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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Aliyah lets out a huff of alarm when Julian slips; Daniel twists around halfway to offer help but he seems to right himself reasonably well on his own.

"Underneath -?" he starts, but his lungs don't have the breath to finish the query. They just have to keep -

Aliyah's second warning comes too late as Daniel whips around just in time for his nose to make very hard, painful acquaintance with the bark of a tree he'd apparently been too distracted asking questions to avoid. He smacks directly into it and rebounds off the hard surface to land face-up in a graceless sprawl. His heart is still playing an agonizing vivacissimo against his ribcage and he's able to scramble reflexively to his feet with every intention of continuing to run like hell.

Except that he can't.

Because his glasses are gone.

"Oh. Damnit."

Julian is still running when he sees in his peripheral vision Daniel make head-on contact with a tree, almost as if he had aimed perfectly for it. Julian skids to a halt, despite Agamede's worried, "Jules, run," because she is the other half of his soul, and apparently has the self-preservation that Julian sometimes seems to lack. But he is back at Daniel's side in a half second, reaching out a hand to steady the other man.

"What?" he asks, his breath coming in short, pained gasps. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?" He is fairly sure that an impact like that could have easily broken the other man's nose, but it's nearly impossible to see details in this darkness, even with Julian's eyesight. "Can you run? We need to keep moving, it's here."

"Yep," says Daniel tightly, a semantically precise answer to each question across the board he's pretty sure, one hand flying wildly across the ground in search of his glasses. Out of random chance he catches hold of the wire frames, recognizes the shape of the rounded lenses, and jams them back onto his face.

"Come on, come on," Aliyah urges, but Daniel's attempt to break into a dead run is somewhat impeded by the large crack that's apparently formed on one of the lenses. The snow leopard curls her tail at his hip and he reaches down instinctively to brush at the fur on her back.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, go!" He waves Julian ahead, essentially half-blind but with Aliyah serving as his impromptu guide. He has no idea what the ominous it could be, and he has no desire to find out.

"I'm sure you are, but I can't very well leave you with only three of your four eyes working. What kind of doctor would I be?" Julian grumbles, not sure how he even has the air for a joke when he feels like his heart is about to literally explode from terror.

He grabs Daniel's sleeve, hoping the man will forgive his imposition and trusting Daniel's daemon to help him guide Daniel, and starts running again. He is no longer sure if he should be heading to high ground anymore, or down, or to water (is there water anywhere nearby? Julian feels completely, utterly helpless and it simply infuriates him beyond belief). For now, Julian attempts to zig-zag between the trees, hoping that whatever is about to reach them will at least have trouble grabbing hold of the both of them.

"I think I see an opening!" Julian shouts, pointing to what is either a cave or an overhanging in the limestone rock face ahead. "Good idea or bad idea?" He's still running towards it for now, hell if he's going to stop and think too deeply about it.

"Nope, I see it too," he pants in reply, Julian tugging him forward to compensate for his brand new blind spot. "Go, good idea, I'm right behind you!"

He is. The woods fall away to a slight incline which Daniel half-runs and half-skids down, his free hand catching at the gravel and loose dirt for a poor attempt at stability. He makes it into the opening at an abnormal angle, partially tripping into it - a cave of some kind, someplace just as eerie and dark as the woods they just came from but at least a hopefully defensible position. Aliyah steadies him before he faceplants completely, a merciful preservation of dignity he's certain he no longer has.

Julian holds on a second longer, until he has what he hopes is their sanctuary (and not something even worse than the trouble they're in already) is within sight, then lets go for both their sake's as the ground nearly drops out beneath them. This time, at least, Julian manages to keep his balance on the leaves and sticks and roots the whole way down until he feels the cooler air hit his face, letting him know he's made it.

Julian hears Daniel arrive next to him, and he stumbles inside. Julian presses one hand against the wall for support as he bends over double to try and catch his breath, which feels like an impossible task. "You... with me over there, Explorer?" he asks between breaths, eyes closed. He's not even sure it's safe to rest, but there isn't much of a choice. He has to stop, at least for a second. Just a quick second. He's not sure if he can even hear the danger over the hammering of his own heart, but at least he can sense Agamede nearby. He hasn't lost her.

Immediately he falls back against the wall to sink into a sitting position, hands feeling rubbed raw from the rough tumble downward and trembling.

"Hey, yeah," Daniel answers Julian's question after a brief pause to regain control of his lungs that feel, unpleasantly, as though they've caught fire. "I'm, ah, I'm here. You okay?"

He squints in an effort to distinguish Julian from the clouded, inky darkness of the cave's interior. Short of the marginally less dim outside, they have no light source.

"I... am honestly not quite sure," Julian answers, with a huffed, breathless laugh that teeters on half euphoric, half hysteric. "Ask me again in a few minutes. I'm sure be able to tell you more then." He is quiet again for a second, a miracle in it's own right, and then says more quietly, "Is it just me, or is it gone?"

Because Julian hears absolutely nothing now. Nothing underneath them, nothing even in the distance. It isn't as if they've lost or outrun what was coming after them, but like it was never there in the first place. "I'm not completely senile, right? There was something there. The ground was shaking, I heard... I heard it." The silence is eerie, but Julian is simply glad that he is still alive. He'll worry later about the equally frightening fact that he is either going insane or that the thing that is after them can appear and disappear at will.

Edited 2014-11-02 04:59 (UTC)

Daniel pauses for a minute, listening intently. Aliyah moves toward the mouth of the cave, ears no longer pressed flat against her skull but swiveling faintly as she listens.

"I don't hear anything nearby," she says after a moment.

"Me neither." He turns back to the faint outline of Julian, tries to peer past the crack fragmenting one of his lenses. "I - it felt like there was something, yeah. But it could've been..." He trails off into a hopeless shrug. It could have been any number of things. It could have been the Rift. It could have been something harmless, like an earthquake or any number of similarly mundane explanations.

...Or it could have been a massive raging creature intent on slaughtering them all horribly which, with Daniel's track record, seems far more likely.

"Either way, I think it's gone now."

"Ah. Well, I suppose that's something then," Julian says after a second. He straightens and takes a breath, his lungs no longer feeling like they are being squeezed by hot irons, and moves towards Daniel. He sits down next to him against the wall, lets Agamede crawl into his lap with a small whine, and scratches between her ears, glad for her physical contact. The wrist he had landed on when he slipped throbs a little, but Julian figures he could be dead so... you know. There's that going for him.

"A reprieve, then, for now at least." He looks over, trying to see Daniel in the darkness. "You had me worried there for a second. Are you quite sure you're glasses were the only casualty with that... quite graceful dance you had with that tree?" Not that there's much he could do for Daniel, not here, but he can't help but ask. Since entering the dream, he has felt nothing but helpless. Being useful could at least be a change from that.

"That's one way of putting it." Daniel grins faintly. His head-on collision had been anything but graceful, but head-on collisions rarely tend to be. Julian's question is a fair one.

"Aside from the increased chance of a migraine I feel fine," he admits after a pause. "Well, okay, my hands feel like they've gotten half the skin rubbed off them but I think that's to be expected. What about you? You all good there?"

At this Aliyah makes a small, purr-like noise in sympathy, drawing close enough for Daniel to bury one of his raw-feeling hands in her reassuringly soft fur. The physical comfort definitely helps.

"I'd ask you how many fingers, but I'm afraid that would seem a bit unfair considering the fact that your glasses are broken and I can barely see you to begin with," he says with a chuckle. "Let me know if your head starts to hurt. Not sure what I can do about anything right about now, but let me know anyhow. If only dreams would let you take along supplies! I could take care of your hands and have you off to lunch in minutes."

He pulls his long legs up and rests his arms across them, one hand still touching Agamede's back. If there was one thing about this dreamworld he wishes he could keep, it would be her. "My wrist hurts because, like an idiot, I thought I could catch myself from falling whilst running uphill in the dark on unstable ground, but nothing is damaged. In fact, now that I'm here, and not running, I'm feeling much, much better."

He listens briefly, but still hears nothing. "So, are you adventures going to and from other worlds in your awakened life like this a lot? Because I admire you greatly, but certainly don't envy you. I have faced some scary things in my life, but this is not something I would like to repeat. Ever."

Daniel winces and nods sympathetically when he hears about the wrist, forgetting for a moment that Julian probably can't actually see much of it. The concern gets diverted by his next question, which Daniel latches onto with enthusiasm.

"Frequently," he says with a smile and without irony. "Usually involving a lot more mortal peril. Getting shot at, etcetera. The good news here is at least this place is a good defensive point. I think." He peers around at the cave speculatively but its interior is no more visible to him than it was the first time he checked.

(He hates that the military mindset has become something not so easily ignored, that Daniel can detect the threat and the strategy of a situation and react accordingly. It makes him feel less trusting.)

"I guess I'm lucky I ran into you then!" Julian says, putting a hand on his chest and feeling his heart is back to normal now. "I think I've had my fair share of mortal peril for awhile. No more crash landing on planets or being dragged into mirror universes or whatever else was on my schedule. When I wake up, I am requesting some time off working in the field. Just my nice lab, my office, my regular patients. Maybe even some time off for lots and lots of research. Nothing better to calm the soul than good, real research." He shoots Daniel a grin in the dark, wishing for about the hundredth time for a light.

"Let's hope our defensive spot holds up, then," Julian breathes. "I'm torn between never moving again and whether or not I should get back and take my chances in the woods or deeper into the cave. Not one of those choices seems ideal."

Mirror universes, hm? Daniel's feeling more and more in agreement with Julian the more he keeps talking. He never enjoyed any of his parallel universes either.

"Wish that were the case when I wake up," he says ruefully. "The universe I'm in now is, well, it's a bit of a mess. We've got the literal Devil wandering around. Yeah, never thought I'd say that either."

The cave itself feels no more or less safe than the rest of the woods, though it's true the deeper they go the higher they run the risk of confronting anything unpleasant.

"Hopefully we'll be safe enough here." But the uncertainty is stark in his voice.

"I suppose if we're not safe here, we deal with it when it comes to pass," Julian says with a shake of his head. "I've probably said this about a thousand times, but I am immensely glad I ran into an explorer worm-hole adventurer first instead of whatever that... thing is. I realize I'm not much help in the situation at hand, and I don't mean it in a way where I'm saying I'm glad you're in this mess either, but I must say it wasn't the worst luck I've ever experienced to meet you out here." Julian rubs his face. Sometimes his compliments come out sounding suspiciously like insults, which is probably why nobody really seems to like him when they first meet him. "That made little sense. How is it possible to be so tired in a dream? Aren't I sleeping?"

"Wait. The... devil. Like... ancient Abrahamic angel of darkness, horns and tail and pitchfork, Jinn Iblis, kind of thing?" Julian says this slowly. He knows these aren't all exactly the same thing, but he's pulling out what little knowledge he can grasp from childhood Earth memories and schooling and people he's met over the years, assuming that what Daniel means is the same thing in both their worlds. "I'm also guessing that asking how that even could possibly even begin to happen or be true will be answered somehow with 'The Rift.'" The way Julian says it definitely has capital letters. "Am I getting the hang of it now?" he asks Daniel with a smile. "That certainly sounds horrific."

Edited 2014-11-02 07:14 (UTC)

Yeah, Daniel is definitely relating to this guy's loquaciousness. He lets Julian talk while he gets his equilibrium back, knowing full well how reassuring hearing one's own voice for a bit can be. The hurricane of references, biblical and otherwise, elicit another tired smile.

"Yeah, the real deal." He shakes his head. "Still have trouble wrapping my mind around it, and I used to fight gods for a living. Except he more or less took the physical shape of a pretty average-looking guy in his mid-forties and was kinda in the middle of getting drunk when I met him." Daniel won't go on into the details of that little encounter - like how his vague post-Ascension senses picked up on the thing's demonic nature immediately, how he'd engaged in the verbal equivalent of poking the Devil with a big stick to see what would happen, and generally almost gotten himself killed again.

Julian's query about the Rift rings a little too true.

"That's just about it, yeah. Weird stuff happens, we tend to blame the, uh, spaciotemporal anomaly floating in the middle of Manhattan. And since it apparently breaches multiple universes, well." He makes a wavy, equivocal hand gesture, as if to communicate well, what can you do.

"You used to fight gods?" Julian says, raising his eyebrows. "Interesting line of work. I've met... many things I never thought I would, even after taking the medical posting at the edge of my known universe. Non-corporeal beings, beings who live out of temporal planes, but usually gods stayed on the pages of their rightful mythologies, or at least in their heavenly... or not so heavenly, realms. Granted, there were beings that called themselves Gods, used their advanced technology to take control over less advanced civilizations, using what they knew about their beliefs to control them, but they were never what they claimed to be."

Julian realizes that this could be construed as extremely rude and insulting, and while he has never really put much faith in that sort of thing himself, he certainly has no desire to undermine the seriousness of the situation. After all, shared consciousness and multi-universal dreaming should be impossible too, and yet here he is. "Sorry," he apologizes. "I'm not trying to insinuate that I don't believe you. I, strangely enough, actually do. You say he's been wrecking havoc. Does this mean you've taken up your old line of work, fighting gods?"

Julian stretches his legs back out, and stands up. He runs his fingers along the cave wall absent-mindedly as Agamede moves away from him, just a few feet, to sniff at the cave entrance again. They are both still on edge. "This rift gets more and more fascinating and less and less appealing the more I learn about it. So far, strangely enough, it is only affecting my dreams. I've had plenty of perfectly normal dreams since the last one, which I did't even remember until I came back here, now."

Edited 2014-11-02 16:19 (UTC)

"Not actual gods," Daniel hastens to explain. "More like...very powerful species with a penchant for scavenging technology to make themselves seem like gods, similar to your case. In most instances they were just, uh, well, they were alien parasites mostly. But the Devil is, um, not. He's the real deal, he's killed people already, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do about that."

He doesn't mind saying it. The most he can do is pick up on the fractured energy that sparks off Lucifer's being but this is something so much more beyond him and he knows it. But then, Daniel isn't in the habit of ignoring problems even if he has no plausible means with which to fix them. In fact, that just tends to make him even more determined.

"The Rift works in strange ways." Daniel lifts his shoulders in a small shrug. "I couldn't even begin to tell you how it works. I'm, uh, I'm just a linguist."

The rock is cool and rough under his fingers, and part of the wall are wet. He finds himself wondering if this is really a dream realm, or a real place, a real planet somewhere. Maybe he's even heard of it. Maybe somewhere, on the other side of this world, there are inhabitants somewhere. "Sounds exactly like something you wouldn't be eager to wake up for, I can see that, yes," Julian agrees. "I'd offer to help, but I suppose I'm not really here. And while I've had to fight some battles, I'm really much better at trying to fix. He sounds incredibly powerful and dangerous, but not giving up, that's worth something, even if it feels futile. Right?"

"Are you really?" Julian asks, interest plain in his voice. "A linguist? How wonderful!" he seems delighted. "I've always though we should have more linguists on the station, especially in our line of work, with all the trade and politics that happen. Our universal translators make us lazy. Sure, we can communicate almost immediately with any new race we come across, but languages can be so much more than just words, but so much more the culture. How many times I've insulted my friend because I've used the wrong hand-gesture or the translator missed a certain tone...and it is useless at metaphors and colloquialisms" he laughs. "And then, something will go wrong with the translator or radiation knocks everything out, and then where are we? Unable to even talk to half the crew! Though it comes in handy medically. Having an unknown bein being able to explain their physiology can certainly save time and lives."

'Not giving up' is practically Daniel's motto, even if he happens to be dead at the time. Especially if he happens to be dead in fact, as things like that just tend to up the man's resolve.

"Less useful than you'd think, actually," he sighs, mildly mournful, and leans his head back to rest of the uncomfortably ridged cave wall. "Especially now. There aren't really any ancient texts leaping out to be translated in Manhattan, and the Devil's hardly going to run from a garbled line of Latin."

The 'universe translators' sound pretty nice, actually, but the mention of new races, discovery, everything Daniel used to do just prick him with an odd sense of nostalgia, even if it can't have been much more than a week since he landed in Manhattan.

Julian winces, and bends down near Daniel. He keeps forgetting that while for himself this is all just part of a dream, but for Daniel (whether Daniel is real or not, his feelings seem perfectly real), this mess is related to his every day life, trapped in some world that is not his own. He can't read Daniel's thoughts, but senses, perhaps, his feelings. "Sorry," he says, kindly this time. "You don't know me very well yet, but I'll let you know that I am actually quite a bit of an ass."

Julian sits again. His restlessness isn't putting Agamede any more at ease, and it certainly isn't helping him either. "There's nothing quite as infuriating as feeling less than useful and being in the unknown. I know what it's like to be trapped somewhere far away from your home with uncertainty about whether you'll ever get back. Not like... you're describing exactly, but I can empathize. You must miss your home world very much. But hearing you talk, you sound like you have more background skills than just translating ancient texts." He gives Daniel a smile. A linguist he may be, but for someone who seems to travel worlds and fight evil aliens, he believes Daniel is more helpful than he imagines. "Plus, don't underestimate garbled Latin. You never know what could hold power, it is an unknown universe!"

Edited 2014-11-02 18:11 (UTC)

Julian's levity is welcome, and Aliyah takes the moment to butt her head against Daniel's shoulder by way of comfort.

"I've been trapped on other planets before," he offers, "but never, uh, not quite like this. There's no wormhole back, there's no ship to just - beam me out again. I'm stuck. Not much I can do with garbled Latin about that."

He returns the smile, though his is a shade more melancholic than he would like.

"Thank you," he says, and he means it. "And contrary to your subjective claim, there's nothing about you that I would classify as 'an ass'."

Julian tries to imagine it. He's been in some pretty dire situations before, crash landed in some dismal places, but almost every time there had either been at least a glimmer of hope for rescue, or at the very least he hadn't been alone when hope ran out.

"I know this is a bit far-fetched, but perhaps you'll run into someone from your own universe in the dream world," he says thoughtfully. "You said this happens from time to time, and I'm not in or part of the Rift. I'm still in my own and yet I'm here with you, as well." Julian isn't one for giving false hope, comforting words he doesn't believe, but while it might be unlikely, it isn't impossible. And if it isn't impossible, then Julian thinks hope is better than the alternatives.

Julian smiles and gives a quiet laugh. "Then you simply don't know me well enough yet, I'm afraid. Don't worry, I shan't disappoint you. And you're welcome."

"Well, it helps that we're never really alone here." He indicates the entirety of the hypothetical dreamspace with flap of a hand. "I mean, you're here and that, well. That helps, assertions of alleged personality similarities to barn equus notwithstanding. And I've always got Aliyah."

He drops the hand to stroke at her. The repetition in the motion is soothing, if only mildly, and she makes a low rumbling in her chest in response. The chance of anyone he knows coming through the Rift, much less the versions specific to his universe, are astronomical in their unlikelihood, but Daniel's always been a subscriber to the more idealistic schools of thought, so he'll take it. God knows he needs it.

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