logsinthenight | 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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Stone?

[ Kettara shifts back, ears flattened. This doesn't make sense. There was fire, there were bodies on the ground. And now there is nothing except the endless fucking dark that is Beacon. She can't smell anything but the trees. ]

I don't understand.

You were seeing something that wasn't me. Kind of like how I was smelling something that wasn't you up until you tried to throw fire at me.

[He snorts.]

At least, I think that was fire. Can fire be dark?

I saw my friends, in the trees...

[ She shakes herself. ]

And — fire. But it doesn't throw light, here. An illusion, maybe?

And so you attacked your friends? Maybe you're more like a Raksura than I thought.

[He reaches over to give the side of her head a little, gentle shove.]

Are you okay? Seeing regular forest and me like I'm supposed to be?

They were dead. I meant to avenge them.

[ It's said bluntly. She's fought her friends before, but she would never purposefully harm them.

She grunts, but accepts the cuff without much protest. ]

I don't know. I've never felt an illusion that powerful before. It felt real, and this feels real.

[ It's hard to tell. ]

I don't think it's an illusion. I would have seen that, too, right?

[He knows enough about groundling magic to know how illusions work. He thinks.]

I think it was something in your own head. What's the word people are using... "hallucinations", I think.

Besides, never met a groundling magician who could do illusions of scents, and I'm smelling all kinds of shit I'm not supposed to.

It depends on the magic. I've heard of some that could do scents, textures....everything.

[ But she's never encountered one in person, which is the problem. It was never that relevant for her training, or her duties to the Earthen Ring. Illusions fall into the realms of arcane magic, or the domain of hated warlocks.

Kettara shakes herself. ]

Hallucinations have a cause. A poison, maybe.

Most drugs and poisons don't affect my species. I've only ever found one, and it doesn't do this to us.

[Stone shakes his head, looking grumpy.]

I don't like this. I especially don't like if it's making us attack each other.

Then...a spell, perhaps.

[ Kettara knows little about arcane magic, but such things are possible.

Worse, the damage has already been done. She might have killed Stone and not realized it until after the deed had been done, if she realized it at all.

She shakes herself. ]

Do you think it's impacted everyone?

I've been watching people be twitchy and jumping at shadows for days, before I started smelling things that weren't there.

[He sighs, makes a frustrated rumble that vibrates the nearby leaves.]

I'm pretty sure everyone's affected. I just don't know what any of us can do about it.

[ That's a distressing thought. Kettara shifts from foot to foot uneasily. ]

I don't like this. It feels like a....a distraction.

[ Something cruel and messy to keep their attention. ]

[That's certainly a thought.]

A distraction from what? I've been looking and I haven't seen anything that this could even be distracting us from. Except maybe getting work done on the dock.

That's what worries me.

[ There is a purpose to this thing, Kettara is certain. Very little in Beacon happens by accident. ]

There's too much we don't know.

[How does she even know that for sure? They've been here for less than a month. Stone can't even be certain of that much.]

I'd suggest we both look around, but "looking around" when you're seeing and smelling things that aren't there might not help much. I suppose it's better than nothing.

How good's your sense of smell?

[ It's a good plan. Thus far, it doesn't seem like two people are seeing the exact same thing. So if one of them starts hallucinating, the other can check them. Kettara nods. ]

Better than a human's. Not enough to track, though.

Humans can't smell shit.

[This is one thing he has worked out, so far, here. Human senses are terrible. (Though they can see better than he can, which admittedly isn't saying much.)]

Good enough that if I ask you if you smell something strange, you'll be able to tell me yes or no?

EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

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