Forest Mingle (OUTSIDE) | OPEN

[vitaelamorte]

Who: EVERYONE
Where: The Forest outside the Darn Lantern!
When: 1/15/16 -1/18/16 - The duration of the event!
Rating: Probably PG-13, will vary by thread.
Summary: Oh boy. I guess we're really doing this, huh. A log for getting lost in the forest.
The Story:




But it really is tight quarters in the Tavern, and some might be curious to see what else is out there. Maybe there's another place to stay out there, or something. Maybe the Beast Alice spoke of lurking

However, it's very dangerous out in the woods. The farther away from the tavern someone wanders, the more lost they'll become. The rain will pour down harder, but if they listen carefully they'll hear a voice in the distance singing low and dark. No one will ever see the Beast himself, but one of three things will happen if a character ventures out in the woods.

1) If they turn around quickly (within 10-15 minutes) they may make it back to the Tavern safely, even if they lost others in the process. Others may attempt rescues as well, but the general rule is if a character is more than ten to fifteen minutes away from the tavern they will not survive.

2) They become horribly lost in the dark no matter how good they are at navigating normally, and they are left alone with their thoughts. The longer they're out in the woods, the more they'll lose hope that they'll ever find their way out again. And what's the point anyway? Even if they get out, it's not like they'll ever be able to leave Wonderland. Maybe they have regrets or reasons to believe they deserve to be in the woods. Dark thoughts will cloud their minds, and they'll start losing their will to go on.

3) They become horribly lost in the dark no matter how good they are at navigating normally, but if they're not consumed by dark thoughts (because they're more optimistic or have a stronger will) then they will last a little longer, but eventually the temperature will drop significantly. They're already soaking wet so they'll start to succumb to hypothermia from there.

Those who become lost will eventually be compelled to sit down at the base of a tree because they no longer have the strength to go on either mentally (#2) or physically (#3). They'll grow tired and after they've fallen asleep, oily roots will begin to grow around them, until eventually they become part of the tree they're laying against. As the tavern legend goes, "Once your will begins to spoil, he'll turn you to a tree of oil". If they become an Edelwood tree, it will count as a mansion death, and they will not revive until after the event ends.

(Lost? Perhaps you're looking for the inside log or the event information.)

Comments

[rosswood]

any of the first few days; open to all

There's a song humming out in the dark. It tickles the contours of his mind, tugs back an awful sick memory, and he can't quite grasp it. If it's out there, it wants him. If it wants him, it won't stop until it gets its long-reaching fingers hitched into his skin.

Not if he finds it first.

The Puppet cuts a bold line through the trees, lantern in one hand and an old busted-up camera in the other, glancing swiftly from either side in search of this Beast everyone keeps going on and on about. He's got a Beast of his own to contend with. He doesn't need another one on the side.

But he has to make sure this Beast isn't...his Beast.

Because he might be the Puppet, but he sure as hell isn't a goddamn puppet. Nothing pulls his strings. Nothing ever did. He made every choice of his own free will, even the less forgivable ones, and he got past it like a goddamn pro.

If he runs into anyone, it might be enough to sway him to turn back for the time being. He can't let anyone else see it. It can't stain the heads of any other innocents.

He'd hate to have to kill them too.

one of the last few days probably; closed to sharon carter

He's so...tired.

The lantern's stilling flame has begun to flicker tenuously with each fresh gust of wind, and the cold air is like knives even though the trees should be blocking all that shit out. His camera - fuck, where did his camera - it's gone, it's gone, he must've dropped it.

The Puppet sinks to his knees, scrabbling through the dirt and leaf mulch, overturning sticks and rocks in his desperation until his fingers are numb and stained black with mud. Where is it where is it. He can't keep going without it. He can't keep going. He can't keep going. Not like this.

He can't keep going.

The Puppet hunches on his patch of ground, desperation leaking into his voice as he begins to murmur aloud with increasing fervency variations of the phrase, "where is it, where is it, please, please please - "

Until finally, lost, cold, alone, shivering, he huddles on the ground at the foot of a tree and waits for the lantern's flame to go out.

[agentxthirteen]

Things had gone to hell. The Agent had figured they would; Wonderland didn't provide events that would go smoothly. She still wasn't sure what their purpose was. Probably to torture them all, obviously, but for what?

Days have passed, and too many have left the tavern. The Agent would blame them, perhaps, but she's left the tavern, too.

The shine of the tommy gun has worn off. It feels large and ungainly in her hands, and she'd kill for her FNP-45. Her old gun would be a small comfort out here, but it would be a comfort nonetheless. The woods are dark, the rain is coming down harder and colder than before. She'd run outside to stop someone, hadn't been able to see their face. It didn't matter anymore, not really. They were somewhere, maybe even back at the tavern, and the Agent was lost. All of her tracking skills were worthless here. She didn't doubt it was another trick from Wonderland.

Always, there is a low singing in the distance, deep and rich and lulling. She had gone toward it, she had avoided it, and none of it had mattered. It was always the same distance away, no matter where she went. As if it surrounded her. She wouldn't be surprised if it did. Damn Wonderland.

But then she hears something else, a lighter sound over the rain. A voice thick with desperation.

She moves her tommy gun against her hip and reviews what she knows about the Beast as she creeps closer. Does the Beast ever disguise itself as something else? As someone else?

Minutes later, she comes across the huddled figure at the foot of the tree. She lifts her gun, because she's not going to stop being cautious now, and says, "Who are you?"

[rosswood]

It didn't take long for him to begin shivering, running fingers up and down his arms as the goosebumps prickle soaked skin. The rain's still whipping through the trees, wet rivulets running down his glasses and obscuring pretty much everything from sight.

What's that calling, calling - something calling out - to him? Something nearby? Not deep and beckoning like the voice that's begun to murmur in his ear, but something else, something undoubtedly feminine.

The Puppet lifts his head, teeth chattering, and tries to scramble to his feet. Only he can't, holy god, he can't move. There's something holding him down, roots wrapped around his ankles and his fingers are too numb and clumsy to peel them free. Shit, shit, no no no no no no he strains against the twigs and branches, snapping them off, trying to worm free from the wood that's begun to slowly, inexorably bind him to the foot of the tree.

What's happening to him. His fingers even feel like sticks, and, frantic, crazed, hysterical, he bites his thumb to ensure it's still flesh and not wood. Pain radiates from the bite, and he trembles in relief.

"Pl - don't - don't come any cl - " he tries to protest. The Beast, that kid said. The Beast.

It's coming for him. Not tall and thin and faceless, but human-shaped, holding something sleek and glistening. He won't let it. He raises one his hands protectively in front of him, still desperately trying to extricate himself from the tendrils of wood and leaf straining to ensnare him.

"Stay back!"

[agentxthirteen]

The Agent gapes at him, her fingers clutching the tommy more tightly. It's too dark to see clearly, and the rain in her eyes isn't helping, but it looks like he's trapped.

Still, the fact that he seems terrified of her is oddly comforting. It's too good to be an act, right?

She takes a step closer, and her step falters as she watches him bite his thumb. What the hell? What's wrong with this guy? He raises a hand to protect himself, and she takes a step back, trying to show by the small gesture that he can trust her. Though whether she can trust him is another issue, it seems.

But that one gesture likely isn't enough to calm him down. She lets go of the tommy and lets it hang by its straps. She holds up her hands to show she's unarmed.

"It's okay," she says, speaking as calmly as she can. "I'm from the tavern. I've been looking for people who ran into the woods. I'm the Agent. Do you need help?"

[rosswood]

Human. Human? How's he supposed to know? Everyone else looked human, acted human, seemed human, but he knew how well they spread that virus, turned that thing against all of them. He can't trust his sight. He can't trust anything. How does he know for sure.

"I don't - um, I don't - " A deep, shuddering breath. Get it together.

Continue.

The Puppet swallows thickly, struggling to bring his voice back under control. "I'm stuck. I can't move."

It sounds fucking stupid when he puts it like that, but how else does he explain the creaking wood stretching over his arms and legs, like he's being turned into wood or something worse? No. No no no, that doesn't happen to him, he got away from it and he drove it off. Get back. Get away. He's normal again. It was never his fault. It was never his fault.

[agentxthirteen]

"Okay. It's okay. I just want to help." She keeps her tone calm as she inches closer, hands in clear view. She doesn't want to freak him out again. She has no idea what he's capable of, and she doesn't particularly want to find out. She vaguely recognizes him from a network post, but she hadn't followed up on it. She has no idea what he's capable of.

Not that she's concerned that he'll do something to her intentionally at the moment, but in his current state of duress, she isn't convinced that he won't have some sort of panic attack that could lead to him screwing her over somehow.

She draws closer, enough to make out the tangle of branches that have begun to swallow his body. She stares at them with a frown. If she hadn't known better, she would have said he'd been sitting here for years. But they haven't been here for years.

Or maybe he's a trick of some sort.

"May I?" Without waiting for a response, she feels along the ground and the tree for the branch roots. She drops to her knees to feel around better; her clothes are already dirty and soaked through, mud won't make a difference. But as far as she can tell, the branches just lead toward the tree, solid entities without weakness.

She takes a breath. This could be tougher than she thought.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

She feels in her ankle holster for her knife, but through bad luck or intentional magic or some other method, it's fallen out. Of course it has.

[rosswood]

"I just - I had to make sure, I had to be sure - " His jaw aches with how he's been clenching it. He's not making sense. He knows he's not making sense.

"S-something without a face," he says faintly. Somewhere in the cold-addled, trembling core of him, he remembers that he's not supposed to get into the specifics. That's bad. That leads to - he'll have to kill her, and he wouldn't want to do that, she's helping him even if he doesn't deserve it and he's got to stay focused, awake.

He twists to pull one of his wrists free from the wood. Some of the twigs crackle under the strain. If he weren't numb with the cold maybe it'd hurt, but he doesn't care. He just needs to get out. Out before the rest of him - before he solidifies into oil and wood or whatever the fuck that kid said, whatever it was it was right.

"I just sat down for a minute - " he manages. "It shouldn't've - "

[agentxthirteen]

She wants to ask what he had to be sure she hadn't seen, but she's also concerned that she might upset him all over again. Was it something from before he'd come to Wonderland that had caused him to have some sort of flashback?

But then he says that he's seen something without a face, and her grip tightens on her gun. "You saw the Beast?" she demands, her voice sharp. She doesn't even flinch as he pulls his wrists free of the wood, even though she knows it must have hurt and that he'll likely need some degree of first aid.

The Beast takes precedence. Shooting it before it can kill either of them takes precedence.

And making sure he can run if a bullet doesn't take down the Beast...

She shifts her position and lifts her gun, then brings the butt of the gun down hard on the twigs holding his other wrists. Her first duty is to keep the residents of the tavern safe. That includes this guy, even if the moron had run away from the one place they knew was safe.

But then, most people in Wonderland are stupid enough to run headlong into danger. Look at what she's done, after all. She's here in the woods, too.

"We need to get you back to the tavern." Wherever it was. "Follow my lead, okay? I'll get you back there."

Neglecting the fact that she, too, is lost. But still. If she can keep him alive until the event ends, that counts as a win, right? All she has to do is keep him alive and moving until these few shitty days pass and they wake up safe - relatively speaking - at the mansion.

[rosswood]

Thank god this lady has a gun. His wrist is throbbing from the tight space he just squeezed it through and probably on its way to becoming swollen and useless, but Alex isn't of the mind to care. The wood chips and splinters under the pressure of the blow, and he wrenches the rest of himself free. His eyes itch, his skin soaked, the wall of his cheek now roughly the consistency of raw hamburger meat from all the teeth-grinding he's put it through.

He glances back over his shoulder, and shudders. The tree sure as shit looks like it has a face, its surface slick with something dark and oily, and -

And, Alex is going to stop looking at it before he gets fucking sick.

"Hang on." His discarded lantern is still lying a few paces away. He fumbles to pick it up, but the light's long since gone out. Damn it. He'd hoped they could've used it to illuminate their way back, but unless she's got a lighter, they're fucked.

Beside it is the camera. He retrieves it, checks that it might have any indication of where he came from, but the exposure's fucked from all the rain and wind and storm. So he looks back up at his savior, weary and hopeful.

"Where?"

[agentxthirteen]

"This way." She nods in the direction she'd come. She has no idea if it's the right direction, but it sounds a hell of a lot better than "Let me think and slowly realize that none of my tracking skills are working here because in case you haven't figured it out, Wonderland kills people during the events and we ran into the place where it's killing people during this event."

She doesn't think that would go over particularly well.

Her lips purse at the darkened lantern; she had hoped it would provide some small degree of light. But in the darkness, it likely wouldn't help. It might make them feel better, but it would also draw the Beast to them.

After a moment, she holds out her hand. "So we don't get lost," she explains. "And we'll stop soon and try to take care of your wounds. Can you tell me about the thing you said you saw? The thing without a face?"

[rosswood]

Now that he's not completely panicked, it's a little easier to think and trace back what he saw and reconcile that with what he thought he saw. Did he see anything, really? Christ, he doesn't know. All he does know is he heard something faint and deep-voiced, like a weird kind of song, and the trees all had wailing faces on them and he was twisting around, looking for a way out, a way in, a way around, a way that would take him anywhere but in the middle of a clump of more fucking trees, trying to follow that Ariadne's thread and losing everything in the process.

He ignores both the proffered hand and the question, rising wearily to his feet.

"Don't bother," he hears himself say, faintly. "Had worse."

He doesn't know how to address this shit, hell. He can't tell her about what he thought he saw, can he?

"I didn't get a good look at it." Well, that part's true.

[agentxthirteen]

"Don't be ridiculous." Her tone is firm. "We still have time on this event, and if those wounds get infected, we're going to be in the shit. You don't want to come down with fever, do you?" She pushes her way through the brush, still holding a hand out behind her in case he wants to take it, but determining that she may just have to keep an eye on him.

She keeps picking her way through, her steps cautious in the darkness, one hand in front of her to help her avoid branches. As little light as there had been before, it seems to have left. The woods seem darker, the rain colder. She pushes on, because that's really the only thing left that they can do.

"When did you last see the face?"

[rosswood]

Fever-blitzed shenanigans. Yeah, no, Alex will pass on that. He's already shivering from the wet and rain, his clothes mud-slick and his glasses clouding with every fat drop of water that lands on the lenses. This lady's making a lot more sense than he'd ordinarily care to admit, but he's cold and soaking wet and so he's ceased to give a shit.

Well, mostly. Sorry, Sharon. Alex is forgoing the hand-holding in an attempt to maintain whatever faltering self-reliant machismo he's still clinging to. Besides, now that he's on his feet, he knows what's what.

"No idea." His mind's clearing up a bit, but the passage of time is all still very muddled, not helped by the fact that trees were starting to grow over him not too long ago. "I think I - I mean, I don't know if I actually saw anything. I might've just - "

Goddamnit how does he phrase this in a way that makes her a) not suspicious of a no-faced thing and b) reasonably certain that he's not losing it?

That - that might not even be possible.