🏝️ dulces sueños group excursion! 🏝️

[hearthwarming]

🏝️ who: intrepid adventurers (vacationers?) and more!
🏝️ what: ori organized (origanized?) a group trip to the resort! mass memshare ensues.
🏝️ when: fall 9-10
🏝️ where: dulces sueños resort
🏝️ warnings: threads will be marked as needed for memshares.

[ Hopefully everyone had fun on the Arco Lunar! The morning after the boat departs from the docks, a letter arrives to your mailbox: ]

Hello, intrepid adventurer!

I am excited to have you along for a group excursion to the mysterious new island! In two days' time, let us gather in the town square and set off from there! Please be prepared to stay the night. It will be so fulfilling and memorable for everyone to spend a night on an adventure together!

If you have any questions or concerns, please come find me at my flower shop in town or at the forest farm where I live!

Sincerely,
Oriphi

[ If she accidentally delivered it to a few wrong mailboxes, then... Oops!

On the promised day, once everyone (and likely a few surprise tag-alongs) has gathered or been gathered, Ori distributes little paper bags of snacks to everyone. Inside are cookies, oat snacks, and a freshly-picked apple from her and M-21's orchard. Do with them as you please... Just don't let her catch you throwing it into the sea or something. 🥺 ]

Alright. I think we should head out, then! Thanks for coming along, everyone! I hope it'll be a great time. Oh, and please don't forget to drink plenty of water and use this incredible ointment I discovered on this island! It's called "sunscreen!" Tieflings don't really get sunburnt, but you should use it!

[ And with that our intrepid adventurers set off to the mysterious, dangerous, unknowable... resort island! ]

( This is the ill-fated mass extinction memshare event. Please refer to the event for details on the resort and the plotting post for any specific details for characters' memshares! There are toplevels for each area of the resort (and for the memshare). Enjoy! )

Comments

[passthrough]

[You cry out. Yet your voice doesn't echo. Your body can't move. You can't free yourself.

The smoke thickens. The rumblings don't stop, wailings of far off voices barely heard. It burns, burns, burns, and the rubble shifts as the roof fully caves, piling down harder on stone and wood and flame and charcoal with a resounding crash. The fire is stoked by the open night. The flames grow higher.

It's so hot. It's so hot. You've never felt so hot in your life.

Sweat doesn't come to relieve you. The flames lap at you, starting to singe and burn.

Where are they? They tried so hard for you, didn't they? They treasured you. They treasured you.

Where are they? What's happened?

It's so hot. It's so hot. You don't think it can get any hotter... and yet it does.

You can taste the sensation deep in your core now. The maw of the blaze, blackening you, scarring you...

It's growing hard to think. All you can hear is the roar and the thunder, all you can see is red, and all you can feel is the burn, not outward, but inward, as though your insides are starting to boil.

You feel something start to soften. To drip, from the lines of your face. It's not sweat. You don't sweat.]

cw: descriptions of body horror

[graftage]

Ah...a-ah...

[What is this? This fire that burns, that heats his body, that sinks in deep and never lets go...? Steinbeck writhes, attempting to move. He has to move. Like a sprout attempting to stretch its roots, he tries, he does his best, but plants were never any good with fire, after all.]

[It feels like his organs are melting, one by one, into a burning hot core that can't go anywhere except burn him from the inside out. Steinbeck can't even scream. He can only stare upwards, shuddering as it feels like his skin is starting to slide down his own face. This feels different from the growth of roots within his veins, stretching through muscle and nerve. There's no growth here.]

[Just destruction.]

cw: descriptions of body horror

[passthrough]

[You boil, under the relenting heat that never lifts.

And you start to melt.

It's agony. You want to open your mouth, to scream. But you have no voice, no lungs. The weight of your limbs lose their give, and you lay prone.

You can see the shape of your hand, pitting and hollowing out, turning bright red, then white, a slow and painful puddling to the floor. It smells of molten metal. It tastes of molten metal.

You're supposed to be metal. You always have been.

But the more of you drips away, the more your mind starts to slip with a rising, ugly rush of static in your ears. You're... not you, anymore, are you? You're pooling over the floor. You're not sure how much of your own face is left... you don't have a way to check.

The static increases.

"I-It's a dream. It's a dream. It's just a dream."

It's not Steinbeck's voice, but still one that echoes familiar, weary and panicked and heated with agony.

"Snap out of it... S-Snap out of it! Get a hold of yourself!"

The static grows deafening.

"It's just a dream!"

Your inscription is melting from your tang. Your name. Your name.

What is your name?

What... was... your name?]

[graftage]

[His scream rises out of his body like its a plume of smoke on its own, searing the air as he continues to writhe - but wait. There's no sound. He wants to scream. He's trying his best to scream. To scream is to be human, to exist, to leave some mark in the world in the form of sound, but he can't-]

[He...can't-]

[He.........................he................................]

[Everything is melting.]

[What will be left of him, but a puddle, burned up forever?]

[He stirs at the sound of the voice, but there's not much to stir. His body feels like its just nothing at this point, useless metal, unmoving, brain melting, face melting-.]

H...

[A dream....?]

My.......

[Name, name, what is a name, what belongs to a name, the name of....]

Stein...Steinbeck..............?

[passthrough]

["That's it. Don't forget yourself just yet."

A hand grasps for Steinbeck's wrist, weakly pulling him up. His body stays behind, melting, melting - no longer a body, but the blade of a spear, nothing but metal pooling on the floor.

Whatever he is now, separate from himself, he can barely see. An apparition. A spirit. Translucent and struggling to stay present. He can still feel deeply the way his body turns to slag on the floor, how his form now just fades faster as the pain grows. He's losing himself.

The image of Otegine stays in front of him, hands moving from Steinbeck's wrist to either side of his face, forcing his eyes back to him. Him, just as translucent and agonized, but with a focus behind his gaze - a man who has seen this dream before.

"C-come on. Come on, you can do it. You need to wake up. You're not here anymore, okay? You know you're not here. This is a dream."

It's all slipping. Your name was Otegine. You... existed, once. You were loved, once. You had purpose, didn't you? And you...

You feel so, so hot... it fades to a pinpoint, to nothing that you can even remember but the dark and the red and the thundering, the hot hot hot hot--

And nothing else seems to matter. The second you stop existing hits like a snap, a sudden numbing freefall, fading into nothing but a dark maw--

"Wake up, Steinbeck! Come on!!!"

...

...



The memory ends.

Steinbeck is Steinbeck... and he is, thankfully, rightfully, whole.]