly comes to his senses. He doesn't remember falling asleep outside, and it takes him a moment to figure out why he's apparently in the dirt so early in the morning. Oh, right. The past.

He sighs as he sits up, nursing a twinge of pain in his back. Luka wonders how Gyre does this every night, and how he somehow prefers this to the comfort of a soft, warm bed. But he pushes the thought from his mind as he tries to get a better sense of his surroundings.

It's still dark out. Cold. He can't make out anything distinct in the darkness, but Luka pics up on the faint glow coming from the distance and recalls the cracks in the ground they'd encountered before.

"Hey. Gyre? Liv?" He calls out, unsure if the two Knights are close by. It was possible, likely even, that they'd all be dumped miles apart, but it never hurts to try.

Gyre's eyes snap open the second he hears his name, and he jolts up sitting just as quickly. For a moment, nothing about the setting seems surreal to him. He's waking up outside. Luka was with him last night. It's all perfectly normal which means Luka must be asking for him because there's some danger or trouble or something.

His eyes land on the unshattered moon above them, and he remembers all at once that they're supposed to be in the past today. He shakes his head, looking around as he runs his fingers through his hair. He's moving to stand a moment later, going instantly over to the opening in the mountain. He's been here enough times to know that this is going to be a door in the future. That this is probably where they should go first.

"I'm here, Princess," he answers back after a moment, glancing over his shoulder at him. "There are stairs in the mountain over here."

[Olivia jolts up as soon as she hears Luka's voice as well. The quickness of the movement makes her a little dizzy for a moment, especially as she looks around, momentarily disoriented by her surroundings. She shakes it off as best as she can, dusting herself off as she stands and hurriedly makes her way towards the Princess. Her eyes scan him for any sign of injury, and she's relieved to see he seems fine.]

Looks like we've been sent back again. [She says softly, offering him a hand to help him up.

She takes a moment to look around, her eyes finding Gyre first, then moving to stare at the stairs with a confused frown for a moment. She looks up at the sky, scans over the ground, then squints as she tries to look further down the mountain.] It's just the three of us here.

"Lines up with what Seven said last night." He nods, taking Olivia's offered hand and rising carefully to his feet. After a much need stretch, he finds his phone and navigates to the messaging app.

"The others have to be around here somewhere." Luka says as he deftly types out a mass text. His tone is playfully annoyed, a mask to try and conceal his rising concern about the group being split again. At least the Protector can't get them here, right?

"There." He says, hitting send. A response should come any minute now, he reassures himself, sliding the phone into his back pocket and burying that particular anxiety for now.

He takes a few steps in the direction of Gyre's voice, but stays close to where he knows Olivia is.

"Can you see where they lead to from here?"

Gyre turns to watch the two of them, nodding very slightly when Luka sends the message off. Hopefully everyone else has just been sent to a different part of the island, a different thing to explore. They can share information once they're back in the right time. He's not letting his worry get to him for now at least. Sxicq knows what they're doing, knows where to send them.

"Mmn, no, the stairs just keep going until it's dark. I think we should go down them," he adds, straightening up and returning to their side. "We can find the others later."

Right, yeah. [Luka'll probably get a text back soon enough. For now it's best to worry about their own situation, she thinks.

She keeps a wary eye on the stairs, making sure nothing suddenly comes up while they talk.] Stairs do seem like the obvious choice here. [Not that she likes it, though. Her tail nervously sweeps the ground.]

What did Seven say about today, exactly? [She asks, throwing a quick glance at the boys.] What are we here to witness this time?

"The beginning, I guess. That's what they said." Luka explains. "Before the monsters existed. When the Protector and Wizard first arrived here. They said we'd witness his lies."

Luka's not so sure about descending a staircase into total darkness. It doesn't seem particularly advisable, but Seven did stay they couldn't change the past - and Luka dying before he was ever even born would certainly be a change.

"Please say that ominous staircase at least has a handrail?"

Gyre nods along with what Luka is saying, glancing back at the stairs as if expecting them to suddenly vanish, or become the now familiar door.

"We're going to find out what was happening the last time we got sent back. The cracks in the ground. The kids," he says, making a vague all-encompassing gesture. At least he's pretty sure that's what this will be. He's hoping they find out enough about this game to have a more certain course forward when they return.

The gesture shifts in the air as he makes it until he settles a hand on Luka's shoulder, teasing gently, "It has a handrail. You can also hold onto me if that makes you feel safer."

Well. That sounds fun. [She says, monotone.

She raises a curious eyebrow at the comfortable familiarity between her two companions, but she makes no comment on it as she walks past them towards the stairs. She continues to glare at the darkness for a few seconds, placing a hand carefully on the handrail, making sure the whole thing is real. She almost takes a step forward before turning around to face Gyre.]

Um it might be better if you take the front actually, 'cause like, you're uh, a fighter and such, yeah? And he's the Princess and I'm, uh, you know. [The words come quickly and with a tense smile. She doesn't really finish her sentence, as she didn't quite keep track of what she told each person she did before being a Knight.] Luka can go in the middle and I'll watch his back! [She's not afraid or anything this plan makes sense!!! Right? Right?]

"Doesn't it?" Luka laughs shortly, a response to Olivia's sarcastic remark. "At least we're safe from whatever we're going to see... supposedly."

He stays close by the two Knights, noting the change in the sound of their footsteps as they approach the mysterious staircase.

"The handrail should do fine, but I'll keep my options in mind." He says as he feels for its location. "This is way more convenient than what we have in the present, anyway. I wonder what happened to it?"

Gyre smiles very slightly at Olivia's plan, accepting it immediately. He was going to suggest he go first anyway, but she seems so squirmy trying to explain herself. He feels like he knows her well enough to know she's not about to stab them in the back, but it is a weird way to explain herself. He'll have to ask her about it later!

For now, he steps past Luka and onto the stairs, heading down a few before he glances up and waits for the other two.

"Maybe we'll find out what happened to it too," he says, eyeing how neat the stairs are. He never would've guessed this ever used to be here, and he's quite curious what could've destroyed it so completely. More importantly though, he leans to the side, catching Olivia's eyes.

"Keep an eye behind us. Just in case."

For the knights, it's back to familiar places. Places that none of them asked to see. Places that none of them could forget they'd seen. The knights descend down the stairs, arriving in where they can only assume to be the ring-filled cavern beneath the mountain.

This time, however, there are no bottomless pits in sight.

The circular area in the center of the cavern, however, is still there. It's made up of twenty-seven metal rings, 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. The heroes will notice two things differently this time. The first is that none of the rings were rotating, and the second was that there was a huge hooded figure seemingly putting the outer ring into place. It's a huge, hulking piece of metal and they would have to be impossibly strong to be lifting and adjusting it into place.

The figure is one that the boar knight has seen before. The defining feature of a giant wizard hat is present, but the characteristic pajamas are missing. More startling than that is that the body is wrong. They don't look like the usual small, petite form of the current year's Wizard. Their body is made up of what looks like solid muscle, standing several feet above the current year's short Wizard. They're wearing black robes decorated with deep purple clouds and blue stars. Over their face is something like a plague doctor's mask with not a single inch of skin showing. Instead of a long beak on the front of their mask, the mouth section is a maw of sharp teeth that, even parted, shows nothing behind it.

Standing within the circle, on the innermost piece, stands another figure. The second figure is completely new to everyone, a face unknown to all. He's standing at four feet high, if that tall, with something that looks akin to a lab coat dangling over his body all the way down to his ankles. It has too many pockets and too many seams, though, looking more like a shoe storage unit for a door than like the coat it was inevitably meant to be. His hair is stark white with black ends, pulled back into a high ponytail behind him. Absurdly, the length of his hair nearly drags on the ground. How it's staying up above his head is anyone's guess. Over his face is a contraption that looks like it's right out of an optometrist's nightmare. Lenses and panels and attachments are covering the whole of his face and eyes, mechanical pieces of it occasionally flicking out or back into place. He's occupied with something in his hands, some kind of glowing blue panel that beeps every time he touches it. The beep, along with their voices, echo throughout the chamber.

"--can't be just another failure." Comes the man's voice as the heroes descend close enough to start hearing the conversation.

"Estimated time of completion, ▆▋▄▇▚▎." The tall figure answers, voice practically brimming with a crackling energy. The last word, whatever it is, sounds more garbled. But it's followed by a beep from the thing in the shorter man's hands.

"That's too long. Can't you go faster? Bypass protocols. Override all warnings. Prioritize finishing." He says, sounding more demanding than questioning.

"Protocols bypassed, enabling acceleration." The tall figure answers again, starting to mill about faster with metal components and flickerings of light against the floor.

As the conversation goes on, one final aspect of this space becomes clear: The floor of the cavern isn't just solid: It's glowing. A slow, gradual pulsing glow brightens and then fades from within the soil and rock itself, the soft blue of something beneath coming and going. It's almost like breathing.

[As the figures come into view, Olivia quickly and quietly grabs Luka and Gyre, by the hand and the arm respectively, and crouches down, hoping that they will too and that the shadows will hide them.

In whispers, she describes the Wizard, and who she assumes is the Protector, as best as she can to Luka. She doesn't pay too much attention to their surroundings for once, her eyes remaining glued to the two aliens instead as she listens to their conversation. She doesn't know how real the time travel thing is, doesn't know if they can interact with them, but it's better to be safe than sorry.]

Is this the part where they try to "heal" the world? [She whispers, not letting go of the boys - partly to make sure they stay put, and partly because she's scared.]

Luka instinctively follows Olivia's movement into a crouch as she grabs his hand and ducks down. The voices in the cavern take him by surprise - Luka wasn't expecting to run into anyone just yet, and he feels as if they've intruded upon something quite serious.

"Is that them?" He whispers back, his voice quiet but urgent in tone. He's not sure either if the group can be seen or heard by the others. "It sounds like it. No one mentioned him trying to expedite the whole thing. I wonder why he's so impatient?"

Gyre follows Olivia down when she grabs his arm, settling beside Luka and taking in the scene. He remembers the Wizard, of course, and there is an immediate impulse in him to go directly to her. She'd probably remember him, right?

But no, he realizes, this must be before he met her. He tilts his head slightly, answering softly, "It's definitely them. I've seen the Wizard like that before." He takes a moment here to uh stare at the tiny little Protector in his coat and glasses, but he decides not to comment on it.

After a beat though, he starts slowly moving himself down to the next stair, crouch walking his way towards the two of them.

"I'm going to get closer."

The first sign that something is wrong is the low hum in the air.

"The volume of warnings is increasing significantly." The taller figure comments, one fist placed against the ground with a metal rod spinning against something. Locking something in place? The soft whirring of the action is drowned out by the sound in the air, like an engine starting to rev up.

"Go faster. We're so close to saving this one." The smaller figure commands, flicking something open in his hand that glows and beeps rapidly.

"It's no different than the others, seismic reactions to the system." He explains it away, shaking his head before he pockets the handheld device.

The second sign that something is wrong is the prickling electricity in the air, tugging at fabric and skin alike.

"The pressure is rising, unknown source. Ability for living beings to survive dropping." The taller figure declares, prompting the smaller figure to reach into a pocket and pull forth a mask that he puts over his mouth and nose beneath his lens-hat.

The third sign that something is wrong is when the entire floor fractures. Cracks fly outward around the room like lightning bolts in the dirt, they zig-zag across the floor and up the walls. More follow, some flying up the stairwell past the heroes.

From the fractures, arms emerge. They start reaching out, grasping at anything they can. The fracture nearest the heroes bursts open with dozens of arms, each one grasping at all three heroes in an attempt to hold them. If they get touched, it'll be like a jolt of electricity spiking through their body from the point they're grabbed at. How horrible!

In the center of the room, the two figures have visibly started some kind of back and forth, the smaller figure looking like he's shouting while the tall figure remains impassive. But the hum of the room and the rocks cracking drowns out the words at the distance.

What it doesn't drown out is the voice of a child coming from directly behind all three heroes. If they look back up the stairs, there's a glowing blue figure that looks slightly like Sxicq's silhouette. But there are no features, no mouth, only glowing. Even so, the voice comes clear as day:

"Freedom. Stopped. Trapped."

[Olivia doesn't get time to protest Gyre approaching the other two before things start kicking off. She tenses and holds Luka's hand tighter as the weird electric energy starts cracking around the room.]

Can you feel that? [She asks him in a hurried whisper. Her eyes dart from crack to crack as they start appearing on the ground and towards them.] The ground is— the cracks are forming. There's hands—? shit. [She tries to explain what she's seeing as best as she can but stops herself when she notices the arms reaching for the three of them. She suddenly yanks Luka closer to herself and towards the middle of the stairs so the hands won't grab at him from the sides.

Then there's the sound of a voice directly behind them, which makes Olivia nearly jump out of her skin (probably jolting Luka with her movement, since she was holding him away from the arms - she'll apologize later) and inadvertently cycle through a dozen appearances in a second before returning to normal. Her head turns to give the silhouette a quick look before looking back at Gyre, eyes wide and dilated with fear and uncertainty, searching his face for guidance. This is quickly becoming too much for her.]

"Mm, I can." Luka nods, his body becoming rigid as electricity prickles through the air around them. The rising static was becoming increasingly apparent, and Luka remembers a similar energy when he'd previously been sent to the past.

Just as Olivia starts to describe the ground cracking apart, Luka's able to detect the familiar glow emanating from the ruptures, and his eyes track their movement as they spread and branch around the cave.

"Wait - hands?" That detail was news to him. Was it the children from before? He doesn't have to wonder long before the voice from directly behind them seems to confirm his theory.

"H-Hey, wait. Can you hear us?" Luka makes an attempt to engage the glowing figure, just in case? Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that this child appeared so closely behind them...?

He's about halfway down the stairs when the pressure starts rising. His skin prickles, his hair raising up on the back of his neck, and he realizes all of a sudden that he shouldn't leave their side. He starts creeping back almost immediately, watching the way Olivia pulls Luka closer and keeps him safe.

The cracks break the ground apart, and he meets Olivia's eyes, understanding her panic immediately. He jolts up from his crouched position, and darts towards them. He doesn't care if those two see him down below. He needs to get to his allies as quickly as possible, and he almost jumps past them to put himself between the two of them and the floating figure. His shield flashes up into place around them, looking far sturdier then it has before.

"Sxicq?" he shouts at the new figure, trying to speak over the noise of the cave breaking apart around them.

The three of them get treated to a truly horrible sight. The glowing blue silhouette visibly cracks as the air's saturation with crackling and tension reaches a peak. All at once, the blue figure shatters into thirteen pieces that end up floating in the air for just a moment.

A moment later they're enclosed in glowing blue crystals as the electricity in the air abruptly vanishes. All at once it's like nothing bad was even happening at all! Except that the floating crystal-enclosed blue chunks are starting to disappear, as if they're teleporting away. The closest one, however, opens a single eyeball and looks at the three heroes in front of it curiously.

But they won't get long to consider everything, because it's all about to go wrong. More wrong. They get to overhear the last bits of conversation before they're pulled away:

"What happened? It worked, didn't it? Something's different, explain." The shorter figure demands as he looks up at his companion.

But that only lasts for a few moments as the vision of all three heroes blurs. Blue infringes on everything and practically blinds everyone with pure blue brightness. When it fades, the three heroes are standing in the middle of a street in Far Haven, surrounded by tall buildings. There are numerous traffic cones and caution tape surrounding them and they arrive to find themselves in the middle of a conversation.

"--as I was saying, we're reporters. I'm Jane and these three are with me, we have questions about all of this." A tall woman with dark skin is saying, annoyed, holding a microphone out in the direction of the short Protector.

"The plight of this world is beyond your understanding, you are stopping me from confirming this world has been saved." He answers, sounding annoyed. He casts glances around at the various law enforcement officials who are keeping the public back.

The lanyard around Gyre's neck floats up, his double-sided reporter name badge hovering in the air between himself and the Protector so they can both read that it says "Reporter: Press Pass" in multiple languages all listed beneath a photo of him.... wearing a suit. Olivia and Luka are wearing the same thing, and so is Jane. The Protector squints to read it for a moment before releasing the magic that made it hover as he decides to address him instead:

"Your name is 'Red'? Do you have questions, too, or can I leave?" He says, eyes turning momentarily to Olivia and Luka too. Is he going to have to answer everyone's questions before he can leave?

Beyond the barricades around the intersection, three things can be seen, and felt in three different directions. The first is the tall figure that was with the Protector, the Wizard, standing just past some traffic cones. The second is the crackling blue crystals that had been floating around on the third day. The third, and last thing, is a figure of a child wrapped in black, tattered robes. Their face is primarily taken up by one massive eyeball in place of where two eyes and a nose would be on a human. How bizarre!

[As she's blinded, Olivia panics when, after a few moments, she notices she's not holding onto Luka anymore. Yet, when she opens her eyes, she finds that they're in an entirely different situation. What the fuck happened? What? What? Her breathing picks up, trying to calm herself down. They're not in danger, at least they don't seem to be- wait, where the hell are they?

Her light blue eyes are as big as plates as she takes in the situation - they remain glued to the Protector, right there in front of her, even as she tries to make sense of what this Jane person is saying. Her eyes are then drawn to what she can feel is in the area, observing the crystals before landing on the form of the Wizard and the one-eyed child. Her mind feels a little numb as she tries to parse just who it is that she's seeing.

Lastly, as if suddenly jolted by the realization she's not supposed to be alone, her gaze hurriedly moves to find her friends, and her eyes widen even more - which should have been impossible, but the situation just demanded it - when she sees that both Luka and Gyre are wearing suits, looking all professional and tidy. As she looks down at herself, reading her own badge, her brain slowly makes the connection between what the woman was saying and what she's seeing.

When the Protector addresses them, the simple question bouncing in her mind comes out in a squeak before she can contain it.] What's going on?

A lot happens in very little time: there's overwhelming energy, and then there's not. That voice in the distance that Luka has barely a second to acknowledge. Sudden, intense brightness.

The city street is a far cry from the mountain cave, and the abrupt transition is uncomfortable and jarring. But, at the very least, Far Haven was less foreign than the cave interior at its most chaotic.

But Luka is no less confused than he had been in the cave, despite being somewhat more comfortable now. He slowly realizes that he's changed clothes, and that he's standing beside an unfamiliar person - Jane, she said? We're reporters, she said?

"My name isn't Red-" He starts to say in the quiet, confused manner of someone who's been woken from a dream. But he trails off when Olivia speaks up, practically reading his mind with her question. Something akin to it would have likely been the next thing he said, and so he holds his tongue and waits for a response.

Gyre is no more prepared for the breaking silhouette, the voices, the blinding light then the others, but going from cave to city is jarring in a way that puts him completely on edge. His pupils dilate into enormous white circles and he begins to bare his teeth to defend himself. He's taken note of everything around them in just a few second, his skin prickling, his body coiled up to defend himself.

Instead, there's a badge in his face, and the Protector's strange, small form just right there in front of them. He shakes his head to get the badge out of his site, grabbing the lapels of his suit coat and uh immediately trying to tear said coat off. He didn't choose to dress like this, and it freaks him out that he's in something wrong.

He's in the middle of yanking the coat off and throwing it onto the ground when Olivia asks the most important question, but he follows it up by pointing down the street at the crystalline shapes he remembers from last time.

"What are those? Why are there children in them?"

Jane nods in agreement with Olivia's inquiry, but she's jarred out of her calm demeanor as Gyre rather forcefully makes a mess of himself here.

"What are you doing-- Wait, children?" She questions Gyre first, before turning like a lightning bolt onto the Protector with her attention.

"What does he mean, children?" Her voice has gotten a lot colder all of a sudden, like she's on to something awful here and she's just spotted the tip of it.

To his credit, the Protector doesn't even seem to be bothered by the question. He reaches up to flip the lenses up and out of his eyes, revealing the intense gaze of the Protector that the three were used to seeing in the modern day. His eyes look first to Olivia, then to Luka, then to Gyre, and finally to Jane as he answers all of their questions.

"The crystals do not contain children. They contain fragments of magic that display something you are weak to. It is a self defense measure of the threat that this planet must be saved from. I do not yet know if they will fade in time or if they need to be eradicated to keep this world safe." He explains, reaching up to pull the lenses off of his head, apparently content to not put them back on. They disappear into nothing with a crackling pop.

"They will be gathered by sunset and dealt with." He adds, expecting that to reassure all of the ones he's facing. As he does, he motions a hand to force Luka's name badge up to float between them. He takes note of the braille on it and scrunches his eyebrows before he comments:

"And you, Eutychia? Any further questions or may I leave?"

The Weather

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6:00am The Arrival, All Cities:

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