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]

"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.