Welcome to Hemlock Falls

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah tries to listen to Dave while keeping up the numbers. Aaron can't help her, so she focusses on the numbers for right now. This keeps her busy, busy enough to not notice the sand, the heat. She frowns when Dave talked about the burning stars, but it doesn't seem to remind her of anything in particular.

She doesn't understand the voices. They're something so far beyond her experience that she finally has the freakout she's been trying to keep under control. Hands on her ears, dropped to her knees a moment after Aaron, screaming wordlessly, screaming the fear that's made of stars.

(( And I won't have her being a useless screaming lump, she'll shake this off in a remarkably quick time. Useless lumps don't help make things fun!))

 

[Craft]

Craft frowns a little and kneels next to Dave.

"I've seen that too. I've seen the stars and broken worlds. I've seen the void. And I've heard voices."

Craft lowers his voice, "Six years ago, I was standing behind my bar, serving customers when these... monsters... appeared out of smoke and sulfur. I had no idea what was happening...but something inside me changed. There was this power... it built up... and it exploded."

He rests a hand on Dave's shoulder, "I was taken into a dream. There were two voices: Be mindful of the voices. They will whisper in your sleep."

He waits a moment before continuing.

"I was chosen by Gaia... apparently. I was given powers, and shown a world that lay in the shadows of our world. And I think that's what's happening to you. We can help you...."

Craft looked back to Aaron and Sarah, trying to get across they could help them all, he hoped.

"You just need to focus on what's real. Focus on us."

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah continues to scream, curled into a panic-stricken ball. Hands over her ears, body trembling.

Sand falls. A sky appears. Air ripples. At first, Sarah is impervious to these impossibilies, the VOICES the only sensory input her brain can (can't!) process. No other perceptions reach her consciousness.

But Craft's patience is rewarded. One hand trembles, leaves the ear, reaches in Craft's direction.

Focus on what is real. Focus on Craft, on Marcos. Not on impossibilities. Ignore the impossibilities, at least for now.

Head lifts, slightly. Unfocussed eyes move, tracking towards Craft.

Focus on what is real.

 

[Marcos Medeiros]

"We see you. You are all made of stars."

Yup. It's the Filth alright. Were Marcos not too busy reeling from the sudden overload of information, he'd probably be cursing like the good sailor that he is.

He blinks back the stars from his eyes. Both the mundane, and those burned into his mind by the visions. He looks at Sarah, at Aaron, at Dave, at Craft. Everything seems to be moving so slowly, but somehow also much too quickly.

He forces himself to concentrate. Forces himself through the deluge and to the center. He focuses on what he sensed, tries to find where it's all coming from. If they can get to the source of it all, if they can find the point from which the lattice spreads, maybe they could find a way to cleanse whatever dark forces threaten to send it crumbling.

Marcos keeps one hand on the wall, sensing, searching, and reaches his other out — a life raft in stormy seas — to Sarah. Or Aaron. Whoever takes it first.

 

[Atrus]

Dave doesn't really seem to know what is real right now. He seems to hear Craft's words, maybe they even reach him in the depths of his panic. But then he sees Sarah's hand reach for Craft, and the desert illusion becomes stronger, more insistent. Apart from the pile of rocks that Dave had been trying to move, and where Marcos is concentrating, the rest of the mine has completely disappeared from view, and it's just sand and harsh, blue sky all around. "You! You!" he screams at Sarah, "Let them out of my head! Let them out!"

And just like that, the hole in the sky tears open, and oily sludge pours out of it, splashing all over, turning whatever they touch black, before collecting back again in pools, and the pools take the shapes of horrors: shadow men, black spiders, wolf-like guardians.
Those who have faced the actual Filth, though, notice something as soon as the shock and surprise wears off: where they have been touched by the black sludge, nothing happens. No anima defence, no frenzied bee hurrying to repair the body, no transformation, no voices, no madness.

The effort of materialising so many things at once, and against her will, makes Sarah momentarily recoil but it's only a moment. Finally, after suffering her ability passively for so long, she can feel it. She can feel the connection to the source. She can see the lattice that supports the existence of the monster creatures, which makes them move around. It's like a very elaborate, tactile, sensory-accurate holodeck, and she's making it happen.
Well, Dave is, through her. But still. For the honor of Grayskull, she has the power.

Behind them, Aaron gasps suddenly, taking in great gulps of air, like a man who just had an enormous weight lifted from his lungs. He looks around them, at the desert, then looks again, beyond the structure, at the real world, and sees Marcos' outstretched hand. The young man rolls over, gets on all fours, and crawls towards the sailor, slowly but deliberately.

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Don't think of a purple elephant.

Actually, a purple elephant would be an improvement on what's happening right now.


Sarah blindly keeps groping towards Craft's voice, and when she finds cloth, she grips it as if it were a lifeline. Or indeed a life raft in stormy seas. She gasps and starts hyperventilating, then gets control of herself.

She can feel it. Feel this POWER she's been granted, and has allowed to be misused. No longer.

The sand becomes brightly coloured, and then becomes a desert of M&Ms. Not so bad, at first, but a gust of wind starts to revolve, picking up M&Ms and becoming a tornado-like dust storm. Of M&Ms. Did you know that M&Ms hurt when pelted at you at high speed?

The sky becomes a brilliant cobalt, and the hole in it shines like obsidian. Filth continues to rain down, and the M&Ms seem to have no effect on the Filth creatures. On the other hand, the Filth people lose their tendrils and become Filth skeletons. Filth spiders, guardians and other Filth creatures are unaffected, but the humanoids all become humanoid skeletons.

Oddly, the strains of Saint-Seans' Danse Macabre can be heard. Quietly at first, but gradually becoming louder and louder. The louder it becomes, the more the Filth Skeletons dance.

Sadly, it's not a harmless dance. Don't become one of their dance partners!

 

[The Dullahan]

Rourke had been waiting outside the mine, watching the team’s six. At least that’s what he told them when he said he wasn’t going into the mine. The real issue was that dark confined spaces triggered his PTSD. He would be a liability down there.

But then he heard the screaming. Sarah’s screaming. He couldn’t stay topside any longer. How would that look in his report? ‘Yeah, I heard screaming. No I did not investigate and I have no idea what happened.’ But moreso, a small part of him, from before his last mission where he lost everything, screamed at him. A small part that still cared about honor and doing the right thing, that part of him screamed at him to do something.

Rourke didnt think there was anything left of the man he was. But, maybe he was wrong.

Rourke gritted his teeth, looked up at the sky as it poured down on him and cursed colorfully. He turned to face the enterance to the mine, took a deep breath, and then forced one foot in front of the other. Sending up a prayer to whoever may be listening, that he could hold his shit together and do more good than harm down there.

Rourke saw the markings that Marcos had left. Faint but it was a good idea in a pinch. He followed, deeper and deeper into the mind. And the deeper he went the more he felt that physical pressure of something pressing in on him. Trying to pull him back there. Back to the heat, the sand, and the death.

Rourke took a deep breath. It was cold. It was wet. It was real. And the images beating at his mind were not. It took several deep breaths and the sensation of the cold mine wall beneath his finger tips for him to believe. He wasn’t in a room, with no floor, and no windows. He could move. He wasn’t tied down. He could move. Then he started moving again, because he could hear Sarah screaming still. That was real.

Then the sound stopped. But the screams were overlaid from his past and he squeezed his eyes shut. Trying to breathe through it. People need help and your standing here... doing what exactly? Fucking Lamaze. Get it together, man.

”We see you. You are all made of stars.”

Rourke’s eyes snapped open when he heard that. Fuck. Fuck.

Thats when his body finally cooperates and he started to run. Run forward. Just like the man he use to be.

But, it was short lived. He stopped dead in his tracks when he came upon the group.

He sees the sand and the blue sky, and it’s just as he remembers it. And it feels real. Like he could feel the heat beating down on him from the sky.

Rourke hadn’t taken a breath yet. Because he realized, the man he use to be was dead. Died with his buddies back in that hot, colorless, windowless room. And all that was left was a man terrorized by his memories. Memories of the way the sun burned the back of his neck, the way the sand bit into the palm of his hands, and the screams of his friends.

But then it changed, the nightmare changed, and monsters and black sludge fell from the sky. Filth? At least that what it looked like from the dreams. From the files he had read.

Rourke took a unsteady step forward. He realized that him coming down here was probably the worse thing he could do for his team. Mistake. More harm than good. He opened his mouth but no words came out. He just stared.

Wondering if he was losing his mind.

Again.



((Hey All! Sorry for the long post. Just trying to explain Rourke’s absence. If I missed anything from all your awesome posts, just let me know. ))
[justify] [/justify]

 

[Craft]

The appearance of the filth, in human and non-human forms has Craft standing at the ready, blade in hand once again. But there's something different about all of this, it's less real than normal. Despite what he's seeing he doesn't FEEL in danger.

So he continues to speak, to will someone with ACTUAL power in this place to do whatever is required to right what has happened. Whatever was going on in Hemlock Falls he wasn't going to resolve it, but he might help be a catalyst for those that could. This was their town.

He watches the filth and flesh slough from the humanoids and as the skeletons start to dance he holds back a laugh.

But the guardians remain, and Craft readies himself for a fight.

"Whatever you're doing... keep it up." he offers, hoping he put enough encouragement in his voice, "This is your town. Don't let these filthy bastards take it from you."

 

[Marcos Medeiros]

Marcos reaches out and grips Aaron’s hand firmly. He’s unsure just how much it will help, but if it’ll keep the kid from drifting off into whatever nightmare they’ve found themselves in, it’s worth a try.

As the faux-Filth gathers in pools around him, Marcos finds himself wishing that he paid more attention to his great-uncle’s magic lessons. A ward or two would really be useful right now.

Or so he figures.

He draws the moisture from the air instead, forming a sizable ball of water in his free hand. He scans the Filth creatures ahead of him. If any of the Filth creatures tries to draw anyone into a tango, he’ll be ready to blast them back.

Another figure at the corner of his eye draws his attention away momentarily.

Wait. Rourke? What’s he doing here? That can only mean trouble...

”It isn’t real,” he tells the recent arrival — and himself, too, because hell if this isn’t scary. “It can’t hurt you.”

 

[Atrus]

One of the swirling M&Ms hits the sailor at full speed and proves his last assertion wrong: they might not be real in the strict sense, but they definitely can hurt. Marcos retaliates with his water magic, blasting the brightly coloured candies out of the air as they approach. That means he has to let go on Aaron's hand though, who steadies himself against the collapsed rocks, still looking like he's having the migraine of a lifetime.

The skeletons keep dancing, inching closer to the humans. One in particular is making a beeline for Rourke, arms outstretched, perpetual grin on its face. It's ready to dance and devour.

Craft is instead approached by two of the Filth monsters. His sword meets some resistance as it runs through a spider's leg, but it feels very much like when he stabbed the ghostly miner, and not actual Filth. The guardian, however, raises its bristles and looks ready to spout a Filth attack. It might not be the real thing, but why chance it?

Sarah is being left alone for now. Her battle of wills against Dave seems to be using the others as proxy, to see if they can resist their respective illusions and counter-illusions.

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah struggles with it. So many things to keep track of, so much to try to control. She slumps further, on hands and knees on the ground, then sitting on her feet, still with hands on the ground, head down, hair fallen over her face. The mental struggle shows in the tension in what muscles are visible: neck muscles taut, fingers drawn tight in the dirt.

Wait. Sarah's on dirt? Not sand, not M&Ms. Good honest coal-mine dirt.

The circle of actual dirt is small, not much larger than Sarah is. But chances are that it represents triumph, success. If only in that tiny, tiny portion of the space.

She gasps when Marcos blasts the M&Ms, as if she felt it somehow. Then muscles briefly tense even more tightly, and the M&Ms that Marcos hit vanish. There is a distinct time delay between the hit and the vanishing, but the former does seem to cause the latter.

Similarly, Craft's attack on the spider seems to affect Sarah - one hand rises to clench on the opposite elbow. Pause. Longer pause. Spider vanishes. But guardian doesn't.

And the skeletons continue to dance.

 

[Craft]

Six years in dealing with monsters had done something for Craft's reflexes. He quickly crouched and launched himself away from the guardian. Whether the filth it was going to spew was real or not, his survival instincts had kicked in. He rolls, rather ungracefully and then quickly springs to his feet, hoping he had at the very least avoided the arc of whatever the creature was about to spew.


"I really do NOT like these things."

Looking to the others in the mine with him, he noticed Sarah holding her elbow. The neurons in his brain are firing, but not quite making the connection just yet, "Sarah? Are you alright?"

He gives a quick nod to Rourke, who's arrival seemed to be either good luck or bad, depending on your perspective before turning his attention back to the guardian.

His brain was trying to tell him something about all this, but the adrenaline was pumping, overwhelming that whisper of realization.

 

[The Dullahan]

Marcos' words rang in his ears. Its not real. Its not real. A chant he adopted for himself.

But, in that moment, Rourke was lost.

Of all the things to conjure, the feeling of being back in that god forsaken country, was the one thing that could completely undo him. Pull at that delicate thread that was his sanity and start to unravel it. Where logic gets pushed back to the far corners of his mind, and all thats left is the illogical. The wounds that healed but silently festered. Fantom wounds, the doctor called it. He still wasn't breathing. The things beating at his mind now were more memory than reality. And the screaming just kept ringing in his ears. Was it his? Was it theirs? Where were they?

He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't have come.

How many times in his life had memories been more real than anything he'd seen in reality?

An image flashed in his mind of a woman with raven black hair and unique blue eyes. She was sitting at a bar, framing a pint between her hands on the bar top, as she looked at him. She had sad eyes. "Sam." Her voice cut through the madness, just like it did back then.

Rourke finally took a breath. He blinked and realized that a skeleton was reaching for him. He reacted on instinct, raised his handgun, and put two in center mass.

 

[Marcos Medeiros]

Marcos hurries over to Aaron’s side, water once again coiling around his right arm. Somewhere, in the mess of racing thoughts in his mind, he hopes that no one saw him use superpowers to supersoak some M&Ms.

He turns his attention instead to things that do need a good power-washing. Like those skeletons dance-walking towards him and Aaron. Marcos murmurs an incantation in a strange language that is definitely not Portuguese before unleashing a two-pronged attack of water and wind at the skeletons.

 

[Atrus]

Craft avoid the Filth exhalation from the guardian, then swings his sword at it, cutting in two. A dark blue vapour exhales from the wound, more like the world's oddest balloon slowly deflating than a Filth explosion. The Canadian hacks more and more at the wolf-like monster, dodging and slashing with the expertise of a long-time warrior who is really, really fed up with this sort of shenanigan.

Rourke's bullets hit the skeleton, forcing it to step back and into the cone of Marcos' elemental assault. The bones of the creatures get separated by the wind, and smashes to pieces from the force of the water. The fragments fly in the air like an ivory shower.

The sand, meanwhile, drifts away from Sarah's position. The circle around her widens and a sandstorm rises, engulfing everything in the room, making it almost impossible to see. The bits of bone and the blue mist get picked up by the impossible storm as well, melting everything into a confusing haze.
Though our heroes cannot see it, the ground under their feet is no longer the shifting, golden mound of the desert: it's solid rock again.

Somewhere in the swirling dust, Dave is screaming.

((Whew! Sorry it's late. ))

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah is struggling.

Each attack causes her to flinch, though she takes her hand away from her elbow. Her face is hidden by the curtain of her hair, but her body tension shows that she's working hard. On something.

The sandstorm gradually becomes less a sandstorm than a candystorm; then the candystorm is moved away from the people. No, not 'moves away'. 'Is moved away'. Something is acting on it.

The Anti-anima Sky flashes cobalt blue, then vanishes. The Filth creatures are swept up in the storm - for a brief instant, they are visible as distinct storm entities, but then they vanish in among the the storm.

Then Sarah makes a single scream. And all the maelstrom is gone.

Dave is no longer screaming. He's a whimpering mess on the ground. No, not literal mess. Metaphorical.
Aaron is standing behind Dave. He's got a rock, and he's not afraid to use it.

And the walls of the mine, ceiling, floor, everything. It looks like a mine again. Dirty. Coal-y. Stone-y. Yup, that's a mine.


Buuuttt.....

What the hell is that purple elephant doing there?

A small purple elephant. A very worn purple elephant. A plush toy, one ear damaged as if a puppy had been playing with it. The trunk no longer perfectly curled, the tail missing its tassel.

Looks like someone did think of a purple elephant.

 

[Craft]

As Sarah's scream echoes through the cavern, the fauxlth creatures start to vanish, and the mine returned to it's normal mine-ness.

Craft pivots and looks around the cavern, Dave's curled on the ground screaming, watched over by Aaron and his new friend, the rock. Sarah, Marco and Rourke all look to be alright. There's a purple stuffed elephant, which, in the grand scheme of things isn't the oddest thing that's shown up this night.

Letting out a deep breathe, he asks the question likely on everyone's mind: "What the hell just happened?"

 

[The Dullahan]

Rourke hadn't lowered his gun yet, his chest rising and falling with each breath he tried to pull into his lungs. His concerned gaze moved to Sarah, he heard her scream. And it was the Echo of that sound that seemed to snap him out of it. He holstered his weapon and walked over to her. But, he was still on high alert, like he was expecting something to jump out at him. He saw the toy elephant and wondered if he should be concerned about that. Rourke bent down near Sarah, "Sarah?" He asked softly.

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah lifts her head, pushes hair back over her ear, and nods to Rourke. "Still here, I think." She gets control of her breathing somehow, then answers Craft. "Me."

 

[Marcos Medeiros]

Marcos lets the water coiled around his arms drop to the floor with a splash and finally remembers to take a breath. He glances about the chamber, does a quick head count, and breathes another sigh of relief when he sees that everyone’s accounted for.

Good. The not-Filth creatures didn’t dance away with any of them.

He turns to Craft.

”I feat... something when I touched this wall,” he says, touching aforementioned wall. “A... network? Yes, a network. I think... maybe we connected to it?”

He seems slightly frustrated; there really isn’t any way to describe what he had gotten a glimpse of. But maybe Craft can see for himself...