arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

[groundrules]

Hi, everyone! Our Arc III arrival event covers 20 Feb-11 March and doubles as a test drive. Participants don’t need an invite to apply by 11 March. Reserves live here. Try to label if you’re a test drive tourist or an old timer — and have fun!

COTTAGEVORE

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TDM TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | COMMON PROMPTS | NOTES

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TDM TOURISTS: THE SCENIC ROUTE

You flinch awake, hand weighed by a sharp stick, stone, or makeshift torch. Your clothes sit stiff, splattered with dried dirt and dusted leaves. Here and there, scratches and shallow wounds litter your limbs, the marks of days of dazed survival alone that you mistily remember. Your strength and supernatural powers are currently largely depleted, but should recover within two to three days.

As they journey, characters discover stretches of the eerily silent forests briefly transform into woodlands or recognisable spots of nature from their home worlds — perhaps they’re now seeing the meadows outside their home towns, their backyard orchard, or a fondly remembered lake pier. These images are short-lived illusions that other characters can also see.

Mind your steps: the mirages try to lure characters deep into the forest, where unfriendly animals and hidden pits wait.

A. THE MORE, THE MERRIER

Trailing through the labyrinthine woods, you stumble upon a group of heavily armed bandits who are already herding several captives. Depending on how agitated you are, expect shackles, leashes and tusk pendants that allow characters to speak and glean local tongues — including the thugs' barked instructions. The outlaws are on a three-day voyage to cursed village Ke-Waihu, where they intend to sell their prisoners to the Hok-Shinn criminal clan.

■ Ensure fellow captives survive the trek, avoiding leg-hold traps, snares and hunting nets.

■ Beatings continue, but morale never improves: help mouthy prisoners with their tasks or wounds.

■ Capture or forage food — and stop naïve captives from going deeper into the forest to follow glimpses of beautiful (wo)men or cries for help. There’s nobody there.

■ At night, prisoners are locked in stitched-shut tents — get friendly quickly.

B. JUST CRUISING

The bandits never saw you coming — but you’ve been watching them collect their prey. Perhaps you’ve even found others like you — also spared enslavement, but condemned to trail after the thugs towards Ke-Waihu. Characters can pick up discarded translation and communication tusk pendants, scraps of food and frail weapons.

■ Beware: superstitious thieves frequently patrol at night, while woodland predators are emboldened by the absence of fires.

■ Leave messages or instructions to the bandits’ captives (tree husk carvings, anyone?) and maybe try to rescue them.

■ ...or leave them for dead and trot on to Ke-Waihu. You savage.

» GO CAMPING, THEY SAID

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OLD TIMERS: CURSES FOR ONE, CURSES FOR ALL

After a bumpy ride aboard the Salamera II, the party arrive at idyllic village Ke-Waihu.

They are greeted by Hok-Shinn Weisi, the slippery mayor who officially helms Ke-Waihu, while his brother Sairen leads the clan’s heavy underground ventures. Weisi’s flippant and spoiled son Taksui is the Merchant’s local liaison. The botanist Enam and his apprentices set out to explore, taking the group's baggage along.

■ Weisi was told the party members are families of Taravast refugees, seeking finer fates in Ke-Waihu. Each family has been assigned a humble but serviceable dwelling — see what luck has in store for you.

■ Weisi officially welcomes the newcomers in Ke-Waihu’s main bustling marketplace. Every merchant, fishmonger and beggar stops to watch as foreigners are briefly stripped of their ostentatious jewels, clothes or weapons, soaked in iced water and told to embrace the village by accepting its old, its new, its ugliness and its truths.

■ To join the community, characters must absorb and redeem the wrongdoings of a deceased ancestor. They are served flasks of a thick, bitter brew that slides down mildly corrosive and cold.

■ The brew’s effects vary: some drinkers feel only a sudden, electric awareness of the story behind the curse they inherited. Others feel scalded from the inside, agonising for hours. The ancestral curse effects start to take hold that night.

■ Characters are sent off to their new homes in Ke-Waihu — but are contacted within hours by one of Enam’s anguished apprentices. His master and his peers were captured by bandits while inspecting the elusive forests for plant specimens. These wicked men took everything: your goods, your Ellethian high fashion, your extra weapons, even your Sleeping Zenobius. Go get’em — but beware the deadly illusions of Ke-Waihu’s forest.

» DUDE, WHERE’S MY COMATOSE SLEEPER?

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ALL TOGETHER NOW

The thugs, the old timers, the test drive prisoners and their creepy watchers collide in the mist-drowned forests of Ke-Waihu.

A. BANDIT BANE

■ Infiltrate the thug group in, kick some outlaws’ teeth on the way out.

■ Release and escort roughened-up newcomers to Ke-Waihu, picking up strays along the way.

■ One of the thugs snitches that the remaining stolen loot is hoarded in a nearby secluded cave, drowned under foliage. The entrance is watched by large, agitated boars with startlingly hard, but not impervious skin. With gold, gems, guns within reach, anyone for pork dinner?

■ After speaking with the new arrivals, party botanist and guide Enam confirms they have been summoned to serve as weapons in this world’s ongoing conflict between warring undead factions. The Merchant, Enam’s collaborator and the party’s patron, is leading otherworlders east, where forgotten beacons might return them home.

■ The villagers Ke-Waihu, Ke-Waiar and Ke-Waicai reportedly know the location of such a beacon. They will unveil it if the party breaks the curse of the House of Ravens.

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B. THE BLUSHING BRIDE

When the group returns, Ke-Waihu is celebrating the joyous procession of dozens of lavish 'weddings.' The (false) rites are carried out to commemorate the marriage of a huntsman and his fox bride...

■ The roads are awash with flower petals and rice, houses extend their hospitality freely, and the rich give away coin. Even Hok-Shinn clansmen don their finest garments and hand out gifts and favours, while lawmen grant pardons to captives held for minor offences.

■ Villagers pose as 'brides' and 'grooms' to play act public weddings. Characters are asked to participate as brides and grooms, or to join the wedding retinue of a NPC villager. Characters can unknowingly marry, but not become foxes.

■ The evening culminates in a grand market fete, with stalls offering sickly sweets and strong alcohols. Poets recite love songs, professional weepers wail to strangers that they lost their children to insidious in-laws, and petty clashes erupt among merrymakers.

■ Some of the NPC fox 'brides' seem to grow wide-eyed and alert, suspicious of the many hunting dogs that watchmen walk around the marketplace.

■ Come nightfall, 'wedded' pairs are escorted to suites in a large and extravagant inn. For each 'couple,' accommodations comprise one room for the retinue and a linked conjugal bedroom.

IF CHARACTERS MARRY A (FOX) 'SPOUSE':

■ They are handed three pieces of parchment before they are locked into the marital suite with their consort and their retinue.

■ Once alone in their 'marital quarter,' characters first enjoy polite conversation with their spouse, whose eyes start to glimmer golden, while their teeth and claws lengthen, their mouths distort to snouts and their hair reddens. The fox brides do not seem aware they are, in fact, foxes, but try to scratch, bite or maim their partners. Viciously quick, strong and prone to thralling their victims into spells of lethargy, these foxes could get the best of you — happily, the little parchment papers you received can share some survival tips.

■ Fool the fox spouse into thinking you are already married or pledged to someone in your retinue. Affronted, the fox bride will exile you out of the wedding room. Refresh the salt lines that surround the conjugal room, and gently steer the fox back if it flees overnight.

■ Your retinue and you should impersonate a hunting hound, down to howling, running on all-fours and sniffling. The fox will hurriedly isolate itself in the conjugal room, but will actively try to escape at night. Keep every inn door and window closed.

■ Become a widow(er). Call your retinue and make the best of your fists and a butter knife. You will need to kill the spouse a few times before they stay fully dead, each time reviving more and more fox-like in appearance.

AS A WEDDING RETINUE MEMBER:

■ Awkwardly hold watch outside the conjugal bedroom of the dashing NPC cannon fodder groom and his fox bride.

■ The NPC groom might request help as above — or might fall deathly silent. If that happens, villagers instruct, character must loudly ask if the wine pleases the couple. The flushed, visibly fox-like bride will then open the door to complain their new consort — clawed dead in the marital bed — won’t even share a wine cup with them. The fox does not seem to grasp they have killed their groom.

■ Defeat the fox at drinking — the fox bride can hold its cups, but slipping in some of the relaxing opiates on hand will help the cause. Sneak the NPC groom's corpse out with a buddy when the fox drops asleep.

■ Or prove you are a fairer marital prospect by verbally wooing the fox or doing battle with your retinue companion, to prove your worth. Your wingman may wish to throw the fight, feed lines, or generally smoulder. The fox bride will offer the NPC corpse as a betrothal gift.

Come morning, the villagers open the now-delapidated inn. Those who survive fox weddings receive braided bracelets of red, golden and tangerine rope, earning good will in the village. The murderous fox brides have disappeared — in their place, yellowed and dust-drenched bones 'sleep' in the marital beds, covered by withered and torn wedding clothes.

Villagers share the whole story: a huntsman encountered a fox goddess in the forest, when she had taken the shape of a beautiful woman. Lovestruck, he brought her back to Ke-Waihu as his wife — but the horrified villager slaughtered her and her husband on their wedding night. The fox god cursed the village to relieve yearly 'fox weddings,' during which the bones of those murdered during the previous 'conjugal' festivities rise as brides to terrorise new spouses.

Skipping the fox wedding rites, villagers say, shrivels their crops and depletes their food stocks for several seasons.

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C. A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

It’s all fun and wedding games, until one of the victims of the recent nuptials is the son of influential wine merchant Saguk Chaomin. He vengefully sponsors a a hunt to finally lift the foxes’ curse.

■ Saguk Chaomin assigns weapons — from knives, spears and sharpened sticks to bows, arrows and rifles operating on gun powder — alongside lanterns and climbing rope to the brave adventurers. The contingent splinters into smaller groups to avoid detection.

■ The forests now aggressively conspire to lead characters to their deaths: whether it’s through fostering illusions that trip them into gullies, or decrepit bridges that crumble, sending travellers into whirling river waters. Animals (excluding wolves) attack travellers fiercely. Keep a hunting hound close.

■ Characters with unusual physical features or suspicious behaviours — from supernatural powers to a fear of dogs — are accused of being shape-shifting foxes.

■ Fox spirits assume a mortal but resilient shape the day after the wedding — strong, large, feral and willy. They’re quick to bite, and their presence dulls the senses of hunters.

■ To exorcise the foxes, kill their mortal bodies or obliterate or repair their small, decaying forest altars. These are stone rings the size of one’s hand, often hidden at the root of ancient trees. Cleanse the altars of filth, vermin and predatory creatures, and replenish the stones with fresh river pieces. Beware rare fox spirits that come to protect altars or hide their young.

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D. WELL, WELL, WELL

In the wake of the weddings, characters head to their abodes, while test drivers are garrisoned in communal temporary shelters. Over the next few days, everyone may notice:

■ Villagers have a marrow-deep fear of the Hok-Shinn clan, whose members behave as if they are immune from repercussions.

■ Villagers tell eerie tales of strange encounters in their locked stables, abandoned houses or wells — they have seen a creature with the head of a beautiful woman, whose hair braids to form her snake-like body. 'She' slithers away once discovered.

■ Word spreads across the marketplace that dark waters have returned. A farmer’s well has dried, leaving only a thickened, tar-like liquid at the bottom. Another villager shamefully admits his well also dried a month ago, clogged by dark filth — the fount was old, and he assumed it had naturally depleted.

■ Horrified villagers speak no more of this, but superstitiously volunteer flower and food tributes for the Ka-Sanwon volcano. Mayor Hok-Shinn Weisi intercedes to reserve the resources for the upcoming return of the patron lord of the volcano’s three villages — the undead Beastmaster.

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QUESTIONS

Comments

sumeragi subaru | x/1999 | tdm tourist!

[sacral]

I. THE SCENIC ROUTE, ILLUSORY.

[ A journey is not what he bargained for. But then again, Subaru has had little left to bargain with, flesh preyed upon by divinity and a prophecy self-fulfilled, bone wet with remembrance of what it was like to be broken, piecemeal love. That he is somewhere else with this same whole body and same halved heart... he supposes where makes no difference, only that he continues to be. Against his wishes — no, his singular wish.

His hauntings don't flee so kindly either, as it goes. Time amalgamates, burdened with its own passage, the longer he walks these unfamiliar woods rife with magics he does not know, but feels as though he could. Had his own abilities not been dampened so thoroughly that even conjuring up a sparrow's worth of a shikigami familiar seems a labor, he may have noticed sooner.

Footfalls stilling in the cold mulch, Subaru cranes his head to look at what lays before him like a homecoming: beautiful stone steps, vermillion lanterns. White trees crested by white sunlight. Petals of the cherry blossom trees, dancing on that fragrant air.

It gives Subaru pause. Had this not just been a decline, the humid maw of some gulch or gulley?

Other footsteps cause his hands to withdraw from his pockets, one holding some kind of paper scrawled in ink where his thumb presses to it, ready to incur a hallowed papercut just to keep his head on straight, his nerves alive. He is not threatening but stern when he warns: ]

Don't look. They're not real. [ Even when they flutter and reach so lovingly. His gaze drifts, wary. ] What do you see?

[ What will he also see? ]

II. THE SCENIC ROUTE, MERRIER.

[ It stands to reason he wouldn't be the only one left to wander a cursed forest (though it would not surprise him if he was, necessarily...) but the incursion of equally disheveled traveling companions and slavers out to pad their bounty is a lot to take in all at once. Subaru is not necessarily obedient, but he is temporarily compliant enough with capture to avoid losing the tools of his trade: the use of his hands. For now. For now, what he needs is time. But he is a man of compassion before he is one of rebellion no matter what the taciturn set of his brow and mouth say. Thus: ]

IF YOU ARE TRAIPSING ABOUT THE FOREST —
[One hand comes to seize you by the shoulder. Following its line, you are met with a man who has a large rock hefted in his other hand. Alarming surely, but he is very slight, and doesn't look as though he could bludgeon you with it without more effort than he currently seems to be capable of. Instead, he nods ahead. ]

Wait. May I?

[ Yes, he is asking permission to throw the rock. ]

IF YOU ARE MOUTHING OFF TO THE SLAVERS BEYOND THEIR MINUSCULE PATIENCE LEVEL —
[ He will just straight up take a punch for you. Face, gut, doesn't matter. How did he even get over here so fast? Sorry he is just Like This.

Alternatively, you can fight him for the honor and really throw the bandits for a loop. ]

IF YOU ARE LOOKING AT ALL COLD IN THE ~RUSTIC SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS —
[ Something warm and heavy comes to lay over your shoulders. It is a coat — one that is unfortunately now stained with the forest's muck but also nice and sturdy enough to fend off some of the chill. Nothing for the disquiet or creeping misery of being imprisoned, though. ]

Here. Just for a while, if you're opposed.

[ Coming to a seat as if offering the clothing off his own back is a natural enough occurrence, Subaru holds the contents of its pockets in hand: a lighter, cigarettes, what look to be pieces of parchment. There is a tilt of apology in his mismatched eyes; he can't offer the use of the lighter without being caught. ]

III. THE BLUSHING BRIDE, SPOUSE.

[ To say that the emergence of their party once freed into the festivities of Kei-Waihu is a culture shock is, well. A bit of an understatement. Subaru wanted for neither, truth be told, the alien bonds of imprisonment or the blissful processions touting the love of old. And yet it is the latter that commands his attention, not because of such a love made palatable by bright and gaudy celebration, but because of the familiar sickness left in the wake of something that yearns, something that seeks and clings. His senses may not have filled out entirely just yet, but he feels it in the weave of this place, beyond the sugar, florals, and lamenting.

So, Subaru allows himself to be "wed."

This goes about as well he expected it would when nightfall sees his "bride" turning, bone and teeth and fur made malleable by the ancient malice she bears. Call it an exorcist's intuition. Instantly, the quarter they share is quite literally upended in a vengeful flourish, the stout table that held all manner of drink and delicacy being flipped and thrown with her lunge. Glasses and liquids scatter, twinkling and fractured. He begs her understanding once, twice, finding no purchase in her madness. It culminates in Subaru being thrown to the nearest wall and the arm he'd raised to fend her off being seized in a clamp of her powerful jaws. She growls at the taste, guttural and rotten, squeezing blood from muscle until it patters onto the floor. Subaru, sweat on his brow and expression fixed, makes eye contact with the fox as soon as he senses members of the retinue near. Yet he throws his free arm out as a ward. ]

Don't... harm her. [ Muscle trembles, twitches. ] It's the — parchment. Look for the parchment...!

[ Festively scattered about the floor now in no particular order. ]

IV. THE HUNTING, ALTARS.

This isn't right. It was a slaughter that cased this curse.

[ His words lay thick in his mouth, almost irritated. It is not his place to tell anyone of this world how they ought to solve their problems. Really, all of this, from the mounting hunt to the tragedy of the brides, the people who had been captive and then welcomed alongside him, none of it has anything to do with him.

But old habits die hard and are easily stoked. He sports the impressive dressing of his bite wound and takes up no weapon, but he does pause at outset to pet every idle hunting dog. (So sue him.) ]

I'm not going to participate. [ He said, taken to one knee to dourly squish the face of a hound between his slender hands. ] But there is something I want to see for myself.

[ It does read like an invitation to join him if you're not the blood-wants-blood type. Or maybe you are! It takes all kinds. ]

(ooc: this is entirely too many words. i apologize. but also hit me with anything else if you fancy!)

II, mouthing off!

[good_taste]

[Astarion had gotten away with quite a lot so far, thanks to the book. The bandits hadn't wanted to touch him after they were regaled with how terribly cursed it was. Oh no! You've touched it, now you're cursed. It'll drive a human mad within days, unless you give it back to him.

That worked even better than expected. He'd gotten to keep the book and the bandits never finished searching his pack.

But then he'd started pushing it. And apparently, cutthroats weren't fond of insinuations that they had an ogre in their family tree.

He ducked too late, but the blow didn't land. Some wispy young thing had stepped in to take the punch instead. How... sweet.]

My hero. [The bandit gets dragged away by their companions, shooting fearful glares at Astarion.] That looked like it hurt.

[sacral]

[ For all the bandits know, he could have been cursed to move as he had, stepping in to defend a man who hadn't asked it of him — and had, in fact, sort of been asking for just the opposite. Yet the momentary spark of violence seems to end there with him and his stinging cheekbone, which is just as well. No curses or eruptions or corporeal punishment served down their miserable ranks. Try as he might to silence his inner altruism, it never fully pans out.

Heels scuffing in the forest's mulch from where he'd anchored them in, he relaxes again, expression quite cooled.

(It did hurt.) ]

Fright is a good defense. [ Smart, to hinge his mockery on the book. Subaru can barely sense anything in these woods, but the slavers aren't wrong to be wary. ] But shortlived, compared to pride.

[good_taste]

Oh really? [Because two centuries of unrelentingly terrible experience says otherwise. Fear can get you quite a lot. And you'll never make yourself insignificant enough to escape notice when someone really wants to hurt you.

But he keeps that sentiment to himself. Things run more smoothly when people think he's all looks and no substance.] It sounds like you know what you're talking about. Care to fill me in?

[sacral]

It's just an observation. [ That he caught with his face, like a champ. Still, it's a softened answer and he remains remarkably sober for just getting punched in the head. ] It served you well until you brought his mother into it.

[ Ah, family. ]

iii. sorry, bro

[downswing]

( Do not harm her. Stench of her chasm, her yawning, fang-glistened mouth, and how she clings to her prey, clash of her jaws snapped on the man's bone.

Do not harm her, and Lan Wangji — who visits this wedding party en route to locate wherever fortune's scattered Wei Ying like bone dice &dmash; blitzes close, and his sword's silvered grace and a taut line, interjected between the red-furred bride and her groom prize.

Do not harm her, and drip of acrid sweat down the curve of her throat, Bichen's blade sings with the slide down, until Lan Wangji steers it up again, balances it — )

Shutter your eyes. ( — and the sword screeches a wound, red bled from the bride in violent spatterings. She does not scream with it. Later, hands slicked with her wet, he will remember. Now, reedy: ) Apologies. She would have severed the arm.

( There is a tension to her slackening jaw, yet unyielding. He means to assist, fingers slipping down the snout, peeling the mouth open — only to slide and find the wound of her neck, already closing shut. )

but are you really

[sacral]

[ He knew. Yet knowing makes nothing easier. A blade's shimmering intonation precedes its wielder's command, and Subaru listens, its motion carving synchronic into his instinct and his bride. Eyes flinched shut, he feels the fevered spatter across arm and face, the forced shed of a life stoked to fruition by vengeance. He looks briefly pale, the scent and sound of so much blood still too near to his mind's eye — the one robbed of its sight. ]

It's not your fault.

[ Yet merciful fingers interject on jaw where it rends, and Subaru spares one of the few talismans still accrued in his pocket. An intent to be sparing only goes so far. It whispers to life in his fingertips where he gently affixes it to her face. Be still.

And she is, save the pry of teeth, the closing wound, the wild set of her vulpine eyes. ]

She'll return. But just to run to slaughter —

[ It's cruel. ]

[downswing]

( She will return.

The tight-mouthed, steeled certainty of the pronouncement, like a curse cannibalising contrary impossibilities. His teeth grit-grind, Do not poison her with prophecy.

But the bride's flesh already bloats and bursts with the acrid cunning of life ill-purposed. She stirs, and Lan Wangji watches her discover herself in tender increments, from hairs that ride her skin in stiff peaks to the gravitational pull of blood, seeping.

Active power returns even in the cold absence of movement. He does not welcome it — only teases the blade turned and considers another slash, before understanding, all at once, that execution may not prove superior to torture. That the whole can revive easier than the parts.

That he must speak this, unwavering, for all he flinches. )

Butchery could outlast execution.

( Severe her hands, her legs. She can resurrect, but not stitch herself together, surely. He must — prepare the groom. )

[sacral]

[ There is no curse he could deliver to her that would be worse than the one she currently bears. He does not ordain it, as it has already been ordained. Beaten, to this ill end. At the lacerated intersection of mangled arm, resolute blade, and snarling throat, Subaru near breathes the offered word in, the unpalatable sting of it settling in his throat. Butchery.

Palms coated by slick red rise to cradle her head as it continues its slow labor of metamorphosis — seams of course fur, snout seething, bursting with new teeth. Pressurized by magic, her eyes bulge and pupils rage to dilated slits.

She fights against his shackle, heaving towards tender hand and blade. ]

Neither will outlast her. Is there another way?

[ His sluggish mind and powers sharpened by adrenaline wish to wrap themselves around this tragedy, but the fit is still too new, too poor.

A wish only goes so far. ]

[downswing]

( He thinks, There is no third path unwalked, no recourse tamer.

Thinks, You mean her stripped of dignity, to preserve her flesh.

Thinks, There are men who are monsters, thinking themselves martyrs.

Drip and drip and the waters of his hesitations spill over. His cupped hands cannot bear their weight, must claps his sword the stronger for it. The second gash never comes, not like sleet, not like wind screeching.

The bride's eyes roll and convulse, feverish-bright, but she does not scream. They are all, at times — here, now, today — the victims of their inertia. )

Fire. ( Her fats melted, her bones charred, her waters drained, her skins brittle and peeling. Over the fox's crumbling shoulder, he locks gaze with a (hunts)man. ) She will not thank you.

ii - sleeping arrangements

[adormecer]

[ Cleo has been curious about the man with mismatched eyes, as she's been curious of all of them. Her other friends are notably missing, but she chooses to believe some are alive and they've simply been separated while she was sleeping. The group she's with now don't seem to know each other all that well, but that doesn't mean they're bad people. The fact that many of them have been shackled during their trek only endears her to them.

Their captors didn't take well to her complaining that they stop to rest, shoving and dragging her along when she started to lag behind. But she's so tired. If she doesn't sleep soon, they'll have to find someone to carry her the rest of the way, or let her summon her rats to take her. She had just been drifting off on her feet, again, when something heavy and warm falls on her shoulders.

She raises her head in recognition of the interesting man, and she offers a genuine smile for his kindness. It only occurs to her then that they've reached some sort of camp at last, and she could nearly collapse in relief.

Her mood brightens with her arms wrapped around the coat, and as she settles she looks curiously at the parchment in his hands. She saw him with them before when he held a piece of paper like a weapon. Now she finally has a chance to ask. ]

Why do you carry papers? Are you afraid they won't have any wherever we are going?

[sacral]

[ That she accepts is a sweeping relief that settles kindly to his shoulders. It is nearly nightfall, and there have been many stragglers in their party after the long hike over hostile terrain, prodded and yanked along like animals to slaughter. He has little to offer to so many, but what he does is better shared, even if just to one.

While their captors busy themselves with assembling the crude tents they'll be meant to sleep in until dawn rises pale and foggy through the deceitful trees, Subaru comes to fold into a seat next to her. ]

A little. They're talismans from home.

[ Voice lowered to keep the interest of the slavers away from them, he unfurls the small stack and offers one, its warm texture scrawled in ink. ]

It's better to keep them safe, if I can. Just in case I won't be able to make more here so easily.

[adormecer]

[ With a swift glance to see that no one is watching, she scoots closer to him and takes the paper he offers. The talisman. Her fingers trace along the ink, not knowing the significance, but understanding that it's important to him for some reason.

Eventually she looks back at him, and his mismatched eyes, and stretches her arm to hand back his precious paper. ]

You had them earlier. Did they help with your troubles?

[sacral]

[ Accepting it back, he rolls the talisman up with the rest of them and tucks them into his pocket, safe and out of sight. ]

In some ways, yes. They're like a conduit for magic. It doesn't seem like mine works well here, though.

[ It made some things easier when trekking through the forest. ]

Are you familiar with it?

scenic route mixed with some cruising... as usual, i got wordy

[infirm]

[ a few steps through bright but gossamer light and the unforgiving asphalt beneath Cloud's boots had all at once sunken into terrain as yielding and lush as the last time he stepped into Nibelheim five (seven) years prior. a country boy born and raised, it isn't the topography with which he suddenly struggles, but how he'd traversed so much of it and still not wound up at his destination — whatever it was that the fates had had in store. at his sides: no flowergirl, no terrorist with a machine gun for an arm, no quiet comfort of a childhood friend. just the mournful, empty gush of wind cooling fresh hollows he didn't know he had (and hadn't asked for). ]

[ when he crosses a chain of footsteps, he finds the ability to isolate and track their path through the foliage as though he'd opened a ShinRa file in his memory and ran its code. he doesn't question it, following dutifully in tow with one hand perpetually on the well-worn leather grip of the goliath weapon strapped to his back. it doesn't take long for him to happen upon threads of leather braided around a tusk — an item more helpful than he realizes when he pockets it and shoulders on. ]

[ at the next marshbreak, the path becomes that of stone, the pine and soil aroma of the forest eroding to a burst of florals. he can't separate the brilliant skyline from the white tips of trees without squinting through muddy eyelashes, blood-red blots in synchronous little rows, petals fairy-fluttering on the breeze that rustles through dingy blond bangs. it's scenic, and peaceful, and — aching. homesickness needles at him and he doesn't know why. shame needles him and he doesn't know why. there are ghettos and gallows at the bottom of a man's heart that Cloud Strife has wandered into, blind and stumbling in the dark, emerging with his lungs full of ether and head full of lies. ]

[ his lies mix with Subaru's. the molten epicenter of those lanterns bloats, embers quickly acid-eating through paper and engulfing at their crest, then the strings that break and spill quick-moving heat across the gardens. what does he see? ]

[ Sephiroth. ]

...Fire.

[ they're the same thing — what he must learn to not pursue by putting his hands on it over and over and over again. don't look, it isn't real. don't look. don't feel the warmth lighting up your cheeks that hisses and stings spring's twilit chill. knowing a large bite doesn't make it easier to swallow, and his whole body is rigored for defense, worn gloves creaking as he squeezes the buster sword's handle. he waits for white petals to bleed into mercury-silver with bated breath. ]

How do you know?

[sacral]

[ Had his heart grown less staunch against the very blood that courses through it, the sight of those lanterns from his home city's famous winters bursting into a heavy, oiled flame would stir him. But the sight is wrong, the apocalypse of his own world finding no purchase in the delicate carve of his insides. It is the apocalypse of another that bleeds into this winter that bleeds into his spring, cyclical and bright. Nostalgia burns to ember and dies as ash. There will be nothing rebuilt from that ruin if the only way to claim it is in hindsight.

His talisman poises at the ridge of his thumb but doesn't carve soft and whispered into skin just yet. Familiar blood to him might be what incites the other. How does he know? ]

I've loved these illusions for a very long time.

[ And to love something to no end means to accept when it has no basis in reality, no matter how desperate the wish is. A lesson less learned than impressed on him, much like the scars he hasn't the magic to conceal at the moment. Plain, unfettered — blossoms scattered from branch. Weight seen, but not felt. What is there to conceal anymore?

Subaru senses his dread in the dawn cast by unnatural fire. He wants to approach, but as memories churn in their entanglement, he doesn't. At least not yet. ]

You see someone in the fire, don't you?

[infirm]

[ ...he doesn't (think) there's much for him to know about that. the big picture has always been beyond Cloud's peripherals, truth found only in worth and weight — and for too long, both of them lacking. he dismisses it without question, unable to pursue a line of questioning that would too easily threaten his cosmology... and, perhaps more nobly, he's receptive to letting a man be alone with his contrition, for all that he's accidentally invited himself into it. ]

Sorry.

[ for whatever reason, he feels the need to say it. sorry it's all burning down — sorry it isn't real anymore. sorry he's here to intrude. if Cloud has empathy to spare, it can be on that, even not knowing his own responsibility for ruining the picture of someone else's "love". that there are puzzle pieces not of his own becomes so apparent when Subaru points it out that he feels deficient for having missed it himself: of course it isn't real. of course Sephiroth isn't really here; there are some places even he can't be... ]

[ right? ]

I was chasing an enemy on the way here, [ is all he says by way of confirmation. even if he believes it, his knuckles haven't stopped going white in his gloves. the memory pumps fresh blood into the illusion's magic, and mixing with the petal's fall is the first black feather beginning to singe and smolder as it lilts down onto the engawa as ash. rather than await a follow-up question that feels too complicated to explain to a guy who looks like he probably doesn't even know what Midgar is, he asks one of his own, instantly deeming it higher priority: ] How do we make it stop?

[ you're his teammate now, Soobs. ]

1

[warbeast]

Flowers. [ Asura remarks, as eloquently as ever. ] Not the right ones.

[ The cherry blossoms are not the lotus that Asura has come to expect, so this must not be his. He holds a hand out to the windswept petals, studying the scene. It's a little bland for what should be an alluring fantasy. That's all Asura has gleaned so far from the images he has seen.

The visions are meant to lure, to tug at heartstrings, to bewitch the viewer into the woods. It's just not a particularly sophisticated thing, missing the nuance between desire and possibility. There is no use showing a man that which cannot be, no matter how alluring the fantasy.

Asura's hand closes around a petal that lands upon his palm, and when he opens his hand again it's gone. ]

Why do these trees call to you?

[ He smells blood, and the red of his eyes burns as he inhales sharply. There's a precious cut on the stranger somewhere. Accidental? Intentional? Either way, these flowers must have a hold over him that the lotus bloom does not when it comes to Asura.

He smiles, slow and wide. ]

Should I restrain you?

[sacral]

[ Flowers. In silent, silvered hail. So light that the jagged boughs of their trees don't weigh with the ruin of their blooming. In his hand, the paper's edge runs red with blood. In his desire's conjuring, pink seeps into white. Blood enough for two when Subaru considers the man bearing witness to this tranquil rot of his. Lost like him? Simply a traveler? Here, it's impossible to know, not that he supposes it matters. His gaze falls to him and the illusory petals that welcome him as if he also belongs, then back to the trees. ]

No. I've seen this before.

[ It lays heavy in his mouth, unspoken: many times before. ]

Look long enough, and you'll see the corpse beneath the tree. I was called because I wondered if she suffered to turn the blossoms pink.

[ A memory lost and then unveiled. ]

What flower is right to you?

iv;

[chosenbylight]

[Anduin is most certainly not the blood-wants-blood type. This whole situation is making him uncomfortable -- honestly, if they want the spirits to settle, hunting them certainly isn't the way to go about it.

Then again, maybe he's just biased. He is a priest, after all.

He glances aside to take in the man kneeling nearby, the way he is petting that dog and the size of the bandage on his arm. His initial instinct would be to speak up and ask if he is injured or in need of any healing, but -- with the current witch hunt happening around them? Would he be inviting trouble upon himself if he does?

He frowns at the thought of it. Should that really stop him from trying to help people?]

This village is... Quick to pass judgment on those things which they do not understand.

[sacral]

[ That truth lays heavy on him as his fingers card thoughtfully through the hound's fur. It would likely rend a fox tooth and claw if commanded, but Subaru knows the hound isn't at fault. Adorning the same wrist as his wound is the bracelet denoting his survival of the spirits, but at great cost to his "bride". It was his misstep that furthered her suffering. ]

It's hard to blame them. Their tradition protects their village, even if was bred by their ancestors as misfortune.

[ He glances upwards to the other man. ]

Were you at the inn?

[chosenbylight]

[Anduin winces a little at the question, but he has his own bracelet to match, which is answer enough. Nevertheless, he nods in response to the question that was posed.]

I was, yes.

[He could not help but offer himself to assist in the ritual, when they had asked for volunteers. You would think by now he would know better about such things, but he is a priest, and whenever there is a need...]

A little more warning of what we were getting ourselves into would not have gone amiss, for all that it is tradition.

[sacral]

[ Though his expression is grim, there is an understanding that tempers it at the sight of the bracelet, an expression that looks to ill-suit him less. So he knows the blight of the brides, the shackle that tradition has affixed to them. Dusting his knees, Subaru rises and lets the hound be on its way when a whistle strikes the air. ]

I know. It's likely very few people would still go if they knew the truth.

[ He is not one of them, but. ]

To them, it's a curse with no rite or prayer to soothe it.

[ And deception so often walks hand in hand with desperation. ]

altars

[reparo]

[The people are blood thirsty, motivated by the fires stoked by the noble who called for this hunt. Call it instinct, or basic knowledge of human behaviour, but she's not sure killing the fox spirits will fix anything.

So it is a relief to hear someone who doesn't want to hunt and kill them, express it like this.]

What is that?

[sacral]

I have no way of knowing the rites for the spirits here. But where I'm from, the way to pacify a spirit is to honor its home.

[ Which is something that is definitely not happening here — his gaze remains stern but he looks uneasy with the hunting parties now setting off, hemmed in flame and howling. ]

They're most likely concealed in the forest.

[ Which presents its own dangers, but he wants to try. ]