applesaucedream | Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

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Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

The woods are dark and deep, but not particularly lovely. If anything, they feel dangerous, as if something terrible might come lurching out from behind any given tree and tear into the nearest warm body. What that terrible thing might be is anyone's guess. A cat with hands? Slenderman? Stegosaurus? Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf? All of the above in a horrible mob? It's anyone's guess. But every dreamer will be absolutely convinced that there is something unspeakable out there, and that it's after them.

The dreamers have two things on their side. The first is that there is actually nothing dangerous lurking in these woods (with the possible exception of other dreamers). The pervasive terror the dreamers are feeling is just that: a rift-given feeling, nothing more and nothing less. That snapping twig or rustle in the undergrowth is almost certainly just a squirrel or something else equally harmless.

The second is that no dreamer is alone. They all will be reunited with - or introduced to - their dæmons, a source of comfort in this dark, intimidating wilderness. However frightened the dreamers might be, at least they have someone with them who definitely doesn't want them dead.

[OOC: as ever, any and all are welcome! You don't have to be in the game to join the fun. Dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. And the party only stops when you want it to; feel free to backtag forever.]

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"I - er-" Aziraphale lifts his hands in bewildered alarm. What is he doing wrong here? He finally gives ground, taking a nervous step back, right into a tree. Of bloody course.

"But it's a different universe," he explains very patiently, doing his level best not to sound nervous. "Things work differently, we don't have any - any God-Kings, or Primordium, or any of that."

Orisa slithers around him and onto the tree, hissing all the way. It takes Aziraphale only a moment to realize it's not cowardice, but practicality; she's removing herself from reach in case something should happen. And she's scouting for routes of escape or potential allies. Aziraphale feels an unusual burst of warmth for the python. Good for her.

Illyria cocks her head. If confusion were an emotion on her spectrum (she lacks such a thing, it is human, unnecessary), it would be what she conveys now. But it is not. The thought that one such as this principality could not even be aware of her existence is unimaginable, blasphemous. God-Kings cannot simply be ignored, no matter what universe they choose to reside in.

"You are mistaken." She grinds the words out slowly, a warning. "In my times of glory I would traverse the many dimensions with ease, conquer the hundreds and thousands that would defy me and crush them all."

The next words are ironclad, radiating with her restrained wrath, deceptively quiet.

"Would you also choose to defy me?"

"Aha," says Aziraphale, nodding slowly. Now he's in a difficult position. Admitting his very likely defiance would obviously be the wrong move. But he doesn't much like the idea of letting this arrogant creature wander off thinking she has every right to 'crush' whoever gets in her path. That would not be the angelic thing to do.

Aziraphale didn't used to be so doggedly, properly angelic. It's only recently he's started actually doing his job, and without any real employers to boot. Coming face to heel with Satan has that affect on you, evidently.

"I suppose it depends on the nature of your conquering," he says a bit thinly.

He can practically hear Orisa groaning up in the tree.

She takes two precise steps away, a very deliberate preparation for what may need to happen to teach this creature its place.

"It is beyond conquest," Illyria murmurs, a reminder to herself as well as the thing she addresses. Diminished she might be, smaller and reduced in power, but still she is God-King triumphant. Still and always she will be of superior being. "It is my right. This plane and all others I walk upon, they are mine. And I will teach my subjects obedience."

Pancakes hisses, catlike, in preparation for her mistress' will. If this principality will not submit, she will make it.

"Idiot," whispers Orisa, slithering back down toward him. Aziraphale ignores her for the moment, going so far as to take a step away from the tree, toward Illyria, instinctively moving out of Orisa's reach. He can feel her indignant rage the very moment he does so; that he ignores as well.

"You are not the first being I've met who thinks like this," he says dryly. She reminds him altogether too much of Lucifer. She does not frighten him as much, however; if there is residual fear, it is only an effect of the dream. "You'll find I do not submit easily."

"You speak to me with disrespect," she announces, cold and infallible. "We are done here."

She strikes it.

Her shell's hand swings to deal the principality a vicious blow, impacting its form's sternum in a shrieking skid of flesh-blood-bone, hyperelectrified atoms cracking into the latticework of divine energy, sending the physical thing backward and away and to her feet. Where it belongs.

"My pet," she commands quietly. Pancakes obeys, surges at the creature, lunges for it and the unexpected wrongness of her pet making contact with a foreign energy-being-thing strikes her. It is visceral, instant, and she recoils.

What is this? What power does this principality wield? How can it make this -

Pancakes wails and leaps away as though burned. Illyria's shell is shaking - how? This cannot be possible.

"What have you done to me?" she demands, her dissonant tranquility evaporating, her wrath seething to the surface.

Aziraphale lets out a startled, breathless grunt as she hits him, and he crumples to the ground in surprise; she is stronger than he expected, though he should have expected this of course. Most surprising is how Orisa reacts, with a staggering cry from her perch. Like she felt the pain. She felt it.

He doesn't have time to adjust to this alarming information as Illyria's horrible creature swarms over him. He throws up his arms to defend himself, but then it jumps away as though stung. He blinks up at them in immense confusion.

"Wh- what?" he blurts. "I didn't do anything!"

"Get up, moron!" Orisa snaps at him, tense and impatient. Don't forget the bloody sword this time!

Aziraphale climbs to his feet, touching a hand to the crackling pain in his chest, trying to heal or at least soothe it. He wastes no time drawing his sword into existence, the bright fire of it searing up in a blinding, hot flash. He stands up straight, manifesting his wings for good measure, flaring them out impressively and holding his blade before him, staring her down.

"Care to try that again?" he challenges brazenly.

Edited 2014-11-01 19:21 (UTC)

She disregards the discomfort with a spurt of irritation. Inconsequential. Pancakes cannot touch the creature, this much is clear. She orders her free from the radius of the emerging battle. This command is timely; with a clap of wings and a searing brightness, the principality makes tangible his form. A much more impressive foe. Illyria will relish the challenge. She has had so few opportunities for violence as of late, and even fewer that may yet be a match for her. Her true form is not accessible, shackled as she is to her shell, but she will prove unconquerable regardless.

"I will enjoy hurting you," she says, satisfaction creeping into her tone. The creature bears a sword, but Illyria requires no weaponry. "I will make trophies of your wings."

Wordless, soundless save the scream of two auras as they meet on their respective fields, she lunges, aiming one fist to drive it at the principality's face.

This isn't even his most impressive form - that would be far greater and, he thinks, dangerous to reveal. Would he be able to get his body back, even? He doesn't want to find out.

He hefts his sword to block her charge, but she turns out to be too fast for him, ducking in and landing a hard blow across his cheekbone, this strike crackling with as much violent energy as the last. He grits his teeth and skids back a bit, and again he hears Orisa cry out. Knowing that she isn't being spared from this enrages him more than he'd been prepared for, and when he lunges back it is with far greater aggressive force. He takes a swipe at Illyria, not aiming to kill - he has no desire for that, especially in a mere dream - but to wound severely. He wants her to know she is not as powerful as she thinks she is.

The sword pings against the hardened skin-armor of her shell. It should not hurt. Nothing can hurt the eternal, the God-King, the Shaper of All Things.

But it does.

It is a burning, bladed thing that slides into the imperceptible areas of her self, the non-physical, something that cannot be warded away by the carapace of her shell, and the agonizing shrill of its flame-brightness as it drives against her sends Illyria sliding backwards with a cry of - of pain.

"You dare," she spits, the churning darkness of her core rising and pouring over, boiling, enraged. "You would dare."

Pancakes' cries for caution go unheeded. Illyria lashes at the principality with a whip-crack backhand, drives a fist at its thorax, the fierceness of her blows impeded by the agony in her aura, her wholeness, her being.

This thing dared touch her. For that it will suffer.

Aziraphale barely has time to savor the momentary victory before she's at him again, and it's scarcely all he can do to block her blows; she's faster and more vicious than he, and he can't catch each one, each hit drawing a pained, choking sound and a tremor from his serpent. He slashes again, desperate and frustrated, and catches her across the back.

He hears her beast crying out as well, and suffers a moment of pause; just as Orisa seems to be feeling his pain, so does that thing feel Illyria's. Much as it attacked moments ago, he doesn't want to harm the creature.

The hesitation costs him the upper hand he might have gained after striking her again, and from the trees Orisa snarls furiously, "Don't just stand there!"

This time his blow provokes a cry from her, a wrenched-out grunting twisted noise, the vocalization of her fury and pain and frustration from the swordstroke. After the blow hits she retreats and circles, warily, seeking out her next opportunity and ignoring the pitted ache that blazes in the parts of her being with which the sword connected. Its pain is low and visceral; unnatural.

Pancakes' low, whistling wails command her attention, but only briefly. Her pet is in pain, just as she is, despite having only touched the principality for an instant. There is connection here but it is one Illyria is uninterested in investigating at the present time. The battle calls for her. She will not deny its importance.

The principality hesitates, its concentration slipping but for a moment, and Illyria pounces. This time she targets the hand bearing the sword, her greatest threat. Iron in her grip, she seizes its wrist and applies to it a brutal torquing grasp, ferocious and unrelenting, squeezing with all her concentrated might, and slams her other hand around its neck to wrap her shell-fingers around it, vicelike.

"You are tiny," she whispers into its shell's ear, her voice alight with the promise of victory.

Edited 2014-11-02 00:40 (UTC)

He pivots back at Orisa's shout, trying to catch Illyria first, but once again she's too quick. He manages not to let go his sword even as she all but crushes his wrist, letting out a strangled grunt of pain. The hand around his throat is similarly unyielding, and for a moment he's pinned in her grip, his movement limited to awkward, frustrated struggling.

Orisa releases a most un-snake-like growl and slithers down from her perch, cutting a line in the dirt not for Illyria, but for Pancakes. By now she's pieced together, that pain is shared between body and soul-manifestation, and that attacking Illyria would throw Aziraphale off just as it had Illyria and Pancakes earlier. The beast is her only logical target.

She wraps around it quickly, baring her fangs and biting down hard.

Pancakes let out a high-pitched vrrschh of agony as the worm-thing coils around her, sinking powerful jaws into her gray flesh. The Yastigilian hound jerks her head, rolls to the ground, kicking tentacled feet in an effort to shake the thing that has a grip on her like steel.

Illyria releases a similarly strangled cry, tears away from her victim and curls one hand around her midsection. Agony, biting and abrupt, licks up her, and for a dreadful moment she cannot see for the blinding pain roaring through her. Then her vision returns, and she sees the cause for her hurt.

Cold rage infuses the whole of her self. The principality would unleash its worm upon her pet. None lay fingers, coils, or fangs on her pet. None.

The God-King charges at the pair struggling on the ground, falls to her knees halfway from a renewed burst of ache that accompanies Pancakes' fresh squeal. With an agonized roar, she redoubles her efforts, reaches and rips the worm from her pet and flings it, desperate and furious, at the nearest tree. Her shell shudders and she nearly collapses entirely from the effort. She must brace herself on all fours to control the rippling pain permeating her every movement.

Aziraphale falls to his knees when she releases him, gasping and bracing on his sword. He struggles forward, reaching out in a desperate attempt to pull Illyria back, or perhaps to recover Orisa himself - stupid, involving herself, he had this in hand! - whatever it is, an attempt far too late. A shock of strange, foreign pain rips through him when she seizes Orisa and wrenches her away from the beast; he lets out a startled yell, overcome by this unfamiliar, terrible sensation. Is this what she'd felt when her beast had touched him? This rank sort of violation?

He breathes out in a ragged, relieved burst when she flings Orisa aside, though he feels her violent impact against the tree reverberating painfully through his body. He turns his back on the enemy, now concerned only with the snake's wellbeing.

"Orisa!" he cries, his sword vanishing as he gathers her up. "Are - are you?"

"I'm all right, stupid," she says, sounding hassled and alarmed. "Are you?"

"You shouldn't have - I was fine!" He holds her close in spite of himself, only distantly surprised at how much this creature means to him, having only known her a short while - and yet, what feels like the whole of his existence.

"I've always been with you," she says, soft and impatient. "Always. Don't you understand?"

He does, after a moment, though it's difficult to comprehend. He glances back to Illyria and her creature, curious to know how they fare, knowing what he now knows.

I am bleeding, mistress.

Pancakes is bleeding. It is small but it is deep, thick and dark blue blood drooling from the puncture marks. Illyria would heal her if she had the power, but all of that energy has been locked away from her shell and she has no access to it. She touches a finger to her pet, fluttering and mournful. She cannot ignore the sabotaging ache running through her own being. They are tied together by some indescribable, intrinsic bond. When she threw the principality's worm she must have injured it similarly.

It appears to be in distress over the state of its worm. Good. It should regret ordering it upon her pet. She stands with significantly less coordination than is her equilibrium and glowers at the thing.

"You injured my pet," she says, her voice icy and vengeful. "What have you done to me? Why do her injuries affect me so?"

"She's not your pet!" says Orisa angrily; she rests her head on Aziraphale's shoulder, too weak to raise it herself. "She's part of you. Your internal self. That's why you share thought and being, why you can feel each other's agony. He didn't do anything to her, it was my decision, because you were hurting him."

"Orisa, please," says Aziraphale in mild embarrassment, stroking her back in an effort to calm her down.

"I'm not poisonous," Orisa goes on stubbornly. "She'll be fine."

This thing's opinion of Illyria weighs less than the air it breathes. It is small and weak and wriggling and can do nothing to harm a God-King. If it has one grace, it is that it has left her pet in no danger.

She snaps her gaze to the one holding it.

"Control your worm," she orders coldly, "before I crush it."

"Worm?!" Orisa echoes in outrage, just as Aziraphale pulls her closer and cries, "No!"

"How dare you," Orisa continues, aflame with the same pride that Aziraphale feels all too often. "That's royal bloody python to you. And he does not control me. We are equals. Or are you too thick to realize that, even after what your beast has been through?"

"This is not helping!" Aziraphale snaps sharply under his breath, holding her tightly. To Illyria, he says, "There's no need for any more violence. Let's just - let's be reasonable, for goodness' sake."

Illyria watches the worm's outrage with vague unconcern. She is uninterested with the self-righteous anger of those beneath her. The principality no longer wishes to do battle, it seems. This is a disappointment. She was beginning to enjoy their violence.

"You forswore reason when you sought to challenge me," she answers. Her pet has risen to rub her head against her God-King's leg, an assurance of her health. "And you rejected mercy when your worm damaged Pancakes."

"She's a python," Aziraphale volunteers delicately, before both he and Orisa freeze in mutual bewilderment over what they just heard.

"P-Pancakes," says Orisa. "Did you just say Pancakes?"

"Is that that's name?" says Aziraphale incredulously, and it might be the pain, the terror, and the general hysteria, but he can't quite keep from snorting.

Orisa joins him all too easily, laughing full-heartedly, her heavy coils shaking with mirth. Something so terrifying, named Pancakes. This nightmare is achieving new heights of absurdity.

"W-why?" Aziraphale demands.

Edited 2014-11-02 02:29 (UTC)

The principality makes some bizarre choking noise, it and its worm shuddering with something Illyria cannot perceive. Is this some sort of fit? A strange pre-funerary ritual of their species, perhaps.

They are laughing, mistress, Pancakes informs her sagely. They find my name amusing.

"I do not understand." She addresses both her pet and the principality, unable to hide her confusion for these circumstances. Her head tilts onto a skewed axis. "It is the name of my Yastigilian hound, as she chose. You would do well to respect it, or I will make collars of your spines."

"It's just - well, it's not very fitting, is it?" ventures Aziraphale, sobering up as much as he can. "Sorry, sorry. I, er. Just wasn't expecting anything like that."

Orisa slithers up around his shoulders, resting her weight on him tiredly. Aziraphale stands up, still feeling a bit shaky.

"We're going to, er, go, then," he says weakly.

"It is her name. She chose it. Therefore it fits her." Illyria's logic is infallible. Pancakes winds one tentacle affectionately around her mistress' arm in appreciation of the defense of her title. She was very proud to come up with it, undignified as her mistress may find it.

The principality wishes to leave. She cannot suppress her confusion at that either, for there is nowhere it may hide from the Shaper of All Things, truly.

"We have not finished engaging in glorious battle," she murmurs, puzzled despite herself (confusion, emotional output, a remnant of the shell she is in, and nothing more). And she is - disappointed. The principality was a challenge of the metaphysical, fragment of the world she once ruled without question. She would have liked to exercise her authority over it and triumph in conflict once more.

Aziraphale stares at her, not entirely certain what's happening here. She wants to continue fighting, but she seems almost - sad? That is not what he expected. For a moment he wavers, feeling irrationally guilty.

"It wasn't that glorious," he ventures.

Tender Lumplings Everywhere, Life's No Fun Without A Good Scare [Open to All]

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tw: strangulation, also daemon-on-daemon fighting about to commence

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