forum RP I'm trying to do with all my characters. (closed)

Started October 18, 2018 by Deleted user

tune

"Can't you hear it?" Ariana whispered, getting up out of their shared bed.

"Hear what?" All Ru could hear were the puffs of their muffled breathing and the slide of his legs under the covers. There didn't seem to be any distant noises that were troubling either. Was Ariana hallucinating?

"It's calling me, closer. Where's Rosanna?" Ariana asked suddenly.

"I'm not sure. Last I saw she was wandering the halls." Ru stepped out of bed as well, searching inside himself for the sensation of being called somewhere. He ached for the sea, as always, but he also ached for something closer. That was new. And now that he'd acknowledged it, getting a bit stronger. He pushed it down and tried to figure out what was going on. "Why?"

"You can't hear it, can you. That noise. Never mind, I need to find Rosie. She can help." Ariana said, pulling on her dressing gown and rushing out of the room.

While Ariana's search for Rosanna could be interesting, it wasn't something he wanted to partake in. Ru didn't follow her. Instead, he followed the tugging in his gut. It was hard to follow it when so much of him was yearning for a different place, but he managed to track it through the halls until he came face to face with the blocked up library. Fantastic.

"Rosie?" Ariana pried open her secret lover's door. "Ariana, we've talked about this, I don't want-" "It isn't about that. I need to get back inside the library, inside the tunnels hidden from most. There's something in there, calling to me, and I need to find out what it is, and preferably stab it." she explained. She really has lost it, hasn't she? Rosanna thought, but stood up with a weary sigh. "Fine, come on, show me." Rosanna sighed, and Ariana complied. They came to the library, where Cerulean was already standing outside of.

"God damn it, Ariana." The doors were so heavily blocked that it would take them ages to break through and the pull was only growing stronger the closer he got. What had they disturbed? What kind of magic had they called down upon themselves?

"I need to get inside there." Ariana pointed at the sealed doors. "Fine. Teleportation spell, then. Right." Rosanna huffed, annoyed that Ariana had woken her up for this.

Ru sighed. "Can you take me inside too?" He really wanted to dispell the ache in his gut. It was shifting from mildly annoying to almost painful.

"Ugh. Fine. Grab onto my arm." Rosanna said, feeling like she was slowly losing her sanity.

Ru clasped her arm and waited, humming with excitement. It wasn't every day you felt something powerful pulling you to an unknown location. Besides, he'd had experience being pulled to places by magical means, which meant this whole journey was much more exciting than scary or world shifting.

Rosanna teleported the two and herself inside the library, but found herself inside a cavern. She sniffed the air. "Rank. Nobody has been here for ages. Damn, can never get that spell-hey, where are you going!" Rosanna called after Ariana, who had fallen into a trance and started to walk down the dark corridors. Torches propped up on walls flared up with a malevolent purple glow.

Ru sighed. The pull was nearly unbearable but he'd been in this situation before. He was in this situation a lot. He knew exactly how to bide his time. How to keep his right mind even as he wanted to sprint down the hall to soothe the ache. "She's following the pull. Don't blame her, it's not her fault. If you want, you can follow."

Feeling that he had explained the situation reasonably well, he tromped down the hall. The pull didn't stop by any means, but it was no longer growing stronger. Which was good, Ru wouldn't be able to hold off much longer as is. If it kept growing he'd be just as mindless as Ariana.

"Ariana?" Rosie asked, walking up to the woman, who had stopped at the wall at the end. She grabbed the woman's hand, but was thrown back with inhuman strength. Ariana turned around to face them, her eyes pure white, glowing. Rosanna stepped back in fear….

…as the acrid stench hit her nostrils, she found herself throwing her arms up to protect herself from the far away blast of another explosion. The grit stung against her eyes, more explosions thudding in the distance, connecting with the scorched, decimated earth. She stumbled across the rubble, climbing as high as she could to survey the carnage before her, spots of white flesh and ripped uniforms acting as markers for the dead beneath the ruins. This was all too familiar, yet she didn't recognize the place anymore. The battlefield was empty, save for Ariana. The lone victor. This was Ariana's memory.

Ghosts aren't really ghosts, merely imprints of intense, primal emotion, recordings of thought, held in stone. But sometimes those recordings gain sentience. And that causes what some know as a Ghosting Effect. Your most powerful memories will be taken, you can relive them, even if you were unable to change the events. But more than one person in the area, and memories become twisted, warped, relived by those who are not their owners. Oh, the recordings that gained sentience? Well, they feed off of that, those memories. Most die, the few that survive either go insane or gain wisdom beyond that of most men, although insanity is far more common. Although, multiple strong-willed people could possibly resist it…

"Rosanna, snap out of it! This is a deathtrap, you idiot!" Rosanna shouted at herself, breaking out of the trance. Someone had set this up, they needed to get away from here.

Ru stared around at the empty arena in shock. Only Ariana stood tall, with bodies flung all around her. It seemed almost like a… memory. Fuck. This was a ghosting effect, wasn't it? He'd never been through one before, though he supposed that was pretty obvious. These things were almost legendary, rarely seen or experienced. He tried to stomp towards his wife, and when he found movement was hard he called out to her. "Ariana!?"

"That won't work, Prince Cerulean. She needs to snap out of it herself!" Rosanna snapped, irritated with his stupidity. She dealed with this sort of thing all the time, or at least used to, so why was this one in particular so difficult to defeat? It was far more powerful than it was supposed to be, and she found herself being dragged back into a memory….

She stared at the wall, chains, blood all over her front. Rosanna gasped for air, six sharp blows hit her back. "Treason. You think we'd let you get away with that, Rosanna? You're a bad, bad girl, you are." the torturer snarled.

"I haven't exactly done this before!" Ru turned to snap at Rosanna and realized she had been pulled out of the illusion. Ariana was still standing in the center of a ring but nobody else was there. Only him. Shit. He did his best to snap himself out of this, to force his psyche to realize that this wasn't real, but he was stopped when something forced him from one of Ariana's memories to one of his own.

The shift from scorched battlefield to stone walls was jarring, but not as jarring as the realization of where he was. The stench of death hung heavy over two bedsides. The potion hung heavy in his hand as Adrien struggled to pull himself up, pale and broken and failing to breathe. "I don't wanna die. Please Ru, don't let me die. Help me."

His mother lay still in the other bed, long past the stage of speaking. His father was staring sadly at him, clasping his wife's hand and pleading with Ru to make a choice. How could he make a choice?

"Focus! On anything! Don't give in!" Rosanna said, then thought. "Five by one is five. Five by two is ten." she said, multiplying upwards, focusing on anything but the memories.

A choice. Ru had to make a choice. Mother or brother. Alithia or Adrien. Beloved or beloved. How could Ru pick only one of them? How could he live knowing he let one of them die? Adrien was still begging him, voice growing weaker and weaker as his heart slowly stopped beating. Mother was lying still, breathing almost coming to a halt. Choose choose choose echoed in his head as he turned from one to the other.

If he couldn't make this choice for himself, he could do it for the good of the kingdom. For what would help him most when he and Ariana came to power. And… wait. Ariana, the Ghosting Effect. He was in a memory right now, wasn't he? A shaky breath rattled his lungs. All he had to do was focus on something else. Anything else. Like old fables of love and loss. Ancient heroes fated to rise again when the world was in need. Dragons and creatures rarely seen but often spoken about.

"Get out of my head!!" Rosanna screamed. She managed to free herself from her frozen state and blasted the walls haphazardly, trying to find the source of the effect. "Aria, snap out of it. I'm sorry for the things I said, okay? I really do care. Please, hold on!" she begged to her hypnotised partner.

(Sorry I've been gone. Life really caught up with me and I started majorly stressing. So much that it was really fucking with me. The worst is over now though, so I should be able to post regularly.)

The dream world came in and out of focus as Ru struggled to get out of his own head. Every few seconds the real world came into focus- stone walls and moist air- only to fade back into that grief-filled bedroom. He tried to escape, tried to clutch onto the few fragile threads of reality he could find.

After what felt like hours of struggling, he began to hear Rosanna yelling about… something? Ariana? A few more seconds confirmed that yes, she was yelling at his wife to wake up. "Rosanna!? You awake!?"

"Of course I am, dimwit!" she snapped.

"Look, I'm kind of disoriented right now. The world keeps flickering in and out, so cut me some slack for being confused." Ru furrowed his brows, staring around the room that was slowly coming into focus. Even if Rosanna was being a little snippy, she was giving him a distraction.

"Yeah? Well fuckin' focus, alright! We need to leave!" she told him.

"You think I don't know that!? Just give me a few seconds to catch my breath." Ru blinked, rubbing a hand over his face as he fought to stay in the moment. He just needed to stay grounded. If he kept his wits about him, everything else would be okay. Eventually.