Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sap entered the looking pool again. Her quest log said it was to be closed soon, and she didn't want to leave it without seeing another... well, possibility because that was what they were.

She didn't understand them, but she did want to see another. Perhaps, she thought, as she took another drink, I'll understand this time...

---

Amityville academy. Finally. At last.

Sap stared up at it's auspicious spires, feeling her... whatever... melt with adoration.

She had been trying to get into this school for so long, so impossibly terribly long. And now, finally, she was here.

Though...

Her smile faded as she looked at the slip of paper in her gnarled, branchy hand, the word JOB scrawled over it in blocky, gnomish writing.

She did wish that it was under other circumstances.

She shifted the white coat resting on one of her limbs, looking at the mask and the hat sadly.

It wasn't what she had wanted, but she should be happy to be here at Amityville at all. She should. Be. Happy. She swallowed, her saliva sticky and sweet like her sap, for it was her sap.

Well.

No use waiting.

She forced a bounce into her step as she headed off to the Cafeteria to start her job as a lunch lady.

----

Sap woke up with a sob. She hugged her knees to herself and began to cry horribly.

"No no no no no..." she whimpered.

But she got over it and resolved to never EVER let that possibility become a reality.

No comment for Phoenix's little jaunt, nor for her unsettling joy afterwards, because he, Taym, had once tried to murder a crippled man unable to fight back and maybe that had been Fiona's irresistible influence but it still counted and so he said nothing, because this wasn't real: it was a story. He'd heard his own voice in there in Lawrence's throat and her reaction had been noted but it meant nothing.

No comment, either, for Leslie's little horror show. He neither understood nor comprehended. It was meaningless gore with strange cryptic trappings, and he hadn't understood his own and had no reason to suspect they'd understand theirs.

"So," he said finally (nasal, with Georgia creeping in). "Are we done with the Fountain of Implausible Bullshit?"

When Ash entered this cell, she was quite surprised to find an impressive stone fountain in the middle of it. "Drink me" was written on it and curiosity wouldn't let her go without doing just that.
Right after taking a sip the ghoul fell asleep and dreamed.

She could see herself, her real self -if quite a bit older than she should be- standing, facing some sort of monstrous ... Cake? Was that really an evil cake? Anyway, she could see the Valkyrie getting ready to attack the enemy with her army of spoons. She had Generals spoons directing the Soldier spoons, ordering them to surround the bastardly pastry when suddenly, a Great spoon came closer to her and seemingly innocently bended to pick something.... The reaper's eyes hadn't left the fiend end never saw the betrayal coming. For the spoon mercilessly speared her ruler with her blunt head.

Waking up with a jolt, the Cheshire took a while to catch her breath. Really what an awful future. She really hoped it was only an effect of eating so much pastries at the mad tea party that caused the dream.
A chest had appeared right besides her and she took what was inside before leaving.



+ 3 levels
+ 3 loot cards

Grey walked inside this cell feeling a bit relieved to feel it was harmless. Or at least that ws the feeling she got when she went inside. Most parts didn't really feel save to her. She walked up to the stone fountain and looked inside to see the shimmering liquid. It looked quite pretty. "Drink me" she read and decided to just do that it looked harmless.



Luckily she woke up again seeing where she was wondering if the future really was going to give her such a mixed result. It was great and at the same time horrible. But it was just a dream. Thank goodness! To make her feel even better she found a little chest for her dream. A real one!

It was one of those nights: one of those tense hotel stays, the ones that ended in him spending two hours huddled into the cheap plastic chair in front of the cheap plastic blinds, Fionnghal summoned and tucked into his jacket to hide the tell-tale light.

Summoning her was more and more of a chore. On some days it seemed nearly impossible: it felt like a physical fight and it left him with sweat beaded on his forehead and an ache in his hands when they closed around the hilt. Other days it was as effortless as it had been before, with the ease of listless resignation. In some ways those days were harder. Those were the days he curled up into whatever hiding place he'd found and cried, less silently than he'd once been able to, and he would beg her, coerce her, threaten her: say something.

She did not speak to him, or caress his thoughts with a comforting one of her own, or send him the panicked instinctive image of an alert doe. She had not spoken to him at all, with word or thought or image, in over a month.

Headlights swept over the car park and he tensed, fingers tightening around the hilt even though it felt ridiculous to think that they might come in a car. His relief when the person that stepped out wore no white coat was equally nonsensical: as if they would come in uniform. He knew that they wouldn't. He had been in Death; he knew how this sort of thing worked, and somehow it had never occurred to anyone to question his interest in his specialization as anything but a keen bent for useful work.

He knew all the secrets. He knew all the tricks.

He knew the success rate.

He knew the consequences.

It had been thirty-eight days. He'd told himself he could relax a little at ninety, and give himself fuller freedom at a year, but at thirty-eight days he was losing more hair to every shower and the shaking of his hands had never been worse and the temptation of the bottle (and the needle) had never been stronger but it was dangerous, too dangerous, to give himself even a few hours out of his own head. Every instant required vigilance and vigilance required constant movement. He'd spent six months laying the foundation for this: establishing the traps that would trigger false leads months in the future, orchestrating careful false paper trails, arranging eyewitness sightings far, far from anywhere he might actually be.

He trembled, his teeth chattered; Fiona was silent.

One year: one year and they'd forget about him. One year and it would be too many resources expended on one piece-of-s**t turncoat. He hadn't turned to O--he'd looked into it and seen a future there as grim as the one he already had, and worse--and he wasn't peddling secrets to any civilian agencies. He was just... disappearing. On his own terms. One year would surely be ample time for them to give it up, to close the file and call the trail cold, and then he could settle. Find some nothing-town in some nothing-state, and do everything right that he'd ******** up the first time.

(Some nights he fantasized about finding some way to kidnap his own daughter, but he was not so cruel: she was seven years old now, and would not recognize him, and very probably did not remember him at all. Which had been, of course, the entire point, three years back. And they would, besides, be watching her. They would watch her more closely than ever, now, and he had already given them too much reason to take note of her.)

He whispered to himself aloud as he watched through the slit in the blinds, rocking back and forth with his knees against his chest in the uncomfortable chair: "Exit. Egress, for the means; metaphorical. Evanesce, for the act. From the Latin: evanescere. Van. Vanir: from vanus, empty. Vanish. Shared root. Latin conjugation, the classical, is--I looked up a lot for you, Fiona. The ring's not got the most symmetrical grammar. I guess that's the idea. Oportet vivere. Suggested translation: it is necessary. It behooves. Right?"

Fiona said nothing. She never did, any more. He kept whispering, rocking gently to and fro and watching a second car, this one driving slowly.

"Vivere: self-evident. To live. To live. It is necessary to live. You understand, sweetheart."

The car swung a K-turn at the end of the row and he clenched his fist around the knife and shook until he ached with the effort of shaking, and it drove past his window again and when it finally turned, apparently only a lost and confused tourist, back onto the highway, the shaking escalated and he paused to nonchalantly lean over and vomit hard into the wastebasket, as casually as though he were turning aside to avoid coughing in someone's face.

And he cried, with relief and terror. Three hundred and twenty-seven days to go and then like magic a house and a woman would materialize out of the haze of a small town, and she would have a little boy already, or a little girl, but there'd be more later and he'd love them as fiercely as though they were his own anyway, because he would have earned the right to call himself their father through the pain of three hundred and sixty five days of the vigil and the wracking of the silence in his head.

He rocked back and forth next to the smell of his own vomit, Fiona tucked into his jacket, and he watched the parking lot and he whispered to himself, to drown out the vastness of her silence: "Evade. Elude. Escape. Also from the Latin. Emancipate. Manumit: the archaic."

And so on, and so on, forever, while the clock on the nightstand ticked over and told him that thirty-eight days had become thirty-nine.

Mitfael squinted at the water held in his hand. It had came from the stone fountain before him, and while he is thinking of drinking it, the idea seems rather...strange. For all he knows, it could be full of bacteria which could make him sick. Then again, this is not exactly the normal world...so he drink the questionable liquid anyways.



Power.

Power is something prized, and could easily corrupt anyone into doing the bad thing. Yet it could also be the force necessary to remove evil.

However, Cahir could care less. He might now be the most power being in the world, but there really is no need to stick his foot into every single thing. No, he rather liked the world as it is.

Simple.

Power is wasted on him really.

Awaking from the strange dream, Mitfael's eyes widen a little as he had realized just what had happened.

Nope. He is not drinking that crazy liquid ever again. The dream isn't bad but nope, hallucinating is not a good sign.

Whatever it was that he drank had him fall into a deep sleep. At first the silence was a relief, something different to focus on instead of the usual bullshit that came day in and day out; but like all good things, it came to an end. The scene changed, and when he looked down at himself, he realized; he was powerful.

The most powerful thing in the world. That was who he was. What he had become. It wasn't something he wanted; his whole life he had spent under the radar, quietly figuring everyone out just to make it through the day. But not here, not now; he was the focus now. The centre of attention. He was being studied, categorized and condensed. They wanted to know what made him tick and why; they were in his shoes now, and despite the power that surged through every ounce of his being, he felt hopeless.

It was too much for him; nobody should have this much power.

His decision wasn't even a difficult one; it was nothing for him to make himself unstable enough to destroy himself.

The most powerful entity in existence caved in on himself, on his own free will, just to make it stop.

Lute slowly blinked at the liquid and then the words drink me. It wouldn't be the stupidest thing she had done since entering here, and so on a long gulp she drank up. As soon as the liquid slid down her throat she was out. In a dream, no, once more a nightmare. This was beginning to be a persistent theme here she noticed as she trotted the grounds of Amity.

Nude.

Fully in the buff poor pink from head to toe Gabriel Santiago raced around the corners to avoid the many eyes of other students. This was a horrible fear, an illogical fear but a fear none the less. How had she gotten this way? Well someone had stepped on her long shirt sleeved of course and somehow..though she wasn't sure how, all her clothing unrivaled with the simple stepped on thread.

The only weird thing about her nightmare was that the students that pointed and laughed were referring to her as a ..third year. Waking up on a panicked gasp, Gabriel Santiago clutched over her heart and rose up to run. That had been terrifying, her cheeks were still burning from the nightmare. As she raced away, GS was met with a treasure chest and it was quickly open before her grand escape of total awesomeness. You go Gabriel Santiago, you go.