JAWS • DECEMBER 2025 EVENT/TDM

[uruz]

TDM & EVENT: JAWS

Watch on YouTube

ᛗ

Show Me Those Pretty White Jaws

The dream has been coming in waves for those new to Sleep's touch, as a shoreline that never stays still. As a sky that never remembers to include its stars. Beneath it all, there is a voice. Her voice: silk-sweet, coaxing from just beyond the approaching wave that towers like a moving mountain. She tells you to come home. She promises it won't hurt, even if she never tells you what waits beneath. You see the shape just before the dream ends: a massive black tidal wave, yawning wide and black until it looks like a pair of jaws breaking upon you. You don't have time to resist.

You and your veteran Vessels will awaken in water.

There is no surface. No bottom. No sky. No sound but your own heartbeat and the echoes of water being slashed though, dull and endless in the still, frigid dark. You are suspended, weightless— Some may have difficulty to breathe without inhaling water the first few times, while those aligned with the waves will feel it come like second nature. Once you acclimate yourself, you'll notice that around you drift glowing filaments; thin, pulsing threads that coil like jellyfish tendrils, softly luminescent. They curl and twist through the water, and when you look closer, you realize: they show you things. Memories, maybe. Dreams, maybe. Each one unique to your gaze: a hand reaching for yours in the dark, a goodbye that never finished, a face you haven't seen in years. They are what you think love looks like. What you once needed it to be. And when you touch them, they wrap around you, gently, warmly . . . Hungrily— and begin to pull you down.

To ascend into the next level, you must let go. But not everything that binds you wants to be released. The filaments drifting through the water show you what you think love looks like— what you've built it into. They are gentle at first, beautiful even, but the longer you cling, the more they pull.

There are ways to escape them: You may bind your filament with another's and together speak aloud a shared truth: what you believe love really is. If your hearts align or at the very least come to an agreement, the threads dissolve into light and lift you upward. If your beliefs clash or contradict, the threads knot tighter, and something . . . May take interest in you.

Beneath you, something moves. Huge, silent and almost regal. It glides through the deep like a phantom, almost too large to be real. You feel its presence before you see its flash of pearl white and glowing red eyes, three on each side of its face: a shark.

The shark is here to choose its next meal. It smells grief, fear and seeks out trauma most of all. It is drawn to the most unspoken parts of you, the very parts you thought were buried, roused from the tightened ropes of what you crave in your heart. And when it chooses you, it does not bite immediately. It invites, with its jaws opening like a sanctuary and slow towards you.

Inside is I, whispers Sleep. Allow Me to have you whole, and you will be at peace. Show Me love.

Fight against her, or even with your current partner about what love is, and Sleep will open her maw, spilling tendrils from her throat and begin to stalk you. Best be prepared to fight the possessed Megalodon— She will laugh, amused as you do, like a great cat playing with its food. And if you were to be caught, well. You'll wake in the dream's next level with an undeniable prey drive, whether Token or Offering.

She will do anything to keep you here.

NOTES:

• There is no surface visible at first. Light only comes from the filaments. As characters resist, act, or ascend, a faint stained-glass shimmer begins to pulse upward, hinting at the dream's next layer.
• Sound is muffled— speech emerges as bubbles, but meaning travels regardless. Words feel heavy here. Some phrases may literally change the water (turn to light, birth dream-objects, or ripple with tension). You will do better using The Murmur as a means of communication. Luckily you have your mask on!
• The Shark always circles once it senses trouble within you. Sometimes close, sometimes far, but always felt. If characters listen closely, they can hear the echo of One's voice coming from inside it: pleading with a haunted, at times screaming melody.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• The dream bends subtly around Tokens, especially at the whims of an Aquamancer. Walls of pressure open before them, and filaments shift course as if expecting them. This can make their path easier, unless they start to doubt their purpose.
• Tokens perceive emotional resonance as currents in the water such as subtle flows of energy. These can guide them (or others) toward escape paths, or signal when the shark is near.
• When a Token speaks or acts with strong intent, the dream sometimes translates it into a symbolic structure: A word might become a floating glyph. A gesture might alter the filament's shape. A moment of clarity might reveal a hidden path. Other characters can interact with these dream-objects, but they're fragile, unstable, and prone to distortion by doubt.
• The deeper Tokens go, the more they feel themselves pulling apart and begin to experience dual awareness: one part dreaming, one part watching— some may even see flashes of within the shark's belly, and One's voice much louder. The deeper they go, the more detached they become, and the more they lack the ability to act at all.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• The shark is more fascinated by Offerings. It circles them often, sensing kinship— or potential. The more monstrous the Offering, the more the shark "pauses' near them, almost curious.
• Offerings feel "the pull" more clearly, particularly Merrows and other aquatic-based Offerings—they can sense where the surface might be, and where the shark intends to strike next. They may even see pulses in the water that others miss, similar to Spider Man's "spidey senses".
• An Offering may experience rapid body changes submerged. Fins may appear, bones may shift, teeth may lengthen without warning and so on. This makes their movement easier or harder, depending on how much of themselves they're holding back or how apt their monstrous forms are at swimming.
• Some Offerings may feel drawn to the shark— not in fear, but in understanding. They may see themselves in it, and vice versa— One's song in particular is hypnotic, and for split moments you may understand his pain through his words. This might make you more prone to being consumed, though, so hopefully your partner can help you out of it—?.

ᛗ

Watching Me With Eyes Of A Predator

The surface you breach is not water— it's glass.

You strike it with the force of falling sky. It fractures beneath you in a bloom of painted light. For one weightless moment, the dream hesitates, sputters. Then the world shatters, and you fall with the cascade.

Water pours through the crack in the ceiling, carrying you down in ribbons of color and a shattering splash. Stained glass shards drift like petals through the now collapsing roof, and you eventually land not in sand, but upon a cathedral floor, slick with tide. Around you, the water spreads, pooling across the stone and swallowing the walls in a rising hush as it finds escape through the doors.

The cathedral is vast, impossibly so. Its architecture towers, crooked and immaculate, built more from longing than stone. No altar awaits you. No congregation. Only the sensation of having trespassed into something meant to be private. Veteran Vessels may recognize this cathedral as St. Patrick's— before it was drenched in One's blood sacrifice.

High above and surrounding you, the stained-glass mosaics churn with captured light. f you linger beneath one of the window's rays, your appearance may begin to change under the light. You appear as someone else sees you. Be it a hero. A monster. A disappointment. A god. A weakness. A temptation. Even a burden. That version of you clings to your dream-body like a second skin; uncomfortable, intimate, and undeniable. For some, it may be beautiful. For others, unbearable.

If you and another stand beneath the same window, you may each appear as the other secretly imagines. There is no control and no negotiation. Only truth twisted through the lens of want, resentment, fear, or love. And it doesn't go away until you leave the light.

Eventually, the cathedral doors open by dream's will. Beyond them lies a cloister garden: narrow paths, pale trees, and wild flowers that bloom in stillness. At the far end, behind the overgrowth and ruined arches, you see a hollow.

It is a corridor where the dream collapses inward, twisting, warped, half-swallowed in fog and dread. Its stones pulse faintly beneath a shallow film of water. Black tendrils reach from its depths like roots, veins, twitching toward sound, warmth, and movement. You see them dragging matter into the earth, and between them lie bones, contorted and fresh, half-consumed.

And farther still, a body that still breathes. Glimpsed only briefly, A masked man's form is stretched by the hollow's gravity, arms pinned behind the veil. He does not move, or speak. Or perhaps, he cannot. The hollow does not let him go and will not, should you make your attempts. If you step foot in the hollows that have consumed him, you too will be consumed. A three eyed Tod sits at the hollow's edge, a single bushy tail splitting into three, as its body plays with illusion like smoke put to dance over fire. It says, as its head floats up and its maw splits into a grin too cheshire to ignore: Wearing shoes, yet no feet in sight. You'll hear steps pound in the death of night. What is it that you need, to cross this narrow blight?

It disappears and only leaves you the riddle to chew on.

Nothing living can cross the hollow, you'll soon find. Nothing except . . . The Nightmares.

Just outside the garden's boundary, you'll find horses built from wind and shadow, flickering at the edge of your vision. Their bodies are black— not the color, but the absence, swallowing all light. Some of their craniums cound be seen, others have a jutting horn of bone from their foreheads. Where eyes should be, there are six: three stacked on each side of the skull, glowing dimly red like distant embers beneath ice. Their manes flow like torn fabric, like drifting vapor that trails behind them like the smoke from a snuffed candle. Their maws are too damn wide to be herbivorous, yet they seem to enjoy the act of grazing. They wait, unchained and wild in a herd.

This is the only way forward. Only they can pass through the hollow untouched. But how to ride one—? You may chase them. You may plead, command, kneel. You may offer them all your need and all your love, promises that you will provide if they become your steed. But they were not made to answer it. For every Vessel, there is one single Nightmare that will choose them, and thus you will choose each other. They have their own personalities, some more aggressive or shyer than others. The harder you reach, the faster they vanish or harshed they will attack if unready. Try to mount one through force, and you'll regret ever trying. Try to bind one, and it will break you.

But if you are patient, if you figure out its nature and how to please it— your Nightmare may come closer. One may circle you. It may bow its head. Their snort is warm and real against your palm. If successful, it will lower itself to its knees. If you've got the height, they will simply wait, patiently, for you to get on their backs (Or not; there are plenty of sassy mares out there).

If you accept, you might not be taken somewhere safe, but you will be taken somewhere true, away from here. And if you force your want upon them, if you cannot let go— you will be left with something else.

In the distance, across the flooded cathedral floor, you may see One again. Flashes, glimpses. Always chasing a mare he never reaches, or the opposite— the mare chases after him.

NOTES:

• If a character successfully forms a bond with their Nightmare, it will return with them in the form of a waking world steed, officially introduced in the next event. You're free to give it the personality you wish.
• If a character attempts to force a connection with a Nightmare at any point (tries to catch, mount, command, etc.), the mare will bite or kick, which Vessels will suffer as a persistent dream-mark that will carry into the waking world.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Light clings unnaturally to Tokens in the cathedral, especially near the stained glass. It bends around their bodies like a false halo, casting them in divine or monstrous outlines depending on who watches.
• If a Token casts or channels any magic within the cathedral or near a Nightmare, the spell does not manifest, but instead, a cold mist escapes their mouth, and the Nightmare turns to look. The dream rejects force.
• When a Nightmare looks directly at a Token, their eyes eclipse, pupils vanishing into rings of shadow. In that moment, a fragmented vision floods the Token's mind . . . not from the Nightmare, but from another character nearby. It shows the Token how that character once dreamed of them, what they feared, needed, or hoped they would become.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• The stained glass causes a subtle change in scent and physical appearance turning into a more grotesque version of this— Offerings begin to smell or look like what others most want from them.
• Offerings may always know where the Nightmares are, even when hidden. But the more they try to act on this knowledge, the harder the Nightmares are to reach.
• An Offering's body will react before they realize it, flinching from lies, bristling in moments of emotional pressure, pulling away from contact, and so on. They may startle even at gentle contact, as if something inside them is as reactive as they are.

ᛗ

Where The Delicate Stops

As your Nightmare takes you through the misty hollow, you may begin to notice the empty city of Manhattan as veterans remember. There is no warning but the eerie silence that surrounds you like impossible weights. The cathedral once behind you folds inward— wrong, deep and full of pressure. It bursts through the hollow's path, through the city's street, and then— The dream ruptures.

Stone peels backward like paper. Glass liquefies mid-air. The sky above the city pulls itself inside out. Time bends sideways. And from the edges of the dream, something, someone, begins to hunt. Sleep's presence moves like the very shark she chose as a vision of her physical manifestation. She does not speak or rage. But you feel Her, rising like fever beneath the skin of Her world as the hairs at the back of your neck do. She does not want you this deep, and neither does One.

Somewhere within the collapse, you may see them— entwined, shifting, trembling. One's face is turned toward you, screaming something that doesn't reach your ears. Sleep's hands are tangled in his body. She pulls him back with a gentleness that breaks the sky, and he screams, reaching for you with his last breath before consumption. The dream convulses.

The Nightmares bolt with you still on them.

The city rises to meet you from the shadows, but it's not the city you know. Skyscrapers twist at unnatural angles. Streets flood, then dry, then flood again. Tendrils burst from subway grates and gutters, slashing upward like tongues. Streetlights spin like compass needles. Cars levitate, crash, freeze midair. You move through it all at breakneck speed, but the exit keeps shifting— a hole in the world that flickers just beyond reach where you see your body, fast asleep.

Somewhere in the chaos, a few Nightmares are caught. Sleep strikes like lightning— she coils like a viper and tightens like a vice. One touch from Her, and your Nightmare collapses mid-gallop, its body unraveling into smoke and light. No sound. No scream. Just absence. And you fall right off it like a ragdoll.

Others fall beneath impact, too— a wrong turn, a shattered wall, a burst of heat from One's grief. A broken leg. A crash. A wound too deep to ride through. If your steed is lost, you fall. And if no one reaches for you, you stay fallen. Others are near, and their Nightmares still run. All of you have a terrible dread in your bones— if you are caught or left behind, the consequences will be dire. You might not even wake up. So, call out. Cling. Climb. Share. Two Vessels on one mount. Anything to survive and flee as the dreamscape tightens its wrathful grip around you.

Sleep calls inside your spine. You can't make out what She says. One answers, the same blur of garbled words in your marrow. And then, just before the dream can take you, just before you reach an exit— you rise.

Your body lifts from the Nightmare as it paddles the air with desperation, it too rising. You're pulled upward, weightless, as if a thread inside your heart has been yanked by a furious god. You float, twist in the air. Your vision glows white.

We've got you.

And then you wake up— mid-air in the waking world.

Your body slams into your bed, floor, street, soil, wherever it was that you had slept. Reality greets you with terrible impact.

NOTES

• If a character does not find a mount in time, they may be caught in the dream collapse. They still wake— but they wake broken. These characters may wake up bruised, disoriented, or emotionally fragmented, and this can be explored in the next waking world event.

TOKEN EFFECTS

• Any Tether they feel becomes unstable—splintered. For brief moments, they feel it breaking and re-forming again and again, with slight differences each time.
• The more emotionally charged they are, the more the dream pulls toward them; tendrils snap faster, debris veers unnaturally close.
• Their body flickers with signs of their own magic—sigils, symbols, runes— burning just beneath the surface of their skin like constellations. These glow brighter as the dream collapses, as if trying to tear free.

OFFERING EFFECTS

• Where Offerings are grazed or injured, they bleed light, not red. It floats up like mist.
• They hear One's heartbeat, not theirs, and it speeds in panic. It affects their own pulse, the mare under them . . .
• The Nightmare no longer follows the Offering's will—it will respond to their fear instead.

ᛗ

OOC NOTES

➤ Welcome to Somnia's third TDM, which doubles as the month's gamewide event!
➤ This TDM is considered game canon. You are free to have your character remember as many details as possible when they wake up.
➤ Only new characters are free to experiment with the Vessel options, Token or Offering 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!

network ᛗ logs ᛗ ooc ᛗ memes ᛗ navigation

code

code

Comments

Lady Maria | Bloodborne | Lycan | Current Player

[whomthebelltolls]

[1: Show Me Those Pretty White Jaws]

[The concept of "love" will have to wait a moment, because awakening into drowning is both entirely familiar to Maria and a massive trigger of something else: She's thalassophobic, and has never really told anyone. So for the first moments of the dream - she flails, she struggles, she moves with the panicked, but purposeful swimming of someone that is desperate to try to find the surface, but there is no surface to be found.

Light, love, and a way to the surface will have to come later because there is a more immediate, pressing need showing itself: The megalodon is drawn by trauma, and this thalassophobia is rooted deeply in trauma. Maybe not what people expect, but maybe once she sees someone else not having a bad time, they can blitz out an answer to love?

As she swims past the filaments without slowing or stopping, even as they grasp at her, they flash little visions here and there.

Love: Maria and another, taller man who wields a scythe longer than he is tall - and he is tall indeed. They are cornered by strange, naked, pale humanoids with weapons; in the distance, a bell rings and with every ring, gigantic spiders pulsing with glowing red veins spawn into the air and scuttle toward the two hunters. But there is no fear, there is no hesitation as they cut through the throngs of enemies. Neither Maria nor the other hunter seem to mind turning their backs on their enemies because every time they do, the other moves to cover the motion, to defend the vulnerability. A hunter is never alone. A hunter is never alone.

Love: And there's a lanky, pale figure, slowly in the midst of thrashing upon the ruined, stained covers of a bed. Maria grabs the person's hand as they move, and their long, spindly fingers, skin graying to an abhorrent shade wrap around her hand in turn. Their head is covered in some kind of cloth, as well; about twice the size a human's head should be, it moves a little here and there like there's something writhing under the surface. Like their head is trapped in there with eels or something else lithe and slimy. The figure seems to calm, seems to lay back, and laughs with a tired, cracking woman's laugh that is completely out of place with what else is going on. Once the woman seems calm enough, Maria helps her sit up. They seem to chat with each other, but no words seem to come out - in the end, Maria presses a small key into the person's palm, and stands to leave.

Love to her seems to be a steady, predictable presence, and trust, and understanding. But she has to calm down first to articulate that.]

[2: Watching Me With the Eyes of a Predator]

[Well that was quite possibly the second worst thing she's ever done in her life - for the first time, she feels a little more than annoyance toward Sleep and "Her" antics. A little walk around the cathedral - it's familiar, though also tied to... er... less than savory memories this month - may help at least. The dream is up to familiar antics, as well; sometimes she walks beneath the moonlight and, well... almost nothing happens. She is a noble scion of Cainhurst, and so many people see her as a noble scion of Cainhurst. She also happens to look a lot like a vampire just naturally, so her blood-drinking habits don't seem to color the vision much. Other times, the light flashes over her and her full lycan form is shown - in the stark light, the white of her fur glows, and the shadows cast highlight the "human twisted and bent and forced to comply with canid proportions" of her fully transformed state.

But maybe someone else wants to stand beneath it with her, and they can see each other?

After that, though, as soon as the doors are open in the cathedral, she is more than happy to escape out and head for the gardens and... there are horses. Or at least things that look like horses - shadows, perhaps? She tries to step close, and they disappear, turning to mist and skittering off.

So... very horse-like horse-shadow-things. That's alright, though. Sometimes a horse needed to be pushed to its boundaries and maybe a step beyond, and sometimes a horse needs time. This is a lesson she learned an eternity ago. She had been something like a knight, after all, once.

Not that the person stepping up next to her needs to know that, as she holds an arm out before she looks at them.] They're very skittish. We don't want to cause a panic in the herd. [And then turns to look and see who she's talking to.]

[3: Where the Delicate Stops]

[It's been a while since Maria has ridden a horse, especially bareback. The mare seems to know where it's going, as little comfort as it is. Maria has no idea if it's even a good idea to ride the thing, but what's the worst that can happen to her? She dies? She gets thrown into an Eldritch madness? She's already done both.

Then, the steel shrieks and glass melts. The sky splits, and the city unravels in a way that reminds Maria perhaps too much of the Hunter's Nightmare. She's busy looking at the sky (at Sleep, at One) when the nightmare suddenly starts to accelerate, and she has to desperately pull herself forward and grab at whatever she can to try to steady herself while it runs. Once she has herself some semblance of balanced, however, she cranes her head around and watches and looks - what... what is he trying to tell them? It's hard to ride with her head sideways, the constant pounding of hooves threatens to pull the muscles, and there's only so much compensating her hips can do while bareback, but she does everything she can: Takes in everything she can, every sight, every movement, every motion of One's lips because someone is going to have to. It's only when the mare jerks hard to one side to avoid a falling streetlamp that she looks back to the fore, an eternity and also only a few seconds later.

It's worse than she feared, and suddenly, her brain starts back into "cavalry in combat" mode. She doesn't know if the mare understands commands, but she tries anyway, giving the mare commands from side to side, and then a squeeze for a jump... and the mare jumps, leaping a chasm that goes to nowhere and makes Maria's stomach roil to look into it. Landing bareback is also an exercise in trying not to go flying over the mare's neck and head, but the world ahead of them is more put together, and less all at once, and something behind her screams, and... she turns toward it.

Ah. People. Mares. They're being sucked down into the collapse of the dream. She's just far enough ahead she could probably ride to the side here and get one more person - whoever it is, whether or not they have a mare with them. From her lofty perch she leans over the side of the horse in a maneuver she hasn't done in way too long, and grabs for whoever is nearby, to try to haul them (their horse, as well, if it's there) forward.] Come. Come on, come on. We've no time.

[She doesn't quite know why she wants to escape. Neither death nor madness are particularly novel experiences for her, but the desperation continues regardless.]

2b

[roedeer]

That's the last thing I wish to do.

[ it's only a man in a business suit adorned with a deer-like mask, antlers protruding from the top as he stares at the animals before him. actually, if she really looks, she can probably see his eyes are closed to suggest he's either doing this to reserve energy, or there's purpose to it.

there is purpose however, it's simply that he doesn't want to see the stallions for how they look. the gory figures with missing flesh, or the rot of their bodies mixed with shadows, it really drives it home for soleum's budding nausea that might come to full bloom.

when his eyes do open, he turns to meet with the woman that's spoken to him. she seems to know more about these than him, is she familiar by the way this pack carries themselves? ]

I was curious if there was a leader of the pack.

[ they seem smart, he can't classify them as normal horses, and maybe in a way they could seek help if they played their cards right. ]

[whomthebelltolls]

[He looks less... voracious or eager than some of the other people she's met both within and without the dreams. Except... he isn't looking at the nightmares, and instead turns to look at her. She frowns, and tilts her head a little, until he meets her. Well, it's sort of her gaze; she can see through the gauzy bandages, but it's hard to see her eyes in turn.]

There may be a herd stallion, or an eldest mare... it's difficult to tell their sex. [What with all the rotting meat and shadows on them. That they're still standing at all would be more miraculous if they were both not in a dream.]

... I do not think they particularly like being approached, and I would hazard a guess whatever leads this herd less so.

[roedeer]

That may be true, but they are locals.

[ from what he's learned so far, everyone else is from manhattan and this is a dream. the only thing that's a living source that he's interacted with are the horses, and they never stay still, and instead drift into the air like a fog because of their appearance. darkness holding itself together only to depart once folk come into their territory. ]

If something does lead them, a clue can be found there.

[ bringing a hand to his chin, the man taps it gently as he weighs their options. ]

Unless you're not here to try and find a way home?

[whomthebelltolls]

Hmm, perhaps, but I don't think one will gain it by being... forceful with them. They're certainly horses, and skittish as they come; maybe even wild or feral. [She tilts her head a little.] If they're even real creatures. You'd be just as likely to consider Sleep herself is what leads them; whether directly or indirectly, most creatures in the city are under her thrall, and in the dreams, even moreso. [She crosses her arms and looks at the herd again. They seem to be content to graze and walk around as long as they're not approaching them.]

Hm... But that could mean there is another trick to it. You didn't happen to see any kind of treats a horse would like about, did you?

[roedeer]

Yes, that is true. I was hoping to gain favor.

[ the last thing he wants to use is force on something he doesn't know with power he doesn't have. that's why soleum crosses his arms while watching them trot back and forth, some dissipating into the wind as they do. they're like shadows, almost like himself when he's stuck in a different body.

he twists his left wrist briefly like scratching at an itch. ]

I've only heard very little of Sleep, but...

[ from what he's gained so far, this is her dream, and that would mean the horses must have a meaning? fillers, probably. ]

Nothing here seems appetizing. The cathedral is filled with petals, what do you think?

[whomthebelltolls]

I see. [Maria is slowly learning about Sleep, and almost as importantly, she is learning about the others in this world that were drawn into Sleep's clutches and how they're reacting to it. The ones that want to curry favor with Sleep she finds the most interesting of all.

So if that's what he wants to do... she'll Observe. Until then, she does want to see what these animal hosts are like, mostly because the ones she's familiar with are either covered in fungus, or deformed in a living, fleshy way. These are deformed in a much different way.

She looks back toward the cathedral.]

... Petals... well, they wouldn't be appetizing to a person... [But horses are generally herbivores, and maybe they would like them? She gives a sort of shrug of her shoulders as though to say "why not", and starts walking with little other preamble.] I suppose they could not hurt.

[roedeer]

[ she wouldn't believe it, but he's learned that himself as the taste is far too bitter, but if one sets their mind to it, they can take it down. they're in abundance inside of the cathedral so he can't help but wonder what they're capable of, but he knows better than to say aloud that he's tried consuming them himself. ]

If the time calls for it, I'm sure they could be eaten? They are in goblets, maybe there's symbolism to it.

[ kim soleum turns in direction of the cathedral, hands tucked behind his back while thoughts drift through his mind. what if it doesn't work, what do they do then? nothing was ever meant to be easy, but at least they're trying. ]

I'm not extremely familiar with the place but, have you been inside?

[whomthebelltolls]

[Honestly, she'd eaten worse, just last month. She won't talk about it either. She takes up alongside him, her stride measured for someone as tall as she is.

Symbolism? They've had worse things to go on for trying to figure out what is going on in the dreams, or what might end up helping or hindering them. She doesn't comment on it, just continues to walk. Back in the cathedral, she's rather deft at avoiding the rays of light while they walk back toward the goblets and pedestals.]

The cathedral? It mirrors one in the waking world that was... the center of much ado this past month. The being called One made a great sacrifice of blood and ritual within it. I'm unsurprised it's making a reappearance in this dream.

[beaffrayed]

[ To say that Fray isn't comfortable on a horse is an understatement. He rides like a novice, more clinging to the beast's neck and letting it have its head than doing anything much to control it. When it's struck by an errant shard of dream and veers off, he can only do so much to steer it, and so Maria is a welcome sight.

His Nightmare is still mostly intact, simply a bit dazed; he grabs onto her hand with grim desperation, his mount slowly steadying itself given an example to follow. ]

I'm-- [ His grip tightens briefly as he tries to pull himself together and mostly succeeds, his breathing slowing from frantic to slightly steadier. ] --thankful you're a far better rider than I. Don't know the first thing about this.

[whomthebelltolls]

And here I thought you said you were a knight. [She frowns as she asks - both in concentration for what she has to do to lead his horse, and because she figured the full armor was because he was riding at some point.

She's only kind of taking the piss though - where she's from, knights are already a dead breed except those in the employ of her family, and all of them know how to ride, but not all of them ride in their duty as knights. (Mostly because they have to sneak, and hunt under the cover of darkness. Another one for the "will explain later" pile, though, because they're rather in danger.)

Fray's horse has not bonded with Maria, but she tries to lead it anyway, using her mare and the horse's pack instincts to keep them moving at a brisk pace away. Keeping her balance is a little exhausting, ironic in a dream, but she keeps it going regardless.] Nngh... I hope there's... something beyond the river this direction, or we're going to fall in trying to get away from this collapse...

[beaffrayed]

We've none of these beasts where I come from, only chocobos, [ Fray retorts, righting himself and trying to give his poor beleaguered mount some direction and attention. His free hand strokes awkwardly against its neck.

It seems to understand Maria's intent, or at least that this is a person its rider trusts. The mare follows her lead as they run together, frantically, through the chaos of the collapsing dream.

He strains to see beyond, grunting in pain as something flies past and leaves a shallow cut on his back. It seeps light, instead of blood.

Is that a hole in the dream, an exit? ]

Hells, we have to aim for that? [ The hole in the world hovers tantalizingly close, just past the twisted ribbons of water that the river is slowly becoming; he sort of just, gestures at it. ] Nice of it to offer anything that looks an escape at all, I suppose...

[whomthebelltolls]

You'll have to explain what that is... [Maria replies, in just enough time to watch Fray injured. She is a lycan, and little more, so there's nothing she can do to fix it, and they're still in a bit of a hurry, but it does remind her to keep her head down toward the mare, as much as possible. She doesn't have the luxury of looking as far as he does with her head down, so it takes a moment longer before she sees the edge of the dream, finally, start to rear itself, the further they run. She glances back up to the sky, and can only catch small glimpses of One and Sleep between the wreckage as the city disintegrates.

Then, she looks to the exit one more time, and there's a momentary uncertainty from her, like she's legitimately considering staying behind to watch the dream collapse and whatever the hell is going on between Sleep and One instead of escaping.

(And what is death to the dead? Breaking to the broken?)]

Yes, I think we do. Stay close and hold fast with your legs, this is going to get worse before it gets better, I fear. Stay out of the way of that horse, as well, let her run!

[beaffrayed]

[ Fray does as he's instructed, clinging for dear life and trying not to get in the way of his mount too much (whatever that means).

He catches that glimpse, though. His words are short, sharp, almost swept away in their wake as he struggles to catch his breath: ]

A chocobo's-- a two-legged bird the size of these-- [ and he gestures to the horse. ] And I've no love of riding--but if you turn aside to watch I'll-- pull you out myself.

[ Mercifully, giving the Nightmare space to run means she's able to navigate far more skillfully than Fray would be able to astride her. ]

[whomthebelltolls]

[Proper riding lessons will have to wait, and it's hard to explain how not to fight against a horse when it wants to go somewhere, especially when you don't know how to control or even ride well normally in a desperate scenario so... all she can really do is pace her own nightmare with his, and try to keep both horses from going down to the random shifts in the earth and debris flying around them in their desperate sprint toward what may or may not even be an exit, and hope Fray just stays along for the ride.

(This would be so much easier if they weren't bareback, and she still has no idea how they haven't both fallen off, but she's glad.)

She snaps her head back to the exit, forces herself to focus on that and not on the ever-present urge to see and to know.]

Bah, fine. But I will know. Hold on tightly!

[That is about all the warning she can give because they're about to careen through the portal...

And it can't come soon enough because she can feel the back end of the horse lifting from the ground right as she cues it to jump, as though lifted by a hand.

(She's about to crash out of bed in the real world, a heavy thud onto the cold stone floor of the monastery, but she isn't happy about it.)]

[beaffrayed]

Likely we'll be seeing them again, so--don't be in too much of a hurry to stay behind!

[ He's not even disagreeing with her goals - he's curious too - but there has to be a better way than staying to get disintegrated.

Fray curses in agitation as whatever force lifts them catches him and his mount a scant moment before they hit the portal - not enough to push him free of it entirely, but he and his mount go through in a tumble rather than a leap--

And then gravity, and the real world, reasserts itself around the both of them. Fray crashes into the side of his bed and then falls off entirely onto the floor, a room away from Maria. His shout comes through the wall, faintly. ]

Gods damn it!

[ Well, at least he's made it out intact enough to yell about it. ]

[whomthebelltolls]

[It's just a dream, she doesn't argue, even though she could. It's just a dream, even if it resonates into the waking world. Answers will be worth it.

But perhaps there will be more answers in the waking world, and they're already halfway out the door, and the nightmares - the horses - don't seem keen on stopping anytime soon.

Wake up something echoes into her mind, or maybe just her body, and she jerks awake like one does sometimes when they're falling asleep - for her part, she ends up awkwardly, uncomfortably angled hanging off the already too-small bed, feet dangling over the edge, and her neck jammed up against the cold stone. It's not worth the epithet, honestly, but it is worth her slowly regaining her feet to go check on her roommate.

It's a knock on the doorframe that announces her presence.] Did you fall from the bed?

2b!

[hexrot]

[ Jayce was a man of science, spent his time in the lab during most of his able adult life; the only time he could recall being around these rideable beasts was during his excursions as a young man, searching for magical gems in the likes of desert dunes and blazing heat that could rival a forge. He was also a man progress and technological advancement and was . . . All for the use of vehicles over animals. Felt more humane.

But, ever wiser with riddle and puzzle in general, their escape to the dream's next level depended on these misty creatures. To say Jayce had some difficulty so far was a bit of an understatement; he's gone through cycles upon cycles of hardships ranging from being fresh out of a ravine, broken limb and all, or heavily drawn to hunting the creatures through an instinct he could not control. Now happened to be one of the lesser, close to successful attempts. The trade off was only his appearance, of a younger man at the cusp of his political "success". ]

You seem more . . . Adept, to the task than I am.

[ He'll follow her lead, to start. He's in a pristine white tailcoat, tapered waist and broad shoulders, the pauldrons more a display than anything combat worthy. He certainly looks like a man who knows close to nothing about horses. ]

[whomthebelltolls]

[Another... newish face to her, but in the dreams, it's very much less surprising. He looks younger, she looks slightly more bestial, but less haggard and exhausted and worn from months of Sundowning.] They're commonplace where I am from. I am learning this is not true of many others.

[She doesn't ask, because she presumes that was what he was implying with his statement. Instead, after giving him a good once-over, she turns back to observe the creatures as they graze and, occasionally, watch them back.]

... Hmmm... winning them over will likely take time and patience... though a treat may help, if we can discover one. I assume you've not seen any carrots or sugar cubes in the vicinity?

[hexrot]

Ah, no . . . [ He hasn't exactly looked, for any of those things, actually, and he begins using his hands to speak, ] I haven't considered that they actually eat to begin with, with they way they're, [ gesturing, again, to himself and a flowy amount of wrist rolls to articulate the whispiness of the mares, but— you know what? he just said he wasn't the expert. ]

I'll look around again— are we restricted to carrots and sugar cubes?

[whomthebelltolls]

[Most delicately, Maria raises an eyebrow. She's used to some people and how they talk with added body language, and she's not usually really one of them, but she gets it.]

No, especially considering they are... [She gives a bit of a halfhearted mimicry of his earlier hand movement] Semi-corporeal. But they do seem to be grazing, so they must be driven by some sort of hunger, or a mimicry thereof. Horses like fruits and fresh vegetables, oat cakes... hmmm... and that doesn't count if they want something that does not even grow in the waking world.

[And then, quietly...] I wonder... if there is simply something growing nearby that we've missed? Perhaps... either pressing further into the nightmare, or... [She glances back at the cathedral. She hadn't exactly scoured the place top to bottom, considering she was more interested in observing what the light's second skin clinging to the others was doing than actually looking too hard at the cathedral itself.]

[hexrot]

[ Fruits. Vegetables. Oat Cakes. Alright. Grass? Easy enough, so Jayce catalogues it and tries not to think much about feeding sugar to a natural herbivore, but what does he know, eh? Dreaming doesn't exactly follow very clean logic, which is frustrating enough for someone as rational as a scientist— at least wherever science is concerned. He's already looking around the bushes. ]

I wouldn't limit findings to a single observation— [ A gesture around them, ] Dreaming, and all. We can go back and cover more ground.

[whomthebelltolls]

[She's just hoping these things are even food motivated. It'll be really complicated if they have to figure out other methods of reward, because then the sky really does become the limit. And if he thinks sugarcubes are weird, someone should show him that video of a horse eating a chick once the internet comes back up.]

... Yes, I suppose that is true. Dreams that repeat do often find themselves different on a second observation. They do not appear to be interested in the other local fare, regardless. [There are a bunch of fleshy people and a corpse(?) just sitting in a dream vortex. But what does she know - dreams, right? The horses could well be carnivores here.

... But they might be more aggressive if they were, so she won't hedge bets on that.] It seems we may simply need a little trial and error, and a lot of patience - what little time may matter in a place like this.

3

[vixenish]

[ ah.

her.

Lortel remembers her, and that familiarity flashes in her eyes as the other woman reaches for her arm. her own Nightmare fell, and she won't die here,

not again.

unflinchingly she takes that arm in an iron grip and swings up onto the horse with a practiced motion. she's done this before. ]

Ride. I can protect us.

[whomthebelltolls]

[There is a brief flash of that selfsame recognition in her eyes, as she helps to haul the younger woman up onto her Nightmare. She is a little surprised - pleasantly so - at both the lack of resistance and the skill of the other getting up onto her horse. The weight of two people should slow the Nightmare down even more, but with the logic of dreams, maybe it won't matter. Maybe they actually will get out of here.

The command merely prompts a nod out of Maria, and she taps her heels against the mare's flank, encouraging a swift return to full speed.]

You made it far. Did you lose yours? [Nightmare, she means, but riding at a full gallop and talking at the same time can be a little difficult. Especially if one doesn't want to bite one's tongue.]