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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jiang Cheng only looks vaguely miserable, which might be an improvement on his general mood more than half the time.

There's no stopping the scowl that settles on his face when he sees Wei Wuxian gallanting around and offering people alcohol, but he's also clearly not in the position to say no to it - not when he can reach out and take it, trying to keep his huffing under control. It's not as easy as it looks.

"You could always use a drink."

And he is still cursed with an idiot for a brother.

"Ah, but I have a busy mind, it won't quiet. You know, you know!" A mou of his lips, and he clasps Jiang Cheng by the shoulder, leaning in and offering the pretense of a pout that's barely there, compared to how he was in the years that spanned their mutual coming of age.

"Thank the Ministry for their kind contribution. Don't tell anyone, but I think half of it is to hopefully discourage us from roughly running off into any trouble. They, ah, they seem to be catching on to the fact we're not trained."

He smiles at that, with the wry edge of a man well aware that the lack of training they all share is because none of them came here by choice, informed. Their stumbling makes sense with no framework for being caught in the first place.

"As if I could forget, you never let anyone forget." It's said sourly, but more because Jiang Cheng is tired than because he's actually bothered by Wei Wuxian. It's harder to muster any level of anger or real frustration these days when a great deal of the ire and irritation has been talked out.

It helps that there's alcohol, too.

"We're trained, just not in the way they want us to be," he scowls, taking another drink before he breathes out a little. "What have you been doing, then, for them to be so worried?"

"Me?" He laughs, bumping his arm against Jiang Cheng's, the level of affable he allows himself to settle into more concretely over the months they're spending here together. Not all edges will ever smooth over, but the poison beneath so much of it, the rot, has better been excised.

They cannot reclaim the past, but they've been redefining the present, and might find likewise, they can create a future that is less the permanent pain of their losses and failings, and something closer to forgiveness.

"Oh, here, nothing much. They say, move camp! I help move camp. They say, we need another body on this equaliser installation! I offer my body willingly. Perhaps my worst so far is... leaving fruit offerings at the statues back where we arrived."

He shakes his head, as if this is all terribly lamentable.

"These haven't been just or kind distortions of the past imposed over the present, have they."

"Yes, you," the menace that is Wei Wuxian, with Jiang Cheng giving him a sour, irritable look as he settles. They're more comfortable, at least, that the scowl is something almost gentle, almost too familiar - it's the kind of thing that comes from idle brotherly irritation rather than real hatred or want to push too far.

They're getting better. It will never be perfect, but they are repairing things. Isn't that enough for them, given how much they have lost already? There's no going back, but they can move forward.

It has to be enough.

"So you're filling gaps wherever they are," he nods. At least he's being useful, which might be more than Jiang Cheng has been doing. He feels a little adrift at the moment, his mind more concerned with Madoka and her knowledge, the realities of the train, than he is with taking part in this mission.

He looks back over after a breath.

"No, of course not." He drinks, quickly. "Are they ever?"

"Nope," he says, cheerful in tone, little of that making it to his face. They both know the past laid over the present is a distorted mirror, even if it's not literally occurring, stranding people outside of their times. He has sympathy for that, displaced by near two decades. It's incalculable, the way of those kinds of losses.

You just move forward.

Wei Wuxian, reaching into his hoodie pocket, extracts a fruit roughly the size of his fist, looking like a loquat, tasting more citrusy and plum-like with tartness than a loquat truly does. He likewise hands it over, quirking his brow.

"Try one. Different than what you'd think looking at it, but tasty, nonetheless. You should bring one to Jin Ling and Miss Madoka. I've got plenty!"

He has a basket that he's kept until this refugee or that worker or that Trainling has looked like they needed something sweet, juicy, and different from this parched landscape to soothe their hearts.

The things that has improved is their ability to communicate - yes, it had taken shouting, and anger, and grief, but all things between them had been much like that. The notion of things getting better without that is not something he had ever really considered, not for a moment.

Jiang Cheng knows himself, recognises his own failings better now as an adult than when he was younger. He is trying, and maybe that would be enough.

In his proper robes, looking a little more fancy than he had been before, he leans over to look at the fruit.

"... Have you seen them both? The two different a-Ling?" He takes one of the fruit, immediately making a note to find both his nephews and Madoka to ensure they get to have them.

Something good ought to come after the horrors of a mission.

"Mm," he says, a nod as Jiang Cheng plans the proper redistribution of god-granted fruits. "They look like her."

They look like their father, too, as one might expect, but more to the point that matters, and something he'd seen once he understood on his 'return' who this loud, arrogant young man was... well. Their sister, adopted or blood, lived on in her son.

In more than looks, because that wasn't so striking, really, but in his heart, and how he acted.

"You know, for how much of you and Guangyao was in his raising, he's still much more like her than anything else." Soft, warmly said, and not looking at Jiang Cheng.

It's difficult to put it all into words when it feels, suddenly, like his mouth is filled with cotton. Somehow, in some way, both of his nephews look painfully like the sister they'd lost - the idea of that seems unfathomable when he thinks about the way he was raised and what little he had of their sister to work with.

He glances over at Wei Wuxian, somehow resisting the urge to say something sour, some commentary on his own raising of his nephews - with a-Ling more like his son than anything else.

Jin Ling is still technically the heir to Lotus Pier, until Jiang Cheng has his own child. That's something that isn't necessarily coming in their future. He has no prospects on that front, which leaves him all the more sour.

"She was with him, in his heart," he says finally. "I... Did not tell him enough stories, but..." It was too painful. How could he ever put those sorts of things into words?

Adoption, Jiang Cheng. Time to consider the time-honoured tradition in all sects not part of the perversity of blood lineages in their five region isolation, to the ones beyond, to the future that truly keeps the best going, and not simply limited by family pride.

(Not that Wei Wuxian will be the one to say. He already lives that, with Sizhui. He already embodies that, as the adopted child, the prodigal son, the horror overshadowing their youth under a matron's pointed, pushing words.)

"There's no too late," he says, voice soft. "No time where a child does not appreciate hearing stories about their parents."

Or considers their denial and the stolen glimpses they're offered, says one orphan to the brother orphaned first when he was orphaned yet again. Perhaps being Wei Wuxian's family is, indeed, the curse.

There is the notion of not wishing to adopt and then have his own child at some nebulous time in the future; Jiang Cheng had grown up as the less favourite of his siblings, as the one where the adopted was preferred, and he would not wish that on his child. He had been busy enough the last handful of years with a nephew and no one had ever matched his desires, a-Ling's favour included. It was easy enough to dismiss it when he was younger, but now...

Everyone seems to have children. It's starting to become irritating.

"He seems to think so," Jiang Cheng replies after a moment of pause, enough time to register the words and for him to digest it, to think on what he would like to say in return. "I will find the time to give him more. You should as well, especially now there's two of them."

They'll be twice as demanding, twice as wanting, twice as spoiled. It's completely his fault, of course, but the point stands.

It's okay, brother, just swear off women! Then you won't have to worry about biological children, at least...

He laughs, more of a chuckle, and looks forward, off at nothing much with a slow blink of his eyes.

"One of them tolerates more than the other. I'll see what I can do, but A-Cheng, I don't know how to convince a young fool determined to die of heartbreak that he's not dying, that alcohol doesn't solve it, and that refusing to speak with the ones who care for him leads anywhere sane."

Which is a summation of what he's run into with one of the two nephews, and has been ignored on. He doesn't think it's odd, but the things he's tried to talk on... if one doesn't want to hear from someone with more experience with dying than a dramatic seventeen year old, then he has nothing he can say. After all, he had been theoretically dead all those sixteen years.

As if he isn't already half-way there, given his experiences with the matchmaker and Wen Qing. None of those things have made him feel as though he has any particular chances in the future.

All the same, he shoves his brother gently and moves to slump down, settling with a huff.

"One of them gave me this," he tugs at a little charm on his belt, fingers brushing over it gently before he sighs. "I see the other one less. It is easier to adjust to a strange world without your uncle breathing down your neck, I'm sure. I am just here when they need me."

When he's needed, which is rare. He misses being home, misses having work to do, something to manage, work to do. It makes him feel particularly useless here, adrift and weightless.

"But I am here. It's better than not being here."

He leans in, wanting a closer look at the charm in question, lips pulling up into a smile even as he eyes it.

"They'll always know where to find you," he says, agreeing without needing to make it more explicit, "And they've friends to get into trouble with, and back out again. Or that's my sense of things."

Straightening out of his bending to look at the charm, he laughs.

"I'm thankful, ah? That we've had this time." The two of them, with all the pain of their sister (martial, blood, adopted, Jiang Yanli a spectre of their hearts throughout), the time with people who they might have not had around in any reflection, the limited time with Wen Qing. Finding children of their own in a wayward, unanticipated manner, and being here, whatever that meant in the end.

"Just like we did when we were younger," Jiang Cheng agrees, voice soft and quiet.

When it had been him and Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang in Gusu, playing around and getting into just enough trouble that he had been worried about his father finding and scolding them. As much as he worries about a-Ling - the both of them - he recognises that this is now part of them growing up.

His fingers brush over the charm again before he laughs softly.

"It's better than not having it," he agrees. He wishes that he could say more - do more, even - but there's not all that much he is capable of right now. He feels a little awkward thinking about all his gains and losses, but at least he is trying.

"Mm, very much so. I wonder how many rivers they've gone fishing in... or what they've been reading."

A sly smile for that, sideways glance to the brother he's gifted a novel to, knowing it's at least engaging enough to be fun reading, if not particularly close to a pretense of high literature. He hasn't given his nephews anything of the same kind, only the older Zewu-jun, only his son-that-snot-fully-his-son-but-is-as-long-as-he-lets-him-be.

He refills the cup with alcohol, lifting the jar to Jiang Cheng.

"To their health and happiness! Along with the other young souls we look fondly on."

Madoka, Nell, Tidus. A growing, tangled net of some people here on the train, or those who were now gone again, lost to be found.

"Not enough. A-Ling spent a great deal of time with his other uncle, so often his fishing was well behind his other studies. He had some of it, of course, among other things, but..."

Sharing his nephew with Jin Guangyao had been a pain in itself, having to give up his rights to the boy for too many weeks of the year. The fact that he had managed to deal with it to begin with is something of a marvel in the end, surely.

He takes his cup and sighs softly, rolling his eyes but responding the same.

"I'll lose all my hair because of it."

He leans closer, ostensibly to look at the top of Jiang Cheng's head, as if their topknots allow for witnessing signs of balding anyway. No, but he does examine his brother's hairline, shaking his head and clucking his tongue.

"I can see it now, you're a hair less thick than before. You might even have one starting to go white."

Though he laughs, lifting his cup and quirking his brow.

"Very luscious, all your hair, if you're losing all of it, I think it'll take some time yet. Here, here! To the health of your hair and it's plenty for years to come!"

He will, absolutely, drink to Jiang Cheng's hair retention.

Jiang Cheng immediately reaches up to try and slap at Wei Wuxian, scoffing at his brother even as he takes another drink. It's not enough for him to get tipsy, not just yet, but he's getting there. One way or another, he'll find himself with a looser tongue and less patience.

"I'll kill you. I'll shave you bald first then I'll kill you."

He's rolling his eyes, but it's not meant to be something real. It's something that feels almost painfully familiar, like something of the years gone by.

"You're an idiot. That hasn't changed."

He laughs again, and lifts his cup and the wine in his other hand, seeking to prompt his brother to do the same.

"I give, I give. No way to face any forebearers if I'm bald."

Not that he's less ashamed with all his hair, but it can be the jest it's meant to be, not heavier, weightier things.

"I'm an idiot, you're a fool. Some things don't need to change." Like this, drinking and insulting each other in the ways that don't have to dig deep, that can be laughed off, because it simply is the moment, and not the rewriting of their lives through the lens of their worst moments.

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Fissures of Time: Ongoing

alcohol!

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