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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Fragments of wood fly off in every direction except the one that Lucifer stands in, a little slice of the destruction pie that is the area around her left clear. His meatsuit can be damaged, but he likes to keep it intact, thank you kindly. Nick looks so much better when he doesn't have splinters.

The air is barely clear of debris before he moves again, pressing the attack; giving her space gives her time to regroup, to strategize, and he wants her on the defensive as much as possible. She may be quick, but he is strong and persistent and tireless. His fists are what sledgehammers hope to be when they grow up.

"I thought it an appropriate way to answer your love taps."

Fierce and unrelenting fists strike at her and they would crack bone if her shell still had a skeletal structure to speak of; the organic material has long since been hollowed out to make way for the writhing mass of darkened eldritch being within.

The writhing mass of darkened eldritch being is losing.

Unacceptable.

Her shell requires immense kinetic force before it will reflect physical damage but she can feel the strength of the blows weakening her shell's hardened skin, tempting the leak of blood, her blood, the only substance that still remains within this battered shell that was simply not constructed to contain the entirety of the God-King Illyria.

The leaf-strewn ground will be her traction, she just needs to escape the rain of fists from this Pit-creature, Illyria will not allow its triumph over her, this victory will be hers. She braces her shell, steels herself against the percussive repetition, retreats, retreats, retreats, until finally -

She can evade the oncoming creature, if only for a second, but that is what she needs. She ducks and slips behind it to deal a vicious strike to its back.

She is a slippery and clever thing, and all it takes is one imperfectly timed blow for her to get away, to evade the hammer-fall battery of his fists and slip away. He snarls, slightly off-balance from a blow he expected to connect hitting only empty air, and by the time he registers that she has moved directly behind him, it's too late for him to react.

The strike would have been agony to his vessel if he bothered to allow pain signals through Nick's nerves; it would have been lethal to a human, strong enough to snap the spine like brittle wood and rupture the delicate organs underneath. Lucifer stumbles forward and nearly loses his footing entirely, catching himself with one hand against the rough bark of a tree.

He will not be brought to his knees by some Lovecraft reject.

"You realize," he says as the bark around his hand goes white with frost, "that we can't actually do any actual damage to each other here, don't you? It's a dream. As amusing as it is, it's ultimately just vanity."

He pushes himsellf upright, and the only sign that he even took a devastating blow to the spine is that his back cracks.

She retreats further, watching the ice curl from its hands, shell tensed in preparation for a secondary onslaught. Yet it is the Pit-thing's words that disconcert her (emotion, not hers, belonging solely to the shell) the most.

"Impossible," says she, but the words lack their ordinary conviction. Dreaming is - is mortal, and Illyria does not sleep, not in the human definition of the term. The thought of it repulses her.

And yet - here, this Pit-creature, the Morningstar, so clearly not of her world nor of any world she recognizes, and if it is to be believed than it has surely been drawn into this dream when it should not be, not with all its power and Hellfire.

"This shell does not require sleep. How is it that I dream?" The shell is radiating confusion. It is highly distracting.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

He turns, standing at a profile to the former God-King, and brushes a few imaginary specks of dust off of the sleeves of his jacket. Nick's clothes have gone through a lot in the time since Lucifer took him, but through the Apocalypse and what came after, they've remained exactly the same. Not a stitch out of place.

"There's something very powerful in the universe I'm in that has influence even over beings like us. Every once in a while, it pulls us into this... shared consciousness." He makes a wide gesture, encompassing everything around them. "You've simply gotten caught in the area of effect, it seems."

It did the same to him, once-- pulled him into a dream with Gabriel before he'd even been heading down into the Cage.

Powerful forces in the universe that disregard other powerful forces in the universe are immensely grating. Illyria cannot decide which powerful force she is angrier with. Ordinarily she would settle for the one most within striking distance, but if the Morningstar is to be believed then such actions would be pointless.

"Loathsome," murmurs Illyria, her shell's lip curling, "to think we would walk in minds with mortals."

The Morningstar has made no further move to attack her, she notes with a faint tremor of disappointment. The battle would have been glorious and could have raged on for many days and nights. They could tear a hole in the dreamstuff-consciousness and rip themselves back into waking. She will not act as though the thought does not tempt her but with the understanding that battles fought on this plane will be useless and without consequence, she finds that her interest in resuming their engagement has waned.

"I can think of more loathsome things."

Like having some Lovecraftian horrorterror speak of him with any sort of kinship, as though she has a right to use we with regards to him. Even if it is just referring to the lowest common denominator between them.

They could have tried to make such waves in this dream-bubble that they tore a hole, but there's no guarantee that it would work, or that even if it did, they would awaken at the end of it. The powers of the rift are many and varied and Lucifer does not know to any full extent what its limitations are, or if it has any. It's possible that they could pop this micro-universe and just get put into another, or get trapped in some sort of in-between. Neither are exactly appealing prospects.

"But regardless, you have little choice in the matter. Tearing up the playground in a fit of pique doesn't really get you anywhere."

"No," she agrees with a faint wistfulness, "but it would allow some measure of satisfaction."

Violence has only recently become the God-King's choice in therapy, but she finds it to be a helpful method in alleviating some of the agony of being trapped in such a small and fragile body in comparison to her hulking form of old.

~~In short, Illyria hits things to feel better.~~

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

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