Can't Stand the Distance, Can't Dream Alone [open to all]

[applesaucemod]

The sleeping rifties might have a difficult time realizing they're dreaming this evening, in part because tonight's dreams are atypically vivid, even compared to the rift's usual efforts. Perhaps that is because it's drawing so heavily from the memories of the dreamers, themselves, and using that information to recreate their home worlds in stunning detail. And that is the real reason the dreamers might not be eager to accept the unreality of the situation: the situation is one that many of them have been hoping for for months or even years. In their dreams tonight, the rifties are going home.

Perhaps they arrive in the same moment that they left. Perhaps months have passed at home, or they might even find themselves arriving before their departure point. But those are small details when compared to the overwhelming realization that they're back where they belong.

They're not alone. Many dreamers will find the rift has given them a companion for the return trip. Well, an uncomplicated return home is probably more than anyone could have hoped for, anyway. And for the unwitting visitor, perhaps another universal displacement will be easier to bear with the addition of a local guide.

[ooc: usual dream party rules apply; all are welcome, and dreamers can remember or forget the events of the dream at the players' discretion. Also at the players' discretion: when their character arrives in their 'home universe,' and how many (if any) locals they'd want to run into.]

Comments

[noteasybeingblue]

Your efforts will result in failure.

Yet they are steeped in doubt. In doubt.

I have my own loyalists. They will stop you.

But they are a small army, hopeless against the Morningstar, whose devotion can be easily bought.

You will not get far, Pit-creature.

The building behind them cracks unexpectedly, and Illyria's great eye sweeps around in time to play witness to the many-tentacle horrors attempting to uproot it. They look to be succeeding. Illyria swats at them with a clawed, whiplike limb but the damage is done and the construction will soon fail completely.

A spurt of - of - is that best categorized as annoyance? - shoots through them to realize that the human they most recently swore to protect has not made its path to the city's outskirts but rather elected to stay and observe the proceedings.

I suggest you move, human, they order it darkly. Lest you perish.

Johnny you had one job

[johnny_truant]

Any thought of fleeing long ago abandoned Johnny, along with most of his animal instincts and all his human ones. He's frozen up there, his dragon slithering back and forth uneasily. The way these two have been carrying on, their voices filling up his head, resonating bone-deep within him, he feels like he's going crazy (again), and like he is definitely going to die (again). He can barely even track the argument, though it seems to at least laterally involve him.

Then the building is shaking. It's collapsing. Fuck. Fuck!

Illyria's helpful suggestion does not even register. He leaps up on trembling legs and backs into the dragon, which is already taking off, not caring just how well he's holding on. He has his arms around its long neck, sort of dangling like an ill-placed proverbial carrot. Almost immediately something hits them, and he almost loses his grip; another fireball, from another dragon, just seared right on through his ride's wing. Well that's just fucking spectacular.

It spirals down with a deafening screech and crashes heavily into the broken pavement, managing to land with Johnny on top of its shuddering bulk.

He reels up, staring at the heaving, grounded thing, then up at Illyria, and then, finally, turning around to face Lucifer.

Goddammit, Johnny

[wentdowntogeorgia]

Lucifer doesn't even twitch when Johnny's beast crashes nearby; the creature is greatly injured upon impact, but its passenger has apparently managed to survive the crash relatively unscathed.

Eventually, Satan turns his gaze from Illyria towards the otherwise insignificant human. His brother's pet, the one that he wastes so much time and devotion on; the little hairless ape who is not worthy of the affection that Gabriel bestows on him. Not worthy, and not nearly properly grateful.

Perhaps he needs a demonstration of what archangels really are.

He looks back up at Illyria.

"How many times do I have to tell you, crawling horror? I am not of Hell," he says. "I am an angel of The Lord. You'd do well to remember that before I show you."

[noteasybeingblue]

The sight of the Morningstar bracing itself to eliminate their charge summons an unexpected surge of emotion within them. What is this?

Do not dare, they snarl. That one? That one is theirs. They do not know to what extent this newfound possessiveness applies, or even to what it might mean for the concerning amount of emotion they are now displaying. They have promised it protection. They will not fail their oath.

Get away, mortal, Illyria orders furiously, and their tentacles whip out with every intent of wrapping themselves around the Morningstar, crushing it, tearing it, shredding its shell into flesh-ribbons and then nothing. It would lay its abominable hands on the thing, it would destroy all Illyria has built, and for that it will suffer. It will suffer. They are exercising their authority as a god. They are detached. They are implementing justice.

They are implementing justice and the Morningstar will not touch this human. It is inconsequential and yet - Illyria has decided it will live. Thus it will live.

[johnny_truant]

This time, she doesn't have to tell him twice. Johnny jerks aside as though pulled on puppet-strings, letting his body crumple and essentially doing a really awkward barrel roll out of the direct line of fire. From his new position he chances only a brief glance at the two of them before deciding that no, he really doesn't want to see this. He curls up like a goddamn armadillo and covers his head.

[wentdowntogeorgia]

Lucifer does not care what Johnny does. His attention is on Illyria and her assault, and as her limbs reach for him, he closes his eyes and leans his head back and

lets

go.

He unfolds, all light and sound and fury, expands to his true glory for the first time since he had been released from Hell. He rises above the buildings, dwarfs them like they're children's toys. The breadth of his three sets of wings arches just shy of a mile and a half each, crystalline riotous brilliance that lights up the sky like the noonday sun. He is burning limbs and faces and ice and fire, he is that he is. There are no words in any human language to describe the manifestation of full Grace on Earth, and the demons that are caught in his radiance are destroyed.

He pushes away Illyria's grasping limbs like they are an annoyance. When he speaks with true voice, all the glass in the buildings shatters.

I DARE, FALSE GOD-KING.

[noteasybeingblue]

Shield your eyes, they order the mortal in the transient span of time before the Morningstar's shell unravels itself. The unholy blaze lights the darkened red of the Hellish skies and throws upon the clouds a burning white cast, the parody of a halo. Its voice is a bright tortuous smear, something twisted and corrupted beyond what even many of the demonic creatures below can tolerate. Those that did not melt away in the white fire of the Morningstar's being are hollowed out by the thundering aural force.

Illyria's shelled body braces itself for the inevitable clash of two unknowable forces. They are old enough to have seen things of the Morningstar's ilk before. But this thing is a paradox of existence, the darkest of all Pit-creatures shrouded in divinity.

The battle will be grand and destructive. The scuttling mortals they have fought so hard to inexplicably save will perish by the thousands, provided such a great number of them have lasted so long.

And yet - the sight of the thing infuses them with a modicum of dread. Illyria's form is built for dominance; the Morningstar's is tailored for pure destruction.

Then it will be your ruin, they answer, summoning every shred of righteous, ironclad pride in preparation to strike with all their godlike force. This is violence. This will be a mighty battle, and it will remind them of their glorious war-drenched origins.

[johnny_truant]

Even with his head covered, the light seeps in at the edges, between the folds of his clothes and through the thin skin of his fingertips. The sound is worse, though it's hardly sound, it's something else, something more. Johnny feels his whole body vibrate, feels the city quaking in preparation for an immensity of destruction heretofore unimagined, even in this off-brand Hell.

He can't stay here for this. He doesn't have anywhere to run, either.

He's curled up in the remains of a demolished house, well, a skyscraper, an edifice of some kind. Doesn't matter. He can still do this, right? If it led into some kind of Hell before, maybe this time it'll go out the other end. Maybe he'll end up in China. Ha, ha.

Trembling and panicking enough that even this doesn't seem so fucking bad in the wake of what's about to happen, he curls in harder and plants his hand on the ground, what's left of the foundation, and he thinks, manic and grinning at his own internal fucking joke, Ftairs.

There they are. Plunging down, down, into depth and darkness and cold unreality. Unlike Will before him he doesn't have Karen to pull him out. He just has an angry God that may or may not survive this, may or may not remember him, may or may not follow him in.

Fuck it. He can deal with drifting in the void. He's done it before, on his own terms. It's better than the unmitigated holy terror that's happening around him.

He sinks down, crawling, stumbling, slipping down the stairs. Into cold black oblivion. The entrance seals behind him.

[wentdowntogeorgia]

Archangels are the most terrible and devastating weapons of Heaven, and Lucifer was great even amongst them. There was a time when only his brother Michael could have been called greater, and even then it would have been a near thing-- now, he is all terror, all glory, beautiful like a lightning-strike.

The Morning Star, bright enough to be seen at dawn.

NO. he says, and a wall comes crashing down in the space where Johnny used to be. YOU ARE NOT THE ONE WHO WILL STRIKE ME DOWN. IT IS NOT YOUR PLACE.

Michael is the only one with the right to destroy him. Michael, Michael whom he loved, the brother who raised him, is the only one who can cast him down again. It's a cruel and inevitable fact of his existence: if he is to die, it must be delivered to him by the hand of his beloved. Each man kills the thing he loves, and as it is on Earth, so it must be in Heaven.

Lucifer spreads his wings to their fullest reach, raises some of his many pairs of blind-bright limbs, and strikes.

[noteasybeingblue]

The pain is like nothing they have ever known.

This, it occurs to them, must be because they have never encountered celestial energy such as this before.

It is a peculiar feeling.

The pain feels exactly as a holy weapon ought to, tempered and branded in searing metaphysical fire. Yet there is Hellfire, dark, hollow, persistent, ridging the impact of many piercing divine swordlike limbs.

This will not deter them.

On the contrary, it makes them angry.

Illyria roars their displeasure, whips appendages and darkened eldritch energy to surge directly back at the blazing thing. They meet in aberrant harmony, crackling oscillation, humming thickly and full of cold-bright-hot. Two substances opposed.

The battlefield floods with dichotomous light.