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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I. Cemetery - Death vision
_{(OOC: You can get all of the deets on M.K.'s grave here, complete with helpfully grim video clips for reference's sake! If you have any qs or need any other info, shoot me a line! Consider the second prompt free game for reactions all throughout the event, or just wild card that shit right on up, I'm easy. :3)}

_{[This is what it is to see through M.K.'s eyes:

They're tiring. Try as they might, they're tiring. Each of your kicks leaves bruises that will take weeks to heal. Each of your strikes rattles the fine bones of the arms. They're without equal, all three of them, the cream of the Badlands' crop, but their best stops at the limits of what it is be human. You're beyond that. Battle is a song and you sing it with devastating sweetness, the tune in your ears and power in your blood. It's the closest a person can come, you think, to divinity. Every part of your body in sync with every other part, black as tar on the outside, never more alive on the inside. A perfect, precise

(weapon, demon, killer, god)

There was a time you wouldn't have been able to land a hit on any of these fighters, too unsure and scared to reach into the darkness and grasp the power sleeping there. You've grown. Victoriously, you lived to see fear reflected in the Widow's eyes, genuine fear that you're too strong to stop. You relish it, that look. It makes up for the dozens of simpering, mocking, disparaging, disappointed looks that came before it when she had a blade to your skin trying to carve this moment out of you for her own profit.

How's that saying go? Be careful what you wish for.

She had this coming. It's a howl in you, an animal scream built up with time and scars. She had this coming. And when a window opens and it's finally time to turn the blade back on her, you're wishing a savage you're welcome at her unborn baby for not having to ever know her. Better dead than to be raised with her as a mother--

The rage is blinding. You're not paying attention. If you had, maybe you could have stopped in time. You should have stopped.

Tilda.

You would have stopped when she's the one person, the one person, you're forging this new world for.

Tilda.

But you didn't, and you don't, and not even your speed is enough to course correct. But that monstrous strength of yours, the monstrous ease of killing-- That carries your sword right into Tilda like butter. Through her.

You would've stopped, you're sure, because she deserves to live. More than you, more than anyone left. More than even Pilgrim, who you pretend not to see as clearly as you do. She won't love you the way you hoped for once but that's fine, because when the Badlands are gone, when the Widow and Sunny are gone, when they make this one last push, she'll have years and years to be with Odessa. Or someone, anyone of her choosing. Years Pilgrim won't have with the gift killing him, when he won't be around to question why you saved a girl who isn't like you, but who still believed in you.

These are the lies of a better world you've fed yourself, and Tilda's choking wetly on them in your place.

The howl is quiet, the tune dead. In place of the fight, snuffed out like a light, you have room to wonder how did we get here, Tilda, I'm sorry, it wasn't supposed to be you but your words are as numb as your fingers, relinquishing your swords to the sand. I'm ready to die, she'd said, but you weren't ready to be the one to kill her. Not this way. Not this.

Oh, and that look-- The look the Widow gives you, the same look you used to give to her. It's that look you back away from, that sinks in more keenly than the dagger that comes after.

This is what it is to see through M.K.'s eyes:

To see the blackest parts of you reflected back in the Widow's black eyes. To see yourself.]}

II. Beach - Open

_{[He feels a sense of aloof acceptance when the graves appear. He can't explain them; no point in trying. Neither can he deny them; no point in that, either. Maybe making peace with dying the moment he decided to stick a needle in his arm better prepared him to have death on display than some. Maybe he's just too tired to care.

You can find a young man on the beach on some days. Shirtless and barefoot, he stretches in some manner of yoga that limbers up muscles that aren't pinched tight with burn scarring anymore. He splits torchlight into smaller flames and arranges them around him to practice forms, making patterns in the sand from his methodical movements. The ultimate irony of not being much able to stand working through his forms when younger--always too restless, always too eager for the fight itself--is now finding something soothing in the repetition.

Other times he lets himself sink into more improvised, increasingly complex acrobatics, tumbles and flips and flying kicks down the beach and back up again, trading oppressive thoughts for sweat. It's not a fight to the death with swords cutting the air, but the dancing nature of it bears a familiarity--as does the scar.

When he comes out of a tuck with chest glistening in the light, you might see it: the knotted scar where a dagger went in at just the right angle to end a life, among its smaller cousins climbing his arms.

He supposes it'd be too much to ask to be rid of all the marks the Widow left.]}

Edited 2019-07-13 10:55 (UTC)

[He's seen all he's needed to see when it comes to the graves. Well, all but one, and he's going to put that off as long as possible. Instead he goes for a walk along the beach, trying to think about anything else that isn't dwelling on the past.

Though the moves are strange, the purpose is immediately clear: the warm up stretches, the practice of moves until they become muscle memory.

It's the first thing to happen in this place that reminds him of home.]

You are a warrior?

[He folds his arms as he watches him come out of his training.]

That is not bad.

_{[He recognizes Kuai at once the moment he steps close enough to be identified. Even without the ongoing mystery of the note still between them, the man would have stood out among his peers in the Badlands. His build, his dress, his armaments--all speak to someone who's assuredly not some common farmer doddering his way toward middle age.

Pulling out of a movement a modern person might be tempted to call tai chi if they had a loose definition of the thing--a slow routine for the sake of acquainting himself with the sand--he straightens to address his company, shaking grains of sand off the top of his foot. His small nod is meant as a greeting and acknowledgement of the compliment--but it works as confirmation, too.]}

Should I be insulted you had to ask?

_{[But he's not, not really. He'd arrived with armor but none of his weapons, and considering he's dead, it'd be fair to guess he's not a very good one. Not good enough to survive, at any rate.

Anyone who views his death will definitely know he's a failed one.]}

I didn't mean it to be taken as an insult.

[Though everyone seemed to take everything he said in a demeaning way.]

Your form is good. Where did you train?

[He says it reflexively, as if his standing as Grandmaster gives him the right to judge and critique all warriors everywhere. ]

_{[And if he harbored even a suspicion Kuai was from the same place as him, if Kuai had swung his title around with more pomp and circumstance, he would've taken it as one with a typical knee-jerk rancor, through little fault of the man's own. In life, so often judgement had felt demeaning when he was under its spotlight.

But that had been a different time, and a different place. He doesn't bite back with the same sourness he had during their first meeting. Perhaps exercise and listening to the gentle swell of the surf has done him some good--or closer to the heart of it, he's making an effort to rise above his typical in light of the graves popping up unannounced.]}

The Badlands.

_{[--is the simplest answer, though he recognizes that might not mean much to someone not from there. Stretching an arm loosely, he joins Kuai on the sand outside the ring of lights. The sky is clear and he doesn't need his eyes for his muscles to know what to do; he could've gotten away with just moonlight. But even a dark one needs the light.]}

No one place, though. I spent time in a couple of places, and none of the people I learned from would've put up with bad form. But I'm from Azra.

_{[That's important--he knows now children of Azra have their own way of fighting and he lays claim to (he wants to lay claim to) that more than other influence. It might be the best gift Sunny ever gave him; Sunny, a long-lost Azrian, had laid the foundation, teaching him the ways of their people without him even knowing it. And the Widow, the Master, and Pilgrim had built upon it.]}

[The place names mean nothing to him, and he's slightly disappointed. He'd hoped he'd found another from his world. The moves were just similar enough to what he was familiar with that he almost thought he'd found someone from Outworld, trained by a clan he was unfamiliar with.]

Then you had good teachers.

[He almost says that bad form could get you killed, but seeing as how they're all dead and the spontaneous appearance of graves is driving that point home - it seems in poor taste.]

Tell me then, what do you fight for? I know nothing of your world, but you are young to already be so well versed in combat.

_{[On a level, he recognizes it's an innocent endorsement he should accept with courtesy and move on from, but he still snorts softly with an audible contempt. Giving credit to the chefs for how good their recipe turned out would be fair in most situations, did he not believe he'd sleep better knowing all of them but Pilgrim were dead.]}

Most of them were liars and killers who manipulated the people under them for their own gain. I didn't have a choice. I took what they taught me and survived them. They helped make me what I am, I'll give them that much.

_{[For as hard as he tries to wrap his tone in composure, it's obvious Kuai stepping back from his aborted thought has led him to trip on a different sort of sore spot.

But that's history now. On the contrary, he's not young enough to cry over it, he thinks. Kuai continues to be an odd specimen by Badlands' standards; it seems a strange thing to presume he has skill and question his age in the same breath. The two go together in M.K.'s mind. The baronies had offered the best opportunities to formally learn combat, and they preferred apprentices as young as possible. Better to start them young, so they shed hesitation early on.

He studies the man, debating the merits of honesty. What do you fight for? He's been thinking of that himself, of late.]}

When the fighting finds you, it doesn't really matter, does it?

_{[There's no such thing as too young to decide to live or die.]}

Ah.

[He nods and looks away. He knows exactly the kind of teacher that he speaks of. Sektor's father, the former Grandmaster, was much the same. Fighters didn't need humanity, they needed skill and dedication and everything that made them alive was unnecessary and a hindrance. Best to strip it all away.]

My apologies.

[He's not sure if he should continue even talking about it, he clearly doesn't understand the world that M.K. comes from. But aside from fighting, the only other thing to discuss is the appearance of all the graves which seems an equally poor topic of conversation.]

No. But there is a difference between fighting for survival and fighting for a cause. Both are important, but some would view the latter as more noble.

It hardly matters here, you do not need to answer. I was curious about your world as everyone I've spoken to seems to come from a place far different than mine. For a moment I thought... Your fighting style reminds me of someone back home.

_{[Kuai understands enough: that people have the capacity to be a cruel and miserable species no matter the world. It's why Pilgrim had seemed to be the cure for all that--someone above the petty politics. Someone who could leave, who accepted dark ones as his people.

He dismisses the apology with a shake of his head. It is what it is.]}

It made me strong. _{[And those who fight need to be that, don't they?]} It's nothing you need to apologize for.

_{[Picking up a small towel resting by one of the candle flames, he wipes sweat from himself before it can begin to cool on his skin. And as he does, he comes to a decision.]}

I fought for Azra. _{[There's a heaviness when he speaks of the homeland he doesn't really remember. A sad, sorry longing for a dream he didn't know was already dead before he started dreaming it.]} For a new Azra. My home was destroyed. My people are trying to build a new home where they can settle, and so long as they win, my death will have been worth it.

_{[Whether or not he deserves to live in it himself. The goings on in town is making him sentimental and maudlin; he can forgive it in someone else.]}

Who is that? You're lucky to have come off the ship armed, and you sound like a fighter. I take it you know the life.

[Made him strong. He knows that phrase all too well. Often when one grows physically strong, their ability for empathy grows weak. That's what all assassin's train for. The ability to lock away their emotions, their humanity, their weaknesses.

It was never something that Kuai was very good at.]

I hope that they do.

I had a student who fought much like you. I'm the Grandmaster of the Lin Kuei, they're .. [He pauses, tilting his head a bit as if the memory is just hitting him.] They were a clan of warriors, protecting our realm from another that was constantly seeking to invade.

I'm always armed. Because we're always fighting.

_{[Me, too. But of course, he'll never know. That's one of the harder things about being here--not knowing who won. If Sunny still walks free.

The hardest might be grappling with how glad glad he is that Sunny isn't here. If he were, that would mean Pilgrim won and killed his mother's murderer. But it would also mean being stuck here where death is meaningless, and the man could come back again and again no matter how many times he killed him. As traitorous as the thought is, he'd prefer having Pilgrim here, even if it meant knowing his defeated.

How twisted is that?]}

Oh yeah?

_{[A master of an order of warriors that used to be. There's certainly something familiar about that.]}

What happened to them?

They were killed. By my former student and the previous Grandmaster.

[He looks down, haunted by the memory of what happened to them. It was the second time the entire clan had been massacred. Truth be told he was almost pleased that he'd ended up here and not needed to make the difficult decision to not rebuild it. To live out the end of his days in an empty temple with only the ghosts of memories to accompany him.

No, dying a warriors death was far preferable.]

I was the last. The clan of the Lin Kuei dies with me.

_{[Well.

As far as reactions to revelations of mass murder go, M.K.'s might fall on the reserved side. His movements slow and his eyebrows quirk, but he goes on wiping down the back of his neck, eventually letting the towel fall to drape around his neck.

And for a few moments he simply stares as if weighing the merit of the words as well as their meaning.]}

Did you see my memory?

_{[It's mild, but the speck of accusation is unmistakable.]}

No.

It seemed improper to watch the deaths of those I'm not acquainted with. An invasion into things I should not know of or be seeing.

[For someone as honorable as Kuai, the thought he'd accidentally seen Rosinante's was going to haunt him forever.]

_{[This place would seem to disagree. Why else would it compel them to interact with the memorials, allow them to view what should be impossible? Strip away the sentimentality, and it's no different than the mirror chamber, or seeing a friend fall in battle; the difference is in how much of an ugly truth the viewer can take.

In the present, M.K. holds a steady gaze.]}

Why did you say that, then? That I reminded you of your student? The same one that ended your clan?

_{[He's given a nugget of information away in that, in the connects he leaps to make, but he focuses little attention on his side of things. Just because people can peer into his memories at the moment doesn't mean he's eager to rehash the whole story.]}

The way you train, movements you make, the style you use. The way you carry yourself and your attitude in dealing with others. You're very like her in that regard.

Not the end of it. She was consumed with ambition and made poor choices, but there would still have been hope for her - even then.

[A mixture of his ever present optimism, and his opinion of himself as a teacher that he still thought he could reach her even after all she'd done. It was far too late now.]

Should I have watched your death?

[He arches an eyebrow, is M.K. also responsible for ending the lineage of an entire clan?]

_{[Except you don't know me that well, he's on the verge of saying--but then he must allow that that could be the quality Kuai is talking about. Peevish argumentativeness. The chafing need to rally against the boxes people try to put him in.

He bites it off. There's something more pressing to ask, anyway.]}

You'd still forgive the student who wanted you dead? _{[That surprises M.K.]} Why?

_{[Big words, those, and ones that require a generosity of spirit he doesn't have. Forgiveness. Such a strange concept to try and wrap his head around after the single-minded hostilities of war driving them all to hotter tempers and greater brutalities.

As for whether the man should step inside his head, it's not his place to say, though some perverse part of him thinks there'd be no better way to tell if he's indeed like the person Kuai knows than to live his thoughts in those final moments. His silence speaks for him. Gripping the towel by either end, he looks off over the water.]}

I had a Master once, too. I killed her and helped destroy her order. _{[Finally, he speaks, and with the same firm, clipped frankness underlying previous snippets of his life he's shared. But he seems to be taking great care in picking his words.]} That's why I thought you'd been in my head--me and this student of yours have that in common. But it wasn't ambition for me. The Master thought keeping our people in chains was the only way they could live--the clan she built was built on lies.

She was blinded by her ambition, if she can see sense, then she can be forgiven. The future has many paths, and though we are shaped by our pasts - we flow forward away from what was. I still see the potential in her.

Saw the potential. It matters not now. I am dead, and she was incapacitated.

[He'd forgiven far worse transgressions; making an alliance with the man who murdered his brother, and constantly trying to reach the inhuman wraith that his brother had become.]

The Grandmaster before me thought that as well. He believed that being human made us weak, that emotions were a hindrance. So he removed them.

You were able to free your people?

_{[We flow forward away from what was. He narrows his eyes without being consciously aware he's doing so. Kuai talks about setting aside the past, while he chews on the sentiment from his position as someone who's felt more like a snowball sent rolling into the future, acquiring more burdensome weight along the way rather than shedding it.

He's not sure he believes the rest. The other just finished saying this person assisted in betraying him and wiping out his people. If he loved even one of his Lin Kuei clansmen, that's not someone you forgive. Is such a thing even possible without betraying the memories of the slain? All the more to chew on.

He's even less sure what that says about him now that the connection's been drawn, and the overlap makes him uncomfortable.]}

You're generous in death. Does thinking you could have stopped them make you feel better?

_{[Is that judgement? Maybe a little.]}

How do you remove emotions? _{[That's a new one.]} I did. I've made mistakes, but that's not one of them--and if that makes me like your student, so be it.

_{[His victories feel few and far between, but he won't regret watching those horrible needles slide out of abused flesh.]}

She didn't give anyone a chance to decide for themselves what they'll be. No one in the Badlands did. It's why Azra was destroyed, and so many people wanted to train me to fight on their behalf: control. Controlling our power. I'm a dark one.

_{[If Kuai at all recognizes the term, he expects that'll solidify just what he's talking about.]}

Feel better? No. What I feel is irrelevant in any case.

[He looks at him curiously, it's an odd question. Thinking about what might have been would drive him mad, and while he dwells on the past far more than he should - he doesn't fantasize about being able to change the outcome. What has come to pass has happened, and he's seen too much time distortion to think that going back and changing his actions would make the outcome any more favorable. It would likely make things worse.]

He turned his warriors into robots. It may have made them obedient and emotionless, but it did nothing for their fighting ability. A warrior's intuition, their spirit, is what guides them in battle. Removing them makes an unthinking automaton that is easily defeated.

[He should know, he was one. But as M.K. continues he pauses, wondering if he's understanding what he's truly saying. Without the context of the world he's not sure he's following.]

Because you were a skilled fighter? Or for some other reason? I do not know what a dark one is.

_{[The Grandmaster's intuition for sarcasm could use a little work. He extricates himself from the quicksand trap that is the subject of home, betrayal, and teachers and students with a wrinkle of his nose and a shake of his head.]}

What are robots?

_{[It's easier to address the rest because, quite frankly, he doesn't entirely understand what it is he's addressing. "Robot" isn't a part of his everyday lexicon any more than it would seem "dark one" is part of Kuai's.]}

Those of who descend from Azra are special--we can do things other people can't. _{[But he could repeat everything Pilgrim had ever explained to him of their history and it would only go so far, wouldn't it? The differences between worlds--a thing he's still wrapping his brain around--complicates matter. Maybe Kuai has already seen the gift and calls it by a different name.]}

It'd be easier to show you.

_{[An implied offer he wouldn't make to just anyone--but it might be interesting, to see how easily this man scares.]}

A mechanical creature with no free will or humanity. Metal and wires and electricity.

[It's a broad overview, but it's honestly the best he can do because he doesn't really understand how they work and he was one. How did the cybernetics factory function? Why did the robots need human brains? How did they manage to rip out peoples souls and put them in metal casing to begin with?

He has no clue. In fact he'd rather not think too hard on it.]

So you have powers then?

["Dark One" sounds like it might be some sort of shadow power, the way his brother has. Coraline seemed to have something similar. He and Cao Pi seemed to be the odd ones out with ice powers.]

If you wish. You do not have to prove anything to me.

_{[One brow arches higher than the other.]}

I thought you meant a figure of speech. You mean he literally turned your people into... metal?

_{[That's a hard one to swallow, even after watching some of the others' memories himself. He isn't so rigorous in upholding the boundaries of privacy.]}

You're right, I don't. _{[He steps forward so that his face is visible in the moonlight, reaching up to loosely hold either end of the towel still slung around his neck.]} But unless you plan on getting inside my head to see my memories, you'll understand what I'm talking about if you see it.

_{[And memories are the key to unlocking his power, as he's come to learn. The most painful, miserable, enraging of his memories, the ones that hurt enough to stir the power sleeping inside. He doesn't have to think back far--his grave has put one on display for all to see.

Inwardly casting out for feelings of heartache outwardly releases the darkness into his body in an immense flood of dark chi. As Kuai watches, it announces itself in his face, changing its terrain into something terrible, coating brown eyes in oily blackness from sclera to iris and flushing the skin around them with a pronounced latticework veins. Even his voice, when he speaks, is deeper, reverberating with it.]}

This is what it means to be a dark one. Ever seen one before?

_{[He lets go and the darkness retreats, fading away.]}

Not many people can match a dark one's fighting ability in that state. They can be dangerous if they can't control it. In my world, people either fear this power or want to use it for themselves. Even the Master was afraid, and she was one. If she were here to speak for herself, I bet she'd agree with your Grandmaster--except it wasn't emotions she removed, it was power.

[Whatever he was expecting, was not that. There's an actual physical change in him and as he watches it seems as if tangible darkness is manifesting in him, at least in his face anyway.]

No, I have not seen such a thing.

[The power is foreign to him, unlike the shadow that his brother controls, but there is certainly a power there, one that it seems M.K. has to channel from within himself somehow. If what he's saying is true, then he'd likely be formidable when in this state, not the Kuai is interested in sparring right now.]

She wanted to strip you of this? To make herself more powerful by making the others weaker? Or for some other purpose?

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darkeyed - 2020-01-30 13:57 (UTC) - Expand

⟪ Melisandre leaves him a small piece of cloth embroidered with a flame. While she does, she sings a comforting song of homecoming from her Temple –– he'll hear it when he picks up his offerings at the post office. ⟫

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EVENT LOG: GRAVES

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