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JERICHO ● SEPTEMBER 2025 EVENT/TDM
TDM & EVENT: JERICHO
ᛗ
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.
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.
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.
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.
ᛗ
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:
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.OFFERING EFFECTS:
• 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.
• 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.
ᛗ
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.
The table awaits.
NOTES:
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.TOKEN EFFECTS:
• 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.
• 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.OFFERING EFFECTS:
• 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.
• 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.
ᛗ
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
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.TOKEN EFFECTS
• 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.
• Spells cast during acts of intimacy may provoke a heightened sensation of euphoria for both caster and whoever is affected by the spell.OFFERING EFFECTS
• 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.
• 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.
ᛗ
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:
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.TOKEN EFFECTS
• 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.
• Magic recoils violently when used on The Abomination, backfiring with psychic screams or ripping into your flesh.OFFERING EFFECTS
• 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).
• 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.
ᛗOOC 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!
➤ 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!
eton mess
It is not his memory, no, but even this feels too familiar, too terrible, too fucking shitty to let be.
This time, light blooms in the guts of this pit like a small, rectangular sun.
Ahead of the crouched boy, another one stands resolute like a barrier against the myriad curses. He grips in one hand a small, cracked phone, its screen a simple blank white that burns all the brighter in the oppressive dark of this memory. Clutched in his other hand, a sword as white as marble, as featureless as if it had been carved from it.
"I got you." Dave doesn't look back, but his words aren't for the seething dark.
no subject
And someone would. Not here, not in this pit, but someday. And through her Toji would learn that hope was the deadliest curse of them all.
"The light attracts them...!" his young boy's voice rasps out, sharp with panic. He hates how small it sounds, hates how young he was back then. It's a stupid thing to resent. It's not like he could've helped it. He hates it anyway, and he reaches for the stranger's hand to try to smother the light.
It's too real to be a dream, and the memory of the otherworldly dining hall has faded out of Toji's mind completely, slipping away like fog until he can remember nothing but this room, nothing but the family that put him here. His fear feels cleaner, simple. The anger leaves him. He is only afraid. He is just a boy, and he is only scared of a family that will not love him and the things that whisper in the dark.
There's a curse that freezes, that makes his whole body go numb and there's a curse that burns, not with fire but with a thousand tiny imperceptible cuts. There's a curse that skitters, with too many arms that all end in blades. There's one that whispers in despair, that tells him there's no point, he should just lay down, he should just let the darkness have him, that at least devoured he would have a purpose. He could be wanted. He just has to lay down quietly here.
This stranger is too strange to be a conjuring. He doesn't look like a sorcerer, doesn't feel like one. But he's not a curse either, and Toji can't fathom why he's here, or how, and all Toji knows how to do right now is fear.
no subject
Dave is no hero. He has never wanted to be one, has never believed himself suited to the role no matter how many of the forces that shaped his path dubbed him as such. Hell, he doesn’t feel like one in this terrible, dark place; like the kid behind him, Dave fears. Terror buzzes under his skin like electricity, dread coils tight in his guts, it threatens to shake him apart but he stands firm. He’s gotta. Back straight and jaw clenched to keep his teeth from chattering, Dave is no fucking hero but he still turns on the phone’s flashlight to cut through the dark. Dream or not, delusion or not, he remembers what it’s like to struggle under the crushing weight of the ‘care’ of a guardian who does not love him, alone and bruised and bloody, and he cannot bring himself to leave this single boy alone for even a second.
“Good.” he intones, and his voice is so much calmer than Dave feels, and goddamn fucking idiot he is he throws the glaring spotlight of the phone up high into the air so he can take Caledfwlch in both hands.
Dave can’t see the curses like the boy can’t see them, but he can hear them well enough, can sense the irregularities well enough to figure this shit out on his own, and the thing that whispers cruelties just happens to make itself a perfect target in this game of blind whack-a-curse. He’s gone in a flurry of movement, a streak of red converging on a particular point in the pit, his blade an arc of white made stark in this lightless place and when he strikes at seemingly nothing, a shriek from an unseen throat (throats?) pierces the air.
no subject
Toji doesn't know how the stranger got here, but he does know it's his fault. Is this a new game the old man is playing? Some new and worse punishment? The taunt of someone decent, someone to offer Toji an outstretched hand, to prove to Toji his uselessness and helplessness to the world? (—that lesson will come later, no matter what the Zenin elders do or don't do—)
Toji screams, a high and rasping sound, some desperate swell of fear and rage tearing from his throat as he launches himself forward to do something, anything. He can fight, he can keep them back. He's been fighting. He'd just been getting tired, wearing thin. Getting hurt had rattled him. He didn't know how much time had passed or how much longer he had to go, and even though he could beat the darkness back, having no cursed energy of his own meant he had no way of ridding the pit of what plagued it.
But with this stranger, maybe— Maybe they can last. Maybe he can protect them both. He doesn't feel tired anymore, he doesn't hurt. His lip is bleeding again, but he doesn't care. Zenin Toji doesn't want to be someone who leaves other people behind. (—Fushiguro Toji will shed everything, everyone, but his own self will be the first thing he abandons—)
no subject
He is terrified, but his voice still cranks up to join the kid’s in rattling defiance, a cracking, “Fuck yeah, make ‘em eat shit!
So before the nerves and the fear can lock up his useless limbs, Dave hurls himself across the space, a tangle of limbs and cloth cape and antiquated blade. He allows himself some showing off when he uses the sword like a vault, hurtling skyward in an arc where, at its zenith, he kicks up to knock the phone spinning back into the air. The effect is dizzying, awful, a wild rave effect of shitty LED light streaking around the room. Will it confuse the curses? Fuck if Dave knows, but anything is worth a shot. Fuck the dinner and the dream and the dream within a dream, he’s here now and he’s got a duty to see through.
When he lands, he whips around to place himself at the nameless boy’s side, blade up and ready to watch his back. Again, Dave bites out into the dark,
“I’ve got you!”
no subject
That clear, bright 'I've got you rings out infinitely in his mind. Has anyone ever said that to him before? Did she? He can't remember. She doesn't exist yet, not here.
He fights, and they fight, and then something in the dark cracks.
They spill out the other side of it, back into the dining hall, Toji gulping for air as he turns to look at the stranger from the dream, the memory. That's not how it went and Toji knows that's not how it went, he knows it now with renewed clarity, with the full context of the rest of his miserable, empty life.
But it feels real. It feels different, uncomfortably so, somewhere deep in his chest. Like the presence next to him is a familiar one, someone who means something to him, someone trusted.
His gaze is somehow both a glower and something closer to fondness, to longing. His voice is gruff when it comes out, the entire situation having him so turned around that the only real emotion he can muster in the moment is decidedly cranky.
"Didn't get your name," he mutters, not really knowing what else you say to a stranger who tried to fight all the monsters that haunt your inner child.
no subject
it is too bright in here, too warm. his mask sits too firmly on his face, its stupid corvid beak curving like the punchline to a joke only the gods find funny. he wants to tear it off, but his hands won’t move to complete the action, his fingers twitch and tense and he can smell something burning like toast left in too long and his heartbeat seems too loud in his ears like the constant deafening tock of a gargantuan clock and he—
—blinks. Lets out a heavy breath like he’d been holding it all this time, an echo of the man sitting in the next seat. Dave, he’s almost glad for the mask, the way it shields how he stares agog at the guy. Turns out the boy he’d been fighting for is an absolute fucking unit of a man, just completely gigantic, with a mug about as mean as those fists look. Yet, it’s him, the boy in the dark, of that there is no doubt; that little scar on his mouth says it all.
But now’s not the time for zoning out like an asshole. C’mon Dave, play it off like that whole thing didn’t just rattle you to the core.
“Dave,” he says, and it kind of catches and cracks in an embarrassingly teenage way. God damn it. He clears his throat quick-like, tries to play it off like he isn’t still reeling from his clash with curses. Tries to, but his voice still swings low when he finds himself asking, “-you okay, big guy? That was some crazy shit there.”
no subject
He knows none of that happened. He knows there's bullshit afoot. He knows it's this whole fucked up place, and that he was alone, that no one was there, especially not some weird foreign kid who apparently hasn't come out the other side of puberty yet.
(Is he Megumi's age? Must be, just about. He's been dead since Megumi was a toddler, so he's either not old enough to be this kid's dad, or he would've been an alarmingly young teen father— Anyway.)
"It was a long time ago," he finally manages to say, starting to lick the dribble of jam from his lip before thinking better of it. He smears it away with a napkin instead, pushing the rest of the insultingly mediocre dessert away.
"Don't eat that."
There's another strained pause before he heaves out a sigh.
"You would've died, you know. In that pit. If it'd been real. Died, or worse. It was stupid, the stunt you pulled."
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"Wasn't planning on it, thanks." Eating that, he means, which is just another tally on Reasons He Isn't Going To Eat This Sick Spread. (the smell of burning toast deepens to something uglier; a house on fire, maybe, plaster and plastics and wood combining into an acrid stench he can't swallow away.
he seems a little greyer than just a second before, the reds of his suit a little less vibrant, a little less there.)
"Yeah. Probably." Stupid, he means. Deadly, he means, but when he finds the big guy's gaze again he doesn't look away. Red irises gleam from under the mask. "But if it was real, I woulda done it anyway. It isn't my brand to leave a kid in the dark like that."
He thinks of the kid in that memory, small and scared and bloody, and something in Dave's jaw sets into a hard line.
"What was stupid was leaving you down there. Only irredeemable assholes do shit like that."