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

[fogey]

[ had five stayed with the commission, he might have lived for centuries, himself.

the commission has, literally, all the time in the world -- and then some. oh, his contract was only for five years, with the promise of retirement at the end, but he knows better. the terms might have changed, right at the end. or maybe he would've been offered that promotion that the handler tried to lure him back with -- work at the headquarters, have the option of the best pension and benefits, sign away another handful of years, and what's time when you can time travel? she thought he could be her successor. how big a cost is the rest of your life when that can be an infinite length of time?

(you don't leave the commission. once you sign your name with them, they own you until retirement or death. usually the latter.)

so the length of melisandre's life is hardly strange to him. nor her apparent inhumanity, and it takes so much for him to feel horror anymore. he's seen it all, done it all. how can he possibly judge anyone?

he makes a sound, bitter, says, ]

If that's meant to be reassuring, it's not. I don't like the idea of multiple apocalypses, even in different worlds.

[ makes his fight feel that much more impossible, pointless. the handler kept saying he was fighting fate, but he'd refused to believe it. but -- if the end of the world happens in multiple realities, timelines, whatever, then what if it is inevitable? ]

[voktys]

No one said you should like it. Do you believe I enjoy this? Do you think I relish seeing the end of all life when I search the flames for the future?

⟪ he is a man grown, that much she believes, but in some ways, he is a boy still. ⟫

This is not about want, this is about a purpose. You had yours and I had mine. I have seen the good end, too, it just need be reached.

[fogey]

[ he hears out her rebuke, at least, which is about as close as he comes to apology. blows out a breath before answering, a long exhale, and then speaks lowly. ]

Yeah, me too. I didn't see it, but I had an idea how it could go differently. Guess neither of us will know what happens.

[voktys]

You trust those you left in charge. Your family.

⟪ it's curiosity, that, the steel from before entirely forgotten. part of her just wants to hear that he has a little bit of hope, somewhere. that he's had it good, with his family, even if it was only for a little while. ⟫

[fogey]

Yes.

[ it's all ever been for his family. i want them to live, he'd told the handler, and it's the truest thing he's ever said. what else kept him going, all those years, but the chance to go home? ]

If anyone can stop the end of the world, and that's an if, it's them.

[ they failed before, but they hadn't known what was coming. hadn't had his help. in a better timeline, he would've fought right alongside them, but that apparently just wasn't meant to be. ]

What about that king of yours? Think he can do it?

[voktys]

⟪ there is nothing more human than the slump of her shoulder at the question. sometimes, when the pain of her visions grows too severe, she weeps, but she's been younger than he looks when she learned to hide such things from prying eyes. ⟫

He is dead.

⟪ and it's a personal loss, that. ⟫

The Long Night will be fought and ended regardless, but... two of those from my lands here have said the same.

[fogey]

[ five doesn't offer any sympathy, but he looks off to the side, jaw clenching. of course he gets it. the goal was always to save the world and his brothers and sisters. just saving his siblings wasn't good enough for him; but on the flipside, saving the world, but not their lives, would be empty. ]

We're dead, but we can still lose people. If that isn't irony, I don't know what is.

[voktys]

I was never meant to care.

⟪ people confess to her all the time, so why not turn it around on him? ⟫

I was always going to die as soon as the war was done. Who is or isn't King was never my business. Mind, he had to be, he needed the troops –– but if this meant having the throne by the end of it all, that never mattered.

[fogey]

People aren't tools.

[ he was, all his life, but that's all the more reason for fire to burn in his words. he's not angry at her, of course; it's for her. ]

[voktys]

My body would not be as it is if I was anything else. I tried not to forget...

⟪ She closes her eyes –– the thing is, she thinks he isn't speaking for her, but for the king. ⟫

I let him be human. He was too dutiful to let me take all the blame.

[fogey]

[ god, she's going to make him say it. ]

I don't give a shit about him.

[ rude, yes, harsh, yes, but also true. he has no reason to care about this stannis of hers; has never met the man, may never. ]

No matter what your god did to you, you're still human. "Never meant to care," what bullshit.

[voktys]

'Human' is... not quite the truth anymore, I believe.

⟪ but her voice is soft –– she'd not expected him to care, least of all for her as a person. this kind of thing doesn't happen a lot.

hasn't happened much in most of her life, really. ⟫

I do not require sustenance anymore, haven't in a long time –– even sleep is barely a need, by now. Before I died, is what I mean.

⟪ she inclines her head. ⟫ But I appreciate that you view me in such a manner.

[fogey]

[ he waves all of that off. ]

I saw all of that in your memory. Doesn't matter. Sleeping, eating -- none of that makes a person. It's just technicality.

[ background noise. none of that makes a human, not in the sense he means. she was born a human, for one thing, whatever she became. and she has a beating heart, care and concern for others around her, for the world. compassion makes a person, not physiology. ]

[voktys]

You are a lot more empathetic than most who know these truths about me.

⟪ She reaches out to him, offers him a hand if he wishes to take it. ⟫

I would be honoured to call you a friend. This is new for me, I was not quite permitted such things before.

[fogey]

Well, I've seen worse than you. Believe me.

[ everyone at the commission was human, technically, but heartless in the worst ways. he wouldn't call any of them more human than melisandre, who'd actually tried to stop an apocalypse. who'd given him a name because his number had bothered her just that much.

there was a time, a matter of weeks ago, where she had offered him something else. like then, he looks at her hand, and then back at her face, hesitates warily.

he does not take her hand.

but he does say, ]

I've said it before. I don't care what you call me.

[voktys]

⟪ not all are given to touch, so much she has learned in her lifetime, so she lowers the offered hand without offence. ⟫

I don't like the name I gave you as much anymore. I think you might do better with Kostio.

[fogey]

Changing your mind already?

[ truthfully, his first instinct is that she's messing with him, has deliberately chosen something somewhat unflattering in the wake of his attitude now. ]

Fine, I'll bite. What's this one mean?

[voktys]

You won't like it.

⟪ this doesn't give him much confidence, she'd think, but he has already argued her on the point before. ⟫

Hero, or champion. Someone who chose, rather than was ordered to do something.

[fogey]

[ five doesn't get angry, actually. what happens is that his eyebrows drop, expression smoothing out in surprise. still waters.

she's right.

he doesn't like it.

she says, oh, i don't doubt that you have done terrible things. she says, you remain capable of goodness, of sacrifice. she says, someone who chose, rather than was ordered to do something.

five's all small frame, young face, but that's all a lie: not one he means to tell, but one nevertheless. the boy who fell headfirst into an apocalypse (who grew up with a family, who had a home, who had never stolen from a body, let alone dropped one) is long, long gone. he's older than any of his siblings got to be, and tired, and snatched away from a chance to rest.

here's the truth: he's never heard praise like this in his whole life. it's more than he knows what to do with, hands ill-suited for much outside of causing harm, for holding anything as soft as a kindness.

he could, should refute her. he knows every reason why the name doesn't belong on a person like him.

but he doesn't answer at all in the end, just hangs his head and breathes out slow. ]

THIS ICON WTF HOW D A R E

[voktys]

⟪ in silence, she can keep him company. they remain standing by the site of his grave, and she wonders, she wonders where his thoughts are going. by herself, she mourns him, not perhaps in the way his siblings surely do, elsewhere, right now, but in a slower, more ancient way.

she hopes he mourns his death, too. she hopes he will warm again to himself, to see the things she'd so easily witnessed, in spite of his cold, bitter protests. in spite of the pain she believes he is in even now. ⟫

Come away from here. We will have a drink by the lake, and for once, I won't intrude on your private thoughts?