logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: WILD HEART PART ONE

EVENT LOG: WILD HEART PART ONE

EVENT LOG:
WILD HEART PART ONE

characters: everyone.
location: the medical center; all in town.
date/time: march 20-22.
content: half the town is captured; the other half comes to their rescue.
warnings: torture, possible character death.

to think everything must die for anyone to matter.

Welcome to part one of the WILD HEART event! The prompts below are intended to cover all the main parts of the event, but you're all free to take your own liberties with the details. The prompts are meant to add flavor, not to limit you.

Kimiko and the gang will make their debut in part two! If you've got questions for the Hunt, they'll be available in the next event log. If you've got questions for us, hit up the OOC post!

captives.

KIDNAPPED

You wake to hands gripping you, muffling your shout of surprise and pinning your limbs to your sides. Spirits large and small surround you, staring at you blankly as they lift you out of bed. You have the sickening sense of movement, and suddenly you're outside-- you can see the flickering of the bonfire flame, feel the chill of the spring air. You have just enough time to renew your struggle once more before a spirit's hand raises, flying down to strike you on the temple, and then you know no more.

When you wake, you're in a room that seems long since abandoned. Cracked tiles are chilly beneath you, and the walls are a nondescript, faded color you can't make out. You're far from alone, though: at least twenty others surround you, waking up slowly.

Why are you locked in here? What's going on? Nobody may have answers yet, but at least you can be confused together.

TORTURE

Of course, you aren't confused for long. Soon the door opens, and without warning you're grabbed by a large spirit, dragged along whether to cooperate or not. You're led into an enormous room full of what must have once been sterile medical equipment, ranging from gurneys to scalpels and everything in between. Pushed onto an operating table, your arms are spread out, strapped down; further straps are pulled tight against your legs, your hips, keeping you still.

A green-eyed spirit comes into your line of vision. They hover over you, staring down blankly. Breathes heavily . . . and then, slowly, reaches for you.

CW: hallucinations

In an instant, you're somewhere else. Somewhere darker. Where? Only you know, because it's a nightmare personalized just for you. The scene of your darkest nightmare, a jagged mix of all the worst things you fear. It's endless, cruel in its relentlessness-- and just when you think it may be over, it melts seamlessly into another, and another. Your insecurities, your failures, your terrors, your loved ones bloody and dead, joining you in this endless purgatory dimension . . .

Or maybe it's not as personal as that. Maybe you simply wake up in a room: white, blank, featureless. Devoid of doors or windows, with no colors to break up your vision, and the only sounds the ones you generate. You scream, maybe, or pry at the walls. Perhaps you sit, assuming this will end soon, that you'll wake up soon and be perfectly all right.

But it doesn't end. Not for minutes, and those melt into hours-- and those melt into days, maybe, except you don't know, because you're trapped there. You don't grow hungry or thirsty; sometimes you sleep, and when you wake, you're still in the room. You're still in the room no matter what you do, or so it seems, caught in the hallucinations as you are.

CW: gore, blood-mixing

The scalpel that slices into you is slow and steady, piercing and splitting skin with terrible effciency. Flesh parts beneath the rusted blade, blood welling immediately to the surface, gushing forth and spilling down the sides of your body-- but suddenly you aren't so concerned with the blood, because the pain's hit and it is nothing, nothing you can ignore. White-hot and piercing, and maybe you're screaming and maybe you try to keep silent but it doesn't matter because either way it does not stop. Not until the spirit is through, cutting into you all over, your legs and your arms and your stomach and your chest, slicing you open like a butcher with his cut of meat, so terribly impersonal as you writhe in agony.

And then, suddenly, it ends. Just like that.

Cutting's only the first part, after all.

Setting the scalpel down, they reach for a bucket next, filled with a dark liquid. Dipping their fingers into it-- and you know, suddenly, that it's blood-- they smear it into the open wounds. Over and over, coating them in it, scooping out your own blood so they can replace it with their supply, like the world's crudest attempt at a blood transfusion. They care not for your pain, nor the way you struggle and writhe; they care only about replacing every single drop of blood in your body.

CW: force-feeding, hints of cannibalism

Your mouth is pried open by a spirit's dextrous fingers, knocking against your teeth, dodging your tongue so they can get a good hook in your jaw. The smell of blood is thick in the air, mixing with a particularly sweet stench that you can't place. There's blood on the spirit's fingers, too, and you choke on the taste of it as it mixes with your saliva and slips down your throat.

With their other hand they grip bloody chunks of meat. In a moment of horrifying clarify you realize what's about to happen just a split-second before it does, but it's too late to protest. The spirit shoves the meat into your mouth, so deep into your throat you gag in a reflex attempt not to choke. Blood pours down your throat, the meat slimy in its rawness, but the spirit refuses to let you spit it out: they cover your mouth and nose, cutting off your air, until you chew and swallow. Not just the one piece, but more and more.

If you look down, you'll see a hint as to what you're being fed: there's a few fingers scattered in the meat, a tongue, an eyeball . . . and a few feet away, a mask, broken and discarded. One of the spirits that had brought you here.

DOWNTIME

After all the tortures you've gone through, you've lost all sense of time. But at least you're not alone: all around you are the faces of those kidnapped alongside you. Some are sporting injuries similar to yours; others seem to nurse invisible ones, flinching at shadows or gagging at the smell of blood.

Perhaps you're too injured to do anything but rest. But perhaps not. Do you try and aid the others? There's plenty hurt who need some attention, whether it be medicine or simple emotional comfort. Or maybe you're more focused on the future instead of the present, desperately plotting an escape before your captors come back.

ESCAPE

Movement, noise, all different from the chirps and hoots you've grown accustomed to over the past three days (and that's to say nothing of the screams of your fellow captives). There's shouting, voices deep and piping both, indistinct words echoing down the hallway and into your disbeliving ears. Hallucinations? No, they're too insistent and chaotic for that. It feels too good to be true, but it is. They're human voices.

The rescue is underway.

Now what? Do you try and break free? Shout to let the others know where you are? Or perhaps you're too injured for that. Perhaps you want to help those who are even worse off than you, weakened by their tortures. Whatever you do, decide quickly: it isn't long before someone breaks down the door and urges you to flee into the night, where the Wild Hunt awaits, ready to guide you back to town.

rescuers.

WAKING

Friday morning, the town feels emptier than usual. The population has never been enormous, of course, but even still, as you go through your morning routine, you find there's simply fewer people around. Surely they're not all asleep, right? And weren't you supposed to meet someone after breakfast, anyway? But there's nothing.

It doesn't take long before you and the others realize what's happened. At least twenty residents, if not more, have simply vanished. Are they dead? It seems unlikely. What about missing? But it seems strange that so many would simply disappear, and even if they did, where would they go?

You aren't the only one asking these questions. Soon everyone is talking about it, and that only invites even more questions. Some people want to go into the woods to search; others suggest caution, waiting and seeing. The debate seems endless-- until someone points out that there seems to be a more immediate situation on hand.

They melt out of the shadows, not magically so much as very, very good at blending in with the trees and the darkness. Clad in cloaks, mirrors masking their faces, they number at least fifty strong. There's no aggression in their posture; rather, they seem to be waiting for something. Someone.

She doesn't keep them waiting for long.

A woman dressed in a tailored suit emerges. Her mask is tied to her hip. Her gaze is steady, but there's warmth there as well as she looks around at all of you.

"Your friends aren't dead," she says. "They haven't disappeared, either. One of my scouts saw them being taken a few hours ago. If you wish to save them, you're going to need our help. We know where they plan on taking your friends, and we know how to fight. We'll teach you how to save your friends with the minimal amount of loss.

"My name is Kimiko Yasutake, and I am the current leader of the Wild Hunt.

Now. Are you ready to learn?"

TRAINING

You work. You sweat. The regiment Kimiko and her fellows put you through isn't easy, but she wasn't lying: she really does know what she's doing. By the end of the day not only do you know how to sufficiently wield a spear or a knife, but what to do if you're outnumbered or surrounded. You know what to do against an enemy taller than you; you know what to do should you be left without a weapon.

Whether or not you do any of these things is up to you, of course. Instruction can't replace muscle memory. But at least you know the basics, and that's worth something. Besides: you have all day to practice, and members of the Wild Hunt are eager to help correct you as you do.

RESCUE

The captives are evidently being held in the surgical wing and its adjoining operating rooms, and the abandoned hospital halls make for a contained battlefield. Most of the regular forest spirits scatter when the assault begins, skittering out of windows or barreling straight past the attacking residents, not interested in fighting for this cause... But not all. The meaner spirits stay to fight, perhaps just for the thrill of it.

And then of course there's the green-eyed spirits. There aren't many, maybe only a dozen or so, but they're strong. They typically look roughly humanoid (not always, though) and their limbs are ...troubling, in a too-long sort of way. They prefer to fight from a distance when possible, inflicting terrible hallucinations of monsters and gore and whatever they think might put off an attacker—and these hallucinations are powerful enough to do real damage. Just because it's a hallucination that tore off your arm doesn't mean your arm is any less torn off! But when they're forced to confront their attackers in close quarters, they rely on those long limbs to tear and rip at anything they can get their hands (or teeth) on. The green-eyed spirits can be killed just like any other forest spirit, but it'll take some doing. Dismembering them until their body dissolves is the only way to make sure they won't come back.

The plan is simple: surround the medical center as covertly as possible before Kimiko gives some signal to her crew. The key to victory is overwhelming the enemy as completely as possible, from all angles at once—and that's what happens.

The hospital halls force the spirits into a bottleneck; some stay to defend the operating rooms while others attempt to sneak through the windows or the ventilation shafts to attack you from behind. The green-eyed spirits shriek horrible melodies that echo through the hospital, loud enough that their voices might damage your hearing if you're standing too close. The spirits don't use much in the way of weapons, at least, but they'll hurl any debris or furniture that gets in their way.

But your numbers are greater than theirs. Progress is made quickly as the green-eyeds are forced to retreat little by little, until they've lost their claim on the operating rooms, and thus the battle. Most of them will escape back into the forest before they can be eradicated, and surely both sides have suffered losses—but you've won.

(many of our monster images are credited to Trevor Henderson!)

RETURN

The green-eyed spirits flee back to the forest before long, and the surgical wing is left open for the rescuers to free the captives. The Wild Hunt hangs back as the rescuers reunite with their friends and fellow residents, although they're step in to assist with any medical emergencies as needed—enough of them have rudimentary training in field medicine, and they'll be able to patch up any survivors enough to get them back to town.

There are survivors, is the important thing. The kidnapping and subsequent battle has no doubt resulted in many casualties, but you are alive, and now it's time to head home.

The Wild Hunt keeps a perimeter around the group as they slowly make their way back to Bonfire Square. From there, recovery can begin. Kimiko and the others promise to stay in town long enough to answer your questions and help with any repairs necessary in the aftermath, though they'll need to, er, make some arrangements before they can dive in. In other words, stay tuned for part two!

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I. Training Shmaining

"I am a Raksura," Stone growls at the nearest masked humanoid. "I use my teeth and my claws, not your little weapons." And he bares them at the Wild Hunt in general-- much sharper than your standard human's teeth, and that's not even in winged form. "And I'm older than all of you put together. Teach me how to fight. Idiots."

So he watches, and paces, and occasionally shifts up into his big form to spread his wings and circle Beacon, trying to catch a scent on the wind. Which way. Where did they all go. He's not (quite) stupid enough to take off after them on his own, he knows that he's not as strong and fast as he used to be, and getting inside a building while keeping his sturdier and more dangerous shape will be hard. He needs help.

Doesn't mean he wants to be here. He's going to get the stupid short blonde and stupid tall blonde out, dammit.

IIa. Rescue

Stone stays in groundling form until the attack begins, and then he surges up into a sixty-foot-tall beast that can't see clearly and so isn't as bothered by visual hallucinations as most, that is narrowly focused on literally grabbing and throwing spirits-- or grabbing and biting spirits in half-- or stepping on spirits-- clearing a path for the smaller fighters.

He may or may not have Mary clinging to the ridges of his brows, on top of his head. With him seems the safest place for her-- even if she gets stab-happy from hallucinations or something, he's the biggest one here. She'd have a hard time stabbing something important (the blind eye is on the same side she is, after all) before he could shake her off and catch her in one hand.

The only hallucinations that bother him are the audible roars of a Kethel-- but no accompying scent, so he shakes that off-- and the scent of a Fell ruler-- which just turns Stone on the nearest green-eye, thinking it's them, and picking it up in his teeth to shake and worry like a dig. No more Fell ruler, no problem.

IIb. Return

Stone doesn't want to risk changing shape-- for one thing, he's wounded in a few places, and not only will he heal faster in this form, changing back will make those cuts, scrapes, and broken claws much worse injuries. So he finds some windows... and slams his claws through them. The scales mostly protect him from the glass, and he uses the claws to tear the last shards out.

Mary or Jason will have to call for survivors, since he can't speak in this form, but there's a point of exit. If there's no one in that room, he'll move on to the next window.

Once he's reached max load-- Rosinante and Masaomi are the ones he's looking for in specific, maybe one more-- he'll withdraw and get them settled in his arms before taking off, flying them straight home. Everyone will get set gentle down outside the inn, and Stone remains outside, still big and winged, panting and not daring to shift back yet. As soon as he does, he's going to collapse, he knows it.

The chaos should be completely disorienting. The spirits' cries echo through the halls and out into the woods, and the remains of furniture and people alike flying past may or may not be real; Rosinante can't tell anymore. He doesn't have the energy to dampen the sounds; doesn't have the strength to help fight back, much as he wants to. All he can do, and ultimately what saves him, is to keep one hand to the wall as he lurches forward by sheer force of stubborn willpower, mostly on his knees. Staying low makes him a harder target to hit but it's also just hard to stand. The room they've been kept in is slick with blood and his knees threaten to give out from sheer lack of energy.

It's obvious enough what the spirits have done to him, as his upper body is marked with an array of fresh cuts still seeping black blood. They had especially focused on trying to dissect the areas where ribs intersected muscle, as if trying to understand, or maybe just to make it worse. Some of the bone is now missing entirely so they could get at the flesh beneath. It's not like he has any idea why. His vision swims; he can hardly see much at all through the haze, and blindly moves toward what seems like a larger source of lantern light than most. Maybe it's lots of people at the end of a corridor - he hears some running past already. Or maybe it's one very large person. That's all right, too. The lantern means whoever it is, they're not a spirit. He'll make sense of it later. Right now, he just crawls toward the large shadow and its bright light.

Stone ducks his head to the door, looking inside with his one good eye. There's the one he's looking for. He hooks his whole hand in, claws carefully sheathed, up to the elbow, to tap at Rosinante's arm with the back of one finger. Offering a broad palm to sit on.

No more crawling, buddy. You got a lift.

The shadow resolves itself into a familiar, welcome shape and while part of him wonders if this too isn't a hallucination, an attempt to bait him into coming closer to one of the spirits, his rational mind reasserts itself and reminds him that no. This feels real, this is really Stone, it must be. The hand is solid, and he can hear a voice - Mary? Up above, calling. If he'd had any doubt before then she erases it as he lurches forward onto that enormous hand and holds on tight.

"Stone?" he croaks.

While he can't speak properly in this form, he can make a rumble that sounds very much like "mmmhmm". That's an affirmative noise for most of the humans he's listened to around here. He brings Rosinante the rest of the way out into the open, resting safely on his palm.

Cool air and the scent of forest envelops him, a welcome relief from the thick stench of blood and vomit and death. He could almost cry from sheer joy at the rescue, but instead he gives a small, sharp exhale that hurts and tightly grips Stone's hand with his own for that moment, reflex and pain rocking his body. It subsides enough for him to open his eyes and look around again, though without moving much more than just his eyes.

"How many can you carry?" he asks, for even in his current state he's more worried about the others still inside.

Curling both hands around him for protection and comfort, Stone holds Rosinante up, holding his tail up, lantern dangling from the end for light, to get a good look at the damage. He flicks the end of his tongue out for a taste of his scent. Ugh. Everyone here is in such rough shape, it makes him want to growl and go bite more spirits in half. It's not like he's any good at healing.

The question gets him a ripple of spines, then a gentle tap to some uninjured part of him: four taps. He'll regret it later, but he can manage. And the four does include Mary.

Being lifted hurts, but no worse than anything else he's been through so he endures it wordlessly. He's easy enough to manipulate, limp as a very large ragdoll, but the extent of his injuries and the steady drip of blood from his open wounds across Stone's hands suggests that limpness could get a lot more severe shortly if he isn't tended to.

He nods as the taps register. "Okay. I can't - you'll have to help me onto your back." Next to Mary. Poor girl - but knowing her, this isn't actually going to shock her any. She's seen and caused more than her share of blood. It isn't what he would want for a child, but it's who she is and he has simply accepted that.

Nobody is riding Stone's back unless they can cling to his ridges and avoid being sliced by his spines. That's for people with full range of motion, no missing ribs, and no pain. Stone shakes his head and instead holds Rosinante carefully up against his chest, in the crook of his elbow where the heavily scaled forearm can hold him steady.

Reunion with Mary can happen once everyone is safe, back at the inn. Unless Mary wants to climb down to join Rosinante, which she is welcome to do, being uninjured and agile.

Seeing Rosinante hurt so badly is like a hard punch in the gut. She loves him, she loves the spirits. And they hurt him. They broke him up like he was being a bad, terrible little doll. She can't help but feel her eyes well up with tears, but she tries her best to keep from openly sobbing. Instead, she scrambles over Stone's shoulder to join the large man, intent to be as close to him as possible.

"I'll put you back together, okay? You're going to...to be good as new!"

Even if it's not something that she can promise, she's still intent on it. For the entirety of the rescue, she'll be by his side.

"Hey... It's fine. I'll be okay," he manages, though he knows he doesn't exactly sound fine. Still, his life has been a series of pulling through near-death experiences and this isn't any different. He's not dead, not this time, and he refuses to go down now that he's been retrieved. His injuries are horrendous, but he'll pull through as he always does, with his body as stubborn as his mind.

He wants to reach out and cradle her close but movement seems like too much work. He's putting all his energy into clinging to consciousness. So he does the next best thing and leans a little closer, then closes his eyes again. "Just glad you're all right," he murmurs. The spirits are lucky they took him and not her.

And maybe some healers and healing magic and shit. There's a few of those, some of which are here, and some of which are back at the Invincible. The two magic ones he knows of are still inside somewhere, so Stone keeps the two of them cradled safely to his chest, and walks-- so as not to jostle them-- to the Wild Hunt to see if they had the bright idea of bringing healers with them.

If not, it's a flight back to the inn with them, and Stone is doing to damn well deposit Rosinante at the healer-person's feet and growl at her until she fixes him.

Jason did not have Stone's age as an excuse, but considering fighting monsters was LITERALLY what he'd grown up training for and actively doing for most of his life as a member of the Legion...well it felt silly participating in drills meant for beginners. He understood the need for it and he appreciated some of the tactics he was learning about handling the green spirits -- but it still felt like a slap in the face. Not to just to himself, but to what he, Soldat, and Javert had been doing with people weekly in the first place.

So, while he did a few drills, mostly he found himself studying the others -- the newer fighters and especially these new arrivals -- in order to come up with strategies and tactics. He may have stepped down as praetor, but it was hard to shake those tendencies to lead others.

He was honestly looking for an excuse to leave when he noticed Stone, who had also been watching from nearby, start to walk away. Jason pushed himself up to his feet and jogged over. He'd noticed Stone do this a few times and so he now had an idea of what he might be doing, "Are you going for a flight? Do you mind if I join?"

Stone pauses when he hears someone catching up behind him, looking over his shoulder. "I don't own the sky any more than you do," he says. "Come along if you want. Just don't expect much conversation." Since he can't talk in that form, and all.

True enough, though the response gets an easy smile out of Jason. Ownership of the sky was less the problem, if Stone had wanted to be alone or something he hadn't wanted to impose on that. He understood that being able to fly was a unique way to get some time with your thoughts since only a handful of people here could even think of following you into the sky.

"Okay...I wasn't expecting much just maybe flying would be more productive than the "training" sessions." And, yes, he does use air quotes.

Stone snorts a laugh. "You wouldn't be wrong there. Trying to teach me how to use a spear is a waste of time; I'm more use being big and spiny and picking spirits up to get them out of your path."

He looks around, frowning. "I've been trying to catch a scent when I fly, maybe a flicker of light from a lantern somewhere. My sense of smell is very strong, and there are some scent trails. Just they've mostly been trampled on."

Jason nods, because he understands that well enough. True, he'd be good with sharp, pointy things but his problem had more to do with the fact that he was ALREADY good with sharp, pointy things. He didn't mind watching the others, especially the Wild Hunt, at work since it gave him ideas about how they fought and that could be useful...but he didn't feel like HE really needed that same training.

"Maybe we can coordinate then...my sense of smell might not be nearly as good, but I've gotten better at spotting things in the dark from the air...kind of had to...so if I see anything I'll signal."

He wished he could be more help than that, but at least it gave him something to do besides just loop around in the air feeling like he was wasting time.

"You're a lot smaller, too, so you can swoop down lower." Stone can fly at about the level of the treetops, but getting back down into them is sometimes tricky. "Seems like a good plan. You ready now?"

Jason hadn't considered that, but it makes sense. He nods, "If you see something just give me a signal and I can scope it out." It would also be easier for him to be stealthy than a giant dragon.

He looks down, checking to make sure his lantern is secure and then back, "Yes."

Yeah, Stone is... not stealthy in that form. Stone is not particularly stealthy no matter what he does, but being the size of a four-story building is pretty obvious. He nods, then steps back, and disappears in the now-familiar dark cloud of mist. The dark-on-dark expands and coalesces up into the spiny, pale dragon shape. Stone spreads his wings, shaking them out a little, and motions with one hand for Jason to shoo. Get in the air, kid, he doesn't want to buffet you around with his take-off.

Jason makes sure to give Stone plenty of room. He's probably more used to giant-sized creatures than some, but it still always a little awe inspiring to be so close. Festus was nowhere NEAR this large and that was really the last dragon Jason had any experience with dealing.

He doesn't need to be told twice to take off though. He gathers the winds around him and propels himself into the sky -- not able to get nearly as high as he'd like -- but he makes sure to give the dragon plenty of room. He has a knack for reading the air currents anyway, so it shouldn't be too difficult to avoid getting caught in Stone's path.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

EVENT LOG: WILD HEART PART ONE

Stone | Rescuer | OTA

Rescue

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