🏝️ 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

[sicklysweet]

[It's agonizing. It's slow, a way Owen hasn't died before. It's not a way he can die, and the feeling is nearly unfathomable, Owen barely able to reconcile between the foreign sensations and the familiarity of oblivion.

The spear melts, and Owen feels nothing again. It's not as comforting as what he knows, the brief reprieve from pain, sickness, the harsh realities as the world, but in that nothingness it's also not the misery of losing everything. There is no burn. There is no Otegine, no Owen, there is nothing at all.

So Owen waits, to see if there will be an end to the end. How long will it take before there is something again, and not just this empty feeling of something that no longer exists anymore?

He'll wait as long as it takes, because he has nowhere else to go.]

[passthrough]

[You wait.













The void stretches forever. Years and years. Decades fold over into a century, then another, of nothing.







You don't remember what happened. You knew, once. Who you were, what you were. You're not sure that you even are anymore. Because if you were... there would be no reason for this void.

You want to rest. You... have to be able to do that much... right? But something that is nothing can't rest, nor can it be awake.

Time moves. You don't. Maybe this really is all that's left.







...

You hear the distant, sharp pang of metal again metal, a pinpoint of warmth that sits in the expanse of nothing like a fishing lure in the depths of the ocean. It repeats, over and over, like a voice of its own that you can't quite make out.

It's a call. A request. A plea.

You are nothing. It can't be for you. Can it?]

[sicklysweet]

[He waits.

He waits…




And waits…











It’s been so long. Or has it? It’s hard to say.













Does it matter? Can it matter?

He almost doesn’t notice. His mind drifts until it feels like he’s almost lost himself, too, in this blank space where an existence no longer is, but he hears it. Feels it. Someone is asking for - help? It has to be, because Otegine is a spirit. A spirit born from a beloved treasure and spirits are what anything who can see the value in them would call upon. That has to be what it is, and he won’t accept otherwise.]

If you don’t take this call [he feels so foolish, so small] I’ll make you regret it. It’ll be worse then any promise you could break.

[passthrough]

[...

...

You acknowledge the point of light. A curiosity you aren't aware you still have until the light turns to two, then to eight. The warmth of it spreads, and even though you have nothing left, you still reach out.

The call answers back, the slams of the hammer rattling your ears.

Please fight for us. Please fight for us. Please fight for us.

It's a contract. You're not being forged, not a new life... but summoned. The hammer pounds, and so does a heartbeat you've never had before, a warm and rhythmic rush of blood through--

You're reaching, and you can hear the pound, you can feel it rattle you, you can see the starts of shapes and colors for the first time with eyes you didn't know you could have, a mouth splitting open to part and take in breath. Your head pounds, your chest fills with air, the tips of fingers splitting apart from the hand and forming, a form of autonomy you barely understand as you continue to reach for that point of light.

It hurts. It hurts in a way you've never known before.

A weight manifests behind Owen: a warmth, a body that inhales with new pain as his outstretched hand clasps over the wizards, wrapping a free arm against his waist, pushing them forward, eyes that barely know how to see still keeping locked straight behind short, messy locks of brown that barely start to manifest.]

Don't give up on me.

[You're not entirely what you were. It hurts, so deeply, to be given a human body. And hundreds of years of memories, in a fragile form with an even more fragile heart, pour in like a flood.

You feel like you could crumple from the weight of it. Even Otegine has to press his forehead into Owen's shoulder with a muffled choke at how vibrant and painful it is, to feel.

You remember the red. Your body associates the feelings. The pain, the agony, the sorrow, all in a flashing moment in the back of your head like a brand. It drops in a violent and horrible burst, and just as fast, disappears - a recess in the back of your mind. You know the red. You know it was hot. You... can no longer remember why. A bad dream.

Otegine trembles deeply with an unconcious grip of Owen closer to him. But he does not let go.

They're waiting. You can't give up now.]

[sicklysweet]

[A fight - against what? A fight against something big enough to require summoning a spirit from nonexistence, a danger perhaps even beyond the Calamity. Or a danger in a different way, because comparing the two things seems moronic. Owen watches in morbid fascination as he is reformed - not reforged, not quite, this is far beyond remaking a weapon and hoping it is imbued with life. It's far more deliberate then that.

Owen would bet that they want Otegine, specifically, even if he wouldn't voice that to the spear. Not now, not in this moment, when he is overwhelmed by what does not feel anything like coming back to life again. That has always been slow, gentle, a return to sensations he already knew. This is like pouring salt and on an open wound and then grinding it in deep, an electric sensation beyond even the storm Oz calls down with his fury, because even though it is not new to him, it is new to the man in front of him.

He brings his arms up, a laugh behind his teeth. This isn't a laughing manner, but he feels almost hysterical with all of the raw newness that is being reflected on his consciousness, like seeing the sun for the first time after being locked away somewhere dark and hopeless but you never knew what you had been missing. The wizard is still cold to the touch, even here, and he holds Otegine close.]

I'll give you one more chance.

[He'll have to earn more, of course. Owen can be stingy, when he wants to be, but he thinks he's being quite generous in this moment.]

[passthrough]

[There's a pained chuckle from the spirit against his shoulder, a struggle to breathe evenly as he leans into Owen's weight, letting the wizard support him as much as the Touken attempts to hold him up.]

That's more than enough.

[...

...

It's 2205.

You are... or perhaps, you were... six hundred and twenty five years old.

You've nearly doubled your lifespan, and you remember none of the gaps.

This is temporary. You know it is. So does your new master. Your saniwa. Clad in robes, his face covered, an older human in voice and posture. Your body is a gift from his magic. A gift made of your history.

They need you. History as it stands will crumble without your help.

You promise him your service. Until war is over... you have autonomy. You have the chance to be. And your feelings, your body, the hundreds of years that weigh on your new mind... they keep you separate from your enemy, a never ending of wave of spirits like yourself who exist without the burden of a heart, ruthless and unforgiving.

...

Time won't stop for you. But at least, in this body, with feelings that weigh every memory that stitches you together like a paper doll... maybe the moments won't move so fast.

Maybe you'll find your forever... however long forever can last for something like you. Maybe there can be peace at the end of it.

Maybe you'll truly have one more shot to be useful.

You promised, after all.


...

...

The memory ends. Owen is Owen once more.]