balance_logs | Field Mission 5: Il Prigioniero, Part 3

Field Mission 5: Il Prigioniero, Part 3

	They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food.
	NAVIGATION

1. THE FATE OF WONDERLAND

A. CRESCENDO; FINALE

The beauty of the sentient mind is that hope is hard to kill. Even living in illusion for so long, the Bureau of Balance as a whole believed to the end that a happy ending was possible in Wonderland. That's a good thing, even if an unrealistic dream. Without that vision, that hope, there's no way to succeed. You all know that, don't you?

You knew it when you went back into the tree to save absolutely anyone that you could. Strangers some of them. Strangers most of them. It didn't matter. There's a happy ending to this story; everyone believed in it as surely as they carried out the innocent, as surely as they carried out each other.

You knew it when you got crafty with needle and thread, trying to reassemble the cruel joke Wonderland made with those who lost their way and fell into debt. Nine bodies are saved — including Henrik's, Henrik whose soul is reattached to his body, Henrik whose shaking arms can finally reach out to hold his son.

You knew it when you spoke to a dying Yggdrasil, Maya taking in the suffering and sickness of its years, listening with an open heart until, suddenly, as the tree's consciousness began to collapse, she was taken Somewhere Else. To speak with a man in a sharp suit with places to be. Things to do. Planar systems to devour. You know how it is. A poisoned arrow to Yggdrasil's open wound brought it down for good, leaving Shuichi to hurriedly plant the new Golden Leaf for a new World Tree; leaving Sayori and Angus McDonald to pick up the pieces of their dazed comrades.

You knew it when you tricked the Mirror Maze into glitching apart, giving it quite simply too much to keep track of. The fact that you found a helper along the way certainly didn't hurt, but let's face it: this was genius. The reward is Niel, crystallized, encasing the Compact. Suffering, as he has been for a very long time.

You knew it when three warlocks and a very angry wizard embarked on an ultimately suicidal mission, which just goes to show that the best-laid plans of mice and men sometimes lead to a 50% vore rate. A desperate attempt to keep Adrian distracted for long enough that the Compact could be retrieved was only able to delay him in the end. Just because success is possible doesn't make it guaranteed. Sometimes a fight with the villain ends in stalemate.

Sometimes a fight with the villain isn't a fight at all. Sometimes it's an outstretched hand (or two, or four), and sacrifices from each member of the party, and pain, and . . . self-awareness. Sometimes the villain just wants to let go. Sometimes there are happy endings, but this time Niel — fused into the Tree itself, his life tied up in the dying Yggdrasil, extended by the Compact — just wants it to stop. He doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore.

His friends are holding his hands as they take the Compact and make it stop.

This isn't a happy ending. But that isn't your fault. Hope for a happy ending has, quite literally, saved the world.

The nightmare is over. Wonderland slips away.

2. ON THE EDGE OF THE HORIZON

B. THE PEOPLE

And as suddenly as the myriad indulgences of Wonderland went to ... well, complete shit, there's something of a metaphorical blink of light. Those who were meant to be dead are - both your fellow Reclaimers and the Rolands who could not be fixed in time - but there is still many that are saved. Injuries knot back together at the slightest curative magic. Smog and negativity vanish like they never were, taking the last shambling monsters away with it. The souls of Shadowdale that you have returned to their respective bodies have a new life to forge. Things can be fixed.

If only it were that easy.

Shadowdale, for all intents and purposes, is uninhabitable. For the first time since the Bureau's mission began, an entire city population has lost its home, and must move on. No matter how much blame you may place on yourself for the way things turned out, whether it's guilt or hope that drives you forward, time, and the cycle of life itself, spins onward. And the people who live march on.

To New New Aspen.

Matthew has promised to bring the survivors of Shadowdale to his home, to give them a new chance. You have a couple of options here, if you would like to help them. You may serve as guard, helping escort the people of Shadowdale to New New Aspen. Super convenient for you, since it's right by the Moon Base! You may help them build and settle.

The people of New New Aspen, only months away from Candlenights, are hard at work carving their annual ornaments. You may help the new residents acclimate - whether it's helping them work the fields, start a business, or take part in their new home's most coveted tradition. And you'll have a new ornament to bring home with you, too.

C. THE FOREST

The deadened woods you traveled through to reach Shadowdale at the beginning of this mission seem somehow even more silent, cloaked in demise, than when you first stepped in it. The madness is gone, replaced with double the silence, a stillness like nothing you've ever experienced before. It's almost as if your senses, save for however you perceive the light of the sun, are gone.

At least, until someone speaks to you. A wood elf - he doesn't give you his name, but he does identify himself as someone who was trapped. Someone who, through your efforts to restore the Rolands, you gave life to again.

And he does have a request for you.

"This place has little hope for revival," he says, sniffing slightly, taking in the silence around you both. "At least, it has little hope in your lifetime.

But I do have something to ask of you. Give this place life, the way you did for the people here. Even if you, or even I, for that matter, will never likely live long enough to see it."

That's sort of an existential way of asking you to do some hardcore landscaping. But you will be provided with seeds of all sorts, and you will have the opportunity to plant them as you see fit. If you would like to build a shrine, or remember those who lost their lives here in some other way, you are free to do that as well.

There's something else curious, though: literally anything you plant, regardless of what it is, will eventually produce a viable bud sprouting from the gray, dry soil.

What does that even mean? If you plant a book of poems, are you going to get a poetree?

Are you even going to live long enough to see it in full bloom?

D. THE EXHAUSTION

You might not be on Lucretia levels of exhausted (she is, remember, zonked, and will remain so all the way back to the Moon Base and beyond for a while), but this has not been an easy mission for anyone who dared to test this Grand Relic's powers.

Whether you return from New New Aspen, or whether you finally catch a ride back to the Moon Base from the forest, you are now free to return home. This is your welcome home wildcard, a chance for you to try to recuperate, address anything at all before the next Lunar Interlude begins.

You will find that the Moon Base has an awfully somber feel to it, from the inner members of the Bureau to the people serving the Reclaimers in the town. Word is starting to trickle in on what you all went through.

blurb code by photosynthesis

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She stands. If anyone is watching, she lurches upward with a sharp gasp, and the infinity-turned-inward of the butterflies seethes with the new knowledge of that pain. A devil eats a demon and remembers what viciousness is.

She sort of yelps, and turns ungracefully, and presses the palm that had gone to Crowley's back against a spot over her collarbone between her throat and her chest where there's something like a coal burning. Every butterfly carries the same fleck in the same spot - even Huizi, who divebombs Adrian from the other side with the ferocity of a much larger creature. The swimming depths of her wings are roiling with flame, and she cuts a threadlike fissure through Wonderland behind her, enchantment dragging at an event horizon of spite and apocalypse.]

I'm with you, [she chokes out, pitching up to the kind of scream that Erika is making use of for the first time in seventeen years of life and other assorted states. It is furious.] Alex, I'm here! We're with you, WE'RE STILL RIGHT HERE!

[Her role is defense. The best defense is a good offense. Huizi dives again and again, and Erika's scream is as much encouragement as it is a declaration of livid defiance.

The eldritch blast spam is heartily cosigned.]

[ The sound of that, coming from Erika, it's astonishing, and frankly it distracts him, for a moment. But he knows what she's just done, as Alex just did it as well, feels the raw energy running through him.

He takes a step forward. Another. He's not limping anymore. The pain's still there, but the power overwhelms it. He throws a fireball, and it's big, terrifying and exciting him. ]

You feelin' good about all this, asshole? [ In contrast, Alex doesn't raise his voice, but it still echoes. It's strong, firm, commanding. ] Make you feel like a big, strong boy, does it? Finished acting like you're actually worth anything?!

[ Eldritch Blast. Eldritch Blast. Eldritch Blast. Effortlessly, one after the other. Amazingly, it's not their attacks that draw Adrian's attention, but their words. Agate screams as she flies in and out, talons raking at an approximation of Adrian's face. Revenge for her master. Beaky follows suit, energized by Alex's power-up.

For a shining, beautiful moment, they have the upper hand. They're winning. ]

[It's almost easy to forget that the best they can hope for is distracting him. Erika feels light, dangerously and exhilaratingly light, and inside-out, cold and still and clear in her chest with hot wrath turned outwards.]

You don't know what pain is! [A piece of rubble whiffs harmlessly through her.] You, you, you think you'll LAST, like you'll MATTER, EVEN WHEN WE'RE GONE WE'LL STILL BE HERE-

[For a moment. For a minute. Words and wings and fury.

And then a tendril whips up and doesn't phase through Erika, doesn't meet her sword, just clips her shoulder and sends her flying. Her voice goes wordless with anger and with the surprise of the impact, and then cuts out when landing slams the air out of her lungs. Her mage hand vanishes; Huizi falters and swerves wide.]

Edited 2019-10-09 20:03 (UTC)

[ Shit.

Alex, who was charging up a fireball, stops abruptly, turning as she flies. ]

Erika!!

[ That's a mistake. Take your eyes off the prize and you know what happens, Alex. Adrian knows what they fear, what they hate. An arm like shrapnel reaches out and slams into Alex's gut, and he coughs, going down hard. Beaky and Agate try, they swarm, but Adrian's been distracted by them enough. These kids are the problem here.

Alex gasps there, trying to catch his breath before another construction-material arm slams into his face, knocking him to the amorphous black ground. It doesn't matter if he dies. It doesn't. But the others have already... And Erika. He has to make sure she's okay, he can't-- not another one, not another person--

He tries to right himself, feeling old bandages for his burns slip. He can't stop fighting, but he can't stand, either. ]

[She doesn't feel light anymore.]

Huh-

[The ground heaves with a blast of hot air, the smell of friction-burned rubber. She tumbles again, cheek scraping against the ground, coming up raw and electric. That mass over Alex towers, creaks dangerously, she looks up to see it and you don't need anything but eyes to know how the next few seconds are going to play out.

She can't reach him, so -

- someone has to make it out of here, so -

- all told she'll go down if he does, so -

She grabs the die from her pocket and throws it, somewhere, anywhere, and the instant it stops rolling she lifts her arm and fires. The Eldritch Blast carves through gnarled rebar and concrete and PVC chunks, shattering it and then shattering the shattered pieces and sweeping a cloud of dust back across Alex and Adrian and the ruined Wonderland-space between them.

(Erika moves to stand, and feels a hot-dizzy bloom between her temples, wonders/fears/suspects what the price will be, collapses back into a position she knows by heart won't crack her skull across the ground when she passes out, and

-------

---------------------------) ]

[ Adrian's arm is made of fire. It's coming, coming down at him, and-

And then Erika.

Alex coughs through the debris, tries to crawl out of it as he sees the mass that is Adrian rise back up. For a horrible moment, as dust clears, the two lock eyes.

Then, Adrian vanishes, and Alex is left to bleed. ]

Wh- what? [ Beaky swoops down to check on him, and Agate screams, descending to her master. None of this makes sense. What just happened? He had them on the ropes, why did he leave-

Because we're not the Target.

Ice runs through his whole body as he tries to catch his breath. He'd almost died, again, and the adrenaline courses through him. He left. Adrian left. The thing they were meant to accomplish, they failed. But he hasn't fallen yet, what if he just- what if he crawls his way off, find and kill the brat, maintain Balance-- ]

Stop!

[ No one said anything. Alex gasps as he stumbles to his feet. Around him, there's the bodies of Crowley and Ferran. And, just a little off... ]

Erika... [ Alex limps over to her. She's sat braced against a garbage can Adrian was throwing, legs off to the side. She stares right ahead...but her eyes see nothing. ] Erika. Erika, wake up. C- come on, he's gone, we have to...to get out of here.

[ Nothing. Alex starts to panic. ] No, come on... Come on, don't- you can't- [ do this to me- He doesn't realize his hands are going to her face until he feels her skin, doesn't realize he can feel his hands again until his fingers are against her neck, searching wildly for a pulse- ] I can't be the last one, please...

[ For a horrible moment, there's nothing. But then, a steady beat against his fingers. Tears of relief spill from his eyes, but- but still. Why isn't she saying anything? ]

Come on. C- come on... [ He can feel her breath, even. But her eyes don't track. Despite all his attempts to get a response, Erika isn't there. Relief starts to turn to fear, horror. What's wrong with her? What did Adrian do to...?

At some point, his eyes land on the die, next to her foot. MIND, he sees, before his gaze blurs from his tears. ]

Fuck... [ She can't see it. No one can see it, except for Beaky, who's set down next to him, pecking gently at his arm. But as he cries, he can feel it, his right eye burning. It drips in red and black, down his cheek, onto the squishy ground, until there's no color left, and--

And he starts dry heaving, turning away from Erika and practically falling over. The last few weeks replay. The things that he knew, logically, were Changes, were Different, that he said or did, or thought-- it all flashes before his eyes with horrible clarity.

No. No, what? He said that. He thought that. He- a mistake, how could he think- that poor kid, that poor fucking kid, how could he ever say anything, like--

Gasping and trembling, his hands go to his head. What the fuck did this place do to him? What did it do to all of them?

It takes him a few minutes to get his head together. If his head is together, could be called together. His mind comes back to him when he's kneeling over Erika, who's laid out on the ground for ease. Beaky's taken Huizi very gently in her talons.

There's only one thing he has to do. He has to get all of them out of here. ]

Edited 2019-10-10 03:18 (UTC)

Come on, Erika. [ His voice is a rasp. Had he been screaming? ...He had, for awhile. No one came. No one was there to. Alex closes her eyes, if only to keep them from drying out, and he picks her up rather easily. She's so very small, after all.

Limping to the corpses, he quickly realizes his problem. Erika in his arms, maybe-

Agate. She's still there, fretting over her master. Alex wets his lips. ] A- Agate, please. [ She looks at him. Does she comprehend? ] I need... I need to get them back. Help me.

Please. Help me.

[ His breath catches as Agate tilts her head at him...and then gathers up Ferran, as best she can. Thank you, he more mouths than says. Erika weighs next to nothing to him, but he'll have to put her down for the moment, as he digs through his BIAS for- there it is, rope.

As he kneels by Crowley, he starts to murmur apologies. They don't stop as he grunts, dragging the man (the corpse) up with trembling hands- oh god, they hurt, oh fuck, the bandages slip from them and they're wrecked, just completely and totally wrecked--

He nearly drops Crowley's body. He nearly goes into another dry heaving fit. He nearly loses it, but he is not leaving any of them behind. Alex has dragged himself across a forest, outrun the FBI, pulled himself out of death's grasp multiple times, and he's not going to let this...let any of this hold him back.

Beaky doesn't need him to speak to follow his orders. She sets down Huizi, and then takes the rope from Alex as he hoists Crowley on to his back. It's like giving him a piggyback, except...completely not. He's taller, and gangley, and it's awkward, but Alex is making this work.

After a few minutes, he's got a knot tied around his torso, tight, and Crowley's flopped against him. Alex tries not to concentrate on how cold he is. Alex tries not to concentrate on anything, except for getting them out.

He scoops Erika back up (that's a process, making sure Crowley doesn't tip, first tried to bend with his knees and that didn't work, bends at the waist instead and that kind of works-) and grips her, very tight.

He breathes out, soft enough that, were she able to Erika would be barely able to hear it. ]

Fuck Wonderland.

[ And then he limps through the darkness, Agate following along, in the direction he hopes and prays will get them out of this nightmare. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Field Mission 5: Il Prigioniero, Part 3

spicy. also i don't have icons for this really.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2 cw: emetophobia

2/2 cw: emetophobia mentions