ph_logs | January Event - Lost in Dreamland

January Event - Lost in Dreamland

**Plain text version here.

Lost in Dreamland

Bedtime Story

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: Unreality, dream logic. Mind the CWs in individual threads, as they will vary! }

It is no secret that in the Emerald Isles, winter and sleep have a deep connection. To some extent, this is true everywhere. The whole world seems to fall asleep under the blanket of snow. Plants recede back into the ground, trees stand leafless and slumbering till spring, animals hibernate. Nights are longer. But the local folklore intensifies this, as Mortanne presides over Winter and the Beyond.

As the tales go, the Beyond is the realm of souls, the place where the essence of a person goes when it separates from their body. And while this primarily refers to death, it can also refer to the half-step between living and dying--- the unconscious mind. Sleep, and moreover, dreaming. And thus, winter and dreams have always been kindred spirits. Connected through their ties to Mother Mortanne and to a hushed and sleeping world.

Perhaps it is for this reason that when you go to sleep on the night of January 19th, 16:55, it is a deeper, more consuming sleep than you’ve ever felt. One that swallows you whole, dragging you down, and down, and down, into a sunken place that is deeper and more terrifying than dreams.

By the time you think to feel afraid, it is already too late to jolt yourself awake.

LULLABY

Beautiful Dreamer, Wake Unto Me

You wake. Or do you? It feels a bit like waking, and yet, it does not. It is similar enough to waking that one might believe it to be so. You feel ground beneath your feet, or perhaps a bed beneath your back. Or something. You feel… something. It isn’t like waking. But it’s a little bit like waking. Perhaps it is not. But perhaps it is as close as you are able to get. Let’s try this again.

You “wake.” Your mind solidifies and reality defines its shape around you. Your eyes focus and you become aware. What are you aware of?

Whatever it is, it isn’t good. Perhaps it seems good at first, but it is not. Wherever you are, only horrors await you here, pulled straight from your own mind. Or the minds of others.

Move. You must move. The dream is a landscape. You must traverse nightmares to escape. Seek other dreamers, and flee. To the center, to safety in false daydreams. To the underground, where the Necropolis will conceal you. To the edges, where you can feel your consciousness break free of this sunken sleep and return to the world of hard objects and light. But you cannot stay here. Gods help you if you stay here.

[ Your nightmare can look however you desire. Laws of reality and physics do not apply. Fuse them, reshape them, choose your flavor. Be liberal with content warnings and respect sensitive content guidelines, but otherwise, there are no rules. ]

Starlight and Dewdrops are Waiting For Thee

If you reach the center of the dreamscape (or perhaps you “woke up” there), you will find an oasis. You find yourself immediately embraced by a beautiful dream. All of your wishes granted, your deepest desires pulled directly from the core of your soul and brought to life before you in vivid detail.

What sort of dream do you find yourself in? What do you dream of? Is it success, love, peace? A life that never came to pass? For your troubles never to have occurred? Do you dream of fame or glory? No matter how beautiful or extravagant, no matter how simple or selfish, the things you desire most are yours.

You cannot escape from here. This is the center, as far away from the waking world as you can go. But the dream entreats you, as do the illusory figures within it. ”Stay,” they croon. ”There is nothing for you beyond here. Only nightmares, only terror. You are safe here. You are loved and wanted and happy here. Why would you ever want to leave?”

Time blends together. It often does, in dreaming, but this feels different. How long have you been here? Do you remember what you were doing before? How you got here? Have you ever even been to a town called Pumpkin Hollow? You can hardly remember.

Maybe that was the dream, and this is your reality. Even as the edges of it bleed together with that of your neighbor, even as fleeting memories come back to you, even as a little voice deep within you screams at you to wake up--- you have no reason to doubt the legitimacy of this place. Here you are happy and safe. Here you are everything you ever wanted to be, living the life you always wanted. Here there are no debts, no suffering, and you shall never die.

You belong here. Surely.

Sounds of the Rude World Heard in the Day

With how far you had to sink into unconsciousness to be here, it’s hard to believe one could go any deeper. But the Beyond is a many-layered place, and perhaps by descending a bit further, a bit deeper, a bit closer to death, you can find another place. Maybe you have a connection to death that brought you here. Perhaps you find your way by mistake. Either way, you may find yourself on a more peaceful journey through the Beyond through the Frozen Necropolis.

A seemingly endless maze of stone walls, mismatched in their depth as if they were patchworked together over centuries. Mausoleums, slotted tightly against one another. Covered marble passageways. Stone statues and carved reliefs depicting gargoyles, knights, Virtues, mages with skull motifs--- necromancers, perhaps? Banshees and dullahans, elves and humans and dwarves and orcs and fae folk of all sorts. All of these things line a network of cobblestone pathways lined with powder snow drifts and crunchy brown grass. Names are carved into the arches above mausoleum doors. Some are familiar, some are not. Fairbanks, Gladwyn, Dirthariel, Leeds, Larson, Endrin, Applegate, Brenning. Above you, white pillar candles float magically overhead, burning bright, lighting your way through the dark pink sunset sky.

In the distance, you see the achingly thin spires of the Winter Cathedral. An austere grey monolith with ornate carvings of horses and snowflake-shaped stained glass windows. Perhaps you will find some solace there. Otherwise, make your way to the river. A familiar ferryman awaits you--- though returning to reality this way will have a small consequence.

[ Encountering Mortanne here is possible, though her threads will be heavily restricted. You can do a thread here with someone else, though! It’s fine to be here without encountering her. Returning to the island by ferry will cause your physical body to die in the process, leaving you a ghost for the usual amount of time. You can also return to the nightmare and get out through the edge. ]

Lulled by the Moonlight, Have All Passed Away

Should you find the edge of the nightmare, you will be able to push yourself through the iridescent membrane at the edge of consciousness. You float through the seemingly endless darkness for a moment, then another, then a third, senses dull and drifting drunkenly, until suddenly---

Like breaching the surface of water, you return to the solid, bright sharpness of reality. Actual reality, firm and true. You are where you went to sleep the night before, though some time has passed. It might take you a bit to figure out exactly how much, though…

Those who escape the nightmare will find themselves home sometime between 1/20 and 1/30. Those who stay in the dream oasis will be comatose until the dream ends, and will not wake until 2/8. They will find the return to reality deeply unpleasant. What are you willing to endure to keep dreaming a while more?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No real plan, nothing but a vehement determination: they will not have him.

Gasping, stumbling, she gets within range of Mulcahy just as the dogs charge past her, raises a hand, chants -- "Yir'ei Adonai bitkhu b'Adonai, ezram u-maginam hu --"

It does not occur to her that her magic might not work here, in this dream. What should happen, what she intends to happen, is a pillar of radiant cloud rising out of the ground between the attackers and their target, standing guard.

Three of the dogs are incinerated immediately in the conflagration; the rest balk just in time, some whimpering and fleeing back to their masters, others continuing to circle their quarry. They bark; their tails wag; they are doing what they have been bred to happily do. In the middle, Mulcahy goes on thrashing against the snare strangling him by the throat, squeezing, squeezing tight.

The hoofbeats catch up; hunters appear from between the trees. Those with their rifles raised at her do not lower them. One man sees the burned carcasses and departs from the rest, approaching her; Mulcahy lunges from where he is held, ears pinned back and predator teeth bared in a violent snarl, claws gouging the dirt. His words come out half-choked, leave her alone, leave her alone!

The man ignores him. "Ma'am," he says, with that particular derisiveness of the word, affected and righteous in his civility, "you're interfering with official affairs. I'm afraid we must ask you to leave."

"Sir," says Zivia, in a tone that sees his derisive courtesy and raises it back at him, "I'm going to need your name and ID number, and your immediate supervisor's name. If you're on official business then you're answering to somebody official, right?"

She probably shouldn't have a phone with her -- it's been nearly a year since she's carried one regularly. Nonetheless, habit is strong, and she's already fishing hers out of her pocket.

Mulcahy had all of a year's worth of experience with cell phones, six years ago. Zivia's hand does close around something like a smartphone, though it seems oddly rudimentary. (Perhaps a bit rock-like.)

The man rakes a slow look up and down over this stout, strange woman with no uniform. He offers a beatific smile.

"Why, I'm Number 58."

The snare rattles again with a renewed, vicious lunge, eyes bulging, and if the snare were loose enough to let him speak he would surely be screaming. (The thing about foxes is that they are still predators.)

He tips a dark hat. The hand has the letters H-A-T-E tattooed on the fingers. "And as I'm sure you are perfectly well aware, all of us answer to Number 2. Except for the stray little lamb caught in the trap down there." He turns, frowning placidly, pitifully down at Father Mulcahy. "We've been looking for him for quite a long time now, poor lost thing. Look; he doesn't even recognize a friend when he sees one. We don't mean no harm. Our only business is to take him back home, where he belongs."

Edited 2025-03-01 07:07 (UTC)

"You don't mean harm." Dust-dry. "That's why you've got guns, of course. Gentlemen, you've taken a very wrong turn somewhere, and you are right out of your jurisdiction. I'm sure this can be settled in a civilized fashion if you head back now. Number 2 can expect to hear from my immediate superior within a day, and I think we'd all prefer to keep their conversation ... uncomplicated."

(The thing about small unprepossessing-looking humans is that they are still predators.)

The other men look around at each other and at their apparent leader, jostled just slightly in both trepidation and plain confusion. Number 58, caught in his contradiction, turns his placid gaze to her, a tense pause stretching between them.

"Missus, I think we have a misunderstanding. These guns are just for flushing; he's an especially wily one, see? Number 2 is really quite intent on seeing old 4077 come back to the fold. He's awfully important to 'im, and besides... it's my job to bring lost lambs back onto the right path."

He spares another look towards the fox in the snare, through the divine light. Mulcahy stills a little bit. His ears are still pinned back.

58 turns back to Zivia. "Talk to your supervisor if you like, but we'll be takin' him back tonight. There ain't no one around here who answers to anyone higher than Number 2. Do us a kindness, miss, and dismiss this..." he squints, "cloud of yours."

For a moment she doesn't respond at all -- and then, very slight and deliberate, she smiles.

"Step through it," she says. "Go ahead. Or dismiss it yourself, if you represent the highest authority around here."

A pause.

"But I'd think any schoolchild knows what comes before Two."

Edited 2025-03-06 04:13 (UTC)

This is the tragedy of trying to argue with men like him: he is shallow, and stubborn, and very, very stupid.

His eyes narrow darkly, before a righteous placidity washes those sands smooth again. Smugness returns to the square of his shoulders.

"Men," he says without turning, and there are a dozen clicks in the dark as the rifles are leveled at her.

"Missus, you're a faithful one. That I can see. But what else I see is that your eyes has been clouded by our stray down here, and, why--I simply cannot stand for you to hold him hostage from where he belongs. From his proper home, where I can help him clean the mud out of both his fur and his soul..."

He looks down at Mulcahy with what he passes as pity, barely disguising disgust. Reaching into the saddlebag, he pulls out something that clinks and dangles, made of leather straps, basket-shaped and yet barely larger than a fist. Mulcahy, still, doesn't move.

"... It's no business for women to be out here hidin' apostates. I know the Lord is on my side; it's God who sends me forth to fetch him, who revealed him to me. I'm tellin' you again, 'fore I start gettin' mad: step aside, missus. Let me have him."

She can't help it; her heart triphammers at the sound of those clicks, her throat tightens, her hands go cold and clammy. She isn't afraid of the man in front of her, but the impersonal guns --

Her lips move, the smallest bit. Lo ira' rah, ki atah imadi.

Fear fades, anger fades, disgust fades.

"Gentlemen," she says again -- quiet, conversational, addressing not Fifty-Eight but the gunmen around him -- "I can't tell you what to think. But if the Lord were on this man's side, I think things might look a little different here."

She steps backward, into the soft radiance of the guardian spell.

"How about you do what you're gonna do, and I'll do what I'm gonna do. And if no one means any harm, then no one has to do any. It's up to you."

And she turns, to reach for the snare around Mulcahy's neck and try to work it free.

Guns lower as the spell takes hold. A thin film seems to flicker over Number 58's eyes, then vanishes. He shakes his head as if to shoo a fly from his ear, frowning at the show of disobedience from such impressionable men.

He turns to say something to her, but then he sees her hands around the snare, loosing the miserable thing, and he sees those eyes fixed on him. They stare, voracious and immutable, and Zivia is about to release him without so much as a leash.

He dismounts and there's a sharp schwk as he lands, a small and slender switchblade appearing from his grasp, stepping forward; "Woman," he spits, "now you listen to me, you don't know what devil you--"

A great and violent flash; he yowls, shrill and animal, reeling back from the light and clutching at his wrist, just before where his sleeve has melted away. Parts of the hand are livid, red and bloody; others are bleached and dead, hanging off of the bone and cartilage in papery, wet ribbons. In all his wicked teeth, Mulcahy grins.

The spell breaks. Disgust and fear comes rearing back into the air, but the clunk and clink of metal from the men is hesitant, scattered.

Anger surges back too, into Zivia's own heart, into the place that fear vacated for those few precious moments, hot and acid and steadying as a gulp of strong coffee. She welcomes it.

"Boy," she snaps back at him -- and there is just the smallest touch of his accent in her voice, for just a moment -- "for once in your damn life, you listen. Back. Off."

And to the others: "The rest of you, don't be stupid. Get him home before he hurts himself worse, and you'll go with my blessing."

Her hand rests on Mulcahy's shoulder, firm and steady.

Mulcahy knows well what 58 was up to shortly before he ended up on the boat; he knows, through the typical supernatural means and through deciphering his poison tongue, about the children and the money and the old, short, razor-witted woman with the shotgun. So 58 hears that lilt in Zivia’s voice, so close to the one that killed him first, and cowers.

So he is frozen stiff as beside Zivia, Mulcahy pokes a claw into his forehead, and drags it down, down, unzipping himself from top to navel. Out from the empty skin steps something…

… something with teeth.

“I’ve never seen you open your Bible, 58,” he snarls sweetly, huge and dark. “It’s a bad habit. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

All the men scatter. 58 turns tail and runs, hollering all the way.

Like any good hound with prey, Mulcahy takes off after him.

Edited (sorry for the 5 kphjillion edits, its 4 am and i keep missing stuff) 2025-04-23 08:18 (UTC)

Zivia gasps, reaches out a hand after them -- and stops.

Whatever this is, she suddenly isn't sure she should interrupt it. And she's becoming sure, after her initial shock, that she isn't obligated to.

He had every chance to stop and walk away. You gave him every chance.

So instead, she draws a deep breath and follows Mulcahy, at a walk.

He is explosive in his movement; his tracks are gouges in the mud, and trees crack and burst apart to splinters as he barrels past and through them, like a tank that’s learned to sprint. It doesn’t take very long until 58 is on the ground and screaming.

”I always knew you were devilspawn—“

”And you are weak against it!” Mulcahy shrieks around bulging teeth and gums. ”Helpless!” In a lashing movement, 58’s arm splits clean off. It lands near Zivia. The knuckles are tattooed with the letters L-O-V-E.

”God is not with me,” he seethes over 58’s gurgling. ”But He has seen fit to leave you with me.”

And unless Zivia sees fit to interrupt at any point in the process, then he will set about his work of emptying 58’s torso into himself.

Edited 2025-04-28 08:25 (UTC)

Zivia pauses in her stride when the arm lands at her feet, then carefully steps around it and resumes walking. She stops a few feet away, out of arm's reach.

As far as she can tell, 58 is very, very dead by this time.

"Mulcahy," she says after a few moments, not too loudly.

He hears her, but he does not stop for her until his fangs have popped the eyes in 58's skull and he has torn the ears from his head.

Don't look at me. Don't hear me. You don't get to do that any more.

It is a testament to Mulcahy's respect for her that he turns to Zivia immediately after he's done, dark and bloody and gasping for breath after burying himself in gore, instead of taking a little longer to gnaw at 58's bones.

"There's still more out there." A few deep, wet breaths. "I won't... ask you to come."

"Mulcahy," she says again, gentler. "Father."

And holds out her hand to him, palm up.

"D'you wanna get out of here?"

He looks at her hand; looks at her. He shifts back and forth uneasily, nervous. Twitchy.

"There's still more out there," he says again. "I can't let them go. They're going to come back, and when they do, they'll... they won't listen. You've seen it. They need to die."

That second of truth--of fear--flickers away again with a baring of teeth. "It's about time I get to enjoy myself."

Her hand stays outstretched; she speaks carefully, steadily. "We can get away from them. If you come with me now, we can go where they can't follow us. And if they somehow do, we can deal with them there, but they won't."

A long beat.

"Come on. Come out of it."

"There's nowhere to run," he snaps, "or don't you believe I would have found it by now? There are edges to this world. I am sick of being chased into its corners, over and over again, for years, and I--want--"

Somewhere in the wood, there is the snapping of metal, and a scream. Mulcahy turns.

"I want what has been denied of me, while it's still their turn to be afraid. I want my revenge. I want them to know what it feels like when they skin something."

Zivia still doesn't lower her hand, even though keeping it stretched out untaken is feeling worse by the moment.

"Do you?" She wants to step closer, and makes herself stay put. "Do you want that?"

"Shouldn't I?" He turns back to her, his massive black shape bristling. A maw fit to chew girders apart presses in towards Zivia. "Do you believe I am still beyond reproach? Do you believe that the Lord still looks upon me here? Do--do you--"

His voice strangles. He recoils, then starts coughing. Then hacking, wracked with the effort.

Sticking out from the back of his throat is a little hand, with claws and red fur.

So many things she could say to that; but maybe this isn't who she needs to say it to, after all.

With a clumsy lunge, she closes the short distance between them and shoves her outstretched arm between the enormous jaws, making a grab for the little hand.

(And has just enough time to think please don't bite my arm off, I'm going to feel so goddamn stupid if you do.)

The little hand grasps tight for hers, and if the claws dig in a little too harshly, it is only because of how much he trusts her.

It's a difficult effort, the kind where a lot of strength sees only a little progress, but there is progress, especially as the beast continues to retch. There isn't time to close its jaws when it's too busy gagging. With an abrupt pull, Mulcahy's head slips free from the gullet.

"I don't," he gasps, "I don't want to--I don't, I don't, I don't--"

"I know," gripping his hand in both of hers now, holding hard, pulling. "I know, I know, I've got you."

Later, the visual and tactile memory of this moment will make her queasy. Right now all she feels is a terrible urgency.

"I've got you. We're getting out of here."

January Event - Lost in Dreamland

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cw descriptions of burn/gore

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cw body horror

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cw death, gore, eye gore, cannibalism, real wet here, et cetera

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cw more gore, eye gore

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cw emetophobia

Re: cw emetophobia

cw gore

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