bravenewworld | Descent into Darkness

Descent into Darkness

As the characters arrive, they will find what appears to be a rather deep cavern. Upon entering, the caverns are quite narrow, with twists and turns everywhere and different tunnels that all seem to be interconnected. As characters travel deeper within the caverns, reality around them will start to warp, they will start to see and hear things that aren’t necessarily there - images of old enemies, past failures, voices of condemnation, visions that strike at the soul and core of the characters. Once this begins, it will only increase in power and volume, demanding it be confronted, lest they be trapped within these caves forever.

[OOC: This event will run for a week. All characters who enter the caves will be subject to some of their deepest fears, darkest demons, and most abject failures. To overcome them, characters must help each other out, finding their purpose through strength of character and resolve to move forward. In general, these visions should require characters to come to grips with themselves. Illusory images and voices can and will appear and can take any number of forms, depending on what is most appropriate to a character. Additionally, characters may thread with each other and are encouraged to help each other out to overcome these personal demons. For those who wish to take part, they are able and encouraged to narrate their own personal demons, which will be on display for everyone who enters their thread. IC threads may be made in this post.]

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"'Go on', she said. 'It'll be fun'. The next time someone tries to bring me along on an adventure, I'm gonna tell them to bugger off." Rincewind wasn't having a very good day. It started with him standing at the mouth of a cave.

He'd been there for a while, watching others pass by his reluctant self. They'd slip under the curtain of darkness without a second thought. It was unnerving how easily they did it. Especially, Rincewind had given the entrance a scrutinizing look, when the mouth of the cave could've passed as the maw of a massive creature. Lots of things, he'd reasoned, had mouths. And they didn't have to be living neither. Plenty of things, living or not living, go around and eat other, smaller things. The smaller things, in this case, and provided a morbid sense of humor, were people.

In front of the cave, Rincewind had served as a landmark of reluctance. For every person who'd gone in, he'd taken a step back. He'd almost been halfway out the clearing when ... a blur. He must have run. That's how it usually worked. He must have run right into the cave and now, who knows how much later, here was Rincewind. Here, nestled in the depths of the earth, he was hopelessly lost and, worst of all, hearing things. Rincewind could cope with crushing disappointment. He'd weathered countless side-glances of questioning disapproval. He could even handle the strange, disembodied voices tumbling out of the inky darkness. He endured what they were saying. It was all logic. Of course he was a coward. Of course he was the bottom of the barrel. Naturally, he'd had the equivalent to a negative when measuring his spelling capabilities. All of this, Rincewind could feasibly handle. What he couldn't handle was not knowing how they could needle him so remarkably well with the practiced hand of a lobotomist.

Rincewind skipped off a wall and skirted around the corner. He told himself he wouldn't respond. Hearing was one thing, but talking back meant acknowledging that he was mental. Instead, as he pounded through corridor after corridor of naturally formed tunnels, the Luggage (a nightmare in its own right) on his heels, he breathed the only primal mantra that everyone knew since the minute they'd been born.

Rincewind screamed.

Frozen mid-step at the bone-chilling sound of that terrified scream, Waver was briefly reminded of those terrible nights when he had gotten lost in the Towers as he tried to find his way out with his loot. It was the scream of someone who knew true horror, someone begging to be forgiven for some unknown sin and release from this treacherous prison that they had all somehow become trapped in. Equipped with an active Flash spell, Waver looked around with terrified eyes for the source of the scream.

"Who's there?" He called. There was no way he could keep his unease out of his own voice.

A resounding, "AAAAAAAUUUUGGHH" reverberated back. It sounded to be getting nearer.

Meanwhile, from Rincewind's perspective the winding labyrinth of natural cave was beginning to take on a noticeably un-cave-like approach to the whole existing business. For one thing, the walls were receding. Thousands of white pinpricks began to dot what used to be the ceiling and they seemed to stretch on for an indescribable distance. As Rincewind ran, he noticed the ground was undergoing a metamorphosis of its own. He tried to skid to a halt, but after years of honing his flight response, abruptly stopping was never feature he'd thought to install. Rincewind fell, face first, into sand. And it was sand. Pulling himself to his elbows, Rincewind reached out and grasped a tentative handful. Silver granules ran between his fingers like frost-touched silk.

The Luggage trundled up behind him. He hadn't noticed. His attention had been drawn forward and up and up. It seemed the disembodied voices had found bodies. They were made of the same black space that composed the sky only without the lights. They were blacker than black. The light was too scared to touch them.

"Oh, bugger."

"Rincewind?!"

Waver rushed over to his friend, not entirely paying attention to the changes in the scenery due to his concern for his friend. Given his own encounter earlier, and the encounters of other people he had run into thus far, it wasn't hard to imagine exactly what Rincewind was running from.

At least the Luggage was here, though. That was good.

Dropping to his knees in the sand (when did it even become sand anyway?) Waver made to pull his friend back into an upright position.

"What are you even running from this time? Did you bother a territorial Aggron or something?"

"Waver?" Puzzlement briefly subdued the rattling terror that clamped onto Rincewind's mind like a vice. He blinked owlishly and made a mad grab for some infinitesimal amount of self-control. He stopped shaking. That was a start. He tried to say something else, but gibbered. It seemed his eyes wouldn't move. They were glued straight ahead at... at-

He let himself be hauled to a kneeling position. Rincewind feebly grasped for Waver's shoulder and tried to turn him. "I don't want to be here," he whimpered, making a desperate effort to struggle to his feet. He was trying to push Waver, to usher him away from this madness. He wanted to run. THEY needed to run before the things... before they-

RINCEWIND. It was a voice unlike any other. It was cold and sharp. It leaped directly into the mind, ignoring the ears and bypassing the whole sound wave business all together. A figure broke from the forming masses of shadow. It was roughly human-sized and it held a scythe. It was how Rincewind had envisioned Death. WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?

Utter confusion at Rincewinds frantic actions quickly gave way to rigid fear when that ominous voice made it's presence known in Waver's mind. Freezing on the spot, with Rincewinds clothes still clutched vice-like in his hands, Waver slowly twisted around to stare at the shadowy presence.

"W-what?" He stammered, not even trusting his own cognitive processes enough to form coherent sentences in that instant. "What is that?"

Rincewind clung back. Cowardice always liked company. It made the act of being cowardly, less of a thing to be frowned on. Terror had power. Not like bravery. Being brave had a nasty tendency of souring. It had a high mortality rate and usually meant being dead.

The surrounding blotches of shadowy figures began to form half pokemon, half human things. They looked like inanimate ideas that thought they'd had a knack for taking shape, but turned out to be about as good at is as a toddler's drawing. Their voices were insubstantial like intrusive thoughts trying to make themselves more than just a thought. They needled away, pricking all the little insecurities Rincewind held about himself. Every failing doted on (his inability to graduate, how he couldn't seem to remember any spells except for the worst spell in all of history, that one time he'd dropped his books everywhere and got ink on everything, etc.). Every fear, real and unreal, traced with the fragile touch of an icepick. The most annoying part was they could be tuned in on by a third party. No secret, it seemed, was safe.

The figure stepped closer. It was entirely skeletal and was shrouded in a cloak of shadows. A pinprick of blue light shone out of each eyes socket. "I think," Rincewind started, fear quavering in his voice, "that's Death".

'Death.'

The name itself was enough to pierce anyone's heart with an icy, skeletal finger. Waver, caught in a wave of uncertainty, glanced between Rincewind and the ghostly, surreal figure multiple times before his mind was actually able to process it; shadowy, ghostly concepts were difficult for his scientific mind, comfortable enough with the theoreticals that he could study, to understand.

"....Why is Death after you?"

"Oh, it's not me. It's my life. He's after my life." He stopped. The figures had crept nearer like an encroaching darkness on a dying light. Slowly, drearily he continued. "Yours too. It's only a matter of time."

Like a noose, the note of fatalism hanged in the air.

Of all the things Rincewind feared, it was Death he feared the most. He could survive anything if he ran fast enough, but he can't outrun Death. And really, when he smoothed the rough parts of life out, whatever hadn't killed him, usually hurt a lot anyway. Life, he quietly mused, was like sentence. Rincewind's just happened to be a run-on. Death, he thought, was that final period that put a stop to the whole mess.

Speaking of Death, the skeletal figure grinned. He couldn't help it. It pointed its scythe directly at Waver. NEITHER OF YOU CAN ESCAPE ME. IT'S JUST LIKE HE SAID. I WILL BE THERE. WAITING.

The thought of the twisted, winding sentence that was Waver's life ending so abruptly didn't strike fear in the young man's heart at first; it was annoyance. Even if he wasn't a terribly powerful individual, he wanted to at least have a semi-colon before meeting that ultimate period.

"Like the winter always comes at the end of the year, right?" Waver blustered, for he was small and filled with determination to be a little more than just an easily trampled sapling in the wilderness of the world. "Like how a clock always strikes midnight at the end of each day."

He shook his head. While he didn't harbor a fear of death, he didn't seek it-- nor did he appreciate it seeking the two of them out.

"Why do you even want us anyway? We haven't done anything of interest to anyone, especially you."

ALL LIVES ARE OF INTEREST TO ME. The figure said, but it did not step closer.

"Well, mine isn't interesting," Rincewind replied, so utterly petrified with terror that he'd somehow gained a temporary backbone. "If it's all the same to you, we'd rather not die today. Plenty of other people out there, taking risks. Being interesting and getting themselves killed. Go, er, bother them."

His false bravado was already slipping, but Waver was helping. His presence dulled the sharp stabs of doubt emanating from the other things. It cushioned their stabbing remarks. It helped him focus.

"Mine's not interesting either," Waver huffed, unabashedly following Rincewind's lead now. Although they were both cowards by nature, there was still an element of courage and creativity that was necessitated by such a mindset. It took a truly brave and stubborn soul to just say no.

"Alternately, if you really want us, why not just let us live long enough to do something interesting? That way, no one's wasting anyone's time!"

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