logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: GRAVES

EVENT LOG: GRAVES

EVENT LOG:
GRAVES

characters: everyone.
location: Bonfire Square.
date/time: July 12-19.
content: mysterious shrines appear and bring visions of death.
warnings: likely violence and potentially gore.

time to pay your respects.

It happens when no one is looking, when most of the town is asleep and the rest are inside. A makeshift cemetery has come to Beacon, taking up residence in the middle of Bonfire Square. Each monument, shrine, and altar is dedicated to someone who now resides here, a memorial of their previous life.

Some may be drawn by curiosity, others by fear, and some may simply have to pass through this strange graveyard to get to the Bonfire itself. Whenever a person gets near, the altars beckon with a mysterious urge— an urge to approach, and an urge to leave something behind. They will feel compelled to make offerings at the various shrines, but doing so has a curious effect; it causes one to experience the death of the person whose grave they've honored.

Whether you resist the compulsion or give in willingly (or something in between), you'll also have to wrestle with the fact that a grave exists for you. Will you let your death be known, or try your best to keep it secret? Destroying it sure won't work, as it will return— with a duplicate somewhere else in town.

However you choose to deal with this, one thing is hard to ignore— this a tangible reminder of your death, and the fact that it's probably permanent.

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The singular pale blue-gray stone, crossed with lines of crystalline minerals, was a surprise find among the tiny dark pebbles. Even harder to find was Kuai's grave, for although he has learned to recognize that the man's language looks similar to the one he knows, there are others here with the same script. So he tries all three, naturally, and keeps the stone in his pocket, first placing down a few freshwater mussel shells as an offering to test the ownership.

The first is Kuai's own by pure luck, it turns out. And the scene is pure horror - ships encrusted with skeletal giants, on a literal sea of blood. Their war is truly against monsters, and not the men he's battled who are called monsters but still human, fishman, or another type of person underneath.

But it isn't the battle that he feels, as Kuai fights his way through the horde. What he feels most is the man's longing for someone who isn't there. And he can't help but wonder, as things begin to fall apart - would it all have gone differently if this Hasahashi had been there with him? Can two men turn that tide together, rather than apart?

Probably not, realistically, seeing what they were up against. The depth of their partnership is something he has never felt, himself, and expects he never will. Whatever happened to result in Kuai regarding that Scorpion as a stranger runs through the whole vision like a broken cord, something to be fumbled along that doesn't really go together the way it should.

When it ends, he places the white-laced stone down beside the shells, and sits, rather than leaving immediately. He'll go on his own time. If Kuai finds him before then, that's all right too. The weight of so many deaths experienced in the last few days is starting to wear on him and he needs a moment to get over this one.]

He hasn't been lingering by his grave, it seemed in poor taste somehow. Even though he knew he wasn't buried in there, for one because he was standing right here, but also there wouldn't have been a way to retrieve his body, something about interacting with his own grave seemed wrong.

But while walking around solemnly and looking at the graves of others he does keep coming back to it. This time someone is in front of it.

He stands there silently for a moment, arms behind his back as he watches the candles flicker.

"Dying in battle is what I always desired. Unlike many, I at least got that."

Honorable to a fault. Rosinante understands the warrior sentiment there, shared by soldiers across a multitude of worlds, it seems. He understands it, but he has never shared it. Oh, he expected there was a good chance he would die in a firefight with pirates but it wasn't what he had wished for. Still, it's what he got anyway.

"That makes both of us," he replies with a slow shake of his head. Both died in battle, that is, but he'll leave it vague. "Your battle was immensely larger than any I've seen."

"The armies of the Netherrealm are nearly endless, we were badly outnumbered. But it was all we could do." There wasn't any other option; they could either fight, or allow Kronika to restart time and reshape all their destinies to likely disastrous results. If Raiden was to be believed she'd already done it hundreds of times and none of them were the wiser. Hundreds of lifetimes that were all slightly different until she got the outcome she wanted.

Sometimes he wondered what those other lives had been like for him.

"I don't know the outcome. I truly hope we were victorious, but the odds were never in our favor. I suppose, being here, that I will never know."

And that's a hard thing to live with.

"No. We're all to be left wondering how the worlds move on without us," he says with a slight nod. It's unpleasant, he'll agree to that as well.

"Do you mind if I ask about one person, though? I believe you said he was here, the other Grandmaster. Is he faring well enough?"

As in, what's his deal? In the vision, someone else had fought under his presumed title if he was understanding things right. The one here must be the one Kuai felt the absence of so strongly.

It's rare that Kuai is caught off guard, but this is one of those times. His eyes shoot to the headstones, just what exactly were people seeing?

"Grandmaster Hasashi, yes." He's stalling, trying to recall what he'd been thinking before he died. He hasn't rewatched his own death, it seemed unnecessary, but now he's wishing he had. Had he been thinking about Hanzo? He didn't think so, but maybe. Oh no.

"He's fine. Or as well as any of us can be after death. He died before me, before that final battle." That is not what Rosinante is asking and he knows it. "I'm not sure what you saw but the man in yellow, Scorpion, that is a younger version of him. We were fighting a Titan with the power to fracture and manipulate time."

"Ah. Yes, that's what I was wondering. I was trying to work out if it was perhaps a title passed on to another."

God, but that's crushing, and he lets out a breath slowly. In some ways, Rosinante recognizes that he's fortunate that he was the one who died first, of those few he was close to. If Law had been the one to die out there in the snow, he's not sure he would have found the strength to go on. It would have broken him. Kuai, though, lost that person he was close to, and then had to live through a version of the man who didn't have the bond they must have formed later, through the joint defense of their world. No wonder his thoughts were so focused on Grandmaster Hasashi.

"Then - as difficult as death is, I'm glad you were able to find him again here," he says with sincerity.

Well that confirms that Kuai had definitely been thinking about Hanzo. That's oddly embarrassing. He didn't mind others seeing his death, but he had failed to consider the emotional aspect of it, that they would feel what he felt.

Too late now.

His voice softens as he replies, "As am I." He almost leaves it there, feeling odd saying any of this outloud. But eventually he continues, "We were enemies at the time that Kronika pulled him from. I also initially thought he was the one who had killed Grandmaster Hasashi, so I attacked him. And he has no reason to trust me."

Fighting alongside a stranger that you've known for decades was a distressing experience.

"Attacked him... here?" Hence, has no reason, instead of had? Or is Kuai still thinking of that time before death as the present? Rosinante can't blame him if so. It must be exceptionally confusing with the time travel thrown in.

Also, how many stories of time travel has he heard now? At least two, possibly three. It must be more common than he would have thought, much like magic. These people live in such strange and difficult worlds.

"No I.." He trails off realizing he's confusing the issue. He hasn't had cause to speak outloud about this to anyone and now that he is, all the emotions are coming back and he takes a moment to stuff them all back down and maintain his frozen exterior.

"No back in my world. I attacked the younger version because I thought he had killed Grandmaster Hasashi. I was wrong - he hadn't. But the damage was done." His voice is soft as he recounts that meeting, not liking to admit to his mistakes, but too honest to lie about them. "It is in the past now. And since I'm dead there's nothing more to be done."

There's another long pause as he looks elsewhere, "I hope he is well."

He nods his understanding. Yes, that makes more sense. It's interesting, too, how Kuai seems to struggle with this, when in every previous conversation he seemed to be fairly measured, composed. Confident. Thoughts of the other man make Kuai's mind fix on that subject until the rest is tuned out. That's one hell of an emotional attachment.

"He's well here. That's what matters now. There's nothing we can do about the worlds we left behind," he reminds Kuai patiently, because he knows it's what he reminds himself when he's worrying about Law. Law, however, is a child, all alone and terrified. Not a grown man and a warrior. Perhaps he was slow to realize at first, but the nature of Kuai's interest is becoming clearer to him.

"You are right, as you often have been." In their conversations Rosinante has proven to be competent, well thought out and with a mind for planning. He was also remarkably perceptive, which in this case may not be precisely what Kuai would have liked. There's nothing to be done about it now, at least he's someone that Kuai respects and likes. Which makes his words actually sink in where with others he may not have truly listened.

"I suppose we simply move forward. It serves nothing to dwell on the past. Though I sincerely hope there aren't many situations in the future where we relive each other's deaths." Or anything worse.

"I hope the same, but I'm not optimistic enough to expect it. This happened not long after arriving. There will be more." Whether it's worse or not, he can't say, but this seems like the beginning of something, not the end of it.

"Since this world is all we have now, we should try to understand it. Maybe we'll discover how these graves and shrines came to be. We can find who's responsible, and find out what they want. That's the only way to put an end to it." And that may not work either, but they won't know until they try.

He sighs, why do you have to be right? Again. "Most likely."

Kuai definitely doesn't like the finality of this world being all they have now, it may be true, but it doesn't sit right with him. Probably the eternal optimist in him fighting hard against the crushing despair of reality. "I don't know what brought them, but I do know that one who destroyed their grave had it reemerge the next day. So it seems we can't even impact the things that do occur."

Sometimes being bright and trained to think about these things is a curse.

"That's... even stranger than their appearance," he says with a frown. "That makes it seem malicious. Spiteful."

"They do seem to be here to cause us to be ill at ease rather than to actually honor the fallen. There's no honor in leaving a token of respect and then being forced to experience someone else's emotions and experiences," he says it with some disgust. He hates that he's become privy to others' personal thoughts. He shouldn't know those things. It's not his place.

"No, there isn't. Hard to offer well-wishes and respects and then see suffering instead," he agrees easily. "Especially when most of us would probably have wanted to keep those things private. Reveal them on our own time, to people of our choosing."

But who needs honor, right? It's never something he sought. If it was, he wouldn't have nodded along and echoed Kuai's sentiments just now. He's glad he saw everything he did, even if it was hard. Information can be vital and collecting it isn't always noble.

"So they - it - whoever, has set us up not only to see each other at the ends of our lives, but then also has set us up for conflict at the site of the grave itself. There are people here who sit and guard their memories, who'll fight before they'll let anyone pay respects."

"Yes. Unfortunately such choices were taken from us." He narrows his eyes, briefly annoyed that he'd been subjected to things outside his control. He'd spent too much of his life being enslaved, controlled, possessed or manipulated that even something as simple as seeing things he didn't intend to deeply unsettled the part of him that was terrified of losing control of himself again.

"I saw that as well. It won't do them any good if someone is determined to see it. And it seems suspicious that anyone would be so adamant that no one see how they died." He naturally assumes that it means they died dishonorably. All honor, all the time with Kuai.

"Though I would have preferred to not be forced to feel other's emotions."

"The ones I noticed who were guarding their markers the most intensely were the children, though," he points out with a frown. He too would have thought that someone being so adamant would be suspicious until he spent some time really trying to track some of the memorials down. Most of the people who died in questionable ways, people who might have had something to hide, were accepting enough of their deaths and even welcomed questions from those who saw.

"I think they were just the most afraid. I don't blame them. They're so young."

"They shouldn't even be here." Now he sounds more than annoyed, he sounds mad. If he could personally eviscerate whoever thought to bring children to such a place, even those who were as capable as adults, he would. Such a creature is a monster that deserves no mercy.

"I don't know what the rational response is to seeing your own grave appearing and when others interact with it they relive your death."

"Children die too," he points out, though he understands the anger. Not everyone who dies comes here or this place would be much busier.

As for rational responses, though, he's likewise at a loss. He just shrugs. "Everyone is going to handle it differently. But as I said before, I think now I'm more worried about what's to come. I hope it ends up giving us insight into why we're here, though. What we're wanted for, if anything." Other than yes, these resets, but that in itself means very little to him right now.

"Certainly, but they shouldn't be subjected to," he gestures around at the darkness and the nearby graves, "whatever this is."

He shakes his head, not fully agreeing, "Perhaps. All we can do is wait."

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EVENT LOG: GRAVES

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