JAWS • DECEMBER 2025 EVENT/TDM

[uruz]

TDM & EVENT: JAWS

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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—?.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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Comments

[hallowedly]

( A friend in need is a friend about to be summarily cursed out, as the swelling obstacle course of Sakurazuka Seishirou's dark robes fumble him on his way up the horse's back, tripping him down in the way of prospective trampling, before the sheer luck of breaking his foot's fall on a swerving light post propels him back up — indeed.

He's a wonder, a delight, a bubble of boisterous joy, a buoyant gift that keeps giving. And he ends up, in a spell of consistent misfortune and bellicose gravity, caught in a charmless stranger's arms like a dangling trinket. He should top a tree, he supposes, come the Western world's Christmas — so long as it's obligingly on fire.

In the end, he knows his fate. He also knows that voice. And in between the confines of his Noh mask, acidity drips out indiscreetly: )

Am I a hitchhiker or roadkill?

[markingnight]

[ Had the Ironeye's misdeeds truly been so grave as to warrant Seishirou's luck? Would he have still caught the good doctor if he'd known who it was behind that dog-mask? And why was it always dogs? ]

That yet remains to be seen. Are you much for horses, doctor?

[ Oh, that Seishirou would say 'yes, yes, we love the horses and the riding'. If that were the case, Ironeye might simply hop off the dark steed and count his good deed as done for the day. ]

[hallowedly]

( For a moment, a heartbeat, Seishirou suffers the grave sickness of silence. No puns breach his peace, no snide comebacks rupture it. He is a creature of sudden, unexpected humility that only his gentle seat atop a tank of a man can explain.

Luck is a cruel mistress that takes her joy in his discomfort. It must be so. )

I'm afraid I'm a city man. My only regular ride is the metro.

( Or the casual hop across burning buildings, as one does.

Though, with proactivity in mind — what does a man do when he has been compactly packaged into a portable souvenir? Presumably, fold his hands on his knees, make himself somehow even smaller, and pretend not to be clinging to his honourable escort for dear life. And also presumably, such a man aims a pithy by-the-by: )

Interesting look.

[markingnight]

Yours suits you.

[ Did he mean the wizard robes? Did he mean the dog mask? The world would never know. ]

If I lift you, might you be able to sit astride the horse, in front? It would free up my hands.

[ The mare huffed as she ran, as if in agreement. What did Ironeye mean by this...? Surely not that as he was, Seishirou's weight was something of a hindrance, unbalanced. One might even say akin to a sack of tubers. ]

[hallowedly]

If you lift, you will have successfully defied physics and my deepest expectations.

( Surely, he is not dealing with a strongman or demonic entity capable of reducing Seishirou's adult scale to the subject of pointing and laughter and/or a glorified paperweight. He refuses the thought. Exorcises it.

But he accepts the possibility of an improvement to his currently dubious station that quivers with every misstep of the horse on the nearest, dearest barely collapsed obstacle. His grip is too loose, too encumbered.

And so, a frail nod. )

But do your worst.

[markingnight]

[ Ironeye wasn't the physically strongest of the Nightfarers, but Seishirou was half in position already; the balance was the trickiest part of shifting the man sideways so he could sit astride the beast instead of in some hellish sidesaddle. A good thing, too, for the ground was rapidly shifting beneath the mare's hooves. ]

Ready now.

[ A leap sent the horse scrabbling up the side of an undulating big of fungus-encrusted side street. And speaking of fungus, a number of tendrils up ahead appeared to be reaching straight toward them -- ]

I don't suppose you have any sorceries up your sleeve?

[ You know, to match the robes? Surely they weren't purely decorative. ]

[hallowedly]

( A hazard of pushing and geometries and misplaced momentum, and an indignity of fumbling. Seishirou will not remember this experience as well-boding for his friend; he will, dragging up both legs to hook himself strongly on the horse's flank, endeavour not to remember it at all.

But then, there's greater danger inevitably afoot, and the pack of coiling, curling, waving tendrils ahead thickens by the moment. It seems distinctly dense and only growing stronger, as if a nucleus has only just woken, pulsing, to feed the peripheries.

And all growth needs fuel and feed. Seishirou's teeth grit. )

None that won't confuse or spur your mount. ( A practical consideration: agitated animals and illusions don't make for an intuitive proposition. ) Can you take the risk?

( Can the horse be controlled for the duration of the exercise? )

[markingnight]

[ Seishirou looked like a man who ought be graceful, at home with noble steed under him. Reality, apparently, was only too cruel. If only Ironeye's consolation were to be treated to the view of a whole-ass bakery, but alas.

Cakeless. ]

We have little choice but to gamble.

[ It was backward into the abyss, or forward into the thicket. Which way, Seishirou? ]

[hallowedly]

( Then, by all means: throw the dice.

It's simple work, as illusions go, the sudden, feverish gleam of his eyes under Sleep's spell the only betrayal of sorcery at play — before the tendrils strike toward them, like arrows and spears and targeted weapons.

By all accounts, they should hit true — but for the rain of blooded petals that divert them, criss-crossing down from the slate Heavens in smears and dregs of flower viscera. Pretty parts of a prettier blossom, first; then, as they appear to steel, knives the tendrils have learned to fear better than two men hastening through.

The trouble with illusion work is, a master will tell. The petals have shape, have scent, have tactility. They fall with the precise, drifting heft of an item of this flimsy weight. Each casts a great, blinking shadow.

The tendrils are diverted, then distressed, then somehow screeching.

And the horse, inevitably, starts to neigh and trash, when the sakura shower also enshrouds it. Well, this — for all Seishirou takes his own precautions, grip deep in their mount's hair — is Ironeye's part. )

[markingnight]

[ Ironeye was not a horseman by trade -- but Wylder was. Had been. In times of idleness, in intervals in which the swordsman's ailments did not prevent him from making polite conversation, he'd spoken of what might be done to soothe frightened beasts.

He leaned forward a little, to Seishirou's side, only in order to speak with quiet assurance into the horse's ear. It had faltered in its steps, but he knew that to relieve its fear, one need only grant it release. ]

We have a deal. Go.

[ The animal bolted forward, all fright and nervous energy. It shot past the tendrils in the span of a few moments, leaving the petals safely behind. Should Seishirou's balance on the mare falter, he would simply have to deal with Ironeye at his back, holding him in place. Manhattan could not afford to lose its precious sole veterinarian, after all. ]

[hallowedly]

( Whatever party trick or sweet nothing Ironeye whispers into his equine belle's ear seems to work what is, in truth, likely magic. Seishirou braces himself, the crawling itchiness that worms under the skin of his wrists, walking up his arms, paying the price of his earlier exertion.

Sleep, it turns out, does nothing cheaply — let alone uncompensated. A shrewd women. Seishirou, who has never ridden for sport or pleasure, is finding that the swaying demerits of the experience long outpace any of its potential, invisible advantages. )

How long can it go until it remembers we're the apparent enemy and works hard to dismount us?

( ...well, one of them should be practical about Black Beauty's reliability, here. )

[markingnight]

You're not her enemy, are you?

[ Look. Look. It was probably true that the mare could run more quickly on her lonesome, but judging by the way that some of the other unladen horses were faring, maybe she was better off sticking with them. Out of the edges of his vision, he could see a pair of mares caught by Sleep's presence, unraveling like so much loose thread. ]

But if that does happen, we may have to see how fast you can run.

[ Surely Seishirou had a morning jogging regimen? ]

[hallowedly]

In these skirts?

( Fast and furious, supposedly. But there is a point in one's (increasingly middle) age and growing gravitas past which not every impossible statement should translate as a personal challenge, and, really. Perhaps merrily floating in ceremonial regalia as Manhattan crumbles down is not the ideal exit strategy.

Then again, neither is clinging to Ironeye, while the open road distinctly darkens before them, building shrapnel quickening into a teething storm. He hisses, whispering back — )

Leave the main road. She's putting down — ( ...sentinels? ) Obstacles.

[markingnight]

I have faith in you. [ Estimates said that 2/3 to 3/4 of female Nightfarers not only wore skirts, but marathon ran in them. Seishirou, who if nothing else seemed to have a knack for coming back for ever-increasing punishment, should be able to measure up... to a point, surely.

He urged the mare into an alternative path, this one of cobblestone sidestreet in which the stones in question burst underfoot in a cascade of color and crystal. ]

There's a break up ahead. Shall we chance it?

[ More like they had little choice, with the way the sides of the alley were collapsing in. Up ahead was a stretch of something like normality -- the city? Perhaps a glimpse of their sleeping selves? ]

[hallowedly]

( They're chancing everything, already. They have no compass, no clear trajectory, no countdown, no understanding of Sleep's whims or her mission. On any other day, this should be their forgettable afternoon to die in truant glory.

But Seishirou, straining to see between arrogance-made-man, the startled horse and the very nose of his mask, doesn't feel like dying today. Tried it once. With no offence to Ironeye, but perishing accidentally on a decay-congested road with brawns-for-brains is a downgrade from a poetic demise in the arms of your apparent beloved. )

We take your route, or we work an illusion over us to see if... world devastation is convinced enough to pass us over.

( This has as much logic, he supposes, as anything else in a dream. And a beat later - ) A cigarette would be nice now.

[markingnight]

Think you that Sleep's dream would spare us? [ A moment. ] All right, then. Let's see your illusion.

[ FOR SCIENCE. ]

...do you ever stop lusting after those cigarettes of yours?

[ Honestly, Seishirou, there were times. ]

[hallowedly]

( There is an illusion to case, a pair of lives to save, a desperate and unthinking gambit to launch —

And yet here two gentlemen are, debating the health of Seishirou's distinctly dubious life choices. He should back out. Really. A man possessed of ceremonial robes he never inhabits and a mask befitting an aging actor's professional crisis should know when to draw the line.

A line.

Any line. )

Would you like to try one?

[markingnight]

[ A brief pause, punctuating only by the beat of the mare's hooves. ]

If I should take a liking to them, that would mean less for you.

[ Think before you make such rash decision, Seishirou! He was trying to save you from yourself! ]

[hallowedly]

If you should take a liking to them — ( Uncomfortable, improbable and laughable, for a gentleman seemingly struggling with the roots of vice. ) Then I'll have to live with the consequences of my unfailing generosity.

( For 'lo, this is Sakurazuka Seishirou, saint of philanthropy, giver of lung cancer unto one and all. )

And I've earned my dearest fated one's stash, besides.

( By lying, cheating and stealing, as one does. )

[markingnight]

[ Hmmmm. ]

I shall pass on your offer. I have to run for work.

[ Specifically, Ironeye needed to marathon run in the course of his job, for Night waited for no man (or woman). And Seishirou, well... only look at him. He didn't seem like a four minute runner. ]

However, I appreciate it. Kind of you.

[ He could be wrong, though. ]

[hallowedly]

( Kind of him. No one ever has, nor will, nor should use the words, not in polite company. But he is kind, certainly, to offer out his scarce, polished-off resources, purely to spite their rightful owner.

And he is kinder still to preserve their lives, finally, finally rerouting the better part of his attention to the head-on tragedy of Sleep's inching claws, and to summon — ...blood. From his mouth, dripping down, his eyes tearing. Veins thick and consuming, so close to the burst.

Magic comes after the price is paid, enshrouding them like a close-knit skin: first, they are men, riding. Then, silent, then touchless, then concealed in the long road. Give the gentleman some credit: he has the grace, where novice illusion casters over-focus on sight, to remember the other senses.

He also recalls to murmur: ) Ride hard to evade her. In the end, I don't think this will do more than — ( A moment, to swallow down mouthfuls of his own blood, then spit what won't go down easily. ) ...buy us time.

cw: seppuku mention

[markingnight]

[ Ironeye had let blood oft before, albeit usually someone else's; he thus considered himself mostly inured to the sight. And yet Seishirou's technique. Could the man not bleed himself with but a little more dignity? With less spitting and swallowing? What about a nice blade to the midsection, neat and economical? ]

Of course. [ Said as if this was all perfectly within the bounds of polite interaction. Ironeye spurred the mare on with appropriate urgency. The illusion was... good. Great, even. An appropriate void for the senses, he really had to applaud -- or would have, if he'd had his hands free. (Maybe later.)

Improbably, there did look to be a hole up ahead in the dream world itself. It was Central Park as it existed outside the dream, the trees now sharing space with a riot of fungal growth but no less welcoming as a beacon of safety. The mare, sensing safety from the storm of collapsing dream around them, galloped ever more swiftly toward it. ]

You are quite the skilled illusionist.

[hallowedly]

( Kindly excuse a man trying to function with local limitations on magic, biology and common sense. He has but the one experiment in his red spattered hand, that's now working the petty wonder of clinging to the horse's mane without the mediation of average reins.

At least Ironeye has assumed control of their trajectory, if, unfortunately, also of their conversation. Seishirou considers, in two sequence reels: one, the time and inconvenience it'd take to whip around, hook his hands onto Ironeye's throat, politely strangle him, toss the body, then take over the horse; and two, a collection of pithy repartees to the tone of 'My mother always thought so' or 'Make sure to recommend me to all your friends!'

In the end, grudgingly settling in for the ride: ) Beginner's luck.

( He can accept survival on that pride-repudiating note. )

[markingnight]

[ How humble was Seishirou, truly commendable.

Not even this respite could be total, however, as even invisible and indetectable to the senses did not mean that the residents of the dream did not know they were there, somewhere. Ironeye therefore was obliged to do his best to direct the mare past splintering automobiles and thickets boiling with searching tendrils.

In the face of these obstacles, the archer loosed his scaled mantle and offered it to his riding companion as the mare continued on. ]

Here.

[ He didn't have to accept, of course; Ironeye merely thought it might shield Seishirou from the flying glass and other hazards up ahead a little more thoroughly than flimsy wizard robes. ]

[hallowedly]

( There is a moment, strangely intimate between them, when the black tick-tocking kernel that's inhabited Seishirou's chest cage for the better part of thirty-four years gives a strange, stuttering convulsion. Records something. Possibly malfunctions.

Then, on it trots and trots and trots, and Ironeye's mantle, spared the incisive regard of any medieval flea sanctuary, is flimsily accepted in a hand that's all survivalist greed. Waste not, want not. What's freely given might not save Seishirou from bitter death, but the roads are now splitting to tongues of fire and literal brimstone beneath their feet, as they escape Sleep's wrath and masticated scenery. He might not need all the defenses he is offered, but he'll take them.

Still, after leaning in to whistle, reedy, in the horse's ear, when it seems on the cusp of panic, he can't help enshrouding himself in the mantle, sparing the inevitable: )

...well, this is inconvenient. I suppose if you drop dead in this ditch — ( With(out) help. ) — I'll have to show up at the funeral now.

( Luckily, their sanctuary's already peering close by. )