in the woods dark and deep I offer you eternal sleep

[aarnethompson]

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

Comments

abduction ♚ shrieky.

[aarnethompson]

You are approached by a beautiful figure in the river. It's a mermaid. It wants you to join it. when you do, it grabs you, plunges into the water, and jams an iron dagger in your heart, which causes you to fall into a deep sleep that resembles death. It takes you to a tower in Raven's Gate, which is filled floor to ceiling with water. How long until you drown?

[wontturntofoam]

On some level, Shrieky knows it's coming before it happens. The mermaid circles him in the water, and his tail is long and fat. It gleams with a lustre that Shrieky's never did, and he knows what's coming, because It's circling him, and he knows what he would have wanted to do.

So it's hard for Shrieky to be angry with him, when the Mermaid's fingers tangle in his hair and he drags Shrieky down. He does panic (never thought he'd be the type to panic, but it turns out he is) when he opens his mouth and has to see the cascade of bubbles, of escaping air, erupting from his lips, when automatically he tries to expel the water through his gills and it doesn't go, rushing instead down his throat, into his chest and stomach, into his lungs.

When he first feels the bite of iron against his chest, he's relieved, as if some part of him thinks that making a hole there will let the water out.

Then it hurts.

Then he feels nothing.

(Had the other Mermaid seemed lonely as well? Or is he just imagining things?)



In the tower, he presses his lips to the ceiling, trying to breathe in the slightest amount of air from the cracks in the roof. He doesn't understand this. He can't. It's not the same, there's no one else here, no fingers in his hair, no fat, glossy tail encircling him.

He's alone, kicking his awkward, gangling legs in the water and trying to keep from going under. He feels like a wounded animal, a lame bird or dying fish trapped on the surface of the moat. The kind of thing he used to watch from below for hours, sometimes. The kind of thing that he used to circle, before dragging it under.

Shrieky claws at his throat. He needs to breathe without breathing, needs to re-open that lost channel for the water that keeps pooling in his mouth to escape through.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

His neck hurts.

Scratch.

Scratch.

Scratch.

There's blood under his fingernails.

He still can't breathe.