multiversallogs | in the woods dark and deep I offer you eternal sleep

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in the woods dark and deep I offer you eternal sleep

Who: Alba, Alexia Swiftdawn, Anna Demirovna, Bruce Wayne, Cliona Donovan, Data, Don Draper, Ilde Decima, Irene Adler, Jae-hyun Kim, Jaime Lannister, Kalinda Sharma, Marie-Sixtine St. Vincent, Martel, Nuray Amedi, Penelope Lane, Odessa Wander, Pepper Potts, Rex Lewis, Seoraj, Shrieky, Sunny, Wolfgang Einhorn, Xas
What: Something bad is afoot, and you must help.
Where: Abrogate Green, Badside, Barrackham, Chnum, Echomire, Flag Hill, Gallmarch, Ketch Heath, Pelorus Fields, Raven's Gate, Sangwine, Serpolet, Sobek Croix, Stoneshell, and the northern woods
When: July 22nd to the 30th
Notes: People are slow right now and a few are on hiatus, so slow-tagging and back-tagging are totally fine. Please check the accompanying OOC post for info and to coordinate.
Warnings: Disturbing content, will include violence, choking, drowning, body horror, and animal death.

Strange events tend to go unnoticed in Baedal, compared to the much stranger things happening around them. People don't tend to be noticed when they go missing, either. The city takes these things in stride. After all, people get called back to their homeworld all the time, or they die. Everyone knows this.

Still, rumors start cropping up around the city about the sudden appearance of twelve identical towers positioned around the city like the face of a clock...

ALBA ♞ Cliona Donovan
DON DRAPER ♞ Pepper Potts, Kalinda Sharma
ILDE DECIMA ♞ Irene Adler, Marie-Sixtine St. Vincent
JAE-HYUN KIM ♞ Sunny
MARTEL ♞ Data, Jaime Lannister
NURAY AMEDI ♞ Alexia Swiftdawn, Anna Demirovna
ODESSA WANDER ♞ Rex Lewis
SEORAJ ♞ Bruce Wayne
SHRIEKY ♞ Xas
WOLFGANG EINHORN ♞ Penelope Lane

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In a bar or a club, you are approached by a handsome stranger who is charming, dashing, and exactly your type. Also, rich. He takes you dancing. you're drinking, dancing, having a good time - you start to lose track of time. At midnight, the bar/club/etc and everything in it vanishes and you find that you are locked in a tower in Badside, which is filthy; you are compelled to spend every moment cleaning it, but it never seems to get any cleaner. You cannot sleep or rest; you have to clean. Worse, you have to do it in glass slippers which you cannot remove.

Someday, Odessa will learn not to wander off with strange men. If only her philosophy didn't insist that the strange ones make the best company. It's nice to feel wanted, though, nice to be doted upon, and nice to have money spent on her like it's no big deal. Odessa soaks up the attention, thrives on it, and then - as is so often the case with her - she pays for it.

There's a strong sentiment of well, that figures that runs through her mind when her environment suddenly changes, and it's a testament to the sort of life and occurrences that make up her idea of normal. She takes in her new surroundings without hardly missing a beat (though she does take in a panicked gasp, and her heart is pounding), and makes first for the window. Her attempts to focus on home, and teleport herself are met with a numbing nothingness, but not the same sort she experiences when too near Bonetown.

The pane is too covered in grime to see out of, and so she looks around for a cloth to wipe it down with. When she does, she finds that she only gets the briefest of glimpses outside - enough to discern that she may be in Badside, if she recalls her landmarks - and then the glass is too obscured to be seen through again.

How is that even possible?

The whole room is a veritable pit. (In a tower. Hah.) Feverishly, she begins to clean, because she has to do something too keep her mind from racing too much. Does anyone know she's here? People disappear from the city all the time. Who will even care if she's gone? Will anyone bother to even look? Wiping sweat from her brow, Odessa stops for only a moment to look down at the floor, and her shoes.

Those aren't her shoes. While she's maybe fancied a pair of glass slippers in her life, it's one frivolity she's never actually indulged in. She shakes one foot out in front of her, expecting the shoe to drop off and onto the floor. But it doesn't. With the toe of the opposite shoe, she pushes at the back of the heel, to no avail. She quickly sits down on the floor to try and pry the shoes off with her fingers, but both stay stuck fast. Nails dig under the edges of the shoes, scratch over skin and eventually break it, but those shoes won't budge.

In an attempt to reclaim some of her composure, she decides to return to cleaning. -- Why would she decide to do that? Cleaning's never been a bastion of sanity for her before, and while a certain (high) degree of cleanliness is expected as part of her chosen profession, she's never been particularly put off by dirty surroundings. Even excessive mould and decay has never bothered her.

Her rag is too dirty. That's why nothing's getting clean! Of course, of course. Odessa reaches down to tear away a portion of her skirt, and begin using that to scrub at the floor and the walls. And when that becomes filthy, she just rips another piece to start again, until her dress is nothing more than tatters hanging off her slight frame, left discarded in scattered scraps around the room.

How long has she been at this? She's sure she can see sun trying to shine through the dirty window. Why doesn't she want to stop? Why won't she stop? Her muscles ache, and her eyes seem to burn from lack of sleep. She just wants to lay down and rest.

Why can't she?

There's an old woman pacing outside of the tower. When she sees you, she looks relieved. "Oh, you've come!" she exclaims, taking you by the arm. She knows who did this, you see, and yes, your friend - oh, did you not know...? Well, anyway, a woman is trapped at the top of this tower. You need seven keys to make it to the top of the tower, which she can make for you, but first you must collect the following items: a white pumpkin from the patch in Stoneshell; four mice; two rats; and a snake. What's are they for? Well...

Well, you'll see when you bring it. Just hurry, please; she's running out of time. You'll be rewarded if you do.

Edited 2012-08-13 23:29 (UTC)

He's a little late to the party, which is sort of depressing for the girl in the tower, but it's not like being rescued by Severus Snape is supposed to be thrilling.

Instead of charity or providence, news of an evil sorcerer and magic towers have drawn him out. It's all sounding very interesting, and without Bellatrix around to terrorize with working class nightmares, his leisure time has been sadly quiet. So here he is, then there he goes - he has questions, of course, but his questions will be answered this way, too - apparating to Stoneshell and back.

He places a white pumpkin and four small stones from the road's gravel on the ground, and transfigures the stones into four mice, two rats, and a snake, all of which sit quietly in magical binds, waiting as he does.

Well?

He wonders, briefly, how anyone else would have handled the dissection of several live fuzzy woodland creatures on demand; the thought flits through his head as he splits the snake open tip to tail that he's be interested to hear what it was saying in Parseltongue. Even construct-made animals through magic come with the minds and fully formed memories of true ones, blood to brains.

But one must crack a few eggs, and all that, and fortunately for timeliness' sake, Severus is an old hand at taking things apart. (For potions.)

The inside of the tower is like some long-dead madman's lair left to rot. It's dark, filthy, cobwebs and vines and spiders all over stone. He casts a helpful Lumos, the pale blue ball of light floating alongside him as he looks around. With a pocket full of keys and a strange tool, he knows he's got a ways as he goes up and up - but he keeps his ears sharp, listening for anyone in here. Severus feels for certain he has no wayward friend here, having made headcounts on many occasions, but there's someone in here. Somewhere.

He unlocks and pushes open the next door - unsurprising, the veil he feels in his head, with little unlocking-and-fetching spells failing to heed him - and sets further up the stairs.

The woman Severus has come to save would have handled the dissection of several live fuzzy woodland creatures much the same as he. She'd laugh about it if she knew, and were the circumstances not just a touch too dire to appreciate the humour.

She hears movement in the tower long before she registers it for what it is, and even then, she chooses not to believe it at first. How many times has she told herself she could hear someone on their way up? How many times has she convinced herself Rex Lewis had come for her, only to realise her delirious mind was playing tricks on her? How long has she even been here, waiting?

What does occur to her when she does, in fact, determine that someone is actually en route to the top of this prison, is that it could very well be her captor, and not a rescuer at all. She's decided it makes much more sense that way, if only because it's her luck. When the door swings open, she's already pushed herself to a corner of the room, half-starved and half-crazed from deprivation of sleep. "Stay away from me," she demands in a raspy voice, though her slightly-mismatched eyes are too wide to convey any sort of conviction in the belief that she could fend off the man if he were actually an attacker.

It's one thing to theorize about a stranger stuck in a tower, and it's another entirely to open a door and find a woman disheveled and frightened locked in a filthy room. He expected - something, not this, someone asleep, someone handcuffed, or a trap even, not a child's drawing of an Azkaban cell.

Severus is a lot of things, but deliberate terrorizer of unfamiliar women is not one of them. He does take a step back after she hisses at him, but doesn't leave or close the door. Instead he crouches down, slowly so he doesn't startle her. He's still across the room from her, but as someone who's been threatened by a great many people in his life, he knows the kneejerk psychological reaction of someone being taller than you doesn't help.

"If you're not an illusion from some fucking arsehole wizard-" well okay or you could ruin it with that opener, Severus- "You need to leave now."

Odessa's silent at first in the wake of Severus' words, save for the sound of her ragged breathing, just long enough to mull over the situation in her head. She looks about the room dumbly, for the first time really seeing the state of the place. The scraps of her dress lay sodden and strewn about, there are gouges in the wooden window frame from where she tried to pry it open with her fingers. It's then she notes that her fingers are trembling, and with dirt and splinters under her broken nails, and blood over her nail beds and knuckles. What an attractive sight she must be.

"You're..." Her brows come together as she finds her voice again, "Here to let me out?"

"It wasn't why I set out today, but now that I'm up here it seems only prudent."

Flippant as he may be, his tone isn't as brutal as it could be - and he doesn't sound impatient, which is curiously at odds with his phrasing. He takes in more details of her crumbling state the longer he looks at her, and he thinks about the hammer in his pocket. Is she trapped in here, beyond impassable door and windows? What's he meant to do?

"Can you get up?"

She nods her head once, drawing in a quick breath as she braces her hands against the floor and the wall behind her for balance, pushing herself upward with a groan. She's been on her knees scrubbing so long that her legs protest being straightened out now. When she steps forward, it's experimentally, wobbling as if she's finding balance on new legs entirely. The shoes on her feet don't help matters much. The fact that she'd tried kicking the wall (viciously) more than once to shatter them to no avail doesn't help matters much. Shockingly, it only made things worse.

"You found me by accident?" Odessa surmises without any sense that she would be put out to be told that that is indeed the case. With a small whine to convey her dismay, she finds herself compelled to turn back toward the window and wipe at the pane with what remains of one sleeve. "Nothing ever gets cleaner," she laments, looking back at the dark-haired man over her shoulder. "But I just can't stop myself from trying. Please, please help me."

Severus stands, watching this display with knit brows, and then in a truly Gordian Knot fashion, twitches one hand and murmurs an incantation. In the blink of an eye, the room is immaculate - completely free of dirt, grime, dust, rust, cobwebs.

And then something in the foundation groans, and it snaps back to being filthy.

"..Damn."

There's something in this tower that makes him feel like he's shouting underwater when he tries to cast anything. He's not particularly surprised it didn't work, even if he doesn't feel very secure knowing his magic isn't working properly. A bit closer, he attempts finite incantatem on Odessa herself.

There's relief for one brief moment when the room is clean, her shoulders sagging and a heavy sigh escaping her lips, but it's so short-lived that the woman curses herself for having held the hope at all. She could cry, if she'd let herself.

She's less wary now when he makes his approach, willing to believe at least for the moment that he's here to help her. His second spell seems to have little effect, however. Odessa merely squirms and pulls a face. "That felt strange. So you're a wizard, then."

Her gaze drifts to a spot on the floor, which she stares at for a long moment, visibly attempting to fight against the irresistible urge before she finally drops her to knees again with a frustrated groan, and begins scrubbing furiously. "I don't know if this helps, or maybe I'm just tired, and babbling, but... The last thing I remember before I found myself here was being in a bar with a man." And if 'Dessa had a nickel for each time she admitted to that... "It was midnight, and then I was here."

She wipes at her brow with the back of her arm, stifling a wide yawn against the crook of her elbow before returning to her work. "I did all this to myself. My dress and the scrapes, I mean." She shakes her head. "Fuck," she mutters, "these shoes aren't even mine."

"That's the rumor." Dry, quiet, in response to the assertion that he's a wizard - Severus is trying to puzzle it out. The thought definitely occurs to him that the tower itself is containing whatever spell has her in its grip, but the idea of trying to manhandled her all the way down the massive spiraling stairs without the aid of magic, fighting against her involuntary cleaning impulse and whatever else might unleash itself - no, best to try and sort it here.

"Your shoes?" Let's see those, then. Being out, midnight - yes, she was abducted and spelled, but it doesn't offer much in ways of unraveling it. Items appearing on her during the transition might, however.

There's a hint of sheepishness from Odessa that follows Severus' response. She feels dumb suddenly for ascertaining the obvious, and then voicing it. Swallowing her insecurity down, she rocks back to sit on her backside and stretches her legs out in front of her. "They won't come off," she says of her shoes.

With her back against the wall, she tilts her head upward with heavy sigh, taking in a deep breath and closing her eyes. Maybe if she doesn't look, she won't be compelled to clean. Frustratedly smacking the back of one glass heel on the cold stone floor yields no effect. Save perhaps for the impressive sound it makes, almost like a bell, which she follows up with a groan. "I can't even break them."

Glass slippers, really? Severus frowns, crouching down near her and inspecting - carefully. The evidence of her attempts to remove them are obvious, and he can only imagine how much it hurts. He only tugs on one once, gently, because if these things were going to come off with someone besides her trying, glass would pop away immediately. Nothing. So he tries again, and it's an awkward Wicked Witch of the West versus Dorothy's ruby slippers moment for all that happens. (Again, nothing.)

But...

From out of his pocket, he takes the diamond hammer, holding it up to her. "This came with the keys."

Yes, Severus, really. Odessa's truly as thrilled about this scenario as can be expected.

She opens one eye as if to see exactly what it is that came with the keys, but it's on the side with the worst of her facial scarring. She at least gives the impression of peering cautiously or reluctantly before opening the eye that actually has sight. "A hammer?"

It doesn't take more than a split-second's thought before Odessa's nodding her head in a manner that further betrays both how shaken up she is and how much she's actually talking herself into the validity of the implied plan proposed here. "Do it."

Fairy tales in their original formats - dark, unhappy, twisted - are normal for Severus; the Wizarding World pulls few punches, in its literature (to say 'fiction' wouldn't be entirely accurate). But he still never pictured himself participating in one, and so this is... surreal. Even more surreal, perhaps, is the fact that he says: "Sorry," and for a moment looks as awkward as he sounds.

He doesn't actually want to sit here groping some woman's feet, all right, that's extremely weird and maybe he has a complex about touching people, which is not anyone's business.

But he does take her right foot, and tap the hammer against one side of the glass shoe. Nothing happens, but the sound it makes is more akin to finding a hollow in a wall versus an impenetrable force. Again, harder, and the glass cracks. It takes a few more applications and it's all shattering, splintering away - Severus brushes broken glass away and urges her to scoot over so she doesn't end up with glass shards embedded into her foot.

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in the woods dark and deep I offer you eternal sleep

CINDERELLA.

abduction ♚ odessa.

tw: self-harm

rescue ♞ severus.

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