logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: october 9-17.
content: the hallucinations begin...
warnings: psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

it's probably something that shouldn't be said out loud

October 9 feels like a normal day at first, save for the red lighthouse beam cutting through the darkness overhead. You know by now—or you've heard—that the lighthouse is only active during ferry arrivals and events... And there's definitely no ferry docked at the, er. Beach. The town is quiet, the forest spirits behave business-as-usual, Rastus doesn't know what's up. Whatever's going on, you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

And you will, though the hallucinations are subtle at first: objects moving when they shouldn't, people's proportions looking just a bit off, voices in an empty room, and so on. Is it just your mind playing tricks in the darkness? Might be! Will did warn you all about the effects of living without a sun and a proper day/night cycle.

As the days go on, the hallucinations are harder to ignore, no matter how much you may wish to wave them off as flukes. What's wrong with everyone's faces? When did all the howling start? Who do you hold onto when the world drops out from under you? And those hands...

While you might know it can't be real, it certainly feels real. But at least it can't last forever!

...Right?

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[ Something strange happens then. The fire blooms and then, quite suddenly, it's gone. Along with her enemy.

Then it's above her and striking down.

Kettara takes the blow, too surprised to dodge, and smashes hard into a tree. Her vision goes sideways, air rushing through her ears, and she struggles to take a breath. It doesn't feel like she's broken anything but the air's been knocked violently from her lungs, her equilibrium temporarily thrown.

Get up, my student.

She can hear Muln's voice, closer than before, but when she stands the fires are gone and her enemy is no longer a warrior wreathed in smoke and flame.

She growls low in her throat. ]

Where is he?! Stand and fight me!

"HYDRA won't have anything by the time I'm done with them," Crowley vows. He doesn't like a lot of the things he's seen on Earth, but he definitely doesn't like the torture that the human soldier person has endured. He'll stop it any way he has to.

"You're a demon," Crowley says. "An...owl-demon. Bit of an unusual choice, but pretty terrifying, nonetheless. You'd give Hastur a run for his money, that's for damn sure."

Another section of the second floor falls down, and Crowley raises up his arms to shield himself from the splintered wood.

"We have to get out of here!" he says. "The Hellfire is everywhere!"

Apparently.

( It isn't Fantine that he's grief-stricken over. The woman is dead, and Javert feels no remorse at having hastened her passing. It is merely the circumstances that have been eating away at him. Could she have been telling the truth? Was he wrong to not have shown her pity? )

That is the thing that vexes me. I should not be questioning such problems. Least of all now, when it no longer matters.

I--

[There's someone there, by the fire and Quentin blinks rapidly, putting the book away in the bag to get up.

There's someone there, someone he almost knows and Quentin gets up completely, slinging his make-shift bag over his shoulder to walk around the fire. It's been a rough week, since the ferry keeled over and too many days trapped in the cabin trying to get Eliot to slow down at least a little. Too many draining conversations and that's why, Quentin tells himself, that he can't get Julia's voice out of his head. That's the reason.

He's losing it a little bit, but that wouldn't be the first time. He can ride this out.]

Say something? Did you just say something?

No, I mainly just had to explain to him it was the illusions, and that I wasn't simultaneously dying and then turning into an owl demon. Apparently my head turned all the way round, very disconcerting.

But what are you seeing now?

For a demon, Crowley sure does care a lot. It's kind of sweet. Even if it does still harbor doubts about their success against a worldwide organization of evil... it's nice to hope, just a little. So the Soldier gives him a small smile. "I'd like to see that."

(I fucking want one of those. Okay, Sergeant, I know you do. You say that every damn time you see one.)

After a pause, watching Rosinante light up, the Soldier decides, it's not afraid, and Rosinante is tentative on the safe list anyway. It can make a request. The worst Rosinante is likely to do is say no, right? Probably not going to punish it. Like 60% sure there won't be punishment.

"Can I try that?"

"It's really not," Aziraphale responds, looking all around him at the still house that they've tried to breathe to life with the help of books and plants. He reaches for Crowley's shoulder.

"Besides, if you're a demon and I'm a demon, the Hellfire wouldn't affect either of us, now would it? Now come, sit down, I'll make you some tea. You should really have something to ease the visions, will you close your eyes?" he requests.

Meanwhile, he turns but his face is trained on Crowley, head seemed screwed on backwards, mass of feathers to cover up the seam where his neck should be twisted. His clothes, too, have changed, now looking a bit like they had in 1793, which is apparently what owl demons wear.

[Stone hops over to try and keep her from standing up, holding a hand that could easily pick her up and cradle her in his palm over her chest and torso. He shakes his big head at her, slowly, hoping she can actually see him and not whatever is in her crazy vision.

Not for the first time, and probably also not for the last, he wishes he could just speak in this form, still. His attempt comes out a rumble that he hopes is soothing rather than threatening.]

[Ignis doesn't strike him as the type to make stuff up, and he's being very vehement about this. Jason looks at the trees again but still sees no sign of hands or really anything besides bark and leaves. He hesitates, but he's never been one to lie and he's not about to start now. Though he's not sure who he should be more worried about: himself or Ignis.]

I don't, sorry. [He looks lost for a moment.] Maybe it's still a prank though...maybe there's a way they can hide it from view or something.

[Jason says this as someone used to things like the Mist and his own encounters with magic and those like Hazel or Hecate. Which, really, was one in the same. The other option, of course, is that Ignis is truly seeing things...but now that Jason thinks about it, he's pretty sure he's been seeing things too. But he still felt new here and wasn't sure if what he'd been seeing was just the latest bit of strangeness about this place.]

Right now?

( ambrose blinks slowly at him and then shakes his head. the man's face seems to melt for a brief moment before it puts itself back together and then falls apart again. )

Your face isn't falling apart right now, is it?

As Daylight talks, the hands shrink back slowly - and as Rosinante turns to look at the robot, he sees that perhaps why they had moved. There's practically a halo of them around Daylight, stroking his metal chassis and moving his jaw for him as each word emerges. It's strangely grotesque, and Rosinante can't help but watch in slack-jawed horror.

Before he can say anything, though, Daylight flinches back and Rosinante rapidly turns to look toward that bookshelf again, though he sees nothing there this time.

"Shit, I didn't - I was about to say something!" he exclaims, assuming Daylight means the hands all over, and kicks his chair backward as he stands, then swiftly gathers it up with his good hand. Just because one arm is trapped in a sling doesn't mean he can't still fight these horrible things off, and with another step he's up and over the table, wielding the chair as a weapon as he swings it through the air immediately next to where Daylight is standing.

"They're all over you!"

Oh, I know. [And he lifts his left arm ever so slightly, wrapped in its sling, to indicate that the ferry crash is how he got his current injury. Even that small amount of movement still hurts his shoulder badly, but he manages without wincing, though he regrets the action. Nowhere near healed enough just yet.]

Mm, I imagine she's interested in them, yeah. I saw her saying something about working out a solution now that the ferry's gone - a solution for not bringing in more people, I imagine. She has ways to contact people beyond Beacon somehow.

[And she can order people killed, too. He knows that much. The troublemakers had better watch their heads.]

Anyway, I spoke to the man who calls himself Soldat and he took some of the blame, but it sounds like that Crowley fellow might be at fault as well. Do you know him?

He looks away from Rosinante just briefly, because the longer he looks at him the more he morphs into someone else. Or pieces of someone else anyway. An arm of one person, the face of another, as if his mind can't decide which hallucination it wants to settle on and instead tries to make some amalgam of all of them.

"Were we drugged?" If this is effecting everyone then there must be some cause to it. He'd remember if one of those Jellyfish had whacked him with a tentacle again, unless they floated into his room while he was asleep. And somehow did the same to everyone else?

Very slowly he backs away, putting more distance between the two of them, because this is Rosinante, and not someone he needs to attack. And even if this is some sort of clone, it could have killed him several times already.

"What are you seeing? Everything..." He trails off, head snapping to the side as he hears a recognizable voice asking where he is. But no.. it's not real. It can't be. "Everything is almost melting, like my memories of back home are merging with this place."

He's not going to mention all the hands.

I've not seen any spiders. Nor cobwebs.

[Which is actually really strange now that he thinks about it. No cobwebs or dust, like there's nothing living to make such things. Though he has heard the crickets and cicadas in the forest - but he's never been able to find them.]

Have you noticed ...

[Hm. How to phrase this. Have you been hearing people from your past - sounds more delirious than he wants to admit.]

Are the forest spirits being louder than normal?

He raises an eyebrow, though much of the movement is obscured by his thick bangs. "Never had a cigarette?"

Well, who is he to deny someone helpful - mostly, he hasn't forgotten the ferry - such a basic request? Even though his supplies should only last another month or two at most, a bit of nicotine would probably do a lot of people some good right now, he figures, so he takes a draw from the cigarette and then holds it out to take.

"Go ahead."

The Soldier watches Rosinante do it, maybe with a little more interest than mere curiosity would warrant. Partly because it's not sure why the Sergeant part of its brain is so focused on it and wants to know how it's done. Partly because the Sergeant part of its brain really wants it.

"Thanks." It accepts the cigarette and inhales a lung-full. Something inside relaxes. Something related to the Sergeant, whose voice is nothing but a drawn out sigh and the sense of a smile. The nicotine doesn't really do much of anything, not on the Soldier's metabolism, but the action, the sensation, is so familiar and peaceful that it can't help but relax.

" ... I think I have had this before," it says, looking at the cigarette in mild surprise. "Not quite like this. It. Tasted different. But close enough to be familiar." It has one more draw, then offers it back.

Drugged? Who knows. Robin had called it an "event" when he asked her, but nothing she says is fully trustworthy. So this is beyond her control? He doubts it. She's very good at playing innocent.

Truthfully he doesn't know the answer, though, so he just shrugs, drawing the feathers of his coat higher toward his ears. The distance is a relief, as it grows, and though he keeps the gun pointed at Kuai, he lets his arm lower to the ground. It's there as a warning, not to him but whoever is controlling everyone. The thought occurs to him that if Doflamingo and Robin somehow were to work together, they could probably butcher the whole town spectacularly. She's certainly the type he likes to collect and wield.

"You're a puppet," he replies. "I thought you were my brother, or one of his clones made of string. But you're really Kuai Liang, aren't you? Under his control."

The hands surround the soldier, guide the cigarette to his lips. Others begin to pile up the scraps of wood from the ruins around them, dragging them across the ground to Soldat's feet, and as Rosinante watches, they reach out of the darkness and cup the little falling embers from the end of the cigarette and guide them to the tinder.

"No!" he demands sharply at the mass of hands trying to set their surroundings alight. They retract at the shout, and Rosinante remembers that not only are they possibly not real, but even if they are, the fire will never spread. He didn't burn then and he won't burn now.

"Uh - no, I mean, you keep it. I have more," he tells the other man, then clears his throat and stands. This crumbled, damaged building seems to be allowing his memories to come a little too strongly to life and the only solution he can think of is to move. If he's going to hallucinate, if the darkness has truly gotten to him so deeply, let him hallucinate anything else.

Crowley jerks back from Aziraphale's touch in fear.

"Aziraphale, what's happening?" he says, voice serious. "What's happening to me?"

Because it's not Aziraphale. Not from the way he's talking. He's talking like it's not happening. Unless he's already being a Very Good Demon and frightening Crowley very well, which Crowley doesn't think Aziraphale is capable of.

"It's----one of the Dukes of Hell," he says. "There aren't any good ones, I'm afraid. But this one is particularly bad, you don't want to mess with him and I have no idea how he got here."

He gives his wings an experimental flap to see if he can get air without catching the Duke's attention.

"Come on, I'll fly you away from here, we can get back before he sees us."

Before it sinks? What is sinking? She sees nothing.

"Crowley, whatever you're seeing, better be actual fucking firm ground or I'll drown you," she warns and takes his hand, after nailing a few crawling hands with her daggers. The hands squirm and eventually stop and she retrieves them with a snap of her fingers and braces herself, one of her hands clutching on the back of his shirt.

"Go, go, go-" they are cutting it VERY close!

Looking around, the Soldier doesn't see anyone. Or anything, really.

Actually, not true, it sees a pair of hands beckoning them towards the forest, but when it ignores them, eyes skimming past, they both make a rude gesture at it. "Where is he. This Duke of Hell. Point him out for me."

Maybe it will make Crowley less jumpy if the Soldier shoots this Duke of Hell he's seeing. Because it's definitely a hallucination. Poor Crowley, it'd been really relieved to hear he hadn't been effected....

No, I should really hope not. Oh dear, you seem to be particularly affected by it.

I mean - I assume your hair isn't on fire, but if it is, I am very sorry.

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EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

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