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

[applesaucemod]

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.]

Comments

[fucking_ebay]

Peter swallows, telling himself he can trust Daine. Daine's seen some shit, too, she'll probably even believe him --

"Vampires," says Cascia darkly.

"A vampire," Peter corrects her stridently.

Cascia shakes her head, sidling close up to Coromotto, who seems a lot less vulnerable than she feels. "You don't know that."

[wildmage_daine]

Coromotto looks a little surprised to see Cascia so close - perhaps because he's shaped like a predator and she's shaped like prey - but he wags his tail kindly.

Daine, for her part, is considering vampires. She knows there are some in New York, but she's been given to understand that they're not over dangerous. They have to behave themselves, or somesuch. But there are no vampires in Tortall. If there's any particular way folk are meant to deal with them when they don't feel like behaving themselves, she's yet to hear of it.

"How do you fight them?" Coromotto asks, sensibly getting straight to the point.

[fucking_ebay]

"You don't," says Peter sharply, though he doesn't even get the whole phrase out before he's peering off into the darkness again like he's expecting something to pounce on him any second.

"What he means is we don't have the weapons and we're practically on their home turf," supplies Cascia, who's not looking any less paranoid right not for all that she's taken shelter by the big bad wolf.

Peter swallows, nods. "We need wooden stakes, holy water...sunlight...."

What he'd give for a sunrise right now.

[wildmage_daine]

Daine bristles a little at Peter's pronouncement; she's sick to death of folk telling her she can't fight things that might hurt her friends. Cascia is a bit more helpful, though, prompting Peter to list the weapons they'd need. There's nothing they can do about the darkness or the lack of holy water, but they're in a gods-cursed wood. Surely they can obtain a sharpened stick or two.

"Come with us," Coromotto says, turning to give Cascia a comforting nudge with his snout. "We'll find stakes. There's wood everywhere."

Daine already has her eye out for trees with low-hanging dead branches, which turns out to be most of them. It's more a matter of finding ones dry enough to snap off easily and thick enough to mean business. When she finds one, it's only the work of a moment for her to rear up, clench her jaws around the branch, and snap it loose with a decisive jerk.

"There's one already," Coromotto says as Daine offers the improvised stake to Peter, tail wagging.

[fucking_ebay]

At any other time, the sight of Daine fetching a stick would give Peter a fit of giggles, but right now he's in no mood to be comforted, let alone amused. He hesitates, but takes the stake somewhat pointy stick. "Jesus," he breathes, realizing this makes him the only one theoretically equipped to kill the vampire if when it strikes. Somehow possessing the weapon doesn't make him feel much better about possessing the responsibility. He looks around sharply, hair on the back of his neck standing on end. He has a weapon and the vampire is probably watching and knows. Will that make it attack them just on principle?

"If it's near us, it knows what we're doing," Cascia mutters to Coromotto. "They can see in the dark a hell of a lot better than any of us can."

[wildmage_daine]

Excuse you, Peter, she is equipping you with a weapon. This is hardly a game of fetch. A longer piece of deadfall yields two more improvised stakes when she and Coromotto snap it between them, so Daine offers one to Peter. The other, she'll hold onto, herself. She can pass it off if necessary, and she might even be able to wrangle it herself if the vampire holds still long enough.

Coromotto huffs, the vocal equivalent of a shrug. "Good," is his verdict. "If it knows we can fight, it might be less inclined to attack us." After a mental prod from Daine, he adds, "Four against one is good odds." It might be a bit generous to count Cascia, who seems to have some sort of condition, but she can still help keep an eye out, if nothing else. And in woods like these, every pair of eyes is important.

[fucking_ebay]

"Or more inclined to pick us off while it can," counters Peter, ever the pessimist despite all the evidence to the contrary (like, say, the fact that it didn't pick any of them off when they were in groups of two and unarmed).

He holds out the second stake to Cascia, who just snorts. "What am I going to do with that?" she asks derisively.

[wildmage_daine]

Both wolves give Peter a startled look. "If it wanted easy pickings, it would have attacked while we were weaponless," Coromotto says, quite reasonably, all things considered. He's tempted to just take the second stake himself, but that would make speaking difficult, so he nods at Peter, instead. "Maybe you should put that in your belt or somesuch."

[fucking_ebay]

Cascia chuckles, somehow able to take joy in Peter looking like an idiot despite being Peter. Peter scowls at her but stuffs one of the stakes under his belt as directed. "We should keep moving," he says, as if that will make him sound like some kind of authority on how not to get your throat torn out by a vampire in the woods.