legionmissions | SILENT HORIZON - [Part 1: The In-Between] [modplot]

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SILENT HORIZON - [Part 1: The In-Between] [modplot]

Who| Everyone who signed up
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.

The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.

The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.

It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.

Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.

"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.

After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.

The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.

At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.

It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.

And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(ooc: I've set this up so people can choose to reply either during or after his transformation (1 or 2), and then choose what setting they want to find him in (a, b, or c). If you'd like a different setting pm me, Roland has a lot of trauma to choose from so it won't be a big deal at all for me to write something else up.)

1, during the transformation

After a while it occurs to him that the heaviness in each step, the weight in every limb and every inch of skin, that the empty and bottomless ache inside his chest is a symptom of grief. The next time his head becomes too heavy, bows down, he catches a glimpse of himself.

"Guess it's not grief, after all." It's a dry, understated thought and a dry, absentminded sentence, one which brings deja vu with it. The phrase, deja vu, does not quite exist in either of Roland's native tongues. The concept, though - the concept itself he knows, and when the sensation introduces itself to him - reintroduces - he receives it with a dim horror. He's realized this before, looked down before, said it before. Then forgotten.

(a, cw death of a child)
Perhaps he'd said it in the caves, before he'd noticed the hand. Of course, before the hand. Of course he would have forgotten after that.

(b, cw a teenager burning to death)
Or perhaps during the Reaptide festival. That time, it's the fire afterward that would have done it. After the fire and after that scream, then he would have forgotten.

(c, choose your own adventure)
Or some other time. Some other place. He has some distant knowledge that not all the places here have been his. Every time he's wandered into one, it's taken him some many moments, minutes, hours, to notice.

2, after the transformation

After a while he stops wondering, even in that slow and dim way, over the odd sensations. He's stopped wondering at which place it is surrounding him, too, or how many times he has moved through it. Could be anything. Doesn't matter. He only goes on, moves on with long, smooth strides. If he looked down it might, once, have occurred to him to wonder at how smooth those strides are - that they shouldn't be, looking like that. He doesn't look, not at anything.

At some point a noise disturbs him. It doesn't matter what - the approach of a new person, a new scene settling itself around him, it makes no difference. One hand goes for a gun; the other stays where it is, raised to investigate the one question which he is still capable of wondering. He does not wonder, as he draws the gun, why his index fingers are the only ones which still move; he does not wonder why even they have lost all sensation at their tips, why they glint hard and white whenever the light catches them. He does not wonder about his hands in the same way he did not wonder about his face, why a moment before he'd had to send his searching hand down and down and down again before finding the corner of his eye.

It'd been disappointment he'd felt, he decides, when he found the answer to the one question remaining in him. If the liquid running down his cheek - well, down his jaw - had shown the sting of salt water against the raw meat of his index finger, that would have been something. But what he'd found running from the corner of his eye had been viscous, oozing over his palm slow and thick like crimson honey.

Most of his mind is occupied looking for whatever'd made that noise. His field of vision is somewhat lower now than it used to be. It takes concentration, accounting for that. But there is a part of his mind that's still aware of it, of the slow thick trail from his eye, down onto the hand touching it, down his forearm, dripping down onto the leaves and petals living now where his chest was, once. It's that part of his mind which might stop his trigger finger if his roaming eye catches sight of something which wakes him enough - the L insignia which sits shining on his own belt would do it. He's forgotten which word the L stands for. He hasn't forgotten what it means. In absence of that, of some reminder he'll be moving in to kill.

It's his teacher's voice that does it, at the last. He remembers thinking of Cort, at some time previous which seems very distant from the here and now. He'd wished for Cort, as much as he is capable of wishing for such impossible things. Cort, he remembers thinking, had known black from white.

Cort had also known him. His final student. It'll be your damnation, boy, he'd said and, when Roland's been run down to something heavy and heartsick, worn to his thinnest under the weight of dreaming, he hears that voice again. You'll wear out a thousand boots on your way to hell.

There's a siren call, feeling very alien, very much of this place, singing its dark and wet call inside Roland's heart now. He answers it.

"You've walked a long road, Roland Deschain. One with so many graves along the way."

The being that faces him appears from nowhere, shrouded in mist, his tentacles rolling like the tail of a lazy cat.

"What if I told you that could change?"

"No man can promise that." It's clear he isn't arguing. He's kneeling, staring at his fingers stretched over his knees. His voice is remote. The memory of his teacher's voice, that hadn't needed clarification. Cort's statements rarely had. But this creature - a spirit, maybe, or some kind of demon, one more in a long line of horrors - does. It seems to be laboring under an essential misunderstanding, and it seems the thing to do to correct it.

"Not without asking me to cry off my quest, anyway. That I won't do. I won't stop." This, still, is no argument. It is one of the deepest truths he knows about himself; if he has to choose, his search for the place which ties reality together will always win. He is very tired. But truth doesn't care how tired you are.

Victor creeps around the corner and sees something that must be what that tinny voice is referring to as the Faceless doing something to one of his teammates. And then the Faceless turns toward Victor and reaches for him -- but the vision mercifully ends before Victor finds out what the Faceless would do. He shrinks backward, cringing in horror, his tongue thick in his mouth and bile filling his throat.

But...but he can't just leave. He can't just let the Faceless do whatever he wants to a teammate, a person. But what, exactly, is Victor going to do to the thing that controls this whole place? With his bare hands?

He looks around and spies a piece of piping protruding from a wall. It's rusted through in places, but still seems solid in others. Maybe he can break it off and use it as a weapon?

It can't hurt to try. Not any more than trying to face this thing armed only with his wits, anyway.

"You don't have to give up your quest. But wouldn't it be easier to accomplish what you've set out to do if you no longer felt the pain and guilt from every death? What I offer you isn't incompatible with your desires."

His voice drops to something almost gentle.

"They're not strong enough to face what's to come. Your fellow heroes. They hide behind their screens, afraid to even talk to each other face to face. They refuse to kill, even when it's noble. They're soft. You can become stronger, Roland Deschain. Strong enough to protect them, to carry a weight they're too weak to bear."

He gestures to the world around them.

"I know this world of flesh must seem like a realm of horror to you. But it's not entirely of my making." A lie that can be made to seem like a truth. "It only reflects what lurks in the minds of those who accidentally wander into my realm. It mirrors the darkness in their hearts and those. And they only succumb to their dark desires if they hold such hatred in their hearts. For those of purer intentions and greater purpose, they can change into something better than what they were. Instead of self-destructing, they are sharpened and honed like a blade, into something stronger."

He doesn't see Victor coming -- or maybe he's only pretending he doesn't.

Edited 2017-01-17 01:38 (UTC)

"Better." He's looking up now, head no longer bowed but not really seeing the horror in front of him, either. He's thinking. Thinking of his teacher. Cort, who knew very well how Roland would end up. Wouldn't he have approved of this? Of his student becoming a weapon even more capable and deadly than the one Cort had been able to mold?

Not all the words he's hearing ring true. Some of them hit just far enough off-center to send his instincts to warning him that something's off here. But it doesn't matter. If there's some catch here, some consequence - what does it matter? If there'd ever been a time for shying away from the consequences of his own greater purpose, he doesn't remember it.

He's never been one to dither over decisions. Not when he knows very well what he needs. This place has shown him that. Maybe reliving all those horrors was a gift, after all. Of sorts. It's shown him what he needs.

"Tell me what I'm to do." His eyes are focused now, sharp, seeing the horror im front of him and accepting it. "What do you need?"

It takes more effort than expected for Victor to tear the pipe loose. Though, to be fair, he'd never had to try to tear a rusty piece of pipe out of a flesh wall before, so his expectations aren't exactly trustworthy. The metal makes horrible sounds as he twists it free, but nothing comes around the corner at him so either he's very lucky or the horrible thing is waiting just around the corner to surprise him.

There's a skill he hadn't realized he had. 'If I were a horrible monster, how would I surprise me?'

He creeps toward the corner and peers around it, prepared to jam the pipe into anything peering back.

It's the best thing, sinking into the ground like this. The ground which is soft, which contains parts he sometimes recognizes. That birthmark, for example. It used to belong to a man called Jamie. He'd even been nicknamed for it. Jamie red-hand. Roland had known Jamie for nearly his entire life, and now here is Jamie's red hand, the ground itself, here and waving at him.

It's the best thing to sink his way underneath parts of the ground beneath him, because the mercenaries are still patrolling. Perhaps it shouldn't be called a patrol, they're not keeping watch. There's no one left alive for them to be keeping watch for. Their patrols, now, are done to gather up the bodies.

This is how it'd gone. Become part of the dead ground, let his friends save him one more time until the mercenaries make camp and start to distracting themselves with drink.

It makes no sense to struggle. Perhaps the ground knows it. Perhaps that's why it's helping him down, moving him under its safety and its weight until he comes to his senses. Up to his thighs now, despite his efforts. He's always kept his nails short, too short to tear. Too short to even scratch. The flesh of the ground underneath him doesn't even redden under such short, ruthlessly trimmed things. His face, save for the pale and frantic blue of his wide lopsided eyes, is expressionless. It's for the best that he sink down under the ground, under all this. Before the patrols come.

She isn't a patrol, that's for sure. That said, she's also not interested in watching someone drown in their own literal misery - particularly not when he's one of the first (and the few) signs of human contact she's found. A drop of water in the desert.

"Oye, vaquero!" Called out from over his shoulder, footsteps cautious as she tests the ground itself to be sure it isn't going to have the same affect on her sanity the way it's seem to have done to him.

So far so good.

"Can you hear me?" Can you see me might be the more appropriate question, considering the way this nightmare seems to function, but either way, Sombra's certain she'll find out soon enough just how conscious— how connected to reality— he is.

His wide eyes narrow, focused for a second completely on her.

"Of course I can," he snaps, derisive, frustrated at a question that seems to him to come from out of nowhere, and be relevant to nothing. "Haven't gone deaf. Can you-"

The ground's reached out, wrapped its calloused fingers around his hand. That's why he's stopped. He's watching it. He stops pulling, lets it pull instead, and watches it.

"Can you..." His voice isn't sharp now. It's soft, distracted, and it takes him a moment to remember he isn't finished using it. He breathes, recites the words with which he thinks he was going to finish. "Can you find something better to do than asking ridiculous questions?"

His distraction (and her current isolation) means she doesn't take his frustration personally. It's a lot to take in— to tolerate or shrug off— expecting anyone to keep a level head when they've been literally held captive is a steep order, even by her standards.

"If you say so."

So instead she lifts her gun, leveling it at those grasping limbs and tilting her head off to one side, as though she's making offhanded calculations as to whether or not it'll pan out cleanly. "Try not to move, vaquero. I'm not in it to hurt you."

Which is all the warning he gets before she's fired: a quick set of scattered bursts aimed far enough away to graze the flesh of his distorted, humanoid chains. A means to make it easier to pry him loose. She isn't so careless as to get herself equally as stuck by jumping in with her own bare hands right off the bat. Better to have an edge first.

A test to see if damage alone might get the job done.

The mass holding Roland down shudders. He shudders. It doesn't effect the aim of the gun he's pointed at her. That stays steady. As he holds it there he realizes he's freer, a little. Aiming at her means he has to look at her. Looking at her, somehow, makes things like that easier to notice. His gun was free enough to be drawn; his friends, ever so slightly, have begun to retreat. Another shudder runs through him, ripples through the ground.

"What are you doing?" His voice, like his look, is sharp again. His mind processes what she'd said before she shot. "What are you in this for? Just here to threaten me, waste bullets?"

Why else would she be shooting like that? Nothing around here save him, after all, to shoot.

"What? No—" The accusation's like a needle to sensitive skin (she's worked hard to maintain her cover, to be anything but threatening) and it spurs her to instinctively yank her own wrist back, gun angled harmlessly towards the sky rather than at him. A second later, she adds, brow pinched up in sharpened concern: "Can't you see them?"

Because if not— if he hasn't even registered what's been weighing him down like an anchor— the question becomes not how to get him loose, but which one of them is going crazy.

"Them?" There is only one them in the direction she shot. The tip of his gun dips - a very rare thing, and it rises again almost immediately, but not so much of his attention is on aiming this time because his old friends are pulling at him again. Not physically, not yet, but pulling at him nonetheless.

"Them?" he says again. There is only one them here and Roland has never been in the habit of repeating himself, but the urge to be certain is strong. The disbelief when he says it is thick in his voice, thick even through the layers of distance and quiet that come over it when he looks down at this particular sight in this particular place. "Lady-sai, these men are dead."

Fingers rise up from the mass beneath him, grasp, begin tugging insistently at his inseam. He stares toward them, face dispassionate. "Perhaps I should be the one asking what it is you're seeing, lady. Be a shame for you to waste any more bullets."

Edited 2017-01-06 04:19 (UTC)

For a moment she doesn't really know what to say.

Confronting the disconnect between what they're seeing might be pulling the rug out from underneath them both; he's the first person she's found coherent enough (not to mention human enough) to actually talk to her. And between the shadows that have been haunting her— skittering just beyond the focus of her vision— and the obvious distortion of their surroundings, maybe it isn't just him that's slipping under the current of this place.

"It's not important." Is what she settles on, holstering her gun and chancing a few steps towards him without hesitation. "Ni modo, amigo. You're not hurt, are you?"

"No." The tip of his own gun follows her as she approaches and then, abruptly, he holsters it, just looks up at her. If it's an awkward position, looking so far up, speaking casually while sunk thigh deep into a mass of melted, pulling flesh, he doesn't seem to notice.

What he does notice is her words. He spends a moment considering them and then adds, "Amiga. And neither are you. Are you? I know you didn't fight here. There never was a woman who fought on this field. Certainly not one who handled her weapon so comfortably. You don't know me - or I, at least, don't know you - yet you want to know if I'm well. What is it you're looking for?"

Roland Deschain

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