January Event - Escape from Unknown Kadath

[pumpkinhollow]

Escape from Unknown Kadath

Sleep

How many times now has it been?

I suppose it depends how long you've been here. This could very well be your first such excursion. But for many of you, it's an all too familiar circumstance.

You crawl into bed after a long day of work or… interpersonal drama, or whatever else you adorable, pointless little weirdos get up to in your free time. You close your eyes, and drift off into a deep slumber, far, far from the worries of a harsh and troubled world. Or so you thought. You wake to find yourself somewhere new, whether physically transported or simply trapped in some horrible lucid nightmare, and you are subjected to new and unimaginable horrors you never dared to dream back on that wretched little island. You are at the mercy of who or whatever brought you there, and their whims, or your own wits.

And so I ask again, "offworlder," how many times has it been now?

How many times have we met?

Would you even know?

Oh, goodness, where are my manners? I really should introduce myself. I have a number of names--- the Crawling Chaos, the Caliban Storm, the Bloody Tongue, Kayne--- would you believe I've even been called "Mr. Tiddles"? People are just so creative. But my proper, gods-given name is Nyarlathotep.

It's alright, I know you can't pronounce it. Why don't you just call me the name you usually do?

What do you mean, "which name"? Oh, come on now. Surely you've figured it out by now. Here's a hint. It starts with an N…

But there will be time for all that later, my pets. I have splendid news for you. All of you have been such good little playthings for the past several years that I've decided you deserve a holiday. I've brought you to a destination near and dear to my heart, for a dream getaway you surely won't forget.

Let me give you the tour.

Dream

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: Unreality }

The palace of the gods of old sits high above the great city. This hidden metropolis bustles in your ignorance, but is all but dead with you here to perceive it. Those brave enough to chase the rumors of its existence will find it perched high in steep and baseless mountains of sheer moon rock, with no ground at the edges and separated by a chasm with no end. These mountains, as austere as they are impossible, reach achingly like broken fingers towards a hungry, prismatic sky and can be found in that dreadful space where reality gnaws at the edges of your unconscious mind. The name of the city, spoken of in whispers exchanged among ghouls and cats, is Kadath.

I'm still workshopping that Airbnb listing. What do you think, too much?

Well, it doesn't matter for now. You all are the first guests in quite a long time, and our helpful attendants are just so eager to meet you! But more on that later.

Within the palace you'll find such splendid amenities as a banquet hall suited for the highest number of guests your rudimentary mind can realistically conceive of, a stairwell that always begins but does not end, a sprawling courtyard garden full of plants that refuse to accept a shape with physical boundaries and a wishing well that does not care about you, a constantly shifting maze of impossible hallways, the inner sanctum of all knowledge which shall never be written, and the throne room of the gods.

Your room, regardless of its location within the palace, will be fitted with a canopy bed whose gossamer drapes ebb and flow as if submerged in water, and a balcony that looks out onto that starving sky which beckons to you, begging that you may stare into it long enough for it to crawl into your eyes and become you. Such trappings, as it were, are yours to explore at your leisure.

Now, it is worth noting that we are not used to hosting guests as reality-impaired as yourselves, and thus our accommodations may take some getting used to. For one, you won't find an exit. And for another, you may find that your subconscious influences the way you perceive the… aesthetics of the palace, in ways your fellow guests may not see. The layout is also utterly indescribable, and thus you will only find anything if you were meant to, and you may have to be open to means of traversing spaces that are beyond your normal idea of what is possible.

Such is the way of dreams, no? Trying to make sense of it would be futile for a mind that is so accustomed to the rigid limitations of wakefulness, truth, and sanity. Although whether you realize you're dreaming may vary. I wouldn't recommend considering it too carefully if you want to enjoy your time here.

"Go home"? Now why in the world would I tell you how to do that?

Chaos

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: unreality, wrongness, faceless figures, memory loss }

Now, as I've said, each of our infinite guest rooms is outfitted with the same luxuries. Unlike Aster, I do not play favorites. I cherish you all equally! Most, but not all of you, will find yourselves waking there. Leaving your room and getting downstairs is entirely possible but does require you to traverse the upstairs hallways. Those can be a bit of a labyrinth. (Side note, there is a rather splendid film by the same name which really captures the same energy of the space. You really should watch it if you’re ever in the appropriate time period.) Some may find the journey more arduous than others, depending upon where you are attempting to go, but there's truly no one single right way to do anything around here.

In the banquet hall, the table will lengthen and food will appear itself as needed, but very seldom as desired. If you have a normal, healthy relationship with food and social gatherings, it will be perfectly fine. Probably.

You may also stumble across the broad glass doors that lead out into the sunlit courtyard. Ancient, impossible architecture sprawls out in every direction for what appears to be miles, far further than should be physically possible. The plant life within the garden is as abundant as it is strange and malformed, rife with fasciated blooms or leaves with no borders, like something generated by the hallucinating mind of a machine built to trick you into believing it can think like you. You can wander for hours, finding dream-like beauty beyond compare, forgetting yourself. Become lost in memories, chase buried desires, or simply lose yourself completely. There's a well at the center. You have a coin. Toss it in, make a wish. Whose voice do you yearn to hear? Who do you wish to be? What material thing do you desire? Do you even remember after travelling this far? Whatever bastardization the indifferent spirit here bestows, it will not make you happy.

Ah, you got me waxing poetic again, how dare you! Now let's see, what else… Ah, yes, the ballroom! You're just in time for our ball. I do know how you Pumpkin Hollowites love your fancy galas, and I'd already imagined you up some stunning clothing---- what? Did you think you'd be running through a nightmare castle, chased by incomprehensible horrors, in your work clothes? Where's the fun in that? Pardon me for a bit of glamour alongside the unreality and bloodshed.

In any case, you'll find the ballroom beautifully adorned and brimming with waltzing dancers wearing pallid, featureless masks. Don a mask of your own, and lose your face in the crowd--- there are secrets being spoken by unseen lips on the dance floor. Some of them are yours.

Then, in the heart of the castle, you will find the inner sanctum of the gods. An archive, mostly, full of reliquaries and books. Objects, holy and unholy, lost to time or only ever seen in dreams. Things conceived of but never built. Volumes upon volumes of knowledge that will never be written nor read, incomprehensible to mortal minds or simply just beyond their reach. The Necronomicon once lived here, before I gifted it to my followers. Now that it has been held in human hands, it can never reside on these shelves again. And there are things here that would very much like to prevent this from happening to the other books and artefacts stored here.

And the last room I shall bother to mention, as there are hundreds on just the ground floor, is the throne room. There is only one thing to find there.

Now, before we move on to what there is to find in the subterranean floors of the palace, I would like to ask your forgiveness for the small vermin infestation. Wretched little creatures the size of handbags running around the halls, primarily on this floor but also on others, who deliberately dreamed themselves here when they knew you'd all be coming. I asked my useless staff to try to catch them, but these blithering idiots only managed to lock up one of the smelly, obnoxious little blighters. So if you see some pointy-eared beast calling himself "Fluffy" or some nonsense like that, do let a member of our staff know immediately. And don't listen to a word he says.

Madness

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: insanity, potential for gore, cult references, potential for claustrophobia, heights, entrapment, graphic descriptions of eldritch body horror }

Now, the basement is where things really get interesting. Sure, the upper floors have luxurious balls and banquets, lavish gardens, spiral staircases for running up and down dramatically or thrilling sword fights, and all the amenities your heart desires. But the basement, that's where all the drama lives. The secrets a family keeps, the skeletons in their closet, their long forgotten treasures, the poorly stored holiday decorations that someone is going to get yelled at for next year, the cult ritual spaces---- you know, the good stuff.

Well, maybe your family doesn't keep cult ritual spaces, but mine certainly does. Dozens of them, take your pick! Torture chambers, well-appointed meeting rooms with austere wine goblets and tapestries on the walls, amphitheaters for grand gatherings of beings of immense size, dark rooms with rune circles and black candles on hardwood floors, and more besides. Why, there's even a blood pit. I recently had it remodeled, as well. Holds more blood now. But I digress.

Given that many of these rooms hold forbidden knowledge and eldritch relics, or maybe even some of my relatives (more on that shortly), you may also carelessly wander into trap rooms. Some of them are cleverly engineered puzzles that those with the mettle to solve can escape. Some are simply designed for violence, meant to crush or stab or maim or devour. Some do little more than hold you, a dark hole in which to be forgotten. Perhaps another will find your same pit, and you can die slowly together, watching each other's bodies unravel as time marches agonizingly on.

Speaking of places to be held, some lucky wanderers may encounter our pride and joy--- the dungeons. Rows and rows of intricately structured cells, winding around each other in such a way that it is impossible to tell what is a cell and what is the walkway just from looking! How does one prevent oneself from wandering into a cage and becoming trapped in its iron bars? How do you know you're not already in one? I do love a good mystery. Presently, the occupants within are meager, but once these very walls hosted hundreds of prisoners who dreamed of things their minds were not meant to see. Just as you do now.

The basements of Castle Kadath also contain some unfinished spaces. Caverns, if you will. Many are quite beautiful, filled with gravity-defying rock formations, glowing crystals, and pools of the clearest water you've ever seen. Though it may not be your own face you see in its mirror-like surface. Of course, not all of these caverns are peaceful, nor easily traversed. From narrow rock bridges to flooded passageways, you may have to risk some discomfort to proceed. But there are many possible rewards for doing so, whether that's safety from that which threatens your life, a reunion with a loved one, or an object of power that may even follow you home from dreaming.

Those luckier still (or perhaps unluckier, depending on how you look at it) may find enlightenment beyond their wildest dreams in the depths of the mountain.

Deep, deep within the belly of the old stone of dreams and moonlight, there exists the mouth to primordial chaos incarnate. The world turned inside out, the infinity of space buried within the cold stone of the world beneath unknown Kadath. The center of all infinity. The birthplace of the gods. No gods that you know, none that you dare worship, for just the sound of their names upon your fragile lips could be enough to crack reality. Cause the world to bend and break around their impossible forms just to make way for their incomprehensible will. Things like me, but not like me. Gibbering genius-fools with vast minds so full of everything and nothing that they are beyond thought or spoken word or the weak and limiting binds of coherency. And residing there, in the gulping maw of all that is and ever will be and never was and cannot become, one god still whispers, screams, loud and voiceless, accompanied by the pounding of drums like blood in the ears and the shrill and incessant whine of broken flutes. His form twists and churns, endless tendrils and hungering mouths coiling in on themselves and suffocating in his own bulk as new mouths and new tendrils and new blind and vacant eyes are born, endlessly folding like batter in an industrial mixer and made of vile and putrid matter that should not exist at all, much less as flesh. The few that have known him have called him many things, his collection of epithets even greater than my own. The Lord of All, the Primal Chaos, the Downbreaker, the Deep Dark, the Cold One. The Blind Idiot God. I personally just call him "Dad," these days.

But you, my privileged guests. You are here as visitors! Friends of the family! You, my dears, may simply call him Azathoth. I am sure he'd be delighted by your visit. It will surely be one you remember for a long, long time.

Oh, also, while I'm thinking about it--- should you need to return upstairs for any reason, do take care which staircase you take. There are a number of them that always begin but never end. I'd hate to see you waste hours climbing a thousand steps only to look back and find yourself still on the third one. But it's impossible to tell which ones will do this, or when the effect will pass, or when you'll be able to find another staircase. This place is a bit of a maze. Perhaps you should just climb a while more, see what happens.

Blood

{ CONTENT WARNINGS: eldritch body horror, death, Nyarlathotep literally suicide baiting you in the last paragraph }

And now, my beautiful dreamers, we have reached the finale of our grand tour. I'm sure you all feel so terribly fortunate to spend some indiscriminate amount of time as the houseguests of the Old Gods. Before we part ways, I do feel it pertinent that I should issue a few… safety warnings.

In addition to my staff, which is comprised predominantly of faceless mannequin men and bats, my niece's adorable children by and large have the run of the place. Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, Mother of a Thousand Young, is the daughter of my sibling. And as her name suggests, she has a rather extensive number of whippersnappers--- though I think at this point "a thousand" is a bit of a misnomer, as I believe their number is more in the hundred-thousands by now. Not all of them are home, lucky for you.

Shub-Niggurath's children are so varied in appearance and size that I shan't bother to describe them individually. They are bestial things of darkness and hatred, borrowing the visages of the beasts of Earth and Concorde and worlds like them. Bears, birds, tigers, oxen, things with teeth and talons to gore you with, blended with--- goats, mostly. Caprine things, often with cephalopod bits mixed in, body parts that no beast should have and which have no names, just clever descriptors. Or occasionally just too many of the normal anatomical bits you might expect. You get the idea.

Their motivation, when they locate you, is simple. They will chase you single-mindedly through whatever maze you've found yourself in, regardless of what they have to destroy to do so. This will continue until you kill them, outrun them, or until they catch you. If they catch you, they will kill and eat you in the most excessively grotesque and excruciating way they can manage. Fairly straightforward, no?

By now I'm sure you're all asking, "but Nyarlathotep, what happens if I die? I'm outside of the barrier, but also this is some sort of dream. And Castle Kadath is dangerous! There's so many traps and creatures! What becomes of me if I succumb?"

Well, my pets, fear not. Because this is a dream, you cannot truly die. You will feel every moment of the act of dying in glorious detail, right down to the moment your final breath leaves your pathetic, fragile frame. In fact, you will likely find yourself far more conscious of your state than you would be for a normal death, no longer plagued with the delirium of blood loss or organ failure, completely cognizant of every breaking thing in your body until you can no longer perceive anything at all. But, as soon as it's over, you'll pop right back up in your room, right as rain and ready for another go. Now, your corpse may end up left behind if it can be sufficiently useful in tormenting your fellow dreamers, but you'll be none the wiser in most cases.

Of course, this is only relevant if something actively kills you. There are certain things you can do to break or alter this particular cycle. No, of course I'm not going to tell you what they are. Goodness, doesn't anyone enjoy a little mystery anymore? I swear, it's almost like you're reading this as some sort of explanation for what you're meant to be doing for the month or something. What am I supposed to be, a Dungeon Master?

Alright, fine, I'll give you one piece of advice. Get experimental. Try dying as many ways as you can think of! You could even try killing yourself if you're feeling spicy. The castle is your oyster.

In any case, dear visitors, this is where I bid you adieu. Have fun on your little adventure, you've had a painfully dull December and you're in for an equally droll Merrymeet, so this is the most excitement you'll get 'till the Ides. I'll plop you back into your quaint little reality whenever I feel sufficiently entertained, so do try to keep things amusing for me, won't you? And feel free to come pay me a visit if you're in the area! We'll do brunch.

See you soon!

Farewell

Comments

Haley | Stardew Valley

[hotgirlsummer]

‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊ ♡ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ °̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥ ♡ ‧̍̊·̊‧̥°̩̥˚̩̩̥͙°̩̥‧̥·̊‧̍̊

A hand, a spike, a physical fight, the wind around the willow

[hotgirlsummer]

How does a nightmare begin?

There's rarely a coherent storyline, and this one is no different.

A damsel. A dress. A hallway. A monster.

When the chase began isn't important. It happened. Haley runs, seemingly undeterred by the size of her gown. Pretty, useless things like her were always built to float delicately, weren't they? Fearful and defenseless. The world here feels slow--- the creature as well, yes, but Haley herself feels as if she's moving through water. It's nauseating, hiking her anxiety even further. She doesn't bother to wonder what this place is, but she does wonder where all the people are. A building this huge, with so many vast and lavish halls, should have people in it, shouldn't it? How could she be all alone?

There, up ahead, at last---- a person! Oh god, please be a real person. "Help!"

[ownperson]

From one moment-hour-day to the next, South rarely knows where exactly she is or how exactly she got there. Things here blur, feel like being dragged through flashes of familiar but unfamiliar nightmares, until, suddenly, something snaps to clarity and she's a part of something.

It's Haley's voice that grabs her and yanks her back into focus, now. Down below this bannister she now finds herself standing behind in this decadent, encircling gallery, Haley runs and some— thing, some thing like South's never seen before, chases after her. Shit. Shit.

"Haley—"

Jumping down is instinct. Vault the bannister, land with all your weight and roll up onto two feet in the open space between damsel and devilish thing.

(Was she always wearing armour?)

[hotgirlsummer]

"South! Oh, thank Yoba---"

Oh wow that jump. And the armor. It makes Haley feel a little stupid when she catches herself, but she can't stop herself from reaching up and curling a lock of hair around her finger and watching with interest.

The thing following her stops, bellows, reassesses the situation. It takes a low stance, tendrils whipping angrily and preparing to launch itself at South. Will she take the princess and run or will she stand and fight?

[ownperson]

Holy fucking shit, what is this thing? Even on a split-lip or a Hunter you can see the usual weak points, the gaps in armour and defences, but this is—

She needs time. She needs a fucking weapon.

Cursing under her breath, she pivots on her heel and grabs Haley's hand to run.

[hotgirlsummer]

And off they go.

Haley follows, immense dress train whipping behind them and heels clicking on the floor. She doesn't stop or question--- just trusts South. Goes where she goes.

But that doesn't stop her asking.

"Where are we going???"

[ownperson]

Haley looks so damn gorgeous like this but damn if that train isn't going to turn into a hazard if she's not careful. She'd pick her up so she could move faster but she's not sure that'd help with all that material draping down.

"Don't actually know," she admits with a wince, glancing back over her shoulder to see how close the thing still is on their tail. "Just— need time to fuckin' think and find something that's not my fists. 'Cuz I don't think that thing will care if I feed it a knuckle sandwich."

[hotgirlsummer]

"Even though---" A moment to breathe--- "Even though that'd be awesome, you're probably right. Uh---" Haley looks around frantically. "Maybe there's an armory? I feel like I saw people with swords earlier..."

[ownperson]

"Sword would work." Not that she's ever really used a sword, not really the weapon of choice of the UNSC, but fuck it she'll take any real weapon she can get. Anything that might do actual damage to that thing.

Her grip on Haley's hand tightens reflexively.

"Just gotta— find the fucking things. Can't be that hard." It can be, it definitely fucking can be, but she's raided countless bases before. Even a weird magic castle can't be that much different, right? Just look for the right kind of door.

[hotgirlsummer]

And before too long, it manifests---- a vault-like stone door with a pointed arch, bearing the emblem of a flaming sword. "Hey, maybe in there?"

[ownperson]

"If it fuckin' isn't, that's some real false advertising."

The only problem with stopping to raid an armoury is that you have to stop. South's all too aware of how quickly the distance between target and attacker can shrink, if you don't keep moving, but what other choice do they have? South pulls Haley along with her to the door and reluctantly lets go of her hand to shoulder the thing open with all her strength—either it's wide open and that'll do it, jammed and it'll get them most of the way, or locked and she's just hurt her shoulder for no damn good reason but she'll take the chance.

A toll, a tithe, the passage of time, the melting down, the window

[hotgirlsummer]

A ball. Now that's a place a girl like Haley can blend in. Massive ballgown aside, social engagements are where she thrives, right?

Rich girl, popular girl. (Shallow girl, mean girl.)

The things that have been trying to chase her likely won't follow her here, and it might even be fun.

And for a while, it is. The ball is lavish, the music invigorating, the fashion impeccable. Haley's even lucky enough to have all of her partners be women--- many in tailored suits, others in sleek dresses---- as if they all know her perfectly.

Then it becomes clear that the other guests do know her well. And everything changes.

"What a terrible sister she is, treating Emily like that."
"She really said those things to the girl who took over the farm? How tasteless."
"She isn't even a real seamstress. Her sister is the only reason she knows how to do any of it."
"I heard her parents skipped town to get away from her. I hear they're never coming back."
"What a waste of a pretty face."
"Does she even do anything?"
"Lazy."
"Tacky."
"Wasteful."
"Insufferable."
"Entitled."

Always coming from behind her, a few feet away, with no reaction from her silent partner.

Haley wants to pull away. She wants to leave. But they won't let her go.

[redlightgreenlight]

"May I cut in?"

Even if they refuse, Valdis won't take no for an answer, removing their hands from Haley's and taking their place as if they don't matter to her in the slightest. She radiates confidence, even as whispers of her past and present follow to her new partner, though inside she knows some of them are true.

"Don't listen to them, they likely feed on your suffering."

Just like another place she once knew, a place she won't let anyone go to again.

[not_the_last]

"I beg your pardon," comes a sharply clear voice behind Haley, addressing her partner. "Will you be so good as to excuse us for a moment. Miss Haley, if you would --"

It's Cassandra, giving her a very direct and sober stare.

"I find the air in here has grown a trifle stale. Pray walk with me?"

The now, the then, the thinking of when, the bottle in the ocean

[hotgirlsummer]

It feels like hours since Haley entered the courtyard. It's beautiful here. Peaceful.

In an effort to explore it all, and stay here where it feels safe as long as possible, Haley wanders her way through rows and rows of incredible statues of beautiful women tangled with lush flowering vines. Flowers as big as her head and as small as the tip of her little finger, in every color and shape. It's bright, so bright, the inside of the castle feels like a cave in comparison.

Haley's been here so long, her memory of why she's here grows fuzzy. Anxiety gnaws at her as she tries to recall. Where is this? When did she get here?

She wants to go home now.

"Emily!" She calls out as loud as she can across a sea of sunflowers that just... don't look right somehow. "Emily! Where did you go? Em, this isn't funny anymore, come on!"

She wants to go home.

[abhorrently]

She wants to go home, but home is not here. Home is not buried somewhere amid the flowers that sprout in the palm of the beast's hand. Behind her, there is a tree - fractal, fracturing, too many angles and not enough organic material, a dark streak of a hollow within.

A passage, Fever finds. She emerges in the shadow of too many leaves, shimmering silver and dark blue, fabric flowing a bit too slowly to be natural. Like passing through the slightest bit of resistance in the air. That it's Haley - who's been something of a pain, yet no more irritating than flies that bite because they can - matters little right now. Her eyes are bright, focused, and the light - too loud, too bright, dizzying and unsettling - feels like it could shift. Day to night. Endless to ending.

"You're right. It isn't funny at all."

The strike, the pause, the message from God forbid she shows emotion

[hotgirlsummer]

This dream is overstaying its welcome. The loss of time has become utterly nauseating.

Haley's not exactly sure how long it'd been since she was in that garden, which seems to be a running theme here. She barely remembers dropping that coin into that well and wishing to find her sister. Hours passed since then. Days, maybe. Nothing happened. A wish fell on deaf ears, and eventually Haley found her way out. Aren't all wishing wells just superstition anyway? A receptacle for meager hopes and half-hearted dreams and loose change.

But suddenly she blinks out of wherever she was, wish granted far later and completely wrong. Too little, too late. And it drops her in a stupid cavern, far below the castle, in front of a pool that reflects Emily's face instead of her own. For a moment, she's boggled, but then she remembers that stupid wish and screams her frustration as she smacks the surface of the water.

Emily is gone.

Haley is alone.

She sets herself to looking for a way back. Catches her dress train on a jagged crystal, rips it, stumbles back with the force of releasing and falls into a flooded cave. Swims through, ruins her hair, rips more of her dress in the narrow passage way, panics, barely avoids drowning. Drags herself out, wet and tattered. Trudges onward.

Alone.

Is attacked by a swarm of bats, runs with her face covered searching for cover. Has a run-in with a slithering thing that lives in the belly of that cave, is bitten and clawed up before managing to flee from that too. Walks in silence for hours, the tulle and lace torn from her dress and leaving her in a slim, mangled skirt still soaked in dirty water and blood.

Alone.

When her exhausted legs threaten to give way, she stumbles into a hole. One full of spikes that rip what's left of her gown as well as her skin. She screams, cries, bleeds, begs for help. But there's no one there. She's exhausted. She spends another hour there just waiting, hoping, before she gets stubborn enough to drag herself out.

Alone.

By the time anyone might find her, she's on a staircase, bloodied and battered to the point where she doesn't even look like herself anymore. Blood dyes her dress, now otherwise dry. She climbs the stairs until she no longer can, turns around to sit, and----

You have got to be fucking kidding.

Upon seeing she's maybe four stairs from the bottom, she rips off her thin wire circlet, the last dainty or beautiful thing on her person. She screams, as loud as she can, hours and hours of frustration, and hurls it at the floor, before she sits down on the stairs and buries her face in her hands. Ragged sobs wrench their way out of her throat, barely muffled by her hands.

If only she wasn't alone.

[nothingbadeverhappensto]

Leon (ever the knight in shining armor, unable to rest, unable to stop, because there's always someone to be saved) hears a girl scream and pivots on his own way up the unfathomable staircase to run back down. It does not take him as long as it should, for as far away as she sounded, but he doesn't question it, doesn't think to.

"Ashley?" he shouts, the anguished scream distorted enough by its reverberations off the walls and through bent space that he can't be sure that's who it belonged to. It's kind of a lose-lose proposition, whether it is or not. If it was, that means she's in distress. If it's not, that means he's lost track of her (again) and that someone else is also having an awful time.

In any case, he clatters down the stairs and catches sight of a sobbing blond girl dressed in the tattered remains of what was probably a beautiful dress at some point, battered and bleeding. Coming to a stop on the step next to her, he whips the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and offers it to her.

"Knew suits came with these for a reason," he says, frowning in concern even as he tries to keep his voice light. "You okay? Still in one piece?"