Better to Receive than to Give [open to all]

[applesaucemod]

Somewhere in the cosmos, there is something bright, and young, and playful. Somewhere, this being watches over their little flock and does their best to make those people safe and happy. Somewhere, that godling and their flock celebrate the winter holidays in the happiest of dreams.

And somewhere closer at hand, a sleeping giant stirs.

The bright tapestry of dream threads gathered by Zephyr is suddenly yanked hard enough to pull it from its temporary mooring. Something entirely unlike the little godling reels in the dreamers so neatly gathered and packaged up for it, bringing its own toys back to their proper place and taking all the others it can with them. Unsatisfied, it reaches out again and again, dragging in dreamers from all across the multiverse. It will snare them, all of them, and then it will possess them completely.

Perhaps it's fitting that when the stolen dreamers arrive in this new shared mindscape, they'll find they've been designated the Rift's Christmas gifts to itself. Each might awaken inside a dark box, or cocooned in…is that tissue paper? When they claw their way out they'll be greeted by the sight of an enormous evergreen tree laden with twinkling lights and kitschy knickknacks looming overhead. Beyond the shadow of the tree the rest of the world -- that is, the living room -- is just as large. Or is it that the dreamers have just become very small? Giant packages wrapped in bright paper form an obstacle course, but the wooden floor of the room is wide open between the tree and the hearth where an enormous plate of cookies and glass of milk await a cataclysmic Santa Claus.

All in all, things are fairly normal as far as the rift's dream gatherings go…at least on the surface. The more telepathically sensitive among the dreamers may notice an undercurrent of something darker, more urgent, and more possessive than normal. The rift isn't just sampling the wares of other worlds tonight; this time it means to play for keeps.


[OOC: This is the second part of our crossover with wethelost! Part one can be found here. Usual dream party rules apply: all players and characters are welcome regardless of whether they are currently in the game, and characters may remember or forget the events of the dream party at the discretion of their players.

For reference, characters of average human height are roughly four inches tall according to the scale of their current surroundings. There is an entire giant house beyond the living room; characters will find a kitchen and dining room on the same floor, a staircase outside the door of the living room that leads up to a second floor with two bedrooms and a bathroom, and another staircase off the kitchen that goes to an unfinished basement. Feel free to add details as needed!

This event takes place on evening of August 8th/morning of August 9th in Applesauce time, and December 31 in WtL time.]

Comments

[wolfishsurvivalist]

"Mika Whitepaws of the Meadous." Her palm briefly pressed to her chest as she bowed her head, ears folding back in recognition of Illyria's station. "Thank you again for helping me."

Whuffing heavily, she glanced around at the other boxes, realizing that all of those oversized presents likely held more people. "Do we have a plan for escaping yet?"

[noteasybeingblue]

The creature does not recognize her. This is a regular enough pattern for it to do no more than aggravate her peripherally, but Illyria has grown weary of it. The canine also refers to them as a 'we', a collective, as if they are equals of some sort. The very idea, what would have formerly been anathema, now appears to be their best hope of fleeing their prison.

"I intend to locate my captor," the God-King declares icily, "and make a trophy of his skull."

[wolfishsurvivalist]

"Not a bad plan." Nodding, her nostrils flared as she scented the air, trying to pick out the smells of living people over the pervading stink of everything else. In the Meadous she had abhorred violence, but that was because Zephyr was young and impressionable. But this wasn't the Meadous, and she knew what kind of dangers tended to lurk in places that snatched people up for kicks.

"I'll see about finding if there's any others trapped. More people means better chances, I think." A fanged smile spread across her face, the scars on her face tugging her lips in an almost manic grin. "Not that I think you'll need help, but someone might be able to figure out a way home."

[noteasybeingblue]

"I require no assistance," Illyria replies immediately, but the statement lacks the conviction it would have had prior to this. She wonders fleetingly what other matters of creature may be kept here, but decides it concerns her little. The God-King sweeps across the floor, away from the nested paper and miscellany, away from the tree the size of the Primordials of Old. She does not enjoy being reduced to this physical height. Her powers are already subdued; she does not need to be reduced further.

"I accept assistance because I choose it," she rectifies.

sorry for late reply!

[wolfishsurvivalist]

"I figured as much." Her tail wagged as she finished untangling her ankles from the papers and packaging that threatened to snare her ankles. Bending to fish her cane out of the depths of the wrapping, she snorted noisily as she stood up again.

"I'll be glad to offer my help as long as it's of use."

nah, s'all good

[noteasybeingblue]

The creature receives a second look of cool disdain. Illyria has not gleaned an energy of this nature sparking from any beast in her many ancient years. It is intriguing, and it is by that fact that this thing still lives unmaimed and unchallenged.

"You are not of this world," she states flatly. There is no spark or residue from the Rift's influence, no subtle flaring of that particular dimensional traversal. "Nor of -" The city, the one the principality named so, " - Manhattan."

[wolfishsurvivalist]

"No, I was from Los Angeles before a place called Jigoku took me." She took her cane firmly in hand and shook a ribbon off it, stepping clear of the wreckage they'd made. Ears twitching to take in every sound around them, her nostils flared to scent the air as if she could make out any changes to the room.

"Since then I was taken to the Meadous, and now I've been dragged here." With no powers of her own save sharp senses of hearing and smell, and fangs and claws, Mika doubted she'd be of much use fighting whatever lorded over this place, but she'd sure try.

[noteasybeingblue]

The Los Angeles. Illyria knows of this, even if the other names mean nothing to her. She stops in her predetermined trajectory, shell's head to one side in a sharp, evaluative stare.

"You know of the Los Angeles." There is no inflection, no imbuing of faint alarm.

(Alarm, surprise, mortal things, ephemeral things, useless things. She is a god eternal. Those things are not of her being, not even in this shell here and now.)

Illyria returns to her unidirectional path, unremitting. "That city is gone. Consumed by Hell and all its spawn." It is likely, in any case. The Senior Partners had not enjoyed the infraction of their being, and without Illyria to batter back their innumerable forces the rest of the city surely suffered. It is no surprise that one such as this creature could hide there for such a time, however. The Los Angeles was susceptible to population by demons and their ilk; this one is no exception.

[wolfishsurvivalist]

"Possibly." She cocked her head, shrugging. "My version of it was fine last I checked, but that was years ago." Sighing gustily, her ears drooped before flicking forward again. Honestly, there was no real way to know what had happened to her world's Los Angeles since she'd been dragged howling and screaming through a portal back to the land of the dead.

Yet somehow she had a distinct feeling that whatever version of LA that this God-King spoke of wasn't her world at all. If it was, her species wouldn't seem so strange. Probably another one of those worlds dominated entirely by humans of all things, a peculiarity that still puzzled her.

[noteasybeingblue]

Versions, variations, the scattered separation of realities attuned to a single constant variegated - in some cases. In others the separations were vast and unknowable, and in still others there existed no mortality or conceivability in how this tiny skittering creature would understand it.

"The Rift," Illyria comments darkly, angling the shell's head back to observe the featureless ceiling of her enlarged confinement. The invisible tear, the hand, the thing that deigned to draw her from her comfortable space of violence and drop her into another, reduced. "It did this."

[wolfishsurvivalist]

"So that's what this one's called." Her voice darkened, hackles raised. "Does it have any avatars or other physical manifestations?"

Not that she would be able to do much to help, but depending on who else was here, it would determine how effective they might be at helping fight back.

[noteasybeingblue]

That thought, infuriatingly, had not occurred to her. Illyria possesses a shell, uses it to walk in this world. Would a being or force or concept such as the Rift require one as well? It is an idea worth examining. If it has a form it can be fought, and if it can be fought it can be killed.

Illyria would deeply enjoy punishing the thing that believed it could confine her in the metropolitan prison of a mortal city.

"Nothing I have detected." Yet. She will need to widen her parameter within the waking realm. "It simply exists. It has evaded my attempts to determine its exact nature."

[wolfishsurvivalist]

"Hmm..." Long claws pressed against her scarred lips as Mika narrowed her eyes, considering what she knew of malevolent forces like the Rift. "If it's taken more of the people from my last world, this place might find that a young god's about to come looking for us. If that's the case..."

Taking another look at their surroundings, she made a soft noise in the back of her throat.

"Zephyr will come and try to make their way in to take us home. We might get a chance to fight back then."

[noteasybeingblue]

The God-King halts and looks at the creature that has elected itself her companion.

"Zephyr." The term is unfamiliar to her. "What is the manner of this creature of which you speak?"

If it is powerful, it may well be a worthy opponent, at long last.