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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_{[He folds his arms over one another, leaning toward Five with unconscious interest.]}

How long was that? Your lifetime.

_{[Of all the confounding aspects of the visions, a young body with an old mind that had been but one. Just as confounding is how breathlessly old he is by M.K.'s standards.

This place has been a nightmare, not the least of which because he's still alive to live it day after day, but there are moments--moments when genuine wonder creeps in past dull, deadened defeat. This boy, for all he knows, had been there in the early days, able to see the shining cities before they fell. He isn't thinking of the horror of the fall itself, in part because with no real record of it, there's no real image to fill the gaps in his imagination. He shrugs.]}

You might be able to answer that better than I could. No one really knows what happened. They say they destroyed themselves. Wars or something else, I don't know. I just know it's always been the way it is: dead.

[ it's only a beat before five admits, ]

Nearly sixty years.

[ couple years off, but it doesn't matter now. especially doesn't matter when it's so far off from how he looks, what peoples' assumptions of him are. of course, his gravestone suggests a different age entirely, but he'll let mk ask about that, if the kid's inclined to.

(he feels, when he looks mk straight in the eyes, that he can see a dead world reflected back at him. if he looks, really looks, he can see the cold ashes where the fires have burnt out, the blood where there's nothing left, the weight of what it is to rip yourself to pieces in the name of survival.)

he looks down. ]

I never found out. I've just seen the before, and the after. But in my world, no one survived the destruction. [ looks back to mk long enough to ask, ] How many others are there?

_{[Sixty, and his feet barely reach to the rungs on his stool.]}

--And you can't make yourself look older?

_{[Maybe it's not a choice. Well, it's not important--it isn't as strange a concept as it could be, had he not known the Master, someone who looked forty but was well over one hundred thanks to the gift slowing her aging.]}

I was at your grave. _{[He carries on, admitting it candidly. Likely it's obvious; no point in hiding the fact, so he doesn't bother to try.]} You felt old. On the inside, I mean. The way you thought. But most of your memory was... confusing.

_{[In large part to the gap between their ages--centuries, if one can believe that. He eyes Five like a novelty that retains its novel status for every second he continues to exist in the world, which he all but is.

Contemplatively:]}

You did.

_{[Survive. Didn't he?]}

Compared to what? How it was before--millions? _{[The number has the ring of the unfamiliar on his tongue. Billions doesn't even cross his mind.]} No. No, it's never been like that. But there were wars over what was left for a long time after that, so the story goes. That probably didn't help.

If I could make myself look older, I would. Obviously.

[ there's anger, but it's somewhat half-hearted. the graves weigh heavy on all of them, and the idea of this kid -- of generations of people -- living in a post-apocalyptic world weighs heavier. mk doesn't linger on the point besides, so he lets it go.

the fact that mk was at his grave was no big revelation at this point, with how the guy approached him, so he just hears out mk's impressions, impassive. ]

I did survive, yeah. But I was the only one. [ millions, mk says, and he corrects -- ] Billions. Billions of people used to live on the planet.

[ all obliterated by some cataclysm that remains a mystery to him even now. mk, too. he shifts his weight backwards a little, says, ]

So that's my point of reference. Nothing, or billions. How many other people are alive on your earth?

Edited 2019-07-28 23:22 (UTC)

_{[Obviously, Five says, when it's anything but that. He wants to ask just how a man who looks like a boy can remember the very thing he was trying to prevent from taking place, but M.K. is also aware the appetite for his curiosity is greedy and bottomless, and he's already asking for plenty just wanting to know... wanting to know what it was like.

Billions of people? Same world, different worlds... it's all a bit like a dream, though he doesn't miss the acerbic resignation bubbling behind Five's objective account.

Living alone in a world devoid of people isn't the same thing as living alone in a world full of people you wish you didn't have to share it with, but it's similar enough that he can hear the echo of it in between what Five says and what he doesn't, like a sound bouncing around the empty spaces loved ones were supposed to fill. Loss is a battle any other, waged on a different field; it leaves marks all the same.]}

It doesn't make much sense that one person survived and one was responsible for what happened. It wasn't just a freak accident. The old world I know brought its destruction on itself.

_{[M.K. doesn't seem fazed by the grimness of this pronouncement. It's ancient history irrelevant to the present about a people as distant to him as the dinosaurs.]}

Maybe we are from different... worlds. _{[He allows this, chewing on a thought.]} It'd be nice to think it turns out better for some other place, that it's not just a fantasy things could be different.

_{[For what that's worth. They're not so different themselves, hoping without knowing that their efforts changed things for the better. From what he saw, he'd like to think Five and his allies (siblings) were successful. He has no such reassurances for Azra, dying surrounded by enemies as he had.

Even Tilda, in the end, had stood against him.]}

I'm not sure. In the Badlands? Millions, maybe. _{[The immutable headache that is number crunching is easier to consider.]} It's the biggest and safest region I've ever heard of, but that was before the war. There isn't much contact with the territories outside of it and no one's really sure if anything left across the oceans. I'd be surprised if it was anywhere close to a billion.

Edited 2019-07-29 02:15 (UTC)

No, [ he says, ] it doesn't.

[ make sense. he's thought about that, but this mystery was at least not too hard to solve. ]

As far as I can tell, the one who was responsible was killed -- either by those trying to stop him, or he got caught up in the cataclysm himself.

[ because there was no body. or to be more clear: there were plenty of bodies, weren't there, but not one obviously harold jenkins. no one-eyed person near the remains of his siblings, no obvious sign of who they were fighting.

mk's story is -- or maybe just remains -- depressing. it's not hard to imagine, a world where humanity turned on itself and tore itself to shreds. where the worst parts of human nature won out, where war after war after war ravaged the population until there wasn't much of it left. maybe that's what would happen in his world, too, even if his brothers and sisters stop harold jenkins. the handler would say that you can't fight human nature. she'd probably say that this is the inevitable end in a world where jenkins's freak accident never happened.

(so much better to keep removed from it. so much better to let history run its course, for good or ill, and not give a damn. so much better to stay in clean, gleaming offices and carefully handpick who lives and who dies. there's a pension to earn, after all, there's the promised retirement. why get caught up in such messy matters? murder doesn't mean much when it's for a higher cause, and there's no higher cause than the stability of spacetime.) ]

Maybe we are.

[ they have to be, he thinks, if only because of the differences in their apocalypses. ]

And you're still at war. Is that right?

[ but that was before the war. jesus christ. ]

... And you were trying to undo what he did.

_{[He works through Five's memories aloud, filling in the blanks to the story. Time travel is an alien concept to him--but this town bathed in darkness has drastically broadened his horizons when it comes to the alien and the unfathomable.

All things considered, the gritty details likely matter more to Five in the long run than to him. There's no hand to wipe clean the slate for the world he knows. No unravelling history or undoing past mistakes. Mired in the mess and the muck of his time, he'd agree on one thing: humanity is its own worst enemy. The only way forward is to cut the hands off those who cling to power and make way for the new.]}

You're not the only one who fought for a better future. _{[He lifts his chin a few degrees. Conviction, even the tired kind, can be a powerful motivator. It can see a man through a shrapnel wound, or give him a reason to pick up his swords when he's sure the pain of his burn injuries will drop him.]} If you want to know, I'll tell you. But I'd rather hear about the old world.

_{[He can't help it--that shine of curiosity for mankind's golden age, that nebulous period of time before the wars, before the barons.]}

[ five just sits there for a moment, considers mk. and then when he opens his mouth to speak, it's soft, though steady. ]

There used to be people everywhere, [ he says. ] Like I said, billions of 'em. I used to live in a city that held millions alone. There were good and bad parts, obviously. Some people barely scraped by, and others went through money like water. [ hargreeves, for instance. ] But people could live their lives in some peace, relatively. Held down jobs, fell in love, had families. Raised kids, pets. You ever see a dog? Man's best friend, they called them.

[ he doesn't have to ask what kind of things mk wants to know. he remembers all the stories he told himself, the ones that sometimes didn't even feel true anymore, like the old world was a dream he'd had. ]

You could buy food, clothes, whatever, from stores. Didn't need to grow or scavenge or sew everything for yourself. If you were sick, you could go to a doctor, be taken care of. Buildings full of books that were free to borrow. Schools to learn history, math, reading, science, you name it. There were restaurants whose whole purpose was to serve people whatever food they wanted. Places people could go for no better reason than to have fun. Cars to take you places; ships and airplanes to go further distances. If you had the money and the ability, you could go just about anywhere in the world if you wanted to.

Edited 2019-08-11 03:52 (UTC)

_{[Kingdoms aren't built on dreams. He'd said that to Eli once, to make sure the boy understood the future would be written in blood and sacrifice, not indulgent hopes. But the past... Maybe there's still room for dreams in the past.

Dreams end, dreams die, but they're lovely while they last, aren't they?]}

And there were a lot of cities?

_{[There's not much left that can stir feeling in the ashes that are his life, but he's rapt as Five paints a picture of a way of life people from his time can only speculate about. One could be tempted to mistake M.K. for a good listener if they were to see him now.

How often? How often had they found some rusted vestige of the way things could've been if the world had been kinder to itself and wished someone could explain it? It'd only taken death to make it possible.]}

Cities that ran themselves without barons. And the buildings--there were tall ones, like in the pictures? Made out of glass. _{[The word comes back to him.]} Skyscrapers?

_{[Harold Jenkins' house had been in suburbia. All squat homes, no towers like what captured the imagination on the postcards. Still, one troubled man's home seen through the distracted eyes of an ex-assassin with bigger problems to tend to had held more unique riches in one place than M.K.'s seen in most of his life.]}

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EVENT LOG: GRAVES

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