middleofsomewhere | Fissures of Time: Ongoing

Fissures of Time: Ongoing

FISSURES OF TIME: ONGOING

... POI 10-12

FOR SOME, THE MISSION HAS BEEN MORE MENTALLY EXHAUSTING THAN PHYSICALLY. Distortions sprout around the domain without rhyme or reason, and the camps must be moved every new day to meet them, as well as stopping a distortion from deciding to form under them from their presence.

While there's bare-bones vegetation, at least they have their own resources to help one another, as well as what can be retrieved from the Ministry base during return trips to take misplaced civilians to safety. It's straight-forward so far...

...but that wouldn't be standard for the Voidtreckers, and some in their ranks don't want straight-forward. Starting during the early hours of Poi 10, there will be occasional rumblings throughout the land. They last for a few seconds and then stop, seemingly for hours; but then they return, and as the days go on, so do the tremors increase.

It seems the distortions too have become affected...

THE UNQUIET CITY. (CW: People unable to die/rising from the dead, body horror)

A city of rubble and ruin stretches far out around them, where once there were hills and vegetation. Much of the rubble is still smoking as fires smoulder. The fighting isn't over, heard before it's seen.

It must be connected to the same skirmishes seen in other distortions, and so most of you are prepared to meet warriors on foot and mount. But what awaits isn't only the horror of bloodshed. No: the reason that the fighting still continues even as the city lies in ruin is because fighters fall and rise again, as if death were nothing but a short rest.

Puncture marks litter skin and armour, holes from weaponry and blessed-magic visible in torsos, even the spaces of where portions of one's skull and brain should be.

Yet they cannot stop fighting. They cannot fall to the ground, rest. Whatever drove them to fight this war still inspires them to continue, screaming as much in pain as in some sort of twisted ecstasy. Perhaps they are too shocked to do anything else. A city locked in eternal war, distorted in time, doomed to repeat itself.

It's hard to set the equalisers here. Not much is stable and fights are likely to break out wherever there are people. The people of this city have their factions, but they will not hesitate to band together to fight intruders.

EYE OF THE STORM.

They might feel this distortion before they enter it. A spine-chilling thrill, the feeling one might get at the edge of a storm.

—For a storm it is. The moment they enter it their vision will be obstructed, winds howl around them and rain lashes down furiously making a swamp of the ground below them. It's freezing cold and as they walk they will feel something in the storm. Almost as if there are icy hands, reaching out to grab at them, to pull them further into the worst of the weather.

It's hard to know where to place the equalisers, hard to see where the edges of this distortion are. Easier, not by much, to move further in, to find the epicentre and try and take it down from there.

It's a treacherous journey, but the centre truly is calm, water frozen like crystals. Yet temperatures are dangerously low, so it's in everyone's best interests to set the equalisers quick and get out.

MEAN AND GREEN. As the rumbling continues, there comes a strange and worrying distortion. Worrying, as this distortion can be seen from the outside. A hazy blur that seems to move across the countryside, along the left side of the camp you're stationed at. It gets dangerously close at times, and when it does...

Green tendrils of plant life burst out, entangling people to pull them into the distortion. Or chains of flowers spread from the distortion out across the countryside. Beautiful and colourful in the otherwise sparse environment, but those flowers work as anchors, spreading the distortion, expanding it.

To get rid of it they will need to enter, and inside is a thick jungle of vines and bright colourful flowers awaiting them. The foliage is thick and the air musky and sweet. It's easy to get separated, and getting lost is only a matter of getting turned around. The leaves are sticky and vines move seemingly on their own, curling around unsuspecting limbs, trying to trap people in this colourful paradise forever.

And up in the sky above, a woman's laughter can be heard, the heat of the sun bearing down that becomes uncomfortable quick. But don't look up - you may find a large yellow eye - yellow iris, yellow pupil, golden yellow everything - peering back at you, and find yourself being pulled in by the very ground itself by a powerful force.

NO SANCTUARY. Protecting the camps hasn't been difficult, despite it being a Purple task. Other than rowdy refugees breaking out into fights, little else has appeared to disturb them.

'Eiiiiliiifii.... Siiiiliiifiii...
Merios? Herios?
Don't hide... don't hide...
Everything will be so perfect soon...'

People are woken abruptly in the early hours of Poi 11. If by some special sense, or by a grab at their throat, by a body falling on top of where they sleep, someone else stopping the refugee who was about to take a knife to them.

The refugees have become uncontrollable, raving about wanting 'their Gods back'. The ground rumbles as the woman's voice from the hazy jungle - ethereal, so divine - speaks from below. Grass rises and the sky above burns with a brightness like an approaching sun.

Setting an equaliser will calm the refugees, but only those in the camps. Starting from lunchtime, more warriors and civilians will be found appearing from the distance and from thin air, seemingly knowing where to find the Voidtreckers' camps - and after some very specific people.

Those with divinity, control over weather, nature, and death will be especially targeted, along with anyone who received blessings from the Gods.

OOC NOTES

OOC post. Ask questions here. Let us know about shenanigans here. NPC requests here, set up a thread here. Rewards go here.

TL;DR: Starting on Poi 10, there will be odd tremors around the domain, and more aggressive time distortions. From Poi 11 refugees will lose control of themselves and start attacking Voidtreckers, in and out of the camp.

It will happen abruptly to begin with, but some keen to reading energy will find that it is shifting; like something is breaking in from somewhere else (similar to the time distortions).

Extra equalisers can be picked up from the Ministry base and they will be there to help, but there are also more distortions happening around the domain, so they'll be dealing with those. The Ministry will advise that any non-combatants should stick to the base, and even use the scouting drones to help from afar, if they really need to help.

Undead warriors can be found outside of time distortions, and not all of the people outside of distortions will be 'permanent' people. Equalisers can be kept going for a few hours to keep these people away, but will also need go into recharge/cooling mode.

Don't worry if you're still busy with the Starting log! Or if you've been meaning to tag, jump in here!

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"Maybe... I don't know..."

He frowned. "Do... Do you think we need to go in there?"

He peers into the greenness. It seemed to be spreading, so whatever they were going to do they had to do it fast.

Soldat frowns at Yondu, briefly, before sighting along their rifle in the direction of the nearest potential foes. That's not the kind of talk they like to hear out of anyone, let alone Yondu. "You'll look after them, too, Yondu. You know that even if we die out here, the train just brings us back, right?"

He doesn't fight being picked up. Naoya smells of blood but everything smells of blood. The whole camp is filled with the sound of fighting. He trembles and clutches onto Naoya's shirt shaking his head.

"It's just... the blood. I'm a kirin..."

He doesn't know if he's told Naoya that before, he doesn't think he has.

"I'm not hanging onto anything," Soldat calls back, which may or may not be an attempt at a joke-- it's hard to tell with them on a good day, and this is not a good day. They're actively picking up and throwing the dead, now, to give themselves room to breathe. "Are those equalizers in place yet?"

...that's fair. Ryo hadn't exactly known how his Diagad power had worked either, especially since it had changed, and he'd been too scared to really test it. At least Romeo is past both of those points.

"That's okay - things happen," he says, gentle but still firm. "But in that case, at least promise me you won't try to use it yet. I don't want you taking on a wound that'll kill you."

He's not sure again is an appropriate thing to add, but Romeo is alive enough for now for Ryo to want to keep him that way, train-provided safety net notwithstanding; there's no guarantee dying doesn't affect their tethers, and Ryo doesn't want to take that risk.

He grumbles something else largely inaudible, twisting his neck away and moving himself as the assailant continues to whale against his scales with no traction. The blessing is they're using knives, and nothing particularly blessed, incredible, or aimed to cut deep, so it means while he feels it in the dull way one feels a pin tapping at a nail, it doesn't make much impact.

The point to all this contorting in its gentle inevitability is his setting Sizhui down again, only now encircled within the scales of his body, a bulwark against the chaos. Also, it frees his mouth again, where his lips pull back from his teeth and he looks like he's about to sneeze.

"Ugh, no offence, you may be my favourite person, but I really hate carrying anything in my mouth. There's nothing to rinse with! Oh, will you knock it off already?"

Twisting his head back around, he uses the side of his face to knock the refugee off their feet, then swiftly pins them under a foot.

"Better question. Why are they all acting like they're under compulsion?"

It can't be possession, what they're saying doesn't make sense, and also, he can't start shrieking himself.

The problem in not having telepathy in any form is he tries to answer by speaking, which means he's mumbling around a mouthful of Inigo, sounding something like:

"Thair wuzznt time faur that!"

Emphatic use of the tongue there, and now Inigo's at enough of a height with Jingyi curving his neck backward to see over a portion of camp.

"Hoauw duu you warn umun heey I'm gunng to ick guu uff wiff muay mof!"

Ryo doesn't stop to think about it - he hears hold on and he obeys, wrapping his arms around the person he's run into and holding tight. He gasps in surprise as they're suddenly in the air and holds tighter. "What-"

It's only when he hears squeaking and his name that he looks up and realizes who exactly is holding on to him. "Thanatos?"

(This is weird and awkward, but he's not worried about that so much as he is the revenants trying to kill them. Priorities.)

From Ryo's satchel, Lagos rattles. He's not hurt, but the weirdos are definitely after him! Is Thanatos doing okay?

"QUite possible." They're not quite husks, but he's seen beings taken under direct contorl before. He doesn't like it here any more than he did in his own universe. "History of opponents altering perceptions. Local information indicates forces capable of large scale influence."

Another one comes at them screaming about lost gods and Mordin has to take the shot. "Often invoked prior to violence."

Jingyi gives an elegant grunt of acknowledgement, because all his words are coming out difficult to understand, and also difficult to say. There's something outright unpleasant about holding things in his mouth that aren't a. meant to be eaten, b. meant to be swallowed, or c. is some kind of brush, ribbon, or sword of his own he's holding there. He's not a beast, let alone one of burden, even if he does bear people around under his own initiative.

But it's also faster, and more efficient, when he's not flying to get people out of reach. His neck is far longer than his legs are, after all.

His answer to the gotta do something is a derisive snort, even as he hops to catch himself in floating air right over the ground, allowing him to contort his body and bring his tail whipping around to, well, more gently pin down the person going after Tidus. Who has, in the interim, been attempting to jab through Jingyi's belly scales.

"Thlike I wholdn't!"

Twisting his neck around to look at his former roommate, he nods.

"Can you keep them close to my neck? I can calm the winds some around my body, keep them warmer, but if someone gets jostled I'll need to know."

He's taking off already, hopping upward and letting the winds take him and his passengers, already living up to keeping the howling down, the tug of the air at clothing like a strong breeze and not the visible storm around them. The air is warmer by comparison, but not warm, just less breathtakingly cold as to freeze marrow in bone.

Regardless of his intended person to speak with, neither of the men involved stop. Jingyi because he's seeking to incapacitate, the man because he's been flooded by compulsion.

Or if not, that's what Jingyi has told himself in order to be functional, because this comes too close to possession, and possession will send him screaming if he lets himself see and understand it as such. If it brushes too close.

Then he's straddling the refugee's back, the man's arms caught and pulled behind him, Jingyi braced so the wild bucking doesn't dislodge him. Knife now to the side, knocked further with a sweep of Jingyi's tail.

"Taiki, report."

Jingyi's thinking tying this man up might be the best way, or wait, no, there's a talisman, one that works if it's just a person here, and wait, something else: one hand holds both the struggling man's wrists, and Jingyi forms a seal with his other, plunging them abruptly into silence as the sound is suffocated in the man's mouth beneath him.

Outside, within the camp, there are shouts, and screams, and callings, and none of it restive.

"If this is an army, it's the worst one in the universe," Soldat chuckles. "We got barely any organization at all. And we rely on me to feed us all." (Shaddup, you do good work.)

Edited (typo) 2022-01-23 07:30 (UTC)

She was surprised. But pleasantly so to see Senku fight back. She had thought he might just lie there but then there was a dagger in his hands and he was fighting.

She hadn't knocked the man very far, she's not that heavy really but she scrambled up and jumped at him again, this time from behind, her own dagger coming up to his troat.

"Be letting go of him or you do be being dead." She hissed.

It's for Senku. If he wasn't here the man would be dead already.

"Mm." They consider around another mouthful, then answer once they've swallowed, "If you want to. Most of them will come by here anyway, I think, it's pretty central."

They look the kid (young man?) over curiously. "Don't think we've met. I'm Soldat."

Soldat, at least, has dealt with dead who don't stay down, and who looked warped and strange. Even stranger than this, actually. Beacon was weird.

But even this is excessive, in the getting-back-up department. As Tidus goes down, they duck an attacker of their own, heave under the body, and lift it up to hurl at Tidus's foe, knocking them both down and away from him. "Tidus! Are you hurt?"

The shout is both familiar and ear-catching, a point of fact made more evident when, in dragon form, he has ears which can twitch and cant toward what he hears. For all his bulk, he moves deceptively fast, partly a creature of wind, partly based on cultivation training, but this is not his best form for fighting, and he knows it.

It is, however, an excellent form for restriction, and for taking attacks not backed by significant enough force to leave an impact on him, as he learned when he first noted an oddity in camp and found a knife raised and ready to come down on a sleeping innocent, by one of the campfires. The suddenness of it, the words coming out of the assailant's mouth, the echo of those in other voices across the camp, set him on edge, set him to thoughts which would only lock him down, forced him to repeat to himself compulsion, compulsion, compulsion, because if possession, possession, possession won out, he would lose control.

One way or another, and in no way would that help, even if it only meant the worst he did was run away instead of toward.

It isn't an issue yet, and he leaps up to cleave the air with his body, spiraling down to reach out with one very large, talon'd paw. He can't fight like a beast would, wouldn't, but he can pick up and move and simply settle weight across things where using his wind, his seals, his techniques won't do.

"Ryo, report!"

Neither stops. He is ignored which he had expected. There comes a point in any situation where a kirin is ignored. Where the world as they wish it to be conflicts with reality and that is why kirin do not rule, why they only advise, why when it comes down to it their kings can order them to do what is necessary even if it breaks their hearts.

They scuffle and Taiki pressed himself up against the wall, still watching with horror. Jingyi spoke and it broke Taiki out of his horror for a moment. Report. He could do that. "He just attacked out of nowhere... I don't know what he wanted, why he..."

It was senseless, no reason for the violence at all. "He cut my neck, I... don't think it's deep."

He can still talk, honestly it barely stings. If he were a human it wouldn't even be a wound worth mentioning.

But he's not and he's fighting blood sickness with every breath.

"Buttercup. It's the refugees. They're--" They make a huff of noise as another tries to punch them, and they have to block. "They're attacking us?"

They sound baffled, because they are. Everything was calm a moment ago!

His hands were frozen but he could feel when they reached someone and he grabbed hold, letting himself be pulled closer.

"Mina!" He held her hand tightly, still shouting since the wind was so loud.

"This storm is so bad!"

It's when he steps back out of that tent that Jingyi crosses paths, in full dragon form and winding through the tents as sinuous as the snake his body seems to favour in its lean lines. He's heard messy fights like this before, has been in the heart of chaos as it sets alight, but the sudden flare up here has him firmly tamping down on a paralsing fear to embrace a possibility that allows him to continue functioning: compulsion.

These people, these refugees, these displaced individuals are under some compulsion, and what they speak, whisper, shriek, it only backs that up for him. While he cannot commit the simplicity of violence as a dragon, he can make use of his bulk and skills to suppress and prevent the injuring as he can: to a teen girl with her tined eating utensils who launches herself from between a tent and a supply crate, at the back of another worker, only to be intercepted with a sudden presence of dragon neck in white scales and blue furred mane she runs into, a dull thump at her impact, the wind knocked from her lungs.

She stumbles back, breathless, toward Esteban, fingers spasming tighter around her improvised weapon.

"Watch the young miss!"

[Masumi holds still, letting the Soul Gem do the work of healing her wound. Once it stops, she gives the arm an experimental swing, testing how well it was healed.]

Thanks, I needed that. I think they're starting to go after me more too, probably because I kept calming people.

[She had been told to keep it to a minimum...]

Well, that's one way to be saved from being collateral damage. Jin Ling doesn't have much time to protest against the complaints and attacks before he's held in the mouth of a twenty-five metre dragon that is Jingyi.

He appreciates the save as he doesn't know what to do in the situation that these people are turning on them. He doesn't recall doing anything remotely offensive to them. His words had been curt but they held not disrespect for them. He had tried so hard to make sure things were okay and now he's in this predicament.

"Of course this is-- ridiculous," he starts and lowers his voice enough to not agitate anymore people, "I don't get why they're so aggressive! We're just-- trying to help."

His face contorts uncomfortably.

Edited 2022-01-23 07:51 (UTC)

He could promise that at least. Mostly because he had no idea how he would take on a wound like that. He's very confused even though he thinks this is a good thing, he can heal people! Just like Ryo.

But he knows you need to practice and learn things so he nods. "I promise. I'll do my best."

He doesn't seem to find it awkward, after all shinki could die, even though they were already dead. It was confusing but it was just the way of things.

She darted to one side, kicking out at the man attacking them. This made no sense?

"We did be rescuing them. This do be being stupid."

She darted forward, knife in hand to keep another away from them.

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Fissures of Time: Ongoing

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dead by dawn

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Re: Eye of the Storm

get up and run

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no sanctuary;

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