2020-08-10 - The Power Gauntlet (Phase Three)

It's Friday in Gray Harbor, 8:47 pm. One moment, three people are living their lives one way, then they're taken to pay dues.

The snare this time isn't quick, it's a matter of seconds that's nauseating, it feels like being pulled by a very strong magnet from the inside. It's unpleasant and confusing and right before it happens, vision blots out, sound deafens. Then it's back. But when it is...

It's dark. It's very dark. Nothing can be seen around, initially, but eventually the floor starts to illuminate with subtle, sickly gray light.

Aidan, Alexander, and Rekani know they aren't alone, they've come to on their knees in this dark space and vision is limited at first. But there's a feeling of the others nearby, the breathing, the shifting, and the inevitable voices of wary confusion.

The sickly gray light continues to rise and rise from the floor, but the darkness is so thick around them, it really just looks like they're in an empty space with no perception of what lies around or beyond. It's also quiet, very quiet in a thick way. But the more light starts to rise, the less that quiet reigns. It begins to change into a faint ambient humming noise, like they're in the black belly of a giant machine, metaphorically speaking. It comes from no real direction, it just presses the air from around.

And it's cold. There's wisps of fog trailing around, they can at least see that.

You know what would be useful right now? Light. Rekani tries and something like light shouldn't be a hardship of exertion or issue for an empowered physicalist. In fact, it starts up, initially, as it should. But it's just a flash of forming and the man knows suddenly the physics of this place on those tiny levels is different, that's why it seems harder, perhaps. That and there's darkness around them that feels like a Void, a pushing entity that threatens to consume, and consume it DOES. When he's able to coalesce and pull existing light to form into flare, it's immediately pulled away and apart and eaten by the fringes of dark with little wisps.

That said, Aidan and Rekani can't really tell that much is happening around them otherwise after that brief flare up is disturbingly eaten away. It seems like just that, save for the gradual lifting of sickly, unnatural gray light from the floor to let them see each other as they confer and notice... well, the extent of nothing. For them, that faint ambient hum is backdrop noise, it just seeps in with different degrees for the two of them. Hell, Aidan might not even sense that, the area around them is so thickly encompassing and dark and threatening, it's damn distracting, especially after seeing a light display of power get eaten like that.

But Alexander...

He's a mentalist, it's not that this space is loud or even signature with a consciousness anywhere, no. It's the utter LACK of feeling anything that's so foreboding, and the hum rises. The more the hum rises, the more that Emptiness seems to push inward with the dark, forging through it. Something is coming. He can't hear it or see it, but it sets his alarms off in the worst way. How do you prepare for what you can't see or know? What warning is there to give?

There is something coming, there is. But is it really Something or Nothing? The men can only do so much against either, both are the Unknown. It's subtle at first, the way the darkness starts to trickle out into the relative safe and visible space where the trio are standing together. The eyes are already so maladjusted and the Darkness always plays tricks on what's seen without light-- this is true in the natural world, but it's amplified here.

This is where shadows flood from, it's why paranoias make bogeymen out of chairs and lampshades in the night and fill closets to scare children away from sleep. This place is why grown adults reach around doorways to hit light switches instinctively before stepping into the bathroom, this is why you don't hang arms off of the edge of the bed and sometimes feel the urge to leap onto the mattress so nothing grabs you lurking in the darkness underneath. Darkness consumes the mind beyond what's visibly perceived over time, so it's very hard to tell what's happening until it's chaotic.

It's terrifying, those moments right before it happens, Darkness and Nothing and Emptiness and Silences are the historic night terrors of humanity since it's birth and rise, it's why man was motivated to make fire, it's the Perfect Storm for fears, it's the Alpha Predator that existed before the spark of light and life that made it all.

Dark, inky liquid filaments grow out of the darkness slowly at first, then start branching out with exponential growth to form and link and reach for the light around the men, perhaps the very light inside the men. The second they realize what's actually happening, those thin formations start to glimmer like dark energized metal made of shadow and strike to snare.

Rekani and all his bulk aren't having any part of it. He may not be the most athletic or agile man alive, but his body and reflexes are on point and he doesn't have the instinct to swing that metal bar.

Alexander also is on point with his reflexes, but unfortunately, he also has other instincts-- he tries to ward while dodging, that metal blade in hand with defensive swipe of gesture that slashes through and dissolves some of those inky tendrils of metal or energy (or both) on the spot. But when it dissolves, it wraps around his blade to absorb, then LAUNCHES up and through his blade arm to blacken the bloodflow in the veins to shadow and pain, so much pain.

Aidan. Poor Aidan. He's either too rattled to move fast enough or just is in a very bad place with some bad luck. The dark filaments have trouble at first, lashing in, then darting back to try again with whipcoil around his ankles. And once he's rooted, they lash and form a dark energy bubble around him like encasing tinted glass.

Inside the encasement, Aidan is left alone to get his bearings and/or panic lash, and a little of both happens. The view on the other side, if he was in a way to notice at all, it's like seeing figures moving through dark water haze. There's no sound from outside that gets in, he thinks he sees flashes of light encase the men in his peripheral, but it's hardly priority at the moment, or something he can even react to. Survival instincts kick in the moment his reflexes to break free with rampant slashes of breaking power, that's natural, but what isn't natural is what happens as a result.

Aidan's attack to free himself from the enclosure snaps back. He knows it right before it bloods both of his forearms after that downward sweep of ability-throwing gesture. It doesn't have the dark shadows that seem to have pained and set into Alexander, it's his blood, his damage thrown back onto himself. He could try again, maybe if he was strong enough or lucky enough, he COULD break free, but... there's distractions. The space is like a small standing tornado shelter that bows and bubbles out into a small circle arena and horrible, misshapen forms without faces start to rise with grey flesh from the floor, crawling out of that sickly light. It starts with two.

Meanwhile, outside of Aidan's enclosure, Alexander and Rekani are still under threat. Alexander's mobility is compromised as he's stunned with pain and Rekani tries VERY hard to push with his powers to rectify the dart of inky energized shadowmetal toward the man. There's something like a hiss of static, then recoil and it seems to work, but they aren't deterred enough. Alexander still has to try and move out of the way, but he doesn't make it. He's put into the same form of enclosure as Aidan with forming snap-up lashing and hum. Rekani might be so busy watching this happen, he doesn't see his own fate going the same way...

All three men are now trapped. Aidan's enclosure is attacking him? The other two have a moment to react to their new situation before anything happens in their space.

Oh, Alexander. It's natural what he does, it's no surprise that he hasn't quite made the correlation between the pain and that knife slashing at what comes for him, what contains him, but survival instincts are innate and it's not like he has time to think about it. No animal likes a cage and instinct is to lash at the confines to test the boundaries, first thing. It's not unlike what Aidan did, he just has a weapon. But the same pain happens in jolt, blackening not just the veins, but his WHOLE BLADE ARM with shoot upward. It's like being zapped and absorbing something painfully foreign at the same time.

The pain is pain and the blackness of flesh is alarming, but it's not the problem, it's just what the man wrought trying to remove himself from the situation. Immediately after, silence breaks inside the mentalist's bubble. All the noise goes IN to Alexander's head, like all of the outside world getting in. There's no mental defenses in this box once it slams into too much emotion and feeling. It's a lot like being in a mental fuckery box where you're DROWNING in the feelings of other moments, other times, other people.

The whole enclosure for Alexander is one huge residue of life that he's steeped in and it's horrible. It's horrible. It's double horrible because of who Alexander is, maybe. All those crimes and traumas he follows and reads and researches and KNOWS stab him like a thousand screaming knives. It's the victims. It's the suffering of every victim he's seen.

Rekani isn't going down without a fight himself. Like the other two men, he wants to fight the boundaries of this cage, and it's instinct. But once he's trapped and has that moment to orient and lash out, he takes a moment to really dissect what he's inside of, everything has a weak point, doesn't it? This thing does, the laws of physics are skewed, it's powered by dark energy and shadow, maybe, but it's also a solidly powered construct where all those filaments have come together, it seems.

He pushes. He doesn't just power-push with snap out of telekinesis to break free, but he aims at what he takes a moment to FIND, which is good. He feels the enclosure buzz with static and start warping outward with the pressure of it, threatening to snap, perhaps. It almost feels like a success, but it just bows outward in the end. That means it's weaker, right? He's doing it, right?

Something drops from above. It's a tied package that drops with a soft thud and it's ticking inside.

Aidan. His enclosure has already been tested to bloody result ahead of the other two and there's THINGS crawling out of the floor, like sick grey faceless mannequins made of putty and mutations. It's not okay. It's just NOT okay, they feel like a threat while locked in this small space of torture in the middle of a Dark Void Land. But does he lash out again? No. Aidan does what a straight spiritualist wouldn't, he tries to find some string of empathy to manipulate into what he wants them to feel, what he hopes to exude. But do these things even have a brain or feelings at all?

Three more start to rise and crawl up with formation out of that sickly floor while the first two creatures... stop. They stop after their first arm-reached step toward Aidan. Their weird little mis-shapen heads cock, as if considering what to DO with this good will or whatever it's making them uh. Feel? It's really hard to tell. It doesn't feel right to Aidan, exactly, because they aren't human so their minds aren't... it's just weird. But they're stopping while the others crawl up behind and stop too.

Then there's stillness. Silence. Stillness. Silence.

Heal?

---- Alexander ----

Inside his personal torture chamber, Alexander is having a time of keeping it together with such visceral mental assault and the pain in his blackened arm. For all intents and purposes, it appears to be hanging dead weight with sick shadowy blackness after the two lashes with the blade at something conductive he couldn't take time to understand. The mental assault doesn't stop at first, it feels like it might, but it doesn't. It backpedals and comes in again, this time with all the sick-minded rages and violences of the enactors TO the victims he was feeling before, bidding more and more out of his mental defenses when he starts to push back.

If it was hard to make light in the grieved and pained Darkness assaulting his mind, it's even harder once that changes, how do you muster it with those vengeful emotions and sick desires to HURT coursing through your very blood? If he reflects (and lives), it might be possible for him to relate to how Lilith explains she feels without meaning to, why she acts how she acts in combat, but for differing reasons. Urges. Urges. She's not a psychopath, but Alexander knows plenty of them from his hobbies. These are deadly urges, torturous urges that crave blood and scream for the adrenaline thrill or to sate some vengeance inside.

His nose bleeds. He bids light. He bids warmth from within, from all the places made to care, all to fight back. It's starting meagerly, but sometimes, all you need is a spark to see your way through. As the emotions start to dim to more tolerable levels, he thinks he notices the energy and sturdiness of the tinted bubble enclosure fading as light rises outside of it. It's weakening. His box isn't the physical construct to break down from the inside like Rekani's is. It's not who Alexander is and he clings to that.

---- Rekani ----

Inside Rekani's enclosure, the man has a very, very quick choice to make. He has blown powerful, physical force from the inside with telekinesis to try and force release and he has damaged his structure, he knows it. One more snap of TK that's lucky enough to hit where it should with enough force might well be the thing he needs. But there's a wrench thrown in the gears when that ticking, cardboard and paper tied package drops onto the floor from who knows where. It sounds just like a bomb. It might be a clock, it might be a ruse, it might be... well, a fucking bomb and he's in a very small enclosed space at the moment. Priorities?

Think fast. The only way out is through? God, why do people SAY that so much?

Rekani thinks fast in a panic and unsnaps that altered Endless Fanny Pack (tm). The package goes in like it's being swallowed, it fits with no bulging, but despite being in that container, the ticking grows louder. And louder. And louder. Rekani's physical shield snaps up to protect him with so much damned force. So much force. It's amazing how much power denizens of Gray Harbor can muster.

(Is that the point of all of this?)

The fanny pack explodes with tremendous force and all of the items inside that uncanny fanny holder fly out like missile projectiles. They go AROUND the man's shield of repelling force like a bubble of his own design and SLAM into the enclosure confines. There's soda cans, a bluetooth speaker, bags and boxes of snacks exploding with the impact to throw food stuffs around, tinkering tools, and... ladies well know the more you can fit into a purse, the more you'll put in it. Seems to be that way with Rekani's fanny pack too.

Of all things to free the man and break down the enclosure, it's a damned two liter of Mountain Dew saved for a stoner craving that hits a weakened bow-point to tip and finalize the force of the explosion. As the construct melts down into the floor, the man can see the Void space like he couldn't before. There's a wall in the rising ambient glow and in that wall is a door. But Alexander and Aidan are still trapped.

---- Aidan ----

Aidan is still trying to manage sharing his enclosure with others that are... multiplying. Another creature without a face and misshapen grey putty limbs crawls out of the floor to stand with the four others standing still and looking at the man while he looks at them with communication attempts. He's not just looking at them, though, while trying to understand, he's looking INTO them to see what they are, how they're made, if he can even know them enough to heal them at all. Remember what happened Aidan? Remember what happened last time you and August tried to heal something you didn't understand?

Aidan might just remember that unwittingly, because he takes time to dissect them into components with his alternate way of seeing and it's bad. It's real bad. If he had reached into one of those to start tinkering with whatever energies and forces comprise them in this dark space, despite what looks like a bartering peace treaty, he KNOWS what might happen. It's possible to do, sure, that's the hook of it that would let someone reach into those vaguely humanoid shapes, the idea that they're just familiar enough to the concept of people to set RIGHT again.

What he sees is kinetic semblance of molecules that are made of darkness and blue unnatural fire to simulate something that seems close to living. Oh, they WANT healed, but once that happens, he'll make a monster out of them or himself and there'd be no escaping one way or the other. If he reaches in, it clings to him, if he feeds them, they grow.

Heal. Heal? Heal. Heal!

Reaching for him, they start shambling approach. Aidan thinks he hears an explosion, but he's unwitting of the light lifting in the Void outside of his very space because looking at these things from the inside is like looking into Shadowhell's Mouth.

Alexander's hopeful spark of light pushing against all the horrors in his mind grows. The foothold expands like a cleansing that starts to wash through him and it gets less and less oppressive, all the torment slipping to dim echoes that are perpetual, but easier to know as foreign and contrived, not his own. It lets his own mental faculties take over, it lets him feel the light that life gives him, all his blessings among the curses, his friends, his lover Isabella (he had to come back, he promised not to die), the principles the man holds in honor and good for the sake of greater good.

He will not be taken, not like this. With a last mind-whip of fight, he feels the comfort of sudden silence and realizes a little after that moment... he's not trapped. His own enclosure has melted down into the floor with quickness, he's somehow worn it down from the inside HIS WAY. It's brighter, he can see the door, the wall and yes, there's still darkness all around, but he didn't just emit hope, he sees it now with his own two eyes.

Alexander also sees Rekani out of his bubble space too and forming up to THROW the still-trapped Aidan in his bubble with TK force. It's hard to see the man inside, but it's apparent that there's other figures in there with him, which is very much a problem. There's movement toward Aidan while those things inside seek him out with sudden insisting and fingers that are formlessly tapered like claws, "HEAL HEAL HEAL!" They have no mouths, but they don't need them, this isn't speaking and the way they see...

The way they see is EXACTLY how Aidan wants them to see HIM, right out of reach. They get confused. They stop, They start again, but in that moment, Rekani unleashes his aim and power and though there's no force of motion from the inside to move any of the enclosure's contents, Aidan feels the sickening inertia of movement without sensing movement, a lot like seasickness from velocity. When his enclosure hits the wall and 'door' it melts right into it and pitches the man out in tumble next to it, momentum finally catching up to leave him sitting stunned. And free. And door?

All three men are free and the way is clear. Aidan's body feels sick still, just from looking inside those things, like he has a shadow flu that's persisting, it's a sticky form of the same symptoms, but he's okay outwardly, the bloody forearms are flesh wound slashes that are clotting already. Alexander's dead arm is still black with pain and shadow, but at this point, do you slow down to take a look? Rekani's head is SPLITTING with pain after that last move and there's not only blood from his nose now, but his ears in trickle.

All around them, laughter tickles them like dust and moths and decay, it's disgusting feeling on a level that isn't physical.

It grows! It grows! More! More! More!

Oh no. What did they do? They did what they HAD to do, but what did they DO?

The next sentiments flood into their brain like ichor and it's clear this isn't a threat or a taunt, no. It's foreboding.

It's a promise.

We will keep feeding.
We will taste terror, rage, and despair.
We will keep growing.

We will see you again.