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

[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.