Welcome to Theia!

[theianmods]

Who: Your mysterious caretakers and you
When: September 1st
Where: The Town Square
What: The welcome wagon has arrived!
Warnings: Minor gore, death




It's a white envelope that finds its way under every door, through every nook and cranny a day or two after your arrival. With the peculiar, bloodstained fingerprints lovingly applied as though they were a signature scrawled into its thin paper body, it doggedly persists--it will find you--until you open it and read the letter written ever so meticulously in fine script. It's a cordial invitation to a party hosted in your honor in the town square today. You should hurry, hurry, hurry! You wouldn't want to be late and keep your generous hosts waiting... or so says that oddly compelling feeling pressing into the back of your head. You make your way to the square, the urgent tugging feeling growing stronger the closer you get, and when you turn the corner to get a glimpse of the festivities, you find it's... not quite what you had been expecting.

The square is small, and looks rather out of general use. The fountain in the center is dusty and crumbling, and if there was ever any water in it it's long gone now. Most of the cobbled stones are broken and loose in the road. There are two long tables stocked with refreshments along either side of the walkway to the fountain, and what appears to be a small stage of some sort right in front of it, holding a large, ornate chair and a third table. The most unsettling thing, however, is the rest of the décor.

The theme is death, or so it would appear. Beside the food table to your left sits a bespectacled man wearing a scarf, but was the scarf always red, or is it only stained so because his head is hanging onto his neck by a thread? Against his lap rests a beautifully crafted cello, which appears to be missing its G-string... Oh. There it is--it's still stuck in the gashed man's neck. The poor bastard has been garrotted with the strings of his cello! Talk about hoisted by your own petard. Where his head lolls against the table, you may notice that behind those glasses, his eyes are missing.

Near the fountain is a large, wrought-iron statue of an archer, where... well, he's made his first kill, apparently. The body of a young girl with long dark hair is speared neatly through the chest by the archer's arrow, her little feet a good half a yard off the ground, now sticky with her blood. If you step closer to peer into the fountain, you'll find another body, this one a man with short dark hair, his face twisted into a mask of desperation and his gloved hands around his own throat as though he were gasping for air. Oddly, his lower jaw appears to be missing. Did he drown? There is no water in the fountain...

In the ornate chair on the platform is the body of another man, this one with his head completely removed from his shoulders. Oh... there it is, in his lap, his hands carefully arranged in his wild black hair. Wait, it seems there are too many hands, though! A second body dangles from a large tree that looms over the square, the rope frayed and dirty where it is wrapped around another man's neck, a strangely peaceful smile on his face, blue though it is. His hands rest atop the first man's, as though making certain the severed head remains still.

On the table in front of the chair rests a chest, its lid wide open and a glittering bounty inside.



If you peer inside, you will see a collection of eggs! Scaly, cool to the touch, and about the size of a football, they come in several colors. There is a note pinned to the inside of the trunk's lid--


Do you take an egg, as the note suggests? Dare you? (Dare you not?)

That pressing feeling in the back of your head has left you now, now that you are here to be welcomed to the city, now that you are here in the presence of your caretakers, but it is difficult to take comfort in the relief from the compulsion when surrounded by so much destruction. Who has done this to the faithful sentinels of the city? Who has killed the Watcher, the Interloper, the Guardian, the Nightingale, and the Keeper? Why have they been left here, at your welcoming home party?

Before you can turn to ask your neighbor, before you can wonder any further, a sound breaks the silence--a terrible, wet crunching noise like a sheet of ice breaking under your feet. You turn over your shoulder to see that it isn't anything so simple as ice. In the middle of the square is one final body, a body that wasn't there but a moment ago. She is small, thin, with dark hair and eerily pale eyes wide in terror. You know this girl, she met you on the elevator, expressed pleasure that you had been found (had you been lost?), and welcomed you home. Where did she come from? It's as though she simply... fell out of the sky! The Dreamer now dreams forever.

As you turn to survey the carnage all around you, a pleasant chiming sound seems to fill the air. It would seem that your mirror has a message for you! Upon inspection, you will find a new icon on the main viewscreen.


If you touch the icon, it will take you to a new application. Welcome to the Task Board! Here you will find a multitude of errands you can run for... whoever is running the city, now. Boy, what a way to announce things are under new management!

Welcome back to Theia, wayward children. Please enjoy the refreshments--watch out for the Nightingale's eyes, they may have fallen into the punch--get reacquainted with your friends and neighbors, and do take good care of those eggs. Or else...

Comments

[unweaving]

I don't remember that.

[ It's as matter of fact as she can make it, through the low-simmering frustration. It explains his response when she asked about his eye, anyway; how he'd brushed past it instead of making a joke like she might have expected. But it's aggravating to know there's another gap there, and she shakes her head. She's all ready to bitch about it when his words shuffle around a little in her mind, things he'd said as if they were background detail jumping out at her as more important. Came back. From where, she'd ask, except he's talking about the creatures that invaded the town, and -

well, they'd known that death didn't seem to stick. It just seems like a shame not to have been around for her own resurrection. ]

The attack, yeah. [ She gestures to her abdomen by way of illustration, the still-healing scar visible. ] Coming back, getting the history lesson, not so much.

[failtography]

Huh? ( it's like a cold drop in his stomach, and prompto's brows knit in what can only be described as bewildered incredulity; he remembers it, the brief, wild thought that he surely must've gone completely nuts seeing aranea at the door days after her passing, how that notion was quickly replaced by a completely rational fear of some sort of haunting, but that wasn't it. ) You did come back, and it scared the crap out of me 'cause I thought maybe you were a ghost or something even if y'did show up in the daytime since ghosts don't usually do the whole daytime thing...

( he can't have imagined it, but aranea wouldn't have reasons to make this up either. ) What's the last thing you remember? Before coming here.

[unweaving]

[ It's aggravating to know there's yet another snarl in things, and she can't take any pleasure in how confused he looks, but his saying that he'd thought she was a ghost makes her smile. It does sound like him. ]

I remember you. [ It's quiet. Just that, for a moment, because... well, it had been awful, but she's here and she's fine and there's part of her that suspects it might have been worse for him. ] I called out to you, and one of them got me. And you held me right until the end.

[ She's grateful for that. More than she can say, so she reaches up and tweaks the end of one of those long strands of hair framing his face. ]

Not a great display of survival instinct there, shortcake.

[failtography]

( just the mention of her death hurts, the wound still stinging as if it were new all over again. ) Well... yeah, but I wasn't gonna just leave you, okay? Even if I'd known you were gonna come back. It wasn't right. ( prompto ducks his head, a little sheepish - why is his face burning, anyway? ) Nyx had to drag my ass outta there.

[unweaving]

Nyx ever shows up here, remind me to buy him a drink.

[ It's dry as anything she says, but she watches him a moment - face tipped down, cheeks flooding with pink - and she softens. It mean a lot. It had been painful, terrifying, and while she can't be happy he had to see it she can only imagine how much harder it would have been to do it alone. So she puts fingertips under his chin, tips his face back up. ]

Hey. Thanks.

[ And she presses a kiss - brief and dry, but warm - to his lips. ]

[failtography]

( prompto's pretty sure his face is hot enough to rival the fires of in the heart of ravatogh at this point, and just when he thinks it couldn't get any crazier aranea's lips are on his own and the gunner has never been more convinced that spontaneous combustion is a very, very real thing even as he leans back into it. for those few seconds, though, prompto can almost forget about the crapsack town they're both trapped in. they are, at the very least, still in this together.

the colour in his cheeks hasn't yet left entirely, but when they pull apart the blond has it in himself to look aranea in the eye. ) It's nothing. Seriously. Y'don't need to thank me. And I don't mean it's nothing like "it didn't mean a thing" but it was more of -- you know... the "no sweat" kinda way? Sorry, I just mean -- you're really strong, okay? And I'm not saying you aren't but even so, dying couldn't have been fun. ( especially for aranea, his own despair aside. just thinking about it triggers a surge of some sort of longing, and prompto shifts slightly to bump their noses together, seeking comfort in the contact. ) Let's maybe not do that again.

[unweaving]

Deal.

[ That's easy to agree to. She's not exactly excited to repeat the process, and if they can make sure he never goes through the same thing? All the better. It's probably a shitty thing to be happy that someone's stuck in a nightmare with her, but there it is. He's close and warm and okay (eyepatch aside), and with everything as messed-up as it is that feels like everything.

Still - they're in the middle of a murder scene, surrounded by people, and while she's always a little perversely pleased to see him blush there's part of her that worries about making her affection for him so clear. You want to mess someone up, easiest way to do it is through their loved ones. That's why she tried not to have any until now. So she pulls back, shifts her helmet around to display the egg she's put in it, large and red and frankly kind of awesome-looking. ]

Hey, check it out. Kinda cool, huh?

[failtography]

( while prompto's aware of the slight pang that hits him once he registers the dragoon putting a bit of distance between them both, he barely has the time to be crestfallen before aranea draws his attention to the contents of her upended helmet and - )

Whoa, you took one. ( sure, the sign said to, but the one invitation he's followed already led him to the beginnings of one of those fancy murder mystery dinner parties — except this is putting him off dinner and prompto's having a hard time seeing this as anything even slightly festive — so the egg aranea presents is met with some slight uncertainty. ) Think it's safe to?

[unweaving]

I think it's probably as safe as anything else around here.

[ Which is to say, not very safe at all. But it's interesting, she's curious, and on a very shallow level? It's pretty. Dragony, she thinks, which is her jam. ]

Don't figure it'll hatch, it's cold. But it looks okay. I figure as long as it doesn't turn out to be a bomb or full of poison gas, it'll go great in my room.

[failtography]

Man, I dunno -- if it doesn't do anything then why'd whoever put them there want us to take 'em in the first place? ( as much as aranea seems pretty confident about the situation, there's a lingering apprehension that's settled itself firmly in his core, eating at already frayed nerves. still, the gunner isn't looking to rain on her parade when she's already made up her mind. ) Does look cool, though. Never seen anything like it, all those scales and stuff - could've held a baby dragon, maybe.

[unweaving]

[ She doesn't actually say "aw, man!" out loud, but it's all over her face as she runs a hand over the shell. The little wings on her armor are probably a dead giveaway as to how she'd feel about having an actual dragon to call her mama. ]

Coulda been a playmate for Miss Fluffles. [ And she leans in to give him another little peck on the cheek, because it's clear he's not totally comfortable with it but he's not trying to talk her out of it; it's impossible not to appreciate him for it. ]

I'll keep an eye on it. Starts to look like it's gonna do anything sinister, I'll take care of it.