orderfromchaos | 14. the dam breaks

[Open spam]

[Like Arthas, the barge's limits on him cut out the moment they enter the arena. Unlike Arthas, he's had a lot less practice handling his power at this level. He feels cracked open, feels every leaf and bramble and rock like ants crawling through his insides, placement and pattern and chaos. He can feel a lightning-blasted tree a wuarter mile away turning from dry wood to green, hollow and weeping sap where it was cloven in two. It's too many random wild things leeching at him, gravel turning to grids, fallen leaves turning crisp and new on the ground. It's too much information, raw and strange, the twisted false ecology of a forest that isn't really a forest, just scenery for a deliberately inefficient killing ground. The wall is like a migraine on all sides, blank and blaring, unreadable, an edifice of white noise.

Dillon whimpers and curls into a ball, eyes screwed shut, hands over his ears, tries to think about his own breathing, and not rabbits in their warrens, not the footfalls of hunters and hunted, not the static-y wrongness of it all.

Around him, things thrive, feel refreshed and strong. Wounds start to close on anyone who limps into his proximity. A faint sense of serenity presses on anyone who comes near, a sense of rightness in the workings of the universe, a purposeful rhythm.]

[Public video]

[When he's gasped and shuddered and finally managed to pull himself together a little - he still feels overwhelmed and profoundly uncomfortable, but he can breathe, hold the crushing awareness back just a little - he turns on his comm, not bothering to hide the scars his mirror counterpart never acquired. His hair is neat as ever despite a few hours twitching on the forest floor, but his eyes are shadowed and strained and symmetrical dirt smudges mark his cheeks.]

Elsa? Abigail? Helena? Are you guys alright?

Is everyone - if you're hurt I'll try to find you.

[OOC: So Dillon looks stupid vulnerable but he definitely isn't - he probably won't kill people who attack him though, because he doesn't want to be around corpses right now. Uh. Yeah. I'd love him to get attacked by a couple different mirror maruaders and fend them off, and I'm totally cool with wibbly time or spam set later in the week when he's on his feet OR curled up against a tree again. Also totally up for scared people gravitating to his aura, which is basically the size the plot requires, but somewhat larger than sight-range, probably. He is also available for reviving people you don't want to have to death toll.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh right you're...not capped here. [Grimace.] How's that working out for you?

...better than last time.

Fewer corpses so far.

Always something to hope for, given these circumstances.

And the world isn't ending!

[So much good news.]

It's just unnatural from the beginning is all.

Oh, well. We're fairly used to 'unnatural' around here, let's be honest.

Weird isn't unnatural.

It will end, though. This - badly welded stage. There's an earthquake waiting.

[He could make it happen now. He won't. But he could.]

Maybe don't slam that door too hard until we're not still standing on the threshold, perhaps.

[He reads you, Dillon. He can't say he'd shed a single tear. But shaking things up while they're still trapped inside? Sounds...unwise.]

You know those cartoons where people open doors and it's just like - the abyss, turn around quick?

That's our threshold. I don't think there is a path out. Space is bent wrong.

So what is this? Breach? Port?

I don't know why I'm asking, though. Survive the day, avoid the dangers, get out. Outside of that none of it really matters.

To keep up with the sailing metaphor - it feels kind of like an iceberg.

[It's afloat, keeping them out of whatever abyssal ether the barge sails through, but it's small, adrift, and it wasn't made to last. And it might do a lot of damage to anything it encounters.]

Icebergs melt eventually. But these...collisions, whatever you'd like to call them, they never seem to last very long. Everyone anticipates we'll be out in a couple of days, do you agree?

This place won't exist more than a couple of days. It's - it's - it has no future.

Whether we get out before then - man, I guess? I hope?

If we don't, then the situation is going to get markedly different markedly fast, that's one thing for sure.

But maybe just one thing at a time, for now.

14. the dam breaks

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