MISSION: THE SLEEPER

[ximilian]

● ● ● M I S S I O N   3 . 1

INTRO • MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN • IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT • FYI

// INTRO. beam us down!  

It’ll be during the early hours in the morning when the communications device pings the Orbers in the midst of whatever you may be doing: whether it’s sleeping in, having a leisurely breakfast, or being deep into whatever task it is you’ve planned for the day. Viveca’s familiar voice filters through, a cheerful interruption.

// VIVECA.AI

Hi everyone. We’ve got your next mission ready, but I was asked to give you the file a little bit in advance so you could prepare better… so here it is. I don’t think I can delay the teleportation machine more than a day, so early tomorrow morning it’ll be time to go. The situation in Kilnan is a little strange, so I’ve prepared an antidote for you just in case. Pick yours up from the infirmary before you get going. It’ll only work once, so be careful. The orb is somewhere in the castle… I trust you’ll find it. Good luck.

Without any further fanfare, the comms go silent and you’re left with a new mission file and some rather concerning information within the report about a sleeping sickness. But instead of the immediate departure like you might be used to, you’ve been given the day to rest up and prepare for the trip down. So pack your things, grab the antidote, maybe enjoy a hot shower and a good night’s sleep … or if you’re not the sleeping kind, find a good song to jam to and get you motivated for what’s to come.

The next morning before most of your alarms will go off, the teleportation machine will hum to life, crackling with stored energy. Those who have been here for longer might notice this difference and what Viveca had meant when she said she didn’t think she “could delay it for more than a day”. As soon as you’ve been gathered together, you’ll feel the pull — and a tug that removes you from the station.

For what might seem like an agonizingly long moment, you simply hang there in stasis, white light surrounding you accompanied by a strange, ethereal chorus that whispers in your ear, informing you of the goal currently set before you and the cost to achieve it, as well as the exchange for its power —

But before you can venture to open your mouth and respond, the light around you materializes into a fog of cool, damp cloud cover. The moment your feet touch solid ground and the fog parts as you move through it, you’ll see a marble road ahead.

Welcome to the country of Kilnan, Orbers.

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// PART I.MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN  

Around you, the courtyard of the Crystalline Palace opens up — white marble pavement, extravagant sculptures half-covered in moss, and fountains that have long since dried up — its splendor abandoned and left for time to neglect like a long forgotten secret.

If you look behind you, you’ll see nothing but clouds; and underneath you is mostly open sky. Faintly (if you really squint), you might be able to make out the grassy earth somewhere below the clouds but the distance seems a little treacherous to even consider taking your chance to get there. As such, the only way is forward — up the wide steps and through the imposing, but majestic, double doors of the castle.

1.0   Once inside, a seemingly empty castle greets you. There are no servants rushing to greet you, no hustle and bustle that you'd expect from a castle this size... just silence.

You’ll find yourself standing in the middle of a grand foyer. Daylight filters in through tall windows framed with long flowing curtains that seem to sway just a little, even though the casements are clearly shut. Further in, you’ll notice multiple staircases leading you to the upper floors, some of them straight, and some of them curved, while others wind upwards in a seemingly endless direction towards one of the towers. Most of these stairways will appear to be your regular run-of-the-mill means of egress, but the moment you turn away and look back to where you’d just come from, you might notice that the stairs have disappeared … only to be right in front of you when you glance back. Another set of stairs may take you in one direction, but try and retread your path and you’ll find the very same staircase you’d just used will take you somewhere completely different.

These stairs might be playing tricks on you, or maybe you need to get your eyes checked.

From the foyer, hallways appear to sprawl in all directions of the wind, some of them lined with paintings from a very deft hand (or hands). Walk along and peer at one of these incredibly detailed depictions of vibrant rich cities, lush idyllic countrysides, alluring, well-manicured gardens and find that all of them seem so incredibly lifelike — almost uncannily so. If you study one for too long, you’ll find yourself losing focus of the world around you, only seeing the painting that beckons you forward … and helpless to resist, you take a step forward and wind up within the world of the painting. Is it as beautiful as it seemed from its frame? Of course it is. Just look at that colour! Feel that breeze! Take a deep breath of the air around you. But remember that you probably can’t stay here forever; you have to get back. And the way to the castle is … somewhere here. You just have to find it.

2.0   Inside the castle, your task is clear: find the orb.. and for some of you, perhaps try and look for the people sent to the castle before you. To do that, you’ll need to search through the different rooms and accompanying towers… but the moment that you try to, it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary castle and the rooms are not exactly just rooms either. Some have stark differences in scale: in one room you enter, all the furniture within appears to be made for giants; while in another room, everything has been shrunk down to its miniature.

Further still, another room will appear to be deceptively normal… but the moment you step past the threshold, the door will lock shut behind you and then fade into the wall like it’d never been there at all. You only have one clear objective then: search through the room for a way to get out… or make yourself a way out.

3.0   When you enter this next room, you find yourself having to pause to take it all in, it’s so incredible that you can barely believe your eyes: whatever this room holds within seems to cater specifically to your individual interests and desires like it sees into your soul. It might offer rare books to those interested in knowledge, the best entertainment for those who seek self-indulgence, decadent foods you’ve always wanted to try for those with a discerning palate. What a wonderful time! So wonderful, in fact, that it’s too easy for you to forget the passing of time … what was it you were doing before? Nothing important, surely. Right?

4.0   There are rooms that don’t even seem like rooms at all once you’ve entered them: you open a green painted door and instead of the marble floors, you step right into a hedge maze. When you turn to glance over your shoulder, you’ll find that the door has vanished, and your hand lingering on the door knob is now clutching at a cluster of prickly foliage. With nowhere else to go but to brave the labyrinth, you move forward. The path you take will twist and wind until you realize that the best-case scenario here is coming face-to-face with a deadend rather than the other delights that the maze holds in store. One end greets you with a particularly angry tree, hell-bent on wiping you off the face of this plane; at another turn, a creature that looks suspiciously like a Sphinx, sitting on her hind legs and blocking the way, might ask you a riddle in exchange for passage; and there is always a chance that the right-hook you take will pull you through a cloud of deceptively beautiful fluttering dots of lights that whisper to you with the voices of people long-dead before you.

5.0   Another room will pull you — quite literally — into the eye of a storm. Hail and rain pours down, drenching you immediately, while lightning flashes in the open sky — it almost looks like the countryside you saw beneath the castle, but that couldn’t be, right? You don’t remember leaving the castle… And more importantly — the rain really is coming down, and that lightning is striking dangerously close. It might be wise to find some temporary shelter, perhaps a little cottage to hide in, or at the very least, get to that overturned hay cart and hide beneath it — and wait for a chance to find your way back to the exit door … wherever (or whenever) it may appear.

6.0   Not all of the castle will be entirely strange, however; there, too, are regular, non-eventful rooms scattered within. A large dining room with the table set for one, a thin layer of dust collecting over the silverware, for instance; a library filled with old tomes and scrolls that don’t appear to have been touched in years; a storage room full of strange items; and, if you make it into the cellar, you’ll find the kitchen, its food storage still robust despite the fact that some of the meat has begun to gather mold, and some of the vegetables have darkened and gone a little mushy. On the layer of dust settled over the floor, there is exactly one set of footprints, perhaps smaller than you’d think, but even those seem at least a number of weeks old.

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// PART II.IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT  

It’s almost too easy to become distracted by all of the strange happenings within the castle, easy enough to forget about the sickness you’ve been warned about — and perhaps, with so far there having been no sight of anyone actually affected by it, it’s easy enough to think that there might have been a mistake or a misunderstanding. But the longer you spend within these beautiful white stone walls, you become aware of a whisper: quiet at first, the barely-there breath of a language you know you understand and yet you still can’t quite grasp it, the meaning frustratingly close to the edge of your consciousness. And the more you try to touch those not-words and too-light-whispers, you feel a little dizzy before the world around you suddenly changes.

7.0   At first you think you’ve simply fallen into another room, just another hidden trap-door or painting you’d stepped into. So perhaps you don’t even realize that you’ve fallen under a spell at all when everything around you is just … dark. Beneath your feet, if you focus your gaze, is a still surface of a black lake glinting — and yet you are not sinking. Every step that you take forward creates a little ripple across the glassy surface. As your eyes adjust, so do your surroundings begin to take shape. It will be different for everyone, this dreamscape morphing and melding into a scene (an island, a meadow, a small patch of forest, or will it remain the lake?) or setting that reflects you — it’s where your soul feels most at ease … for now.

8.0   As expected, the dreamscape does not stay still for long. The more time you spend here, the more it seems to draw inspiration from your memories. Suddenly you find everything around you materializing into solid form, the experience being dragged from the depths of your mind into manifesting a vivid study in touch and sight and smell and sound. It’s something you’ve already been through before, but whether you like it or not, this memory is being replayed around you and now you’re the observer … you and the lucky (or unlucky) person who has entered this memory with you.

Do you stay, or do you try to run from it?

9.0   The stronger the memory, the stronger its effect on you: the heaviest memories, whether they’re happy ones or sad ones, may latch onto your subconscious so tightly that it pulls you right into the memory itself.

Just as these dreams often do, it’s hard to tell whether this is made up or reality itself — perhaps you remember that this has happened before and you’ll try to change the course of events. Or perhaps you think you’re living this memory for the first time. Whatever it might be, you find yourself fully convinced of its authenticity … but the power of belief is a dangerous thing. Beware that the injuries sustained in this state will become real, visible to those who might be observing this — and observing you — from the outside. (You know the line: if you die in the game, you die in real life.)

NOTE: These strong memories might also draw you into them as yourself from that time, so someone wandering into this re-lived memory might find you there as a child, a teenager, a young adult, or perhaps someone with the same or a different face — whatever you were at the time of the memory.

10.0   Once you become aware of these memories, you may push them away or will them to stop. The moment that you do, the dreamscape will immediately shift to become its unaltered state once more. The other way to escape these memories is to leave. At the edge of your dreamscape, you will find that the air shifts and shimmers just a little differently than the rest of this space … and once you get close enough, the doorway will open to let you out of your dreamscape and into someone else’s like a chain of several small links. If your dreams are more akin to nightmares, perhaps you enter the door willingly. But just as likely, you might simply get too close and are sucked into the passageway.

And you never know just whose dream you end up in next …

The only way to leave the dreamscape is by being woken up by someone administering the antidote to you, and it will only work once. So if you fall back asleep, remember — if it takes you in again, you will remain under this sleeping spell, unable to wake … at least until the cause of the sickness has been found.

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F Y I

• The events in this log take place during the month of November.

• If you have questions about any of the prompts or the mission in general, please direct them HERE.

• To submit a search request regarding exploring a specific place during any of the prompts, please do so HERE.

• Voting for how the characters will get the orb will go up November 22. Though voting will be done in an OOC post, it is an IC vote in the sense that you should pick a choice your character would ICly make. What the characters choose to do will determine the conclusion of the mission.

• And finally, have a soundtrack for this log! ♪ ♪ ♪

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Comments

[bossily]

[She prides herself on always being able to give some kind of motivating speech if the situation calls for it. But everything he's saying now are things she's felt and asked herself. And she can only hold him tighter in response.]

I don't know.

[Finally she answers, her voice thick with emotion. She's so close to tears that she can't bring herself to lift her head and look him in the eye.]

But I have to believe that love is worth something. Even if it's not enough to save the people we care for so deeply. Maybe it's enough to save ourselves somehow. Even if we don't feel we deserve it.

[kovach]

[ maybe it's enough to save ourselves. he honestly doesn't expect her to say anything that would reassure him (whether she's really here or not, though he knows for sure now that she's here, that she's real), but somehow she says the exact thing that would serve as its own reminder to him.

after all, he had been saved by love once, by feeling it, by being reminded that there was more inside of him than the killer inside of him — the boy inside the man.

of course, he doesn't deserve it. not to have it, not to feel it. but it's saved him all the same.

the gun drops from his hand, clattering to the ground — or maybe it doesn't even land, maybe it simply disappears in the construct, in the dream. all he knows is that he isn't holding it anymore, that his hands are free to press along her back, holding her as he leans himself further against her hair. ]

Clara — [ he wants to say something. about what it all means, about what it's worth, about her being deserving, about wanting to save her. about so many things. but instead of words, he just sighs deeply, his embrace wrapping tightly to hold her protectively to his chest. ]

[bossily]

[There really aren't any words needed at the moment, and she's grateful for that. It's all too easy to melt right up against him and forget the setting around them. The gun he's been holding is forgotten, though she can't ever forget the scenes that have played out before her here. She's grateful that she knows more about him, but her heart still aches for the fact he had to live it.]

Tak.

[Eventually she whispers his name, more affectionate than filled with upset. She feels safe in his arms, and is reluctant to move out of his hold. When she does, it's so she can reach up to cradle his face in both her hands. She wants to look him in the eye and try to see what emotion she can read there.]

Thank you. For letting me in.

[He could've refused to address her. Could've tried to block her out, force her away. But he didn't, and because of it she feels closer to him. Like a little piece of the puzzle has just slid into place.]

[kovach]

[ he's never hid the kind of person he is, the things he's capable of, how violence thrives in his bloodstream no matter what body he's placed into. after this, ctac earns a hold of him, taking the foundation of what he became this night and using it to strengthen the monster within.

her hands cradle him, raising him up by his cheeks to peer into her eyes, even if he looks to her with eyes that aren't his own. still, everything they portray belongs to the man that stands here, ached with the past, recalling when it all began, and dreading that she's made to see it all, like there's portions of himself he'd wanted to keep her from, not to lie, but to keep her from having to walk through his dirt. ]

This ... [ his voice is nearly strained, eyes faintly red. ] It's all me.

[ he doesn't want her to see it and yet he does. he wants her to know exactly what she'd signed up for, what getting entangled with him means. ]

Already a killer at twelve. Next day, a CTAC soldier. They burned out every violence-limitation instinct in me, replaced it all with the conscious will to do harm. That's me. Even now.

[ because he won't lie to her and pretend his hands are clean. those same hands gently hold against either side of her neck, his forehead leaning toward to her. because for all the violence his hands are capable of, he wouldn't hurt her. ]

... You sure want to want to be a part of any of that?

[bossily]

[When she cries, it's not because of him. It's for him and everything he's gone through. To take someone so young and put them into that life. But instead of cruel or a monster, he's so kind. He's a killer, and she knows he's capable of violence. That's never been a secret.

She could tell him about the Doctor, tell him about Gallifrey. But that's not her story to tell. Beyond that, she doesn't want to compare him to the Doctor. She can't compare them, because he's made a space for himself in her heart. And because of that, nothing he says frightens her away.

The tears fall as her forehead rests firmly against his. One of her hands slips upward, palm pressing against the back of his head to keep him in close to her. This is a dream, a memory. But she can feel his breath hot against hers. She can smell the smell of cigarettes on him, mingled with the lingering scent of blood. He always seems to be walking around injured and this makes more sense as to why.

She would take all this pain from him if she could. There's a desperate urge to shield and protect him, even though he's the one that's better suited to be the protector. He would never hurt her, no matter how stained with blood his hands are. She knows without a doubt that even now he'd do anything to save her if he had to.]

You said it yourself, this is who you are. It's all you. And I'm not bothered by that.

[In the back of her mind, it registers that he's a soldier just the same as Danny was. And she's fallen hard and fast for Takeshi. But she's not blind enough to believe that love can save either of them. But oh, she finds herself wishing it would.

Her lips graze against his, soft and reassuring. She's here. She's not pulling away or going anywhere.]

You'd never hurt me. And I don't want to be anywhere but close to you.

[kovach]

[ he doesn't remember the last time he'd been held like this, really held, like a child who just wants to sink into the safe embrace of warm arms. he never wanted to run to his mother, knowing all that she carried just to keep them from getting hurt as she was, and when it came to rei, he wanted to be strong enough to hold her up so she wouldn't have to do it all alone.

but through all of it, no one's held him; he never sought it, never imagined himself being saved by anyone. not until quell had. but when he'd lost her, he was left floating into the darkness, left to his demons, to the fire, to the ash — but now he's brought steady by clara's soft fingers, by her lips gentle on his own, and he doesn't want to go anywhere else.

if this is still a construct, it's one where he wants to stay. ]

I will someday. [ of course, it's not a threat; his voice is too soft to even sound like one, but it's a reluctant warning, sadness carried in the words from what he knows from experience, from circumstance.

he'd never want to hurt her, not on purpose, but his skin is made of knives and his kiss tastes of blood. and yet, he wants what she does, to be close, to be nowhere else.

he leans further into her, bringing his cheek against hers, sliding to press his face to the safe and warm space at the crook of her neck, his arms wrapping around her tighter. ] But I ... want to be here. Right here. With you.

[bossily]

[One arm remains around him as a hand goes to press against the back of his head, cradling him against her. She's here now, and she's not about to let anything here harm him. He's so worried about hurting her one day, and maybe he will. But that can't be what they focus on. They'll never be able to move on past this moment.

A strange thing happens though. The longer they stay there, holding one another, the more the scenery around them shifts and fades. It changes to absolute nothingness, a white space where only they exist. There's no reminder of his father or sister here. Just the safety of her arms, and an open door across the bright expanse of the room.]

I think it's safe to go now.

[She whispers as she presses a kiss to his temple.]

We can walk through the door together, see where it takes us.

[Whether it's another recess of his mind, another dark dream for her to see through with him, or something in her own mind. Neither matter much, as long as her hand is in his and they don't let go.]

[kovach]

[ he doesn't even initially notice the changes around them, eyes closed and letting himself simply be consumed by her embrace, like he could sink into the warmth of her arms and never pull back. it's a strange thing, to hold so much trust for her, to believe in the way she'll cradle him through it without letting him go, but he also knows there's a part of him that simply craves it.

it's only when she speaks that he finally allows himself open his eyes, slowly blinking and noticing the shifting change of their surroundings, the loss of that room in harlan's world now a blank emptiness, void of all but themselves.

with a slight nod, he gradually eases the wrap of his arms, sliding them from her body, save for his fingers following the length of her arm to reach for her hand, unable to fully snap away from the tether. ]

Okay. [ it's a simple word but there's a heavy weight that it carries before the sigh from his lips releases it into the empty air around them.

he's ready to move forward, to go into the next screen, and he's ready for it hand-in-hand together with her. ]

You and me. [ words he's spoken to her before. simple but saying much in so little. ] Let's go.