EVENT LOG: GRAVES

[inthenightmods]

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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Comments

death

[fogey]

[ this is how it feels to be number five:

you look around, and what you see is the dream. you see green grass, blue skies, people talking and laughing, buildings clean and fresh, standing, intact. you see that, but what you don't see, what you know, is the truth. you know how the world is going to look in a matter of days: you know exactly the way in which this house will crumble, have seen its foundations, have cut your hands on the broken glass from its windows. you know how the air will choke with smoke. you know where the bodies lie, every single person whose life hangs in the balance if you get this wrong. you see your brother and sister, living and breathing, and you remember how it felt to find them, lifeless, under so much rubble.

those are the stakes.

—

there's a white-hot pain in his gut that he ignores, because it doesn't matter; because he can compartmentalize it, like he's compartmentalized so much over the years. because right here, right now, number five stands in the house of the man he knows caused the apocalypse. he provided the name; diego found them an address, a face; allison had realized his connection to vanya. all of the pieces are finally starting to add up, for the first time in decades.

allison calls from above: "guys, you need to see this."

diego makes to the stairs first, then five (jostles painfully, but he doesn't slow down), and they climb up to the attic. the house had been painfully ordinary, normal, but up here -- now this is where the man hid his crazy. there's an entire cabinet, walls plastered with photos of a group of six children in domino masks and uniforms just like the one five wears to this day, newspaper and magazine clippings, the shelves full of figurines of the same children. one is five, of course, two clearly younger versions of the siblings with him right now. except --

"all our faces are burnt off," allison notes.

not just that -- in every photo, their eyes are scratched out.

"well, that's not creepy," diego answers, which is a big fucking understatement. "this guy's got some serious issues."

"shit," five and diego say in tandem, because what else is there to say, really.

"this was never about vanya," allison says, but five starts to wobble on his feet, looks down again towards his stomach. the wound had been painful before, all day, but now it's too much. allison adds, "this is about us."

-- and five falls to the floor.

"five," allison asks, alarmed, as she and diego get to their knees. "wh -- blood." she pushes back the vest, the shirt, to find the bleeding shrapnel wound.

"jesus, five," diego says, "why didn't you say anything?"

here's the thing: even this doesn't matter, so much. not with what's at stake. so what five says is,

"you have to keep going. so...close."

because that is what matters -- his siblings are closing in, now, on the person who causes the apocalypse, who kills them all, who destroys the world. five gave them the warning, the clue, everything he had, and now the last of it is up to them. they can save the world now; they have to.

so even as he hears allison call his name, feels diego's hand on his face, he slips into darkness, and feels -- something like relief. he did what he devoted his life to: got them as far as he could. ]