JERICHO ● SEPTEMBER 2025 EVENT/TDM

[uruz]

TDM & EVENT: JERICHO

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Prologue: New Characters

You've been plagued with a reoccuring dream, as of late. Every time you sleep, the dream returns to you.

It always begins the same way: As a breath held for too long. As a pressure at the base of your spine. A silence that presses against the skin like confession, like prophecy. A ripple moves through your bones. A tide builds and pulls at your feet, familiar by now. You dream of a black, soundless wave, thick like oil and starlight, swelling across the horizon line. You've seen the wave before, countless times, always rising. With every night, it never reaches you. You always seem to wake before it does . . . That is, until tonight.

The wave moves slow, deliberate— like something ancient and alive. And when it finally crashes, there is no harsh impact. Only warmth. Only submersion. Rather than drowning, you are being claimed with saltwater that's sweet with myrrh. The darkness embracing you pulses with desire. Then, a voice envelops you.

"Come home."
It dribbles with honey-like promise, like a truth you've always known, whispered now from within your marrow more like temptation than a request.

"You are mine. You always were."
The voice offers purpose. Worship. Belonging. And when you wake . . . You wake changed, with a mask on your face you did not choose. Elegant. Sacred. Too important to remove. You have been given a gift. A new beginning.

Welcome home, new Vessels.

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Sink Down Like Precious Stones

( content warnings: drowning, body horror )

Vessels awaken within the dreamscape as the black wave recedes from their skin like velvet falling off the bone, their masks in place over their eyes and left afloat in the watery expanse. All around them, the ocean stretches infinite and lightless— so still it mirrors the sky above, indistinguishable from the void. Far in the distance, massive obsidian walls curve inward, enclosing this vast seascape like a forgotten temple basin. And there, at the far horizon, one glow pierces the dark: a low-burning fire flickering within a half-sunken structure of impossible architecture— arched, ribbed, as though built from marble and cathedral glass.

This is a test, and it begins with belief.

Those with unwavering faith— whether in Sleep, another god, or even themselves— will find the surface beneath their feet holds firm. The sea becomes glass, and they may rise, and walk. But those adrift in doubt begin to sink. Precious stone creeps over their skin. Joints stiffen. Flesh cracks. Breath slows. It is not death, but it is close and might as well be hell. Your only salvation lies in your own conviction . . . Or the mercy of another Vessel who happens to walk.

Those who drown will not die. They will loop this moment— sinking, blackness, return, sink again— until belief takes root in some way. Alternatively, they may awaken in a later dreamspace . . . Changed.

NOTES:

• Pale white fish as well as glowing jellyfish may be encounted. The fish stare at vessels as they drown, and jellyfish may leave behind a shock that could temporarily stop the process of crystalization. But only temporarily— and their stings are excrutiating.

TOKEN EFFECTS:

• Magic becomes volatile— spells flicker, overcharge, or fizzle unpredictably when cast on or near the ocean.
• When you cast, your veins glow from beneath the skin, but not with light. It's writhing. Like something trapped under glass.
• When channeling magic, your mouth may fill with brine and blood.

OFFERING EFFECTS:

• The water responds emotionally— thrashing with fury or calming with yearning depending on the Offering's state of mind.
• The sea amplifies desire and instinct, making base emotions harder to suppress— rage, hunger, longing all churn just beneath the surface.
• The black water feels too warm, too alive, clinging to the body like memory; any stillness invites visions of Sleep's embrace, both reverent and consuming.

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You Taste Like New Flesh

( content warnings: body horror, psychological horror, compulsion, unreliable reality )

The ocean path ends at a palace carved of pearl and spun silk, impossibly perched where water meets nothingness. Whether you have traversed the black sea on trembling feet or simply awaken seated at an impossibly long table, it makes no difference. You are here now, and welcomed, suddenly in attire fit for a gala. Around this table sit countless Dream-Vessels, many silent and still, faces unreadable in the flickering candlelight wearing generic, six-eyed masks. The table stretches beyond sight, arching beneath creeping vines that twist like ancient veins overhead, blooming with strange blossoms that beat with energy. Flames dance atop dozens of candles— some burn on brass holders, others hover, like fireflies caught mid-flight, their shadows flickering and shifting with an otherworldly rhythm. Around you, phantasmal forms shimmer on pedestals: Sleep's ancient Guardians are eternalized through memorial, monstrous and magnificent, lost to time yet enshrined in reverence. On the highest pedestal stands a still living One, silent and watching the feast with somber eyes. Sleep's voice whispers in your ear, encouraging a glance to, perhaps, see what you may become.

"Feast, My Dear Vessels. Until you taste like New Flesh."

The foods before you don not come unmeddled with. Each bite pulls memories from your bones to the surface— moments buried or erased, but these are not just yours. The banquet feeds on shared history, stirring secrets tangled between you and the others here. To eat is to open a door: to risk awakening something dormant, to invite others inside your buried truths, to forge bonds or betrayals that can never be unseen.

Eton Mess: Crushed meringue, tangled cream, and berries that bleed like bruises when bitten. Sweetness melts quickly, leaving your tongue cold. As you eat, a memory rises— but you don't experience it alone. The person nearest you sees what you see, hears what you hear, feels what you felt. Together, you can alter one key detail, and that change ripples outward, shifting how you both remember the event.

Deviled Kidneys: Spiced and seared, the metallic richness clings to your mouth, as if tasting old blood. Eating summons the echo of a painful or violent memory, but your partner experiences it with you.

Roasted Lamb in Mint Sauce: The sweetness of the meat is cut by mint sharp enough to sting the throat. Your act of consumption awakens a craving, but not in you— in the Vessel sharing this dish. They feel an inexorable pull toward your memory, even without knowing what they seek. The bond persists until the craving is confronted.

Honey Scouse: A thick, golden stew heavy with warmth, but beneath the sweetness, something cloying curls around the edges. Every shared spoonful spreads a slow, creeping influence between you and your partner: intrusive visions, subtle compulsions, small lapses in agency. Neither of you can tell whose thoughts belong to whom.

Starpit Fruit: Plum-sized and faintly glowing, the juice leaves your fingertips dusted in silver, like handling starlight. When bitten, the fruit releases the memory of a forgotten wish, not to you but to the person beside you. They see it clearly— and know exactly what you once wanted most, even if you had buried it.

Marigold Brandy: A golden spirit served warm, glowing faintly as though sunlight has been trapped inside the glass. When lifted, it releases a soft, floral scent. The first sip draws you and your partner into a shared burst of joy— a memory that makes you swell with happiness. The sensation is so immediate, so electric, that when the memory breaks, your bodies ache to move, to speak, to draw more positivity to light. You may feel an irresistible pull to get up and dance on the wide palace floors, even if no music is playing . . . And if others nearby drink as well, the effect multiplies.

Saints Breath Chalice: A dark, wine-thick cordial served in tarnished silver cups etched with symbols that shift when stared at too long. The liquid smells faintly of frankincense and something sweeter— blood-warm and alive. Drinking it floods you and your partner with the overwhelming sensation of being inside someone else's celebration, a memory that belongs to neither of you: a vast mass of black, with branching antlers and six, glowing red eyes. It reaches to sink its claws into your chest as she sings: One. Beloved. We were meant to be. It is impossible to tell whether you're witnessing joy or manic worship. There is chanting you cannot understand but somehow already know, drums that sync with your heartbeat until you can feel nothing else. Your limbs begin to twitch, then sway, then move without conscious thought, drawn into a dance you do not remember learning. If more than two people drink, your movements synchronize perfectly, your breath matching theirs, until the room seems stop to watch.

The table awaits.

NOTES:

• Feasting becomes addictive. The more a character eats, the harder it is to stop. Gluttony may cause physical consequences: nosebleeds, twitching fingers, warping speech, uncontrollable confessions, or dripping nectar from their mouths.
• Those who refuse to eat at all begin to starve in a dream-sense: they lose color, smell burning, and feel the weight of Sleep's gaze. Her wrath isn't immediate— but it grows the longer you reject the feast. She takes offense.

TOKEN EFFECTS:

• Each spell cast after eating releases parasitic energy— manifesting as flowers, thorns, parasitic insects or rot— either from their own body or from someone they recently touched.
• Casting warps your limbs temporarily: too many joints, fingers curl the wrong way, nerves burn like wires.
• Touching others leaves sigils burned into their skin. These will briefly carry over into the waking world during next month's event. Runecasters will get the innate feeling that this symbol has a meaning summed up as "The Night Does Not Belong To God". How they interpret that is up to them.

OFFERING EFFECTS:

• The act of devouring awakens an overwhelming desire, often physical, but sometimes emotional or spiritual. This desire clings to another Vessel at the table, creating obsessive attachment or aggression.
• The more they eat, the more their monstrous traits subtly emerge.
• Consuming another Vessel's memory (if shared or touched) grants a brief glimpse of their deepest fear or weakness.

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There's Something In The Way You Lay

( content warnings: sexual content, voyeurism, body modification, omegaverse traits, loss of agency )

Beneath its pearlescent halls, beyond the banquet of flickering candles and dream-Vessels who eat in hollow silence, a spiral staircase winds downward. Its steps are damp and velvet-slick. The further you descend, the warmer the air becomes— humid, cloying, thick with the scent of sweat, salt, and incense. The sounds reach you first: Slaps, gasps, the wet chorus of bodies and perverse intimacy. Laughter, muffled sobs, the echo of whispered names long forgotten. At the base lies a corridor of "private" rooms. Their doors swing open with dreamlike invitation. Inside, the scenes unfold: past dream-Vessels lost in tableau— arched backs, bitten lips, mouths open in prayer or obedience. Some are alone, coiled in worship. Others tangle in groups, indistinguishable where one body ends and another begins. Vines bloom across the ceilings, watching. The walls glisten with breath. You see their faces, but you can't quite distinguish what or who they are. You may not remember choosing a role, but the dream has chosen for you. α or Ω— and with the naming, your body changes. There is no shame here, only devotion made manifest. This is how Sleep is worshipped now: through cruelty and surrender, through the giving and the taking of flesh.

NOTES

• Masks may optionally offer a sort of glamour for Vessels who wander into these chambers— they will not be able to recognize each other. How much of that, whether it be appearance, voice, and so on, is up to you.
• Past dream-Vessels perform for no one, eyes vacant, movements perfect, as if only a ghost of a memory. Player characters may interact with them and even partake in intimacy with them, but be warned: they are emotionally absent and may cause symptoms of succumbence that could be remedied with a proper, player-character tether.
• Tools hang on the walls: Rods of all sizes, slick with heat. Collars that hum with low, seductive voltage. Blindfolds that intensify physical contact, There's no need for cuffs or chains when there are vines that seem to respond to the α party's mood— tightening, flowering, or reaching for skin. You are free to come up with your own items.
• α perks:: Instinctive claiming (done through biting, rubbing, branding, etc), an almost predatory focus and obsession for those who interest them, pack gravity (the ability to attract one or more vessels at once), emitting a scent that ignites heat/rut in others, darker urges surge and a commanding voice.
Ω perks: High pain tolerance, instinctive yielding, emotional synchrony with those being watched, self-lubricating, hypersensitive, scent tracking, intense need to please or be filled emotionally, physically, and spiritually. When touched, glowing runes bloom across the skin.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Spells cast during acts of intimacy may provoke a heightened sensation of euphoria for both caster and whoever is affected by the spell.
• Magic may manifest as misty appendages— extra hands, tongues, eyes, etc.
• Divine energy becomes volatile when passed through the body— ecstasy may border on agony, or vice versa, and Tethering becomes impossibly euphoric.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• Flesh becomes malleable mid-act— bones bending, jaws unhinging, skin blooming open, etc.
• Animalistic traits emerge: tails, claws, growls, tentacles, scent glands— all begging to be used.
• Feeding and Tethering are indistinguishable— hunger becomes worship, and worship becomes need.

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I am not worthy

( content warnings: body horror, violence, gore, parasitic/invasive feeding, death )

Wherever you are, the palace begins to rot. First slowly, then all at once: vines swell with black fluid, splitting at the seams. They burst from beneath marble tiles, coil up pillars, slither across frames and vacant thrones like arteries choking a heart. The candlelight flickers. One by one, the flames throughout the palace float upward . . . And die. No smoke. No warning. Just wet silence. Then the Dream-Vessels begin to fall. They do not scream as they do. They collapse like marionettes, limbs askew. Their flesh splits open along wounds that should not exist— a rip at the neck, teeth marks prying open the ribcage, a bite that swallows half a torso. Bones jut like sculpted ivory. Entrails slither across the floor like garlands. Some burst mid-air, as if the dream demands spectacle. Others fold in on themselves until all that's left of them is a mound of flesh.

"I am not worthy."

One voice. Ten. A thousand—layered, glitching, sweaty. It echoes from the walls, the bodies, the seams in the floor. The corpses twitch in time with the chant, jerking violently. Some snap backwards, eyes wide, jaws unhinged. Others explode— blossoming in gore, raining viscera. From the heaving pile of ruined Dream-Vessels, something forms.

It lurches into being: stitched from tongues, teeth, torsos. Weeping. Wailing. Worshipping. A monstrosity of raw flesh and faith: all failures made meat. Its eyes (are they eyes?) blink out. Arms claw outwards, too many to count. Its scent is of copper, sweat, and sorrow.

When The Abomination chooses to feed, it seeks not flesh, but the softest rot inside you. An appendage uncoils from its writhing mass and unhinged jaw— veined, slick, and trembling like a violated root. It drives itself into your mouth, splitting your lips with obscene tenderness, and sinks deep into your throat, locking you still.

What it draws out is not blood. It siphons your doubts, your fears, your most secret self-hatred. Your inadequacy. Every buried shame. Your hate. Your negativity. Every flinch of unworthiness. Every moment you believed yourself unlovable, unseen, too small. It gorges on what you hide from even yourself, and the more you try to resist, the sweeter your sorrow becomes. The last thing it takes is your life force, and then your viscera, leaving you wilted and shrivled like a hollow log.

This death is violating and feels painfully slow. You're drained raw of your vitality until you're but a brittle husk that breaks to dust in the wind. It seems near impossible to destroy, always reforming into bits and pieces left smudged behind. Perhaps your best bet it to run, or attempt to wake yourself up from this nightmare.

One's voice repeats in choked sobs: I am not worthy.

NOTES:

• Wounds from the beast linger. You may wake bleeding or marked.
• If devoured, characters will awaken the following month extremely fatigued during the first 3-5 days of the month. They may also sporadically rigurgitate black sludge. Characters who die and are already in the game may requesta plot clue, that will be a vision your character will dream of before awakening.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Magic recoils violently when used on The Abomination, backfiring with psychic screams or ripping into your flesh.
• Your hands glow uncontrollably, burning what you touch— even those you love.
• Magic becomes hungry; it demands pieces of your body to function. A tooth. A nail. A rib (and so on).

OFFERING EFFECTS

• The rage it stirs in you is monstrous. You begin to shift uncontrollably— flesh blooms, bones crack under strain.
• Your body begins moving before you decide to. Twitching toward The Abomination, and toward the scent of despair.
• During the chaos, you may develop a fixation with another Vessel's flaw. You can smell it on them. It entrances you . . . To the point that you may feel the urge to feed them to The Abomination.

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OOC NOTES

➤ Welcome to Somnia's second TDM, which doubles as our third gamewide event!

➤ This TDM is considered game canon. You are free to have your character remember as many details as possible.

➤ Only new characters are free to experiment with the Vessel options to your liking; this is a dreamscape, so multiple/different situations for you to really test which option you like most is possible. Current characters must remain as their chosen Vessel type unless you requested a switch, which can be done on the Taken page.

➤ All TDMs take place within a dreamscape, meaning characters can interact with the setting without needing to apply. Come have fun with us!

➤ Veteran players, I ask to please refrain from making post-event threads for the time being! We have some important information to take into account in next month's event when characters are slated to "wake up". At the very least, please wait for the information to be offered on the next plotting post. Thank you everyone for your patience!

➤ Please comment on the TDM's INVITE TL if you are a new player interested in joining the game, but don't yet have an invite. Current players or the mod may reach out to extend an invite. Once you've got one, please don't forget to comment on the Invite page so you may properly link it in your reserve and app.

➤ Questions? Please direct them to the designated questions comment linked below!

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b-1, abstain

[sacral]

[ This is not his table, these are not his ghosts, but Subaru is seated anyway, abstaining perhaps in hopes of luring the eye of the one who watches them out. In truth, he holds little hope for an audience in a display as grand as this, but it seems right to attempt. Yet it's the surly protest of someone near to him that draws his half-blind gaze aside to the man awkwardly-winged, moon pale and morose green behind a soft veil rather than a mask. ]

I see. Would it help... [ He ventures, hypocritically disinclined to see anyone suffer the same fate he's suffering. ] if we shared something? I can go first.

[ If there's any malice in these offerings (which he's certain there is, and if not malice, then perhaps something more gently insidious, like stakes...) then it would be proven out by him first. ]

[lupusxylem]

[The soft voice beside him gets Wolfwood's attention, and he glances over with dark eyes without moving his head or body to meet his companion. His wings are still being held tight to his back, more instinctual than purposeful since he can barely control them yet. They're just...kindof there, a vestigial reminder that he's not on No Man's anymore.

He swallows thickly, finding his mouth and lips to be uncomfortably dry. He'd kill for a drink, and he's not had clean water in what feels like forever...liquor doesn't really count, but he'd take that if he had it. And sure enough, there's some on the table, along with a thick, dark cordial. Neither he's ventured to try on his own just yet.

To that end, the self-sacrificing way the person beside him offers to try something first rings just familiar enough that he ends up exhaling on a hollow sounding laugh.]

Share? You serious?

[sacral]

[ Subaru is sensitive to the suffering of others. A diviner's facet. And, if he had to guess, the sun-shorn rumble of laughter the other man emits at his offer is a symptom of it, left to fester for far too long. He was born with all the reflectiveness of water; he can feel the rattle of famishment, the ache. ]

I'm serious. [ Smooth and sullen, there's a directness to his answer that implies he lacks the energy to argue about it. ] If you want to confront our host, there are better ways.

[ His arm extends across the table, fingertips plucking at the cups. Man can starve for longer than he can thirst. He pulls them close, one by one, setting the golden liquor down between them first, then the cordial. ]

Here. I'll be alright.

[lupusxylem]

[The apprehension is still there. The distrust. It isn't directed at Subaru necessarily, but...that doesn't mean he's completely divorced from it. Wolfwood has his reasons, none of them personal. It's the only reason he's survived this long.

Still, he can tell that there's some actual genuine concern there. After all, would he bother offering if there wasn't?

He looks at the two glasses pulled close, eyes shifting between them. After a long moment, his claws reach for the golden liquor. Pulls it near...

...then nudges it towards Subaru.]

You first.

[sacral]

[ A certain level of discernment and paranoia are too necessary in his trade for him to take either as a slight. Even birds of prey, all talon and rending strength, don't alight just anywhere. So Wolfwood's eventual relent and push of the cup to his side of the table makes him perk slightly in realization, unphased by the idea of putting himself on the line for a better idea of what they're dealing with.

Before reaching for it, he pauses in deliberation of some silent thing and eventually his reasoning becomes clear: to make this decision his, he carefully peels Sleep's veil away from his face. It strikes him in the gut, the sheer wrongness of it, but he doesn't relent. ]

If this drives me to cause harm to anyone, please stop me.

[ Too much trust, even if taciturn, pressed into this man's hands. And then, he tips the glass back, allowing the overwarm liquid to fill his mouth.

Harm is not what comes. It's a deluge of sensations, mottled through the lens of memory. It's as if whatever is dredging these images from his soul is struggling to find joy — it's black, like the sea they arrived in. Unseeing, like blindness. Bells trill somewhere, and when clarity cuts through the darkness, it's not with the life-giving rays of sunlight or a cool drizzle of rain, but petals drifting, slow, sedate, threatening: "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... for your right eye..." It's a young voice tumbling over itself, scared to death. Then, an older man cuts in, near jovial in its logic: "Human beings can only act in their own self interest. Even if I say, 'I want to do something for that person's sake'.... ultimately, they're saying, 'I want to see that person happy so that I'll be happy. I thought, 'I'd rather have a healthy Subaru-kun than an injured Subaru-kun'..." Forgiveness. Immense relief, and in its place a foreign sensation wells, the source of the memory that the marigold liquor has sourced:

Love.

"It sounds like you really love that person." "Huh?" "Of course, since you seem kind, I'm sure you also feel guilty regarding his injury. Hearing you talk about him, I can tell that you truly love him..."

"...Love..."

Wind roars through the memory as if to wipe it away, obscuring anything else that might form with the sound of creaking tree branches, great boughs heavy with leaves and flowers menacing over the sanctity of his mind. As if there is something else in here with them, beyond Sleep.

Subaru's elbow plants itself on the table, rattling the silverware; brows pinched, he rubs at the space between them. He looks like he has a tremendous headache. ]

You don't have to try that one.

[ His tone is somewhat flat but lacks regret. ]

[lupusxylem]

[One might call this a perplexing reaction to what is otherwise a pleasant memory- a feeling- but Wolfwood feels like he understands this a bit too well. You can have positive feelings come with negative circumstances. It feels like a paradox, an anomaly...but human beings are just complicated like that. It's exactly how he felt, leaving Hopeland behind. Even when he didn't fully understand the gravity of his situation at such a young age, part of him knew...better him, than them.

And so it was.

He's quiet after the last of the memory leaves them both, leaving Wolfwood feeling a mix of deep love and melancholy. Neither emotion foreign to him, but mixed together irrevocably as they are...?

Wolfwood purses his lips, eyeing the glass between them.]

Mm. Sorry if you didn't want me to see that.

[Oh, if only he knew how often this would become a thing.]

[sacral]

[ Subaru shakes his head, half in admonishment of the apology, half as if to dispel whatever's lingering in his peripherals. He's tougher than he looks. ]

I made the choice knowing there were risks. [ Especially given that the backdrop of this meeting is that of a dream, an infinite landscape colored by the heart and soul of the dreamer. The Seers of his world, the dead — all had the ability to walk through dreams. Never has it been so many others. Rolling the last of the brandy's flavor in his mouth, he moves to return his veil. ] You don't have to apologize to me for it.

[ Though it cracked his head open and spilt out memory, it does seem like some color has returned to his skin. Subaru is quiet a moment. ]

What will you do? Drink it, knowing what it does, or choose something else?

[lupusxylem]

...

[He's silent for a moment, and not without good reason. If there's one thing Wolfwood hates, it's being forced to open himself up. To offer up anecdotes and snippets of his life that are his alone to be cherished or reviled, whether positive or not. That lack of control, that agency...it's maddening.

But not so maddening as the feeling of being parched, of needing to drink something before he's forced to imbibe whatever the nearest glass holds. At least he's still aware enough to make the decision for himself...that's kindof all he has left.

So...it's wordless when Wolfwood goes for the liquor, ultimately deciding if he has to, he'd rather get drunk at the same time.

Immediately, they're both drawn into a simple memory from Wolfwood's not-so-distant past. Two scruffy orphans, one with dark hair and his companion with lighter, white hair, huddle conspiratorially on a roof somewhere. They're clearly doing something they're not supposed to, and what that something is is immediately made clear when it's seen that the darker haired boy is smoking something, though it's not a traditional cigarette of any kind. It's strange, curled like an insect's leg, and the smoke it produces isn't dark but oddly colored. He exhales it before offering it to his friend, who nervously takes a puff before he starts to cough violently over it, with the other boy patting his back. If they're saying anything it goes unheard, and not long after this happens they're caught by an adult woman who opens the door to the roof nearby, shouting at them as they try to scamper away. There's nowhere to go and hide up here, so being found is inevitable.

When they both come out of it, Wolfwood is stone silent, his lips quirked in such a way that makes it hard to discern exactly how he's feeling about what they just saw.]

[sacral]

[ It's not his favorite sensation. To scry someone's memories is to put a magnifying glass to their heart, to the faults and welts and thrumming. It's not the dourness or the silence that signals to Subaru this is a no-win decision, but the act of taking the drink itself, knowing there's no recourse. Self-preservation of the body and its corporeal needs, not the mind. Subaru knows he hasn't earned it.

So he watches the two boys with weary eyes, their clandestine meeting, small hands passing trouble back and forth between them. Smoke climbs in thin wisps that he can nearly taste, though the victory of it is short-lived at the hands of the woman that comes to claim them.

Two mouthfuls of liquor on an empty stomach and no lasting joy for it. Just a prickle of addiction. He does feel the need to move his body, but not in expression of anything pleasant. Exhaling, he pushes his seat out. ]

I'm tired of this spectacle. [ Climbing to a stand, he glances aside. ] Will you come with me?

[lupusxylem]

[Now that the feeling has passed (mostly, this liquor is strong and determined to make them feel joy, or maybe some kind of distant fondness at the very least), Wolfwood finds himself wishing he had liquor that didn't make him feel anything. That's the real kind he needs right about now.

But then, his companion is moving to stand from the table, which prompts Wolfwood to look up at him without lifting his head. It's unseen behind his mask as he raises a brow, not yet getting up himself.]

That depends. Where to?

[sacral]

Somewhere with less eyes. [ Subaru remarks, gaze momentarily circling the banquet hall. All around them, monstrous forms glow in oily, phantasmic shapes, still and looming on their pedestals. Only one seems alive, but one is enough. In his pause, he flickers an expression that almost appears apologetic for the comfort he can't offer. ] Even if it's only in spirit and not practice.

[ He's not confident enough to say they aren't still being watched by whatever whispers on the peripherals of his consciousness, eager to see his memories, this man's memories. ]

I prefer the shore.

[ They're no less trapped by the void basin than they are the palace, but at least being out on the sand is less heady, less claustrophobic. ]

[lupusxylem]

[There's a part of Wolfwood that is very much a bit wary to get up and follow a complete stranger, who has unknown intentions...but thus far, he's been nothing but kind to him. That never means anything, he knows, but it's better than nothing in the face of so much other bullshit.

He thinks on it for another moment before he hauls himself to his feet with a heavy exhale.]

I'll be honest, I didn't know we were even allowed t'leave.

[Well, he also hadn't yet dared try.]

[sacral]

I went back to the bridge once. [ He admits, albeit somewhat slowly. ] To see if there was anyone left.

[ Subaru was slow to commit to the feasting. With the liquor's warmth now churning in his belly, memories roiled in the sensation of hunger and thirst, he understands why that is. He's too stubborn to let go of his sensitivities just yet, for the good that he knows it'll do — the call of the waves threatening to swallow all the bits and pieces of faith still left had more promise. Treachery and all.

He rounds his seat and pushes it in, making for the doorway that lets out into the hall that funnels people like them in from the sea. ]

What was it that you were smoking? In your memories.

[lupusxylem]

[Back to the bridge...

Alright, fuck it. Wolfwood decides- in that moment- that he really doesn't have much to lose here, and if this guy tries anything funny he'll be able to easily defend himself anyway, so he should be fine. He's not going to complain about being able to leave this cramped dining hall for a bit of fresh air, at the very least.

So out they go, with Wolfwood endeavoring not to let his gaze linger on anyone else for too long, lest he find himself unintentionally getting sucked back into the mire.]

Mm. Would you believe me if I told you it was a worm? ...well, part of one anyway.

[sacral]

[ Stoic as he is, he seems relieved for the company, even if it feels somewhat ill-begotten by the memories they had to force to the surface. It needles at him, how much better he feels after drinking just once — he suspects that feeling is by design. Wolfwood's answer is thankfully distracting enough; it draws a curious gaze aside. ]

Because of where we are, I'd believe anything.

[ Walking these halls is like walking a beast's bloodstream. As they near the palace entrance, Subaru shuffles around in his pocket and dredges up a half-empty pack of cigarettes that's surely seen better days. He rattles it around a little, knowing it likely won't matter very soon that he's about to run out. ]

Not as unique, I know. [ He tips a cigarette out halfway and holds it up to the other man in offering. ] But I'd rather keep my own addictions for as long as I'm able to.

[ Even if only in dreaming. ]

[lupusxylem]

[Honestly, Wolfwood can't even find it in himself to feel too much shame over the fact that he reaches for that offered cigarette without so much as thinking twice. It could be dangerous, could be laced with god knows what, but this is a dream...right? If it killed him, he'd probably just startle himself awake once it was all over. That much is enough to make it worth it to him, and it shows in the way his shoulders relax the moment he takes it.]

Hah...nah. That was just what I could grab when I was a kid. I got regular cigs on me back home.

[Well, "regular". Those are made from worms too, so this is likely going to seem a bit different to his tastebuds. No less satisfying though, that's for damn sure.

Wolfwood is already sliding it between his teeth as he asks around it:]

You got a light?