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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"Flowers, sweat, and your scent," he says automatically, tail twitching but not flicking. He does move it when Inigo asks, bringing his head down and watching to the sides, trusting Inigo to handle the hog tying. He's seen the man's rope skills.

He's stopped making strange motions with his tongue against his teeth, resigned to the lingering taste of his friend, shifting his mind forward.

"If i knock people down gently, do you think we have the rope to tie them all or... wait! I can make a sort of holding net, if we drag people to it, we can keep them in there! If they're only being violent to those of us from the Voidtrecker and the ministry?"

Inigo earns a questioning look. Does it sound feasible?

"A holding net?"

Hold - hah! - on there for a moment, Jingyi. Because Inigo is still very much busy with tying up this guy here. And while he usually wouldn't mind multitasking, he really wants to make sure to do this well, just so they won't have to deal with an aggressive escapee midway through this conversation.

Inigo stands up once he's sure he's secured the man. It doesn't do much about the fact that he's still running his mouth, yelling at them despite his precarious position - though Inigo seems to have his way of shutting him up anyway.

Not by knocking him out, but by just slamming the point of his suddenly stone-encased sword down into the ground in front of the man's face. It doesn't hurt him, obviously, but it seems to stun the displaced person into a moment of silence.

Glorious, glorious silence that they can use as a backdrop for this conversation.

"How would you even make that in the first place?" It's not that he doesn't believe in Jingyi's abilities, mind you! It's just.. how? Bro? Are you planning on tying ropes together on the spot? Inigo isn't so sure they're going to have the time for that.

Jingyi rears back, partly flying (supporting, congratulations all his flight is essentially telekinetic) his chest and forelegs in the air, so his talons and paws can form a seal that's easier on human hands than with dragon claws. The end result is a circle of ground being encased in the sudden existence of thin blue qi 'ropes', woven together into very generous proportions, through which, well, arms could fit, but not even a child's head. It looks like a perfect two person holding cell made out of pure energy, though Jingyi grunts after, and creates an additional seal he sends back down to the tied out man.

That one for silence. Even when his stunned moment passes, he'll be unable to make much more than muffled sounds, lips sealed shut.

(Lans, as it were, had their ways of handling loudness. Jingyi was very familiar with them on both sides of their casting.)

"Like that. I can expand it, or bring it back down, but if we're using it for holding I'd want to set it up once and bring people to it. I don't have a way to carry it around, so it's not quite like dragging a fishing net through the waters."

Ah. Yes. Of course it's.. magic. (Magic?, more accurately, with that question mark attached. Inigo is used to magic from his own world, but the kind of magic he's seen on the train has always been so different from the fireballs cast from tomes that he's never quite sure if it's also magic, or something else entirely.)

Not that it matters right now. Anything to make the situation more bearable is something to make the situation more bearable. So Inigo takes in his dragon friend's words, glancing at the current situation around them as he lifts his sword again.

"So what you're saying is that we need to get a bunch of people all in the same place."

It sounds like he's going somewhere with it.

Though the jury is still out on whether that somewhere is good plan or a bad plan.

Energy, regardless, though Jingyi picks and chooses when he fights over what they call qi manipulation. Not being a question now, he settles his paws back on the ground, looking to the standing net-cage.

"Or drag them back to a central place after incapacitating them, or run around and use something like this to restrain them before restraining them from hurting others or themselves."

His whiskers shudder, fanning out around his face as his nose wrinkles.

"I can shift back, too, but I'll need something to wear in the meantime—I was on watch like this, which is why..."

A twitch of the tip of his tail, indicating back to himself in full dragon bulk. It was like this on the Salis islands too, Jingyi more comfortable sleeping or on watch as a dragon, using his body as a bulwark against the world outside. This time, he had to move for the world inside their camp.

"No, no, you stay like this."

If Inigo didn't sound as serious as he's sounding right now, then it'd be easy to imagine that he was just saying it because he doesn't want to spend even a single second seeing Jingyi naked.. Please, his heart might not handle it. He's already been through so much. Please let him cling onto that very last shred of peace of mind he has, thanks.

"Just prepare yourself to make a big net."

Inigo glances back at him.

"Do you think you're ready for that?" Because Inigo is ready for his part of the plan. He'll get those people here, Jingyi, you just prepare your.. your odd net-making powers.

"... I don't think it'll need to be big, but yeah, I'm ready." In fact a big net would be very large, and largely useless with how camp is set up, unless Inigo manages to piss off all the compulsion suffering people and have them stampede after him and him alone.

Which is a thought.

"Are you really good at getting people to follow you? By making them angry?"

There are ways of getting that to happen with talisman assistance, when he thinks about it, but he doesn't know what Inigo's plan is on the gathering people side.

He shakes his head. "Though Tidus would probably have some dumb jokes to make at those questions." Knowing the other guy..

But no, that isn't what Inigo is thinking about here. It's just-- he has heard some of these people yell about the gods. And while Inigo isn't sure if they are pissed at the concept of gods as a whole or just the gods of this world in general, he does remember the feeling he got back when he prayed in the room of the gods of this world. And the fact that he is literally linked to a god from his own world probably sure helps amplify that.

So he shuts his eyes, thinking really hard about that feeling, starting to internally pray the way he did a few days ago.

At first it doesn't seem to do something, but then it suddenly does. One of the nearby people, busy trying to destroy a tent in what seems like blind rage, turns towards them instead. Then more follow, and while it isn't necessarily a stampede of all of the people going wild in the entire camp, there is still a decently sized group of them blindly running right in their direction now.

"..."

Jingyi watches this situation evolve, his eye ridges almost giving the appearance of raising. He's not entirely sure what Inigo is doing, but it looks like managing to piss people off just by standing there and looking pretty.

Possibly pious, though he would look for different ear marks, and as a sort of heavenly being himself, not precisely understood in context.

It does give him an idea, and so the first thing he does is form a net around Inigo. Bait is one thing. Bait no one can quite touch is utterly maddening, and by protecting his friend from being immediately overrun, he's also letting the stream of refugees jump into their trap before springing it.

Because once he sees anyone start to turn away, once the flow of people towards them slowed, he formed a second, larger net around the compulsion suffering refugees. Contracting that one while expanding the one around Inigo creates a ring of captured, struggling people, albeit for that moment also leaves Inigo in the eye of the metaphorical storm.

... Him and the passed out refugee hogtied on the ground, at least.

"These people have way too much energy!"

It's at that statement on Jingyi's part that Inigo's eyes finally open again - and so that's the moment he seems to realise that the people aren't the only ones caught in a net.

The one thing that keeps him from freaking out about it like an idiot is the fact that he trusts Jingyi to not be pulling any shenanigans in a fairly serious situation like this one. It's probably part of the plan - and he's glad that it does seem like the people who seem to have gone crazy can't quite reach him.

"Can you contain them?" He instead asks, watching those people struggle as they're being trapped. He's not sure how much Jingyi's magic nets can take, after all.

He sends a pointed glare at Inigo, not even holding a weird pose now that both nets are in place. He has both meet at the top and come back down, until it's a domed, ringed net in truth, with one end opening up so Inigo can retreat toward Jingyi's bulk. Easier to work in circles and then scale back, as he did now, than trying to get fancy from go.

He wasn't a perfect cultivator, he was working with what he could do, and it wasn't yet to the level of his seniors. More to strive after, from his perspective.

"They're contained. I can shove any stragglers in with a gust, but you've got the deft hands right now, so it's on you to use them."

Inigo has prayed people into an arc of netting, and now if they were going to plan on finding a way to deal with the compulsion...

"Please, Inigo. I can't think about this too hard."

Because the moment he does, he will start fraying, and he's not sure anyone here can really make him stop.

Inigo's jaw drops open. There's a tendency - perhaps childish, perhaps worried - to whine back at Jingyi. To ask the other why he is please-ing Inigo here, as if Inigo has the solution to this entire situation. He's at least figured out what's got the people so worked up, or rather, what's drawing them towards him. It's how he got these people into Jingyi's net in the first place.

But thinking further, figuring out how to calm them down again, that's harder. And Inigo is usually not exactly the man with the plan - although it also wouldn't be the first time that he's shoved into the position, having to be that, exactly because there's no one else to do it.

He frowns, really trying to think.

"I don't know-- It's not like praying is going to do any good. It's just making them more mad." So trying to call the gods out to the wasteland? That definitely isn't going to work. It'll just get the people more worked up. "It seems that they're mad about the gods of this place, but I have no idea how to reverse that! I'm not even sure what got them all mad at exactly the same time in the first place!" Inigo pauses, really trying to think. "It's like something happened to them overnight, switching them entirely.."

But what was it? What was it? Inigo has no idea. He woke up with someone's hands around his throat. He had no time to spy on whatever might have happened in the night, even as he desperately tries to think about it here.

It's not like praying is going to do any good.

Jingyi freezes, something visible in the way his mane stops moving, his whiskers hold position, everything about him still as the air that tends to circulate his body goes as a thought creeps in, past the reason he was saying please, needing someone to be a bulwark against a fear he's fought all his remembered life.

Prayer, however, ties to gods, ties to the reason the Ministry is here, ties in so deeply that he practically shouts over Inigo's head some concept of an answer once it strikes in his brain, akin to lightning striking the pine that thrusts tallest over the ridge. What else happens overnight? What happens suddenly with no explanation? What influences reality here in sudden, unpredictable, but definitely 'god' linked ways?

"The tears! The gods responsible for those, the time issues, those are stabilised with the equalisers. Could it work here? Stabilise this place from that influence?"

Jingyi casts a silencing over all the gathered and netted refugees, plunging them into a much quieter area than it'd been before that point. Lan traditions could have upsides: and silence is a working he knows very, very well.

It's an idea.

And it's not like it's an idea that could hurt, so Inigo acts right away. Thinking for a moment about how far away he is from where the nearest equalisers are stored, and then--

"Can you hold them? For just a bit longer? I'll contact--"

He doesn't finish his sentence, too rushed, figuring that Jingyi will understand what he's doing as Inigo flicks up the wrist with his SCA on it. Just pushing the button of the general channel and speaking into it, for anyone in camp to grab an equaliser and fire it up. Inigo figures that it's bound to work faster than him working his way away from Jingyi and over towards a tent that still has those things around. Surely someone will hear the call and get one working. Hopefully someone will trust him without him having to explain Jingyi's own thought process between how those might help.

There's an answer, thankfully, and so Inigo quickly glances back over at his friend.

"Someone ought to be turning on one really soon, just hang in a few moments longer!"

If it works, that is. But Inigo thinks that it has a pretty good shot - moreso than anything else he can think of in this moment, anyway.

Jingyi lands with that, his talons pressing against the earth in a literal grounding. He strains his hearing through the camp, but it's overwhelming, too many sounds collectively, too much to hear and not at first enough to pick out as one specific. The sound of an equaliser being set up is covered by so many others, and centimetre by centimetre, his talons press down into the earth.

Inigo did say hold on. He's holding.

His qi nets are likewise holding, but those he doesn't need to concentrate on, not now that they've been established. Even the silence wards working to keep their captured refugees from overwhelming them with sound doesn't help for anywhere beyond their arc of netting, for better and worse.

Then he hears it, the humming sound that doesn't quite ring and definitely itches his inner ear without doing that at all. Jingyi's head whips around, facing the direction his ear had picked out as the one responsible for the noise.

"There." His whiskers lifted, not wafting in wind, but frozen in an upward lift now. The tip of his tail twitches with nerves coursing through him, and he reminds himself, this is not possession as the refugees try shaking the bars of the qi netting, and then...

... well, it's not fully instant, but the ones closest to the direction he's looking stop struggling and mouthing off in their enforced quiet so violently, start to slump, to look confused, to look frightened as they come to terms with their present situation. Jingyi drops the silence ward, and while some are still shouting about gods, or almost being right or fixed or whatever it is, more are starting to look confused.

".. Thank Naga."

That's definitely an expression of relief in this case, because Inigo truly wouldn't have known what to do if that hadn't worked. Just keep the people that way the entire time, regardless of how humane or inhumane that sort of treatment is? He doesn't like to even really think about it.

But it worked. It's working! Just look at it. Even if the effect is kicking in slowly, it is working. It ought to only be a matter of time before all the displaced people have been calmed, and Inigo releases a breath he didn't even realise he was holding.

"Jingyi, you're a genius."

Hey, he's not above giving a pal some credit where it's deserved. Jingyi helped them cope up with this idea, even if Inigo helped in executing it.

Jingyi whines, in a pathetic, carrying way, and flicks a talon to let the qi nets go all at once. While it is nice, to enthusiastically hear he comes up with good ideas (and reaffirming, considering how most his good ideas came up at home, a very different set of rules and logic being what he grew up with there), he's mostly glad this means the compulsions-that-totally-aren't-possessions appear to have stopped.

"I'm so glad that worked," he says, head dropping down low to be held more on level with Inigo. "Because if it didn't, and they still acted possessed, I was going to have to shift to play Clarity..."

Which would have meant a naked guy playing qin while freaked out, which was a recipe for disaster delightfully avoided.

The refugees, freed from netting, have started standing, more and more of them appearing to be back in control of themselves and frightened at how they ended up here, hazy headed, holding an assortment of makeshift weapons, some injured, some wearing blood that isn't from any wound they can find.

Some very freaked out at the sight of a large creature with visible canines and large claws digging into the dirt.

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Fissures of Time: Ongoing

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