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

[julianbashir]

"I suppose it somewhat comforting," Julian agrees with a chuckle, because of course dying and being able to wake up alive is certainly better than the alternative of staying dead. Julian has never actually died and come back to life. He's been revived from near death, or found alive when everyone thought he was dead, but never actually resurrected.

"But this fact doesn't make me any less keen on experiencing it. So for now, I'll do my best to stay alive." Julian isn't sure how much his best is worth, but it's dark and he can see Daniel even less than he could a minute ago. He can still see Agamede, but even more so, sense her... feel her nearby, like a tug on his heart. It's somewhat reassuring, knowing that at the very least he can't lose her completely no matter how dark it gets.

[peacefulexplorer]

"Good, uh, good plan," Daniel calls back, glancing back over his shoulder as he says it, straining to make out the faint outline of Julian in the thick, choking darkness. In the end he just has to stick with vocal confirmation - especially with the thick crack in his glasses, his eyes are all but useless here.

There's a long stretch of silence (or perhaps he just perceives it that way) in which he can hear nothing but the whisper of his fingertips brushing stone, the dull crunch of footfalls over gravel and rock floor, the padding of Aliyah and Agamede, the soul-creatures Daniel just has to assume are close by since he's essentially flying blind. Completely blind, in fact; when he lifts a hand in front of his eyes to test his vision he can't make it out at all.

Aliyah growls a short warning but Daniel still stumbles and smacks into the wall when he comes up against it. He immediately begins running his hands over it, searching for an indication of a fork, a turn, anything. But the wall simply curves seamlessly around to form a perfect semicircle.

"Dead end." He lets out a small grunt of frustration, sorely tempted to kick the wall in a useless, annoyed gesture. "We should probably turn around before -"

He stops when the words are punctuated by a dull rumbling, the groaning weight of the stone overhead making its heretofore unknown instability explicitly clear.

"Uh-oh."

[julianbashir]

Julian is an action-driven person, usually. When in trouble, there's always something that can be put to good use, even if it is only his own sharp elbows and knees. But here, as the darkness begins to close into absoluteness, Julian feels an itch of helplessness seep through him. He had followed Daniel's example, keeping one hand against the wall for guidance, sliding his feet forward in an almost-shuffle to keep himself from falling into or off anything, trying to keep a mental note of any changes in texture or temperature of the rock or air around him.

"Damn," Julian says at Daniel's proclamation, and sighs as he comes up behind him. "Well, so much for that idea. At least we'll be heading back towards the light! I'm turning around now, going to follow the opposite wall in case we missed a turn-off somewhere."

But that idea lasts all of three seconds when the rumbling begins. In the darkness, it seems deafening, as if it is the only thing that exists.

"Damn!" Julian says again, because maybe it will help. This is it, isn't it? This is where he finds out what it's like to die horribly in a dream and wake up on the other side. Even knowing that there is another side though, Julian's body won't let him just stand still and accept it. His body is screaming at him to survive even as his brain is screaming that it will all be over soon if he would just stop struggling and let himself awake up already.

"I guess we're running again!" Julian says, raising his voice to be heard, letting go of the wall's safety and beginning to sprint. "If we don't make it," which seems a bit pessimistic, but Julian feels like he can't really be blamed for that, "It was truly a pleasure! Even some of the running and almost dying bits!"

everything has just gotten awful (warning for daemon separation stuff)

[peacefulexplorer]

"Noted," Daniel launches back as cheerfully as he can, even with the tempered edge of panic leaking through, because sometimes the gallows humor is the only way one can stay sane. He about-faces, Aliyah bounds ahead, and he tears after her in what he really really hopes is the way out but must be; there are no other passages, just smooth walls and crumbling ceilings and -

- and a rain of dust and heavy stone collapses, directly in front of him, and Daniel has barely enough time to retreat before getting caught in the downpour but -

- but Aliyah doesn't.

There's a horrible wrenching pain in his chest, his limbs, everything as she flees the showering collapse of stone, pulls away down the passage, farther than they should be separated he knows this, he knows this is bad, this is bad this is very very bad. And Daniel hurls himself toward the rapidly building pile of rubble and tumbled rock, straining to make it through before the passageway is blocked completely, ignoring the sharp fragments of stone as they come pinwheeling at him, desperate to reach at her. He can hear her cries, knows she's in just as much pain as he is, but they are separated by a wall of stone and a trembling cave and Daniel can't vocalize, can't scream, can't speak, just grasps uselessly at the hiss of dust, trying to shovel away the mass of heaped debris.

Re: everything has just gotten awful (warning for daemon separation stuff)

[julianbashir]

Julian is running, only a little bit ahead of Daniel he thinks based on footsteps, though all of his sense are overwhelmed by darkness and deafening loudness. Julian is stumbling, tripping through the blackness, feeling as if the walls are caving in, the ceiling coming down, and the floor collapsing beneath his feet, not a single steady surface to cling to. His only hope, he figures, is to keep running.

The collapse of stone from the ceiling hits just behind Julian's feet, and he cowers for a second, crouching as the rocks, dust, and debris fall behind him, around him, on him. He coughs, unable to breathe, choking... this becomes more of a concern than the rocks that are hitting him, smashing into his shoulders, arms, and back painfully. He is unaware of where Daniel is, if he's even alive, when a large chunk hits the side of his head, knocking him to the ground. The darkness becomes a different kind of dark, quieter.

It is Aliyah's sounds that wake him, an unearthly sound of pain that Julian is sure he won't ever be able to forget. Agamede is calling his name over and over again, her teeth sharp against the skin of his arm as she bites him, hard, to get him moving. Julian isn't positive how long it's been when attempts to sit up, unsure if he was unconscious or simply stunned, but it couldn't have been too long as the cave still seems intent on collapsing. He gets up, still unable to see, and puts a hand to his head. The side of his head and face wet and warm, which explains the dizziness and nausea that overwhelms him for a few seconds nad leaves him unable to move for a few moments. His body pangs with every movement, every breath, and he gags. But he is alive, and therefore still in the dream. Nothing to do but force himself into a standing position, wipe what can only be blood from his eyes, and do something.

"Daniel?!" He yells over the noise and through the dust that still seeps into his ears, nose, and mouth. It is Agamede who says, "He's trapped on the other side! They're separated, Jules, they shouldn't be separated, they need to be together!" She is absolutely hysterical, and Julian feels his way over to the rock. "Daniel, get as close to my voice as you can!" he yells again, hoping that Daniel can even hear him at all. "Agamede, get Aliyah as near as possible!"

Julian begins to try to dig the wall out, not sure if Daniel is really on the other side, still alive, or trapped underneath, but he has to try, damn it! Even if he ran now, he would survive what, for another few minutes? He can't just leave with Daniel trapped, separated from his soul. He has to do something, anything, even if it means nothing in the end. It seems a futile task, considering he can't see what he's doing, but he continues to pull and tear at the rocks all the same. Aliyah's cries are getting worse, and from what he can tell, Julian isn't going to make it. The whole rest of the cave is going to come down on him any minute, surely.

[peacefulexplorer]

The pain is excruciating, a dragging siege on his central nervous system and everything attached, impacting the core of his self with repeated concussive force. He's aware, dimly, that at some point he must have fallen to the ground, curled in on himself, back and shoulders throbbing with a distant physical ache that is nothing, nothing compared the shrieking agony attacking every metaphysical fiber in his being. He might be yelling too. He can't -

He can't think, can't move, can't process or feel or anything, just lie in tortuous concavity while the blinding skid of pain receptors fire off, repeatedly, and he listens to Aliyah cry.

Some distant part of him registers Julian's voice. An even more distant part accesses the itch, the need to get back to Aliyah and, miraculously, seizes on it. Movement aches (everything aches), movement is an exercise in pain tolerance and grinding slowness (the pain is constant), movement is spasmodic shift through air that is denser than Daniel remembers (Daniel, he can remember his name and its individual syllables now, he must not forget again), movement is a slow and terrible effort to push through the viscosity of his pain and his absence of thought.

Speaking is harder.

"Ju -" Daniel gets no farther. Aliyah's cries reach a piercing, tearing peak, Daniel's heart wrenches in its cavity, one hand leaps out toward the rubble, but unless his reduced sensory inputs are playing havoc on him, the entire cave is shaking again.

"J -"

[julianbashir]

Dying, it turns out, it just about as horrific as Julian thought it might be. As the cave begins to collapse around him, all his senses are overwhelmed, unable to see or hear what might be happening on the other side of the wall that separates Julian, Agamede, and Aliyah from Daniel. He is unable to morbidly diagnose what his death will be like, figuring he will most likely go from suffocation before succumbing to any deadly injury, his mind quietly listing what that will be like as if his death is an example in a medical text. If he is lucky, he will be knocked unconscious first. His only hope is that he will be spared the memory of this when he wakes up, though how he could forget any of this is beyond him. The human mind can be kind, at times, though. Maybe this will be one of those times.

Julian is still needlessly pulling at the rocks in front of him until the very last moment when everything comes down around him. He curls up crouching, one arm uselessly over his head, Agamede clutched tightly to his chest with his other hand, and Aliyah somewhere just between his body and the stone wall that separates her and Daniel. All Julian can hear is the roaring, and then everything goes silent and still. Julian doesn't remember anything after that.

tw: daemon separation, death

[peacefulexplorer]

The instability of the structure he is in roars and Daniel thinks Aliyah might be roaring too, in defiance or in disclosure of agony or some unintelligible emotion he cannot put a name to, he can't say, there is only the dreadful shuddering of stone and sliding rock, and his limbs jerk in irregular movements, trying to get back to Aliyah, he reaches the walled rubble and tears at it, desperately, futilely, and it is in that moment that it severs.

Snaps.

The thing.

The thing.

The -

Aliyah.

is gone.

He can't feel her heartbeat in synchronous panic to his, he can't feel the chaotic swirl of her pained desperation to return to him, he can't hear her calls, he can't feel her terror he can't feel he can't feel he can't feel himself

everything dims

and he is alone

when the ceiling falls he cannot close his eyes and he does not protest

it will not matter one way or the other

Aliyah is gone

--

Daniel awakes in a surge of sweat and panic, clawing at his chest in fearful revelation. Even once he registers it was a dream, it still feels horribly like some deep and vital part of himself has just been irretrievably lost.

Re: tw: daemon separation, death

[julianbashir]

(( Thank you! ))