asgardmeridiem | EVENT LOG: FEAR ITSELF

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EVENT LOG: FEAR ITSELF

Who: EVERYONE
What: the Fear Itself mingle log
When: Day 528-531 ( Oct. 21-28 )
Where: all across the city!
Rating: PG-13. Anything higher than that should be taken to a private log, please!

Day 528 ( Oct. 21/22 ): Not wasting a moment, Odin, Hel, and Heimdall will set out for Ginnungagap once again before dawn and the other gods will stand vigil at the city gates. The natives will filter into the streets, curious for all that news of Tyr's very existence is eye-opening for them and reverent for the prospect of a new deity among them. They will pass around candles to any that want one to hold lit for their patrons until the sunlight is high enough to blow the flames out, and then they will mill around seeking comfort in anyone around them, whether to give it or receive it in this strange time between hope and grieving.

By noon, a great rumbling will crackle across the sky like the beginnings of thunder, despite the thinly clouded skies. The air will grow heavy and acrid, almost choking to breathe, as a pressure builds across the city and across the land. Just as it begins to reach painful levels, the rumbling will finally crack as one stroke of lightning spiderwebs to fill the entire sky, backlit by the distant sound of a woman shrieking in pain or anger or agony. The scream dies down just as the light fades and the sky shifts back into blue, the clouds scattered and the pressure lifted. Either the storm has past, or it has just begun; there's no telling for now.

A few hours after that, a strong wave will wash over the city, rustling plants and loose materials, and the Travellers will feel their hearts pounding once too hard, near painfully as though they've just received a severe fright. It's similar to what happened when Freyr was resurrected, but stronger and twisted into something uncomfortable, almost nauseating. The feeling will pass in the next heartbeat and just before sundown, the three gods will return from their voyage to Ginnungagap; this time, bandages will be wrapped around Odin's head and covering his left eye, and his right middle finger will be missing to the knuckle, same as his left index when they returned from resurrecting Freyr. They will make way directly to the castle and the other gods will filter in behind them, so be sure to grab them quickly if you have any desire to speak to them before the coming storm.

By dusk, the Travellers will begin to feel a creeping sense of paranoia, as though there's someone watching them from nearby and flickering out of sight just before they can turn around to catch them in the act. Over the course of the evening, the paranoia will bud into a headache and an itch at the back of their minds, like a thought they can't shake but can't reach either. By twilight, they will start to hear indistinct whispers not unlike the start of the Dream a Little Dream event, but the name of this game is hallucinations.

This first night will begin with auditory hallucinations: as the Travellers attempt to prepare for sleep ( or after long enough of not sleeping ), the whispering a will morph into crisp, clear voices that might sound as though they're speaking over your shoulder or from behind the couch or maybe it's simply inside your head. The voices can be male or female, familiar or stranger, one or a dozen, it doesn't really matter. What matters is what they say. For this stage of the curse, you will hear these voices speaking your character's fear(s) aloud, almost taunting or goading in the clear spelling of them. The auditory hallucinations will not cease at any point throughout the night and may continue on throughout the rest of the event as you please!
Day 529 ( Oct. 23/24 ): Morning brings no relief from the strange sounds, and as the Travellers go about their day, the curse will evolve into visual hallucinations. They will imagine seeing the very thing(s) they fear happening right before their eyes, despite the fact that no such thing is happening at all. It will be like a waking dream, wherein they are conscious and aware but perceiving a different reality built around their innermost fears coming into fruition. Other characters and NPCs can be involved in these hallucinations, but they will not actually be happening; physical contact or very strong words might be able to snap someone out of their visions, or they might further fuel it. Feel free to play around with this. These hallucinations can happen as frequently / last for as long or as short / cycle between fears as you'd like, and can continue to happen until the end of the event.

The general paranoia and unease will continue to grow and the day will pass under constant headaches, like an unceasing pressure inside their heads that follows them around and flares up during any hallucinations. They will begin to feel uncomfortable in their own skin, almost dysphoric with the vague impression that something is wrong and that they themselves might just be the very thing that doesn't fit. Paired with the hallucinations of their fears coming to life, tensions will be running high and even the natives will be affected, keeping to themselves until whatever this is might pass.
Day 530 ( Oct. 25/26 ): By this day, the curse will advance to physical hallucinations. What this means is that your character's fear(s) will begin to manifest in real time, no longer a trick of the imagination but a tangible embodiment of their deep rooted fears. They will be able to interact with their imagined reality, and the hallucinations will interact right back; those witnessing your character's hallucinating will only see the character talking to air, but coming in physical contact with them will absorb them into the hallucination as well. This can be a means of breaking through the episode, or further fueling the delusion.

At this stage, the hallucinations will take on a strength of their own, and they will play to your character's fear(s) to try and draw them deeper into the delusion. They will try to convince you that this is reality, that there is no escape, and that you will end your days shrouded in this fear. These hallucinations can kill your character! They are physical, which means that even if other people can't see them, your character will very much feel the weight of them if they attack or draw you into them.
Day 531 ( Oct. 27/28 ): For the last day of this event, the curse will all come together to result in catatonic hallucinations. This stage is simple: your character will be awake but inert, incapable of moving or seeing past their delusions. They will be forced to watch their fears overwhelm them without any means of snapping out of it by themselves. If your character succumbs to this level of the curse, the only way to break the hallucination will be for someone else to talk them out of it. Again, more on this in the plot notes, as this curse is fairly complicated!

While the majority of the city is either comatose or fighting off ghosts, another wave of energy will pass through the city exactly as it had at the start of the event just before sundown. Plantlife will violently begin blooming, leaves and petals bursting into the wind and carrying across the entire city - and immediately afterwards, they will wither within seconds, shrivelling up and dying on the spot. Vines will rapidly start encroaching across the sides of buildings and across yards, thick tendrils attempting to overtake any available soil and the area around it. Rain will pick up as the city starts to feel lost beneath the general theme of decay, and as the sun is setting, a new face will be seen walking through the Gate of Fire.

Vines will sprout from his footsteps as he sweeps slowly into the city as though in a daze, the storm following him and increasing in strength the further he comes into the city. Travellers can attempt to approach him, but he will be wholly non-responsive, and the pressure in their heads from the curse's headaches will increase the closer they get to him until it becomes debilitating within arm's length.

His path will head in the direction of the castle, but before he makes even halfway there, Loki will be seen running through the streets ( followed closely behind by Thor and Heimdall ) directly towards the new arrival. He will not stop for anything, and anyone in the vicinity at the time can see him use the full force of his running start to punch this frightful stranger in the face. The blow will send him flying a few fair feet, where he will lay prone and unconscious; at this point, the curse will stop, and the three gods will drag the body into the castle without a word. Explanations will have to wait For now, there's some cleaning up to do.

[ OOC NOTES: This is the mingle log for the Fear Itself event! NPCs will be available for interaction on the first day in the log header below. Please put [OPEN/CLOSED] along with the time/location of your character in the title of your comment. Let us know if you have any questions! ]

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"Come on," Tris is already yelling when Ellie veers off course, but she won't leave her. They agreed to risk both their lives, so that neither would be left behind, even though she didn't know at the time just what she was getting into.

Feet pounding the floor, they run for it side by side. The obstacles here are nothing compared to what they've both been training with in Asgard, and all she can think of is getting to higher ground. Those things, they probably can climb, but unless Ellie goes for elsewhere, Tris is going to beeline for any high scaffolding and try for up. It's hard to remember that this is just a hallucination, that they're still in Asgard, while keeping in mind that they're definitely going to die if they're caught.

Ellie recognizes it.

Her footsteps falter and she's out of breath much sooner than she should be, lagging behind Tris by a couple of steps, falling into something that makes complete sense to her.

Every other pathway is blocked, and it seems like there are more Infected every second.

They hit a room open to the scaffolding at a run. Not all of it is stable, too much of it looks ready to fall. The ground is concrete, the walls are glass, she can't catch them with vines, but if they can just get outside -- the fight will turn the tide in their favor.

The open glass panel looks like their best bet.

Ellie leaps across a gap, but this time -- this time, -- she doesn't nearly fall, and she keeps up with Tris, keeps running. She knows this room. She knows each and every plane of it, has re-lived this minute hundreds, thousands of times, broken down every step and watched helplessly as it unfolded.

Now she's going to watch it happen again.

"Keep going!" Ellie bursts out. "No matter what, keep fucking going!"

Tris hopes, but can't be sure, that Ellie is still thinking. That she's still trying to find a way out of this, something, anything to break out of what's just a hallucination. There's no time to check, though, and she doesn't want to look back and risk falling, or even look closely at any of the Infected, who, under the grime, are all wearing either black or grey.

The ground is concrete, the walls are glass- something stirs in her mind. A possibility. An idea. She's got practice at breaking the game. For now, she gets the fuck up the scaffolding, but waits for Ellie before she tries to climb up to the window. Gets her gun out as she thinks. Their fears are merging already, if she can just focus on it...

"Get up here, Ellie!"

There aren't that many following them right now. And with both of them armed, they can her the seconds she needs. Perhaps it's that she doesn't know how close to the end they are that she stops at all, but there she is, waiting, her mind racing.

The ground below is wet like it only just stopped raining.

The last bit of scaffolding in front of the window rocks precariously. Unstable, weak, possibly degraded. It is sharply defined and detailed -- in fact, this whole area is. It's a specific place, a memory that isn't stitched together, shifting and deteriorated.

It looks real.

Desperately, Ellie finds herself falling into line, running after Tris. Together, they climb, finding the high point just underneath the window. But instead of climbing up, Ellie reaches out to steady the unstable shelving with both hands.

"Go!" she yells, leaning into it. "I'll hold it, fucking go!"

She goes. There's no arguing and no time to focus even though she's still desperately trying to think of a way out of this instead of through. It's a hallucination. They can fight this, if they just stop and think, but there's no time. Already ~~Lynn~~another one of the Infected is trying to climb after them, so Tris does as she's told.

As soon as she's reached the top, she tries to hold the rickety construction in place from her end, except there's no way to get a good hold on it.

"Come on!"

Ellie's eyes are bright and wild, and she meets Tris's for a moment, just a moment too long, already clearly envisioning how this will have to end, if she can't beat it.

The illusions can still hurt them. What if she gets bitten? Will the infection spread?

She knows how this goes.

"I can't make it up -- no matter what, stay up there!" she yells at her, and turns, laying her finger on the trigger and blasting the skull of the nearest runner. It drops, squirming, and Ellie moves to the next one. She doesn't have that much ammo left, and she's already running low.

She tries to help. She wants to help but she can't, watching the bodies of her friends and family changed into something else, her hands are shaking too badly for her to aim. Her vision blurs with tears she's furiously trying to wipe away, but she doesn't know if it's worse to sit here, unable to help her best friend survive, or if it would be worse to know that she's shot more people she loves. Even from a distance, she recognizes every one.

She clicks the safety of her gun back into place.

"Ellie! Take my gun!" Even if she can't help her directly, she has to do something.

The last bullet rips through a runner's head, and Ellie curses softly as the gun clicks empty. Shoves it back into the back of her belt.

"Keep it!"

It's no use, the room is getting more and more overrun, and they don't have enough bullets for all of them. Making a desperate, frustrated noise, Ellie realizes that there is no way out.

They have to go.

She's unable to grow her vines in this concrete-and-glass room, so when she desperately turns to try and climb up the scaffolding, she has only Tris supporting her.

Ellie knows how this will end. And the second she thinks it, it happens. The scaffolding wobbles back with Ellie's weight and collapses, and Ellie goes heavily down, tumbling to the lower floor of the room, directly into the path of the oncoming runners.

Edited 2014-12-03 05:16 (UTC)

For just a second, Tris stands paralyzed as the scaffolding crumbles and she knows, she can tell that this is how it goes. This is how it always goes, the only difference is the faces on those who are coming for Ellie. Cowardice is failure to act in the midst of fear.

She's still shaking like a leaf the moment before she jumps, but she can't just sit by. Hitting the ground running is almost second nature now, ignoring the sting in her feet and legs and jumping the other half of the way down, just hoping Ellie's still alive until then, that there'll be some way to fix this.

"Tris!" Ellie shrieks as she falls, breathless and pleading, hoping against hope that she'll do what she's told her, listen to her and stay up where it's safe, cover her... but she won't.

She knows she won't even before Tris makes the decision, because just as well as she knew Riley, she knows Tris. Protective, unthinking. Brave. It was the same decision Ellie made when she touched their arm, linked them up. They are in this together. The risk will be for them both.

Ellie hits the ground hard enough to knock the breath right out of her, and she raises up a hand to keep the nearest runner from biting into her face. The teeth take her in the arm instead, exactly as they have in every nightmare, and she can't keep back the scream.

Too many of them. Tris doesn't have time to think and lets her training take over. Breathe in, aim, breathe out, fire. The one who comes running at her she has to look at, but the one who's on top of Ellie she doesn't. Not that she needs to, to recognize someone she shared breakfast and dinner with for most of her life. But this isn't Caleb. This is a hallucination.

Later, she'll think that it shouldn't have been this easy to shoot even the remnants of her brother point blank, but she refuses to look at him as the body goes limp.

Tris doesn't think to help Ellie up, just stands and turns toward the next Infected coming in their direction. Putting herself between them and her friend. She's going to run out of bullets sooner rather than later, but not yet.

"Come on. We're in this together, remember?"

Ellie almost reaches up for the hand, like she's done thousands of times before. But Tris does the smart thing, stands up to defend them both. Arm slippery and bloody, Ellie pulls out her knife, gets a good grip on it, and heaves herself to her feet, stepping up to Tris's side.

The next few minutes are a bloody, screaming blur. The nightmare is intense and seems never-ending, but soon, inexplicably, there are no more.

Ellie rocks on her feet, staring down at the crumpled remains of the runners, before she looks down at her arm. Blood runs in rivulets down from it, but that's nothing to be concerned about. Taking a painful-sounding breath, she turns to Tris and reaches out with shaking fingers.

"Show me. Show me your hand."

Tris stands still, wide-eyed and nauseous, eyes still fixed on the door. She doesn't want to think about what happened. What she saw, what she did. Her hand stings less than other parts of her, and there are stains on her jacket that tell of someone or something trying to bite through. On her shoulder, on her arms. But it's only the jacket. There will be bruises, but they will fade.

It's effort to make her hand let go of her knife, the empty gun abandoned somewhere on the ground. No imprints of teeth. No flowing blood that might be hers. She breathes deliberately slowly, even though the panicked shaking persists.

"Is- is it over?"

Ellie's fingers slide over her arms, take her hands. She's shaking too, barely able to get a grip. Leaving blood on her.

"Jesus," she whispers, teeth chattering with adrenaline. It takes several more deep breaths before she's calm, managing to nod. Her eyes lock on Tris's face, and the full reality of it hits her like a punch in the gut, how close she came to losing her. Who knows what a bite would do in Asgard?

With a harsh breath, Ellie practically crashes into her, wrapping her arms around her tightly. She doesn't give a shit about being cool, about how Tris might react.

She's alive. She's not about to lose someone else.

Edited 2014-12-20 06:33 (UTC)

For once, Tris holds on to Ellie for dear life. It's instinctive. She's too shaken, well beyond what her simulation training ever did to her, and she's desperate for something she can believe is really actually there. Something, finally, that she doesn't have to figure a way out of.

She feels herself sob and only realizes it was her after the fact. There are no tears for right now, nor words. She keeps staring at the ground behind Ellie, not wanting to close her eyes.

Ellie is close to tears, herself. Instead, she shuts her eyes and holds on tightly, comforting Tris as much as she's able.

We beat it, we beat it, she repeats strongly in her mind. Around them, the world fades out, leaving them standing in some abandoned older building, clearly not the one from Ellie's memories. The corpses are gone, but Ellie's arm is still bleeding, their clothes still dirty and bitten, bruises still there.

"I know," Ellie whispers, her voice tight, breaking with relief. "I know, holy shit."

All Tris is hoping for at this point is that this was the worst of it. She takes a breath that sounds more like another sob just to breathe "Oh God," relieved to see the world around them change. Fear landscape conquered. Test passed.

"We made it," she adds, and the relief she's feeling tastes like guilt. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing she should want to survive. But the terror has left her and doesn't care what she thinks she deserves, and elation floods in so strong her shoulders shake with held-back laughter.

Through the tears and the terror, Ellie finds herself starting to laugh too, and she slaps Tris's back a few times, proud and stupid, giggling with relief.

Alive.

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EVENT LOG: FEAR ITSELF

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