applesaucedream | 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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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 -"

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.

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.

(( Thank you! ))

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

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tw: daemon separation, death

Re: tw: daemon separation, death