Event Log: Dreamwalker the Second

[hadrielmods]

Who: All characters participating in the event
What: The event log for the Dreamwalker part 2 event
Where: In your dreams
When: October 14th-20th (the second log will go up on Oct 23rd, please keep the two weeks of the event separate!)
Warnings: All different kinds of dreams falling under the umbrella of Delight, Rage, Sorrow, and Hope.

This time, the weird stuff doesn't happen when you're awake- as a matter of fact, your waking hours are the normal ones. That's because you're forced to sleep by some unknown entity, getting more and more exhausted by the moment as night falls. Better make sure you're always around a soft pillow.

Once asleep, it doesn't get any less weird- your dreams will be influenced by one of the four gods that make up the first week. Something to make you smile, something to make you angry- or something that reminds you of your deepest regret or most vulnerable hope, they're all things that you're dreaming about now for some reason, no matter how hard you may try to pull away from them.

To make matters more complicated, there are others intruding on your dreams who definitely don't belong there, and while they may seem like manifestations at first, it becomes clear that these others are actually the consciousness of other members of Hadriel, getting some top quality exposure to your angriest, happiest, most sorrowful moments. Hope it doesn't get awkward when you see them tomorrow...

► This log covers October 14th-20th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you die in dreams you don't die in real life, but if you somehow die in real life anyway, please let us know here.

Comments

[sciencelizard]

[She doesn't understand what Lup is saying, searching her face for some understanding, something that could explain what's going on. Is she trying to play the hero? Is there something else going on? A person she left behind?

Lup moves, and Alphys doesn't fight it, running with her, just a bit behind with the difference in their height. Still, she keeps their hands clasped tight.]

Who're-- Or, uh, what are you looking for??

[Thankfully, she's much more at home in the heat than the cold, having lived alongside lava for so much time. But this is a clear and present danger, and if Lup won't leave without something, she needs to help her find it quickly.]

[restinglichface]

[Not now and maybe not even for some time after, but Lup will eventually look back on this nightmare and realize what Alphys did for her. That the sweet woman who was always stammering nervously and shying away didn't immediately tug out of Lup's grip and run from danger, but instead held the elf's hand tightly and ran with her towards it.

The significance there will sit with Lup for years after this.

For now, the elf is frantic as she runs forward with Alphys, head snapping back and forth as she peers through the smoke and flame, searching for something but coming up empty. There's a touch of hysteria in her tone, wild and panicked, while she pulls Alphys sharply to the left, straight towards the shops, heading north towards the coliseum.] The gauntlet! I don't know how the fuck it's here, but I need--

[She's cut off by a scream, the first of many that quickly rise up from the burning buildings, silhouette's behind the flames, crying out for help.

[sciencelizard]

[Since coming to Hadriel, Alphys has found more than once that running from her problems has never once fixed them. It's hurt people she loved, it's gotten her killed more than once, it's spiraled things worse and worse to a sharp point. She wants to do better. She wants to be better. And sometimes that's following someone who has always been kind to you, has never been cruel even when it would be easy, into the gulch.

It doesn't even occur to her that she could run away from the fire. That would mean running away from Lup. And she doesn't want to be that person, anymore.

Lup's frantic tone only serves to wind her up more, legs working as fast as they can just to keep up until she skitters to a stop when Lup does. Oh, god, what is happening? What would Mew Mew say?]

We, uh-- we have to find it, then, to stop all this!

[She tugs a moment more at Lup's arm, trying to get her to keep moving again.]

[restinglichface]

[Lup looks lost, trapped in place by the screams of people burning up in the blaze, her eyes impossibly wide and reflecting the raging fire of her own creation.

People are already dying.

Her relic's death toll just continues to rise and rise, long after she thought it was gone for good. Lucretia's staff had absorbed it's power months before this, the first of the other's relics to fall into her hands. How is the gauntlet even here, then? How is it even possible that it's still usable now--

But Alphys tugs at Lup's hand, calls desperately for her attention, and the elf snaps back out of her thoughts to the shorter woman at her side. She still appears dazed, thoughts weighing heavily down on her slender frame, but Alphys is right. Lup has no right to mourn or fall into spiraling guilt. Not yet, not until that thing is gone again.] Right. You're right.

[She squeezes Alphys' hand and takes off again, shoulders squared. Her tone strained, but level.] It's a gauntlet that summons fire, but it can't work without someone wielding it. They'll have been taken over by the thrall of it, we won't be able to convince them to give it up without a fight. We have to find and free them of it's power before the whole cave is consumed.

[sciencelizard]

[Lup starts moving again, thank the gods, and Alphys is feeling more and more like if she let go of her hand she might pass out on the spot. Not that she imagines Lup has any strength to spare, considering the circumstances, but right now her resolve is the only thing driving her forward.

She takes in Lup's synopsis, trying to accept that as something real and not just high fantasy something out of an anime. Gosh. Lup is a magical girl. Relics of great power and fire hands??? Alphys should make her an outfit.]

O-Okay, uh-- do you know who might have it?? Or someone who might know about it? The city isn't that big, maybe we can, uh...

[She swings her head around, looking for answers.]

What if we take the river? It won't be burning and stuff won't fall on us!

[restinglichface]

[The fire is spreading too fast.

The great fire that had sprung up a few months earlier in Hadriel had started off as a small spark gone awry, but then had burned through the city for days, crawling from building to building, smoking out each spire before climbing up the sides, burning up everything in it's path eventually. But the gauntlet's fire is magical. There's no slow crawl of flames through the city, it burns up and out in a matter of quick moments, leaving no one and nothing behind but a circle of black glass.

Alphys is surprisingly quick thinking in such a crisis, but there's just no time. Lup has to find the culprit and fast before everything is just gone.

But just as Lup's about to say there's no point, she turns off towards the arena and spies a shadowed figure near the coliseum entrance, standing with an arm outstretched upwards within an expanding pillar of flames shooting towards the rock ceiling. The figure is just completely wreathed in flames, the only part of them visible the gleam of a silver gauntlet sitting on their hand.

Lup quickly grits her teeth at the sight, hand gripping too tightly at Alphys' for just the briefest of moments before the elf releases the other woman completely.] Get out of here, Alphys. Get to the river or the lake and hide out. I got this.

[sciencelizard]

[On some level, she has to know this is a dream. Something's always just slightly off, even if this is one of the scariest situations she's ever been in. Alphys wishes this is the kind of dream she could change- be able to know it's not real and bend the world to something better. Ever since her death in Hadriel almost a year ago, she's been trying desperately to do better, to be someone's hero, to do-- god, something, anything so she's not so useless.

In the end, seems like it's gotten her into the same amount of trouble lying and hiding has. But at least this doesn't stay with her. At least when every once in a while she does help, she knows she did something. She did better. Just a little bit better.

But god, how does she help Lup here? This is-- this is a real fight. She doesn't fight. She's built-- okay, so she's built a gun before, and it was pretty badass. But that's building. Not combat, not fighting, nowhere near this.]

I-- I don't want you to be alone.

[Her presence is really all she has to offer, at this point. But she still needs to try, or... or something.]

[restinglichface]

[There can be no positive outcome to a dream like this, where the city is quickly consumed in flames, the people they've both come to know all falling to their deaths, but Lup will remember that Alphys stayed with her until the end. Dream or not, the other woman's courage and the depth of their bond in this moment will stick with the elf for the rest of her stay in Hadriel.

Alphys refuses to leave her side and Lup hates that the other woman isn't seeking safety, but she accepts that decision with a firm nod of her head. Maybe Lup deserves to be alone after how many thousands of lives have been lost to the gauntlet she'd created, but she's selfish enough to take the company offered. She's spent so much time alone that she can't possibly find the strength to tell Alphys to leave a second time.

If she has to die again, at least it won't feel as cold and lonely as it had back in Wave Echo Cave.]

Just stay behind me-- [Lup's trying to cycle through spells that may have an advantage over fire, but there's not very many in her repertoire. Not that it matters, because everything happens far too fast for her to even decide what she's going to cast.

The shadowed figure contorts in front of them before an agonized scream rips from their throat, fire quickly consuming what was left, leaving a blackened husk of a person behind, arm still outstretched, the gauntlet untouched and shining. The wielder may be dead but the gauntlet's flame continues expanding and growing, fire pouring off to burn quickly through the city. The flame stretches upwards into a blazing column of brightness before it just reaches the point of inevitability and explodes. Lup barely has a chance to throw a skinny arm in front of Alphys before the two of them are completely consumed in the blaze. There's just enough time for the two to feel the heat and searing pain of the flames before the dream just ends, both women waking up in different locations in the city.]

[sciencelizard]

[Alphys doesn't know what they're going to do here as they approach, but in the end, it doesn't matter. Her legs shook as they approached, tail low and dragging in the dirt. It's funny, in some sick way, how fluidly fire moves. How it reminds her of Waterfall now.

At least this time, she isn't walking to the inevitable alone, either.

But the column of fire goes up, and she tries to brace herself, and-- it's over, just like that. She's awake in her room, breaths heavy, but alive. It's over.

She doesn't go immediately back to sleep. She's never been good at doing that, after nightmares, and she stays for a while curled around herself, tail tucked in as she surrounds her phone like a large scaley cat. It takes her hours to send it, and when she does she just tosses her phone like a hot potato and throws herself under the covers, refusing to check it for hours.

But she does send it. Just one text to Lup, as the fake dawn breaks outside.]

its ok
<3