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

[watcher_giles]

Even after the tree, the baseboard offers an entirely new perspective on their size, and Giles completely sympathizes with Sunshine soft exclamation. All he musters up is a silent sigh, though, as he follows her along the wall.

"Gift? No. Never really dealt with giants. Had my share of altercations and run-ins with very big things, but none of them were actually giants." He casts a glance back over his shoulder, a bit dismayed by how little progress they've made. "Nor can I say that I have ever been miniaturized. Killed a fear demon who turned out to be very tiny, though."

[rae_of_sun]

"Fear demon," Sunshine repeats, somewhere between incredulous and genuinely assessing. There's a pretty broad variety of demons in her universe, but fear demon sounds like something a four-year-old would dub one of his action figures. Like: that's cute, sweetie. What an imagination.

"So are they all pureblood demons, in your universe?" she asks, just a bit carefully. Her universe still has some work to do in terms of not treating partbloods shabbily, and she can't help wondering if any of the demons he's offed have been human enough to not deserve it.

[watcher_giles]

"Probably not in the way you're thinking," Giles answers, giving her a look. "There are some that trace bloodlines, and most only have one demon lineage, but there are plenty that are mixed to varying degrees." He frowns slight in thought. "Many of the demons in my world are created - turned, not born." His frown turns toward disgust tinged with terror as he adds, "I hope most of them can't procreate."

Shaking the thought away, he turns to Sunshine with a curious glance. "I take it your universe has a spectrum, too?"

[rae_of_sun]

Sunshine looks thoroughly perturbed at the thought of demons being able to turn people the way vampires do. All in all, she'd much rather deal with the thoroughly-diluted demon blood that runs through the general population (even if it does carry some pretty gross implications about what was going on however many dozen generations ago).

"Um. Yes." Is this going to freak him out? It's probably going to freak him out. "I mean, we have some pretty full-blooded demons, but there's also a lot of trace demon blood in the general population. Not much; it's usually not enough to cause… personality problems." There's a delicate way of putting it. "Sometimes it doesn't even manifest at all. Or maybe you grow a pair of horns out of nowhere when you're thirty-five. Or maybe when you hit puberty you start being able to see infra light, or something." Okay, that's deliberately optimistic; as if a demon taint would give you something flash and not something that has you throwing money at the most discreet plastic surgeon you can find. "But most people with demon blood aren't, um, visibly demonic."

[watcher_giles]

Far from freaking him out, the truth intrigues him. The idea of applying those rules to his own universe is, yes, disturbing and worrying, but considering it just as the way another universe works? Fascinating.

"Fascinating. So most people in your universe have some amount of demon blood, and the matching physical or magical traits?" He smiles slightly, eyes focused on Sunshine, for a moment forgetting where they are and the predicament they are in as his curiosity takes over. "Do you have demon blood, too?"

[rae_of_sun]

Okay, so it's safe to say that she was not expecting him to be so carthaginian at ease with the idea of partbloods that he'd just casually ask if she was one. Her jaw drops a little, both because some questions are so rude that even cultural differences can't quite excuse them, and because it's a question that is particularly troubling to her. Gods.

"It--um." Stop. Swallow. Try again. "Well. It's… kind of hard to… know for certain. Demon taints don't always manifest at all, or they might skip generations…" she twitches her shoulders in a desperate little shrug, like, what can you do? Besides deal with the ever-present threat of your surprise demon taint and your magic-handling blood deciding to have it out like two drunk meatheads in a bar, with your sanity standing in for the beer bottles and pool cues, and the innocent bystanders being played by actual innocent bystanders.

"I don't know," she concludes. "I… I don't think so." She's banking pretty heavily on the idea that any bad cross meltdown would have already happened, if it was going to. If Bo wasn't enough of an invitation, the rift would have been. She thinks. But she doesn't know. That's the problem with demon taints; you don't know if the answer's 'no,' you only know if the answer is 'yes.'

[watcher_giles]

Oh, dear. Clearly having demon blood isn't so casual a thing in Sunshine's universe as he thought. He stops her with a gentle hand on her arm.

"I'm sorry if the question was rude. You made having demon blood sound commonplace; clearly I misinterpreted. It wasn't my intention to make you uncomfortable and I apologize."

In his universe, having any demon blood at all makes you, well, a demon. Clearly things are much murkier in Sunshine's universe, and thornier, too. He gives her a smile that is equal parts encouraging and apologetic, still curious but no longer desiring to pursue the topic.

[rae_of_sun]

Oh, gods, now he's being all earnest. Sunshine winces. "It is commonplace, it's just… not exactly smiled upon. No one shouts their partblood status from the rooftops, you know?" She shrugs again, more gently this time, because no, he didn't know. Now he does.

She resumes walking. "I, uh. I have magic-handling blood. And that... doesn't always play nicely with any demonic heritage you might have going on." Why is she even telling him this? To excuse the freakout he's already willing to brush aside, no questions asked? Get a grip, Sunshine. Just because he has nice landlady shadows doesn't mean she needs to go getting attached.

[watcher_giles]

"Ah, I see," he says, falling into step beside her. And he does, both about Sunshine's universe and Sunshine herself. He knows how difficult it can be to carry self-fear around inside (that thought stirs up feelings of something beyond himself, something just outside memory, but he brushes it away).

He gives her a scrutinizing glance, a soft, teasing smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Well, you seem fine to me, so I hope you don't mind if I keep tagging along," he gently says. It isn't like he hasn't had people he know turn evil on him before (the feeling turns over inside him again); he can read the signs, knows what to do.

[rae_of_sun]

For an unacceptably maudlin moment, Sunshine thinks that yes, 'you seem fine' is about as glowing a commendation as she could expect - with a big old emphasis on the 'seem.' But he's probably right. And this is still just a dream. Not that there's anything 'just' about dream disasters, because she's been haunted by plenty of those since that night by the lake (and more still since a couple nights ago), but it's not permanent damage she'd be inflicting. Any hearts she tears out in this colossal house will still be in their proper places in the morning.

"I suppose not," she says with a faint smile of her own. She considers attempting a joke about signing waivers and is he sure he could dispatch her efficiently, but it wouldn't be that funny.

After a minute of not-too-awkward silence (during which they make comparatively little progress; gods, who knew being tiny would be so tedious), she can't suppress her morbid curiosity any longer. "So demons can turn people in your universe?"

[watcher_giles]

Giles is decidedly not thinking about the best way to efficiently dispatch her, at least not consciously. Whatever his subconscious does on its own, well, he can't be held responsible for that. You can take the man out of the battle, etc.

He is a little surprised at her question, given how uncomfortable she was with the topic just a minute ago, but he answers her willingly enough. "In some cases. Vampires do, of course, though they do so by killing the victim, which isn't the universal method of demon-turning. Not all demons have to do anything horrible to you to turn you into one of them. Sometimes you just have to choose it." He pauses for a moment, both to check their (relatively little) progress and to collect his thought. "Someone I knew went from human to vengeance demon twice. And there are also artifacts that can turn you into a demon. Or spells."

This time when he pauses, the thoughts are less pleasant. "I was turned into a demon via spell once," he mutters, only a little bitterly.