( open ) shadows creep and want grows stronger

[thisisontherecord]

WHO: Lois, Clark, Jon, Gustave, & anyone else running into her on her open prompts!
WHEN: The duration of Mission 11.
WHERE: The horrorscapes of Etraya, also the reality slippage spaces.
WHAT: General prompts are in the top level, specific starters are below. The general prompts are linked on main log as well.
NOTES\WARNINGS: Horror, loss, monster attacks, physical injury, emotional injury

1. shadows creep | graveside revelations

   
   Lois sits, notepad on her knee, writing with visibly unnecessary force and flourish. This section of Etraya is recognizeable, for anyone who's been out to Nevergrey, absent of any notable landmarks beyond the trolley stop. She'd been turned around when she'd stepped off the trolley, intending to follow the tracks back toward Alexandrea's Wake, when the tombstones had started forming in the fog around her.
   
   Was she still in Nevergrey? At some point following the tracks, with the unending fields of tombstones to either side, Lois isn't sure. Has she crossed over a river, trying to get to the barrier, trying to trace back to what counts as home, to where Clark might be, to where Jon might be, there's only this: the fog, the wind whispering in tears, and the aching melancholy of understanding that all good things must one day die.
   
   Hence her sitting before these particular tombstones, adorned by beautiful statues that might have been angels in another time and place. Here, they were familiar to the heroes beneath the tombstones: Superman with his cloak draping from his broad shoulders, smiling and apologetic. At his feet, a pair of glasses, but also other scattered near-memorabilia: a peanut-butter jar, a small plastic cow, a lea of silk flowers that flutter in the breeze, and notes, so many notes and cards, some faded in ink, some crisp. Moreso than the wilted and dried flowers likewise scattered around are those written tributes.
   
   To his right, a smaller figure, arms crossed over his chest, his smile beaming up at Superman. Superboy, too young ,and matching the hazy dates on his tombstone at his statue's feet. Likewise the base of his statue is covered in memorabilia: glasses, a cow figurine, a dog, a little farmhouse, a little skyscraper. A robin, in kitschy porcelain glory. And also letters, and cards, and a snow globe that improbably spins its little sparkles of ash over a volcano. Lois has no idea why, but she doesn't need to.
   
   Because none of this can be real, for all it's true. The balance of love and fear for people who are larger than life and equally so wonderfully flawed and grounded, people whose hearts are bigger than their bodies, people who feel near invincible, but are not. She hazards the same guess that to them, one of the fears that lingers would be her own weeping angel over 'Lois Lane, loving mother, loving girlfriend,' but that's not a fear she has. Her own mortality is a given, not to rail against but to race against to do all she can before the road runs out.
   
   So there she is with a notebook, her own words sprawled on the page, and the two tombstones whose names can't be read, whose epitaphs morph and change the longer she observes, whose birth and death dates are nebulous at best, whose ages read 31 and 11 weeping blood from the second digits, pooling at the base of the tombstone and absorbed into the long grasses overgrowing the graves. She's been writing down each permutation she sees in words on the tombstones, considerations for later reflections. The most recent one, however, tips her balance into throwing her pen at the stupid, perfect, apologetic statue of Superman standing so impossibly tall and unreachable over her cross-legged position on the grass of his grave. The pen strikes one thigh, bouncing off, falling back toward the ground.
   
   "You do not get to make me a widow before I've ever been married!"



2. and want grows stronger | on etraya's waters

   
   ( The waters of the rivers, or the seas, or whatever it is that flows around each of Etraya's islands flow underneath the rubber raft Lois has in the water. She's found it increasingly difficult to breathe the close she gets to the barrier, the more she keeps reminding herself vent. Each paddle stroke in the water, moving from one side of her craft to the other, feels more laborious than the last. Whatever this feeling is, it doesn't like her pressing back against it, the written reminder on both wrists: vent. Even when the letters dance into other shapes, enough blinking brings them back to that truth.
   
   vent. )
   
   I'm lodging a complaint, ( She wheezes out eventually. ) about inadequate vent filtration. For nebula bullshit.
   
   ( She pauses, looking toward either the shore that's just now looming in the fog, or the sound of a splash in the water. Either way, Lois calls out: )
   
   If you're alive and you can hear me, tell me why six was afraid of seven!
   
   ( The more nonsense her questions, she's found, the less likely she is to hallucinate a response. Vent, for the moment, becomes a wayside thought. )
   



3. deeper than the truth | emergency ration kit handouts

   
   Hey.
   
   ( Lois calls out to the shape of what may be a person, or may be Manny, because she knows there's at least One Manny out here. Waving in a slower, exaggerated way, she follows that up with: )
   
   When did you last get anything to eat or drink? That you remember?
   

Comments

closed | custom prompt | lois, jon, and dadsel in distress clark

[thisisontherecord]

( Time has ceased to have a reasonable flow since the Fog bled over the entirety of Etraya, lapping at their heels like weightless waves, swirling with movements real and imagined. Part of Lois had feared exactly what's already happened with separation, even knowing there's no way to have headed it off. Part of her knows this will continue to happen, this situation beyond any of their control, but the grim line of her lips and the determined set to her shoulders is one Jon will no doubt be familiar with, even across the multiverse.

She tightens the straps of her backpack, tapping on her earpiece as she flicks toward Clark's username. Sends him a quick text: )

to superman2: Clark, sitrep. ( push thoughts of her father out of her head. ) Are you conscious? Are you injured? Can you see anything around you?

( This is the Daily Planet, stepped through on the ground level and completely changed in the process. Unlike everything outside dancing in shadows and murmurs to pluck at their attention, what she and Jon see now is very physically present horror: what looks like bulging lines of fleshy tubing thicker around than either one of them twisting down the hall like some hellish umbilicus, smaller tendrils breaking off to press, root-like, through doors and against windows. Clark had been there with them when they stepped in, notably absent now. Her eyes drawn to the pulsing grotesqueries, Lois forcibly pulls her attention back to her son. )

Hey, kiddo. Do you want to try starting a group call with your dad? See if we can figure out where the he...ck he was pulled when we walked in here?

( She lurches forward as a fat, pulsing tube of flesh unfurls behind them, sealing off the inner set of doors. There are other exits, Lois knows of five, but the one they came in from is now fully out of commission. She swallows, telling her stomach it can be queasy some other time. )

[solarson]

( brave. what he needs to be is brave despite how disturbing and disgusting all of this is. really, for a second he thinks he might hurl. luckily, he pulls himself together and takes out of his spyglass tucked into the waistband of his pants; with him a backpack slung over his shoulder with supplies inside. not everyone has a cool utility belt like the bats do, ok? plus, being without his powers, he needs to be more resourceful and ready for anything. so. backpack it is.

peering through the spyglass, he takes a quick look around and makes a sound of discomfort as he comes to realize... yeah. this is all very real and not an illusion. )

This isn't fake. ( he looks over to lois then, expression a little concerned. ) I can see it all through the spyglass. Which means something might actually have dad.

[thisisontherecord]

( Call them the backpack buddies, because it's the best way of approaching the current series of unknowns. Lois waits while he looks through the spyglass, then flicks her gaze down the hall, past the elevator that's slowly being forced open so another pulsing tendril of pseudo-flesh is revealed. No way they can use the elevators then. One of the stairs it's going to have to be.

She meets Jon's gaze, giving him a concise, firm nod. )

And chances are if something does, it's related to whatever's growing through here. You know how fire-people have to check all rooms on each floor when an alarm's gone off? We can start with that while we try to get your dad to respond to us on earpiece. If something has him, it's only had him for as long as we've been in here, and he's not alone. We'll get to him.

( Firm, because like hell is she leaving Clark here, just like extra hell would she leave Jon here either. )

I'd like to avoid having either of us touch these things unless we have to for now. Let's head left — when your dad gets back to us, we'll want the stairs. There's two off that way.

[solarson]

( spyglass tucked into the waistband of his pants again, he drops his backpack around against his chest and tugs open the zipper, rummaging around in it for a minute before he pulls out a lighter and can of hairspray. just in case. backpack secured on his back again, he looks up to lois, hands curled around his items and nods. )

We don't go alone. No matter what.

[thisisontherecord]

( Well there they go. Jon's ready to makeshift a flamethrower, and Lois is ready to throw down, which is perhaps a touch ridiculous, but it is what it is. She nods to Jon when he looks up to her. )

No matter what.

( And then it's heading the way she'd indicated, taking it at a trot for the wide open section, slowing down as soon as the space they're crossing narrows. Being careful of the at times writhing flesh-roots means also pausing when one contorts nearby, then darting forward with a gesture of her hand for Jon to go first, Lois taking up rear position.

It's passing by one of the fire alarms that gives her pause for another reason. Close-by on the wall is a fire extinguisher, and she reaches up, pulling it off the wall. Not a deadly weapon, but it could cause some damage from the cold, or at least irritate whatever it lands on. Maybe on another level, they'll also find a small fire-axe. Otherwise all she has on her are kitchen knives. (The bread knife seems especially promising, she... supposes.) )

There are two more halls and one big room down this way, before we can see about heading up another level. Floor by floor.

( Another rope of flesh curls along the ground, unfurling like a carpet, coming to a gentle stop with the twitching ends pointed away from the both of them. Lois barely represses a full-body shudder in horror. Nothing about this moves right. Everything about it is horrid. She sends Clark another text from her earpiece: Please tell me you're conscious and breathing, Clark, I don't think Jon or I are going to have a great time hauling you out if you're dead weight, but by god we'll figure it out. )

[newsbeat]

[He can't...move.

Clark drifts in and out of consciousness. On the latest drift out, he tries to stay there, to remember why he's here, how he got there. Jon and Lois — they were with him, they'd promised to stay together. The Daily Planet had made as much sense as anywhere else to search for the vent and then —

He doesn't remember what then. He can't really move, limbs responding sluggishly to his mental commands, buffeted back by something he can't see beyond too-heavy eyelids.

There's a faint buzz at his earpiece. Lois. It's got to be Lois or Jon, or both, looking for him, wondering —

His powers are gone but through a great feat of willpower Clark is able to lift his arm enough to swipe at his earpiece, calling up the HUD and giving him the chance to send a message back.]

hrkp

[thisisontherecord]

( That is not reassuring, even as it's immensely reassuring. Lois blinks at the mangled help on her HUD, glad that it's not immediately visible to Jon. This is going to be bad. Ergo, time to lock in. )

Jon, let's take this at a jog. Chances are he's wrapped up in some of these flesh-roots, but he's conscious — he's trying to text.

( She hits the stairs, peering in through the window before slamming the door open and gesturing for Jon to head up with her: she'd seen that request for locators on the map for people, and if wishes were horses, she and Jon would be war-steed crashing through everything right now. Instead, they have stairs free of anything but smaller roots that dangle down the central section of the stairwell, twitching in a breeze that doesn't exist.

Heading up the stairs to hit the next floor, knowing a number more exist: )

We'll trace to the thickest portions. No getting caught. Promise?

( A swipe of her fingers to Clark: We're coming. )

closed | custom prompt | gustave, what they cry in the dark

[thisisontherecord]

Lois adjusts the ace bandage wrapped around her left arm, her sleeve rolled back up to her elbow to accommodate the length of it. Her arm's still sore from the antibiotic shot she'd told the companion bots at the hospital to give her, but after everything she and Dwayne had encountered on Farway, she wasn't taking chances.

She hasn't been able to get in contact with Clark or Jon over her earpiece, but she has to wonder if that's due to the fog messing with their perception of the contact they'd usually have. Too hard to tell, even as she makes her careful way of the street, seemingly undisturbed by the shadows that lurch and billow in the fog's constrictive view.

Footsteps echo, and Lois cants her head as she listens to them: not the stalk of a serial killer, not the bombastic thudding of heavy weight, but cautious, unmimicking. Potentially a real person; enough that she turns to squint off to the left, seeing movement somewhere in the fog. What resolves is... person shaped?

"Hey," she calls out, hearing a whisper of an angry cry elsewhere in the fog. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Her hand shows three fingers, all three middle ones, thumb and pinkie finger folded in against each other. The crying outrage grows louder, but not louder than the current beating of her heart. The illusions don't talk. By and large, this has remained true for her until now.

[demainvient]

He'd been looking for the vent, but that was when the team was together, able to watch each other's backs and keep each other from falling prey to the illusions cast by their own minds. Now, he's looking for the trolley tracks, the cold sturdy lines of metal that will lead him back to the apartment building and the rest of Expedition 33. That's how they'll find the damn thing, with the team working together.

But retracing his steps in the fog is a perilous endeavor; he finds himself getting turned around and around, now wandering through a maze of cold stone walls, now walking through a silent, watchful forest. Voices call out to him, some familiar and some less so — he closes his ears to the things the fog whispers to him in the voices of the people he loves the most and keeps moving stubbornly forward.

This voice is different. No whispers here, just a firm, incisive question. No illusion has asked him anything of the kind, and Gustave squints through the fog, trying to discern the shape of her hand. "—Three?"

Yeah, no, three seems right. He lifts his hands, too, both of them: one flesh, the other spindly dark metal laced with gold. In the fog, something calls out, hoarse and furious, but his attention is on her arm, the shape of the bandage there. "Are you hurt?"

[thisisontherecord]

Three. She breathes in, nodding to him when there's more of him to see. She's not sure it's visible in the fog, but she takes a cautious step forward, eyes flicking to his raised and empty hands. Prosthetic? Gauntlet? Lois can't say she can tell.

"Nothing recent," she calls back, an honest answer with the benefit of being vague for how recent it is or isn't. Time's been hard to track here, and when she's trying to get back to her boyfriend and their child, it's been distressingly hard to pin down. With her earpiece acting up right now, she can't even trust she can get through to either of them.

Lois is still trying. She's never going to stop.

"Where are you trying to get to?" In the fog, no other footsteps echo. Only that cry, words getting clearer over time, causing her brow to furrow. ... igno... stop... ignoring... stop ignoring us...

[demainvient]

She doesn't look as though she's in immediate distress, so he shifts focus to her question as he comes closer. "The apartments. My friends and I got separated in the fog and that's our rendezvous point... or it would be, if I could find it."

But he'll keep wandering through this fog until he can pick up the trolley tracks or find some other familiar landmark. He has to get back to the others. He has to find Maelle.

This area doesn't look familiar, and those sounds — he half-turns, searching for the origin of those furious voices. They sound so... young. "Do you hear that?"

The voices hiss and rise, clamoring in response, and he lifts his own. "We're— we're not ignoring you! Who are you, what do you want? Come out where we can see you!"

[thisisontherecord]

Lois likewise pauses, eyes narrowing as if squinting will allow her to see further through the fog. It doesn't, of course. Nothing but the vagaries of when the fog decides to ebb allows them greater visibility, or the displacement into real horrors, not the fog-induced hallucinations of them.

The angry murmurs of childish voices rise and get less understandable, a pressure against her chest as if tiny hands are pressing against her collarbone. Only — a blink, and she sees them. Small hands, gripping onto her without purchase, attached to a small body, and big, spectral eyes in an equally large head. The proportions of a child, spindly and awkward, cute and horrific, but transparent, the impression of what might have been here.

She shudders as she feels more tiny, grasping hands latch onto her leg. Her back. A tug on her hair, with a frustrated creel of a howl. Another hand, latching onto her own.

Remember us! Remember! Bury us! Bury our bones, remember our names!

"I... are you seeing them?" They can't be here, she thinks to herself. It does nothing to the children, made of mist and not the shadows that plague the fog. Lois lifts her arm, and the ghost holding onto it rises gently along with the pull of her arm, face contorted into an expression both heartrendingly sad and childishly furious. "The kids? Asking for burials?"

What hellish genre shift are they trapped in now?

[demainvient]

He doesn't know now if it's the fog or his own unreliable body causing this pressure to build and build into his chest. His heart falters and pounds in turn, unable to find the correct rhythm, and his breath is heavy in his lungs. "Yes, I see them."

Because he does now, sees that as clearly as if they'd been there all along. Small bodies, meant to be rounded and soft with childhood, elbows and cheeks both dimpled. The lines are there, but they're faded somehow, translucent, all the living color leeched out of them. For a moment he thinks he sees Guillame, Alexandre, Adrien surrounding him and reaching up, more angry than plaintive, but then their faces shift and the likeness is gone — but the children remain.

They cling to him, grabbing at his arms and pulling themselves up, tugging him down. Bury us! they demand, childish voices high and furious. We won't let you forget us too, remember us, you have to, have to, have to! Dig!

The children paw at him, dragging at him, and he kneels, ignoring the way the small arms circle about his neck. He reaches for them, trying to touch their pale, spectral faces, seeing in his mind's eye Maelle's glossy, tear-filled eyes. "Yes," he tells the children, voice gentle despite the rasp of suffocation. "You deserve to be buried. We'll—"

He looks up at his companion, whose name he doesn't know. "We'll help. Right?"

deeper than the truth

[restingstitchface]

[There are numerous people outside who would be better off hundreds of feet beneath the earth. But being trapped in that dome is the opposite of appealing. His mind had sparked to life considering the data he could unearth by heading outside to explore. Curiosity for what people might see also plays a part. Fascination for what those from other worlds might share.

She calls from the fog. Some new friend he has not made, who seems to be waving for dramatic effect as she emerges from the mist. Then she speaks of food? Sensible.]

Some hours before setting into the fog.

[He tilts his head, assessing her to be a real person and not a figment of the fog.]

I'm quite alright.

[thisisontherecord]

( His response is the kind of coherent most figures in the fog haven't been: too mundane, really, and while that's not settling, it's consistent. Lois already has her pack around her front, and a sealed water bottle pulled out along with an energy bar. She offers both over to the unfamiliar man without literally forcing it on him.

No real point to doing that, after all. )

Worth keeping on you for when you need a little extra energy, then.

( She doesn't try to come closer than the politeness of what extending this allows; it's just not wise in present circumstances. No point in being rude, just... aware, as with most things. )

[restingstitchface]

Of course. We can never be too careful.

[Crane likewise keeps a cautious and respectful distance. He can do plenty of analysing from a distance; he can see her cautious and prepared nature in how she has everything she needs. Her words reveal some level of foresight and planning - and no small amount of wisdom.]

Heading anywhere in particular?

[Like a vent. But that goes without saying.]

[thisisontherecord]

( There are several answers to that question, but the underlying one remains the same: she wants her people to be safe, they need to find the vent to make that happen, ergo. )

Back to the barrier. Still looking for the vent, even if half of it is from the water.

( Considering the stretches only available when out on the water. The fish seem to be one of the animals not all ported elsewhere by Aurora, considering the number she's seen independent of fog-induced hallucinations. Her favorite of those being the Loch Ness monster and the time she 'saw' a giant squid attempt to tackle her inflatable boat. Nothing had happened, but that'd been a heart-skipping moment nonetheless. )

You?

[restingstitchface]

The same. Some can withstand this torture better than others. But we cannot forget who cannot. I've questioned the worst kinds of monsters so this kind of environment is...

[Clinical? Routine? Her question has gotten him to share threads of his career. Something that puts him in the company of monsters, while being on the other side of a firm divide.]

I wouldn't call it familiar. But I've seen the worst humanity has to offer and that? That's probably worse.

[Because people choose to inflict such pain on each other. It's all rather fascinating.]

[thisisontherecord]

Worse than what your mind drudges up?

( She asks, with a slight upward curl of her lips. Frankly, she agrees. Lois doesn't find her dark depths surprising or mystifying or even properly terrifying. What's worse is the separation from her boyfriend and her son-who-is-and-isn't. People she wants to make sure are safe, and can't, because the situation keeps them from being able to do so.

Not to mention there are real threats out here, not even hinged on each other. )

I can see it. What humanity can do to itself is... often cruel in ways that people don't want to understand.

( Because for some people, understanding those cruelties removes their ability to care about the good things in their lives. Desensitizes others to the worsts, until they stop knowing what is a bad, and everything becomes degrees of unpleasant but perhaps tolerable. )

On the waters

[lockdownbuild]

Because modron hierarchy is absolute and unforgiving? Wait... I guess fear wouldn't even enter into it...

[Aliarra is struggling less than many -- in part because she has an iron will, and in perhaps much larger part because she has magic enhancements to that will from items that haven't lost their power even as she herself has. And speaking of functioning items, she isn't bothering to dip into the water either; her mask still grants her flight, meaning when she pops out of the fog, she is a foot or two above it.]

...Okay, you're definitely not a hallucination, because there's no way I'd be hallucinating you. No offense, really.

[thisisontherecord]

( Lois snorts at the answer, because it's exactly the sort she appreciates, even if not the punchline for the terrible joke she's telling. Which is neither here nor there — the point is they're here, right, and real.

To Lois, that's worth holding onto. Even while her boyfriend and son are separated from her, the fog unkind to the concept of concentrated group time. They have their regroup points. It will be okay. Not fine, but okay. )

Reassuring, since I can't imagine I'd be hallucinating you either. Not really ranking on my list of personal nightmares.

( Which: )

So your gear is what's been enchanted, huh? I wondered about that before.

( Those are the things not losing effect, just like general technology. The problem all seems to be biological in suppression. )

[lockdownbuild]

Yep. Not that I don't have my own blessings from Skeldric, but very few of them have any purposes outside of destroying all that oppose me, or preventing them from doing so to me, so you don't get to see them much.

[And of course, not at all, right now. It's an absurd dichotomy. Why are magic items okay, but her own blessings not? It doesn't make a damn bit of sense.]

If any of them were magic vent-finders, we'd be laughing out way through this mess.

[thisisontherecord]

Don't know that I've heard of Skeldric before.

( Which is more another point as she applies paddles to the water, gently directing her floating boat away from the shoreline. )

Hah! If any of them were magic vent-finders, I'd be nominating you for Most Valuable Player for this whole mission. What the hell is with having most the boundary out on the water anyway?

[lockdownbuild]

The god of war and battle, whose grace I carry and whom I serve. For all the good that is doing me at the moment.

[Well, at least there's no current battles or life-or-death challenges, so she doesn't NEED all that so much. But still, being shut off from it so easily is not something she's ever going to cheer.]

Are we sure we're over the water? Maybe you're just forcing this boat across a gravel field.

[thisisontherecord]

If I am, I damn well better be earning the workout to go along with it.

( She looks amused, but there's not much she can say: she's been so reality grounded that what's taken her by surprise are those moments fully real. She hates those. )

You run into anything in the fog that wasn't just hallucination or illusion?