Welcome to Gaia! ::

Khopesh raised, reading to flick down and sever the last string, Soren's hand paused, eyes flying open. His entire afternoon making apple butter. Was that a lie too? Would he put Alice to sleep only to discover that his jars upon jars of delicious, apple buttery goodness, was just a dream? Would he have to use regular butter on his bread? Or sub-par store bought apple butter.

Alice was going down, and she was going down hard.

Strings: 1/10

He was walking down the halls of the school, it was an awful normal thing to do, except that the hall ways seemed to go on for a terribly long time, they went strange directions, and as he walked there was an increasing dampness in the air. A dankness that seemed to pervade even his skin and pulling at him with a curious weight.

He realized that there was an old sword, lightly tapping his leg where he had tucked it through the well-tanned leopard skin, and he brushed a handover the soft fur, and played his fingers over the hilt. Touching it gave him a certain feeling of…dread, there was a black crown around the hilt, it seemed awfully important, and it bit into his thumb with one of its small sharp points.

He wiped it off on his chest, under the fold of his shawl, but felt something curious there. In his human form, there were no scales at the center point of his chest, they framed him, but the long belly scales did not seem to translate to this body, yet there they were, small scales, now coated with a smear of his blood.

He lifted the shawl, pushing it aside so he could see; worrying that there was something wrong with his pin. Surely he would be in trouble if he turned into his true form in the hallways of the school.

There was a small patch of scales there, no wider than the spread of a fine dagger, no deeper than perhaps two scales across. They were black scales, black like black pearls, and yet the nearer their small roots they were the darker the became, as though shadow spread from his skin and teared up there, hardening into new dark scales.
He touched them with his fingertip and felt a terrible sharp pain, as though someone had tied a cord around his heart, and pulled, as though that string ran directly through these strange black touches against his otherwise pearlescent patterning.

He’d forgotten something important about that mark… something… just important to him, because he was not a piece of the larger puzzle, he’d simply for a moment been tangled up in it.

He felt the tug again and stumbled forward, downward and waded into water up to his knees, thick, black water that was cold and left him feeling more sluggish than before.

He heard…screaming.

Terrible high ghoul screaming, not a harpy or a Banshee, but something else, something terrible and pained and desperate and he hurried, slogging as fast as he could through the thick black water, though it felt the faster he tried to go, the slower he was, ornaments of gold kept snagging on him, weighing him down further, catching on the long sword, bobbing against his legs in the water, gold cups that left trails of bright glowing blue water. He was lost as he ran, he knew that because he found room after room that were not the –right- rooms, and yet somehow he passed through them with only an increasing sense of dread.


At last, at last he found the source of the screams, he knew it was with the certainty of nightmares, pulling himself through the tar like water that dragged at his legs like a warning and finally entering the pitch-black door…

SHE stood there, Amaria… he thought her name was, or something like that, no Amrita…that was her name, she stood before the strange statue of the reaper he had seen in the nightmare of the dark door.

The screaming seemed to come from the walls, the very stones themselves reverberating with a terrible sound that had somehow been made the very mortar that made this room, this… prison.

Amrita stood there, silent, a small smile on her face as though she were just beginning to smile, or perhaps as though it had just begun to skip away, and he had to pull her away, because something terrible was about to happen.

He knew that, without a doubt, just as he knew that he would never reach her in time, he tried to call to her but no sound came out of his mouth, the only sound was the terrible screaming from the walls, and those, in turn had started to bleed, great long trails of shadows.

The water rose up, and it was not water, it was darkness. It swallowed her, it consumed her and he realized that the screaming was in part his own.

Someone brushed past him then, a familiar blue figure with bright flashes of color; splashes of orange and gold and so many beads and scraps of cloth that made up his handsome clothes.

Remi, Remi who he hadn’t seen in ages, Remi who’d moved on in so many ways, and how could he blame him, Remi who walked smiling towards that terrible shape. He tried again to warn him, but if he made any sound at all, it was drowned out by the terrible cacophony of sadness and terror.

Remi turned to face him, laughter in his eyes, and then he simply leaned back, and fell into the waiting shadows, and was gone.

He heard someone call his name… he turned, and saw Aldira, she reached for him and called to him, but before he could respond, the shadow touched her and in a moment, she was stone.

The shadow then swept up the water, if it had ever been water, and all that remained was the darkness, and –that figure-

That figure that stretched out a hand, and in that hand was a bloodied dagger.

His chest throbbed at the sight of it, he looked down then, and saw that there was blood and fear soaking through the shawl, he yanked it back and saw the terrible gash that was now where the black scales had been. Darkness crept outward from the edges, crackling dark lines that ate away at him, he tried to touch it, and found that his hands were fading, he was fading…

He was dying


He was forgotten.






((Jarring awake next post…then I will break webs))

[[ Hamika Roll ]]

Eyes opened and she found herself in front of a door. This would be her existence from now on, wouldn't it? Starting at doors and going through them. She glanced at the purple figure and the black and listened quietly to them. On some level, she simpathized with ALICE; if she'd been able to get out of her cage and have fun, she would have done it too.

But it was time for reality and dreams to separate.

The door opened and Hamika stepped through to ALICE. The girl pleaded with her, the zombie lulled to a half waking state. Yes... staying with her would be better. All would be better if she was asleep...

No.

No. Hamika shook her head. No. She reached up and grabbed three of the strings. "I am sorry ALICE, but it's time for me to go home." She ripped the strings from her shoulders, feeling the rest slacken ever so slightly.

Her eyes never left ALICE.

[Strings: 7 / 10 ]

Reference: Quest/Year One Students: 2d6 -6

Olivia opened her mouth and promptly closed it when she found herself in the long stretch of hallway with the single blue door and two figures beside it. Perhaps this was a dream, she gathered, though when she had fallen asleep again was the question - how many times was this school going to make her sleep?

Though, from what those funny looking figures were saying, perhaps helping them out would put an end to it. This time around at least. The ghoul didn't exactly see how much of it could have been her fault when she was so unaware of what she was doing in the first place, if ever, but if going through the door and confronting Alice would help. Well, it would be the least she could do, right? Besides, she didn't like the idea of not knowing what was rel and what wasn't. That seemed exhausting and so very confusing.

As was the Alice that she found in the next room. She looked the same but didn't, her body all blackened out and those shadows on the floor. "I'm sorry," she murmured to the desperate ghoul. Suddenly, she staggered in her place, suddenly tired. Olivia closed her eyes shut and shook her head, trying to fight to fight the feeling that had washed over her suddenly. So weird, so rarely did she feel like this.

And thankfully something inside her knew as well and pushed her to keep protesting. To push her finally into a waking state. Fully awake. Olivia felt her body sway as he eyes popped open to a vision of strings all around her. The ghoul stared at them as they flickered in and out of tangibility. Cut the strings, was what she heard.

Olivia reached out and pulled as hard as she could.

[ Threads: 7/10 ]

The wall of them soon began to thin, falling limp to the ground as she continued to grab and pull. The pooled, grew but remained useless at least, devoid of their purpose of keeping her a puppet for Alice. All things considering, she wouldn't had minded anything the blonde ghoul had told her, could have forgiven her, might have kind of during that final battle - until she had woken up and all and came into this situation - but there were just many conditions against. She wanted to be free, to be with the others. So, Olivia fought and pushed through until the last of the threads holding her fell loose at her sides.

Olivia was free and felt everything tumble back into place. In a way.

The small table in the corner of her room was littered with filled pages, crayons were scattered about and some even rolling the short distance to the ground. But she continued her work, humming softly to herself as a few of her grumpkins laid about - a few attacked the coloring devices as they fell, finding it a fun fun game.

With the snow melting the the temperatures rising, she realized that her make shift windows needed a bit of a change. Less snow and blues and a little more greens and other shades; dead flowers and the pumpkin sun at its fullest. So, Olivia had gotten to work. But they weren't quiet looking right, frustrating the small ghoul a bit even as she scribbled more and more bits of wax, layer by layer. She hated to waste a sheet but sometimes it needed to be done. And so many had been set aside and one more to the pile at her feet.

She flailed a hand, crayon clutched tight in her fist trying to work out a kink that might have been there. But then she noticed something... odd. A blot of brown where her crayon had most likely been as it swayed in the air. Olivia touched it and it simply hung there, fixed in place. She peered at it, leaned in close and realized it smell of the wax of her crayon and she grinned. Wondering and waved her hand again. A mark was placed right in the air. So, she tried another, picked up more colors and went to work. They took stayed, hovering in the air.

Olivia was able to create anything!

Well. Sort of. Her crayons allowed her to draw anywhere!

Yeah, that was more like it.

[ Threads: -3/10
Free.]

AJ's

String: 4

[ Milo

Threads: 5/10 ]