Visions.

[shimmermods]

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The further in you go, the thicker the calcification becomes.

The crystals on the walls are difficult to make out now, having been encased entirely by thick white growths encompassing the walls like spider veins, like roots; their energy, however, can still be felt if you wander too close to the walls, or if you spend too long recovering yourself after something sufficiently stressful has come into your line of view. This may be more for a problem for some of you than it is for others; some of you are holding up surprisingly well, all things considered.

It isn't a failing on your part, when it hits you.

It's hard to say precisely what "it" is - a sudden fatigue, a seizure, an abrupt swirling of the world beneath your feet; all you know is that you're here, and then you aren't anywhere, and it takes a moment to place what brought the feeling on, or even what the feeling itself is. It will come to you eventually, however, once your eyes refocus and the cavern comes into view again for you properly - it feels like that first week you were here. Like reawakening after a long stint asleep; like being disoriented after realizing that you're not where you should be.

The difference this time is that you are, for all intents and purposes, still where you should be.

You don't seem to have gone anywhere; it doesn't feel like you've lost that much time, even, if you've lost any at all. But the fact of the matter is that something feels different, and it feels wrong, and placing how proves to be difficult.

There's a bend in the path, and suddenly it becomes all too clear.

You aren't supposed to be here, are you?

This place can be anything and everything - the hallway in the upper floor of your house, the bar you frequent, that place where all your comrades are buried. What matters is that it's somewhere you weren't sure you would see again, but the fact of it is that you're seeing it here, and you're seeing it now, and perhaps some of the others with you are seeing it too. Perhaps there are others here, those that have been on your mind for the past few days; perhaps you're all alone outside of whomever is questionably fortunate enough to be experiencing this with you.

Whatever you're seeing, however, something remains present in your mind, driving you onward and encouraging you to move through this, and quickly.

You don't belong here.

You need to leave.


[OOC: Welcome to the first half of our week 5 event! For this portion of the event, the hallucinations you've experienced up until now have become far more thoroughly immersive, and can be seen or experienced by others in something akin to a shared dream-state. These visions are likely to delict something from your world that you would find familiar and would have some sort of attachment to, whether that attachment is positive or negative. Monsters or other people from your world can be present here and interacted with, to deal with as you see fit; fighting them or speaking to them are both fair game. Conversely, your personal experience may be exploring or revisiting an area of your world that may or may not be how you remember it...

Please note that the mods will not be NPCing any characters in your visions or answering questions specific to the environments that you create. However, you are free to create as you see fit; time and space have very little meaning here, and your only limitations to your character's personal illusion/dreamscapes are your own creativity. Feel free to post any prompts you may want to play with, and to tag out to others to experience whatever they want to show you. (However, it is worth noting that any physical items you find in the visions will not remain in their possession afterwards.) As always, if you have any more questions about how works, let us know!]

code by vuvuzela

Comments

[alchemicals]

It's messing you up, isn't it.

[It's not really a question.]

It does that at first. After a while you get used to the idea that you'll die here.

[He shrugs.]

Not today, though. We can go if you want to, come on.

[The doorway leads to a corridor, long and poorly-lit, with several of the same sort of heavy metal doors laid into the walls. Individual cells, most likely.]

[scythegun]

[Well, yeah, of course it's messing him up, but it's mostly messing him up because Kimbley seems so used to it. Which is just... weird. Weird's a good word for it.

Anyway! Out we go into the hallway. Yeager is absolutely going to be nosy and look into some of the other cells, is there anyone in any of these?]

Which way leads to the exit?

[alchemicals]

[There doesn't seem to be.]

I don't know. When I was brought out of here, it wasn't to be shown the door.

It's a building, though. They're not exactly hard to figure out by design.

[scythegun]

Ja, true enough.

[Let's head down the hallway to the right, then!]

What were you imprisoned for?

[alchemicals]

Murder.

[It's said just as nonchalantly as the rest.]

I killed my superior officers at the end of that war I was in. So they threw me in here to be executed. I didn't fight it or anything, just let them take their sweet time. They finally got around to the execution part of things ten years later.

[scythegun]

...Ten years.

[Ten years in solitary confinement? Well, that probably explains a lot about Kimbley, but mostly that's just horrifying. Kimbley would have been a teenager when he was imprisoned, right...?]

Did something go wrong with the execution?

[alchemicals]

Technically, I went wrong with the execution. They were doing some sort of weird human experimentation thing; they accidentally enhanced my alchemy in the process. So I blew up some people to take out one of the walls and escaped.

Whatever they were doing would have been worse for those guys than what I did to them, anyway. Alchemy can do all sorts of fucked up things to people.

[scythegun]

Do you know what it was they were trying to do?

[........you know, he's not actually sure he wants an answer to that, but given the fucked up things we've seen done to people in the Shimmer, surely it can't be any worse.]

[alchemicals]

Are you going to get weird about it if I try to take a guess? You seem sort of bothered by this whole thing.

[scythegun]

I am a bit disturbed by the idea of solitary confinement for ten years when they planned on executing you. That's a bit too cruel.

[He's not going to pretend he isn't bothered by it; that's legitimately fucked up.]

[alchemicals]

You think so?

[As though it's something he'd never really considered; it's...weird, sort of.]

I guess they considered me too dangerous to put in the block with the rest. I don't know; I never really asked. I had restraints on all the time, so it's not like I could do much.

[scythegun]

I imagine that must have been why, yes, but even so it shouldn't have taken them ten years.

[Obviously it worked out well enough in that Kimbley was able to escape, but at the same time, goddamn. How incompetent were the people in charge.]

So whatever experiment they tried enhanced your alchemy and you were able to escape. What happened next?

[alchemicals]

I met someone that took me in. He was also in the process of escaping from this place; I guess he was a friend of mine. Never treated me badly, anyway.

He was also wanted by the state for whatever reason; I was offered a full pardon and reinstatement to the military if I stabbed him in the back, so I did. The guy we buried in the field is the one that made the offer.

[It occurs to him, vaguely, that he's still present-tensing Archer. He doesn't know what to do with that.]

[scythegun]

[He's noticed that too, but he isn't going to say anything about it.]

I can certainly see why you agreed to that. It made things easier, ja? I certainly wouldn't want to return to a place like this.

[alchemicals]

I don't know if I really cared anymore. It didn't matter where I was or what I was doing; being put back in the military sounded like as good an idea as any. Maybe they'd let me see battle again; that would've been ideal.

[scythegun]

So that's why you came when offered this opportunity, ja? Because it sounded like as good an idea as any?

[Not that he's judging or anything, because that's totally fair.]

[alchemicals]

I've already reached the highest point in my life. Nothing is going to beat out what I experienced during the war. The things I did, and the things I was allowed to do while we were out there... Can you really see me living a normal life? Taking some kind of peacetime desk job, settling down with a wife and kids? Can you even see me living to be thirty? Because I can't.

I'm here because it doesn't matter if I die. That's all.

[scythegun]

I can't see you living a normal life, no. You're the sort of person who does best on a battlefield, ja? Trying to imagine you without that is a little strange.

[There are a lot of people like that in the guilds, people like Clint and Tison, or maybe even Zagi. But imagining any of them in a world without monsters to fight is nearly impossible; so maybe he doesn't understand exactly, but he can at least see where Kimbley's coming from.]

So what will you do if we somehow do survive all of this?

[alchemicals]

I'm pretty sure we were all dead the second we came in here. This is going to kill us eventually, and there isn't much to be done about it.

I don't have a lot of argument with that.

[And from the sound of it, he doesn't.]

I don't know, though. Maybe I'll take advantage of their time-based bullshit and go spend some time with Archer before we both die. He's a crazy bastard, it might be worth it.

[scythegun]

I agree. I'll be shocked if we do manage to make it through this.

[...]

But I'm starting to think that maybe I really am hoping that they'll figure out some way to get us through this mess.

Well, if we're talking ridiculous hypothetical situations, perhaps you can come to Terca Lumireis and blow up all the monsters you want.

[alchemicals]

[He laughs a bit at that, though it's not as derisive as it could have been.]

This whole thing really must be bothering you.

[scythegun]

You would not believe the week I've been having.

[He suffers so much, Kimbley. So much.]

[alchemicals]

You're trying to take me home with you like I'm some kind of stray dog. I'd probably believe you.

[scythegun]

I've been constantly reminded of a past I've tried very hard to escape from for the past ten years. The Shimmer has decided to show me every single person who has ever had some importance to me, regardless of how dead they may or may not be. I didn't even have the chance to kill the one I'd want dead. And to top it all off, the Shimmer felt the need to insist that death was worse than that horrible tree.

[...it's not actually the tree that's bothering him all that much but that was the start of all this nonsense and he's still mad about it.]

[alchemicals]

...You were really fucked up by the whole tree thing.

[He's kind of quiet for a moment. Just considering.]

I'm going to guess that whatever you're dealing with is one of those worse-than-death things.

[That corridor is long, and occasionally there are bends; what's noticeable about it, however, is that there are no people - no guards, no inmates, no sign that anyone else has ever been here at all.]