open | holiday spirits

[cozen]

WHO: Whoever, plus some spirits.
WHAT: Everyone spends an evening regretting the past. So basically a normal night.
WHEN: Wintermarch 5-6
WHERE: A castle in the mountains north of Kirkwall
NOTES: OOC post including less vague/pretentious haunting mechanic descriptions. Fantasy violence and swearing and so on are assumed, but please use content warnings in your subject lines for things like explicit gore or sex, slavery content, body horror, etc., if you go any of those routes.

THE CASTLE

Their convenient shelter from the unexpected blizzard that whips up around them in the mountain pass isn't too convenient. Anyone with a reasonable detailed map will find it marked there; reaching its clifftop location requires a slight detour. When they approach, it has no warm ethereal glow or suspiciously welcoming lit torches. The windows stay dark. The portcullis is raised just high enough to be ducked under, but the heavy doors of the keep don't swing open to welcome them.

The only immediate sign that something is amiss is the thorough, all-encompassing emptiness of the place, and it might take some investigation before that begins to feel strange. The fortress' abandonment seems recent and abrupt: ample firewood has been cut and stacked for the winter, nothing has been done to protect the furniture or strip the beds, the kitchen is fully stocked and even has some perishables that do not seem close to perishing, the stables are equipped to comfortably keep any animals along for the journey, and a chess board before the hearth in the (humble) grand hall seems to have been left mid-game. But there are no messages, no bodies, no footsteps dimpling the crunchy layer of old snow accumulated in the bailey beneath the fresh snowfall.

As they search, the castle's visitors may begin to find signs that the castle hasn't been entirely abandoned. It begins with whispers emanating from the dark ends of corridors, voices they recognize and others they don't, or faces both familiar and unfamiliar flashing in still water or window panes when firelight hits right, or forms moving on the edge of vision but vanishing before they can be looked at directly.

By the time this becomes worrisome enough to drive anyone back out of the castle, the portcullis has fallen shut and won't budge. Neither will any other doors to the outside. The windows won't break; doors won't give way even to makeshift battering rams. The only walls that can be climbed or reached by stairs face out over a deep ravine. It might be a survivable climb, if the wind and weather allowed, but it would not be a survivable fall.

THE SPIRITS

--so back inside, then.

The keep is built like the Gallows' towers, square and tall, and it won't take long for Riftwatch to notice that whatever is wrong is more wrong the higher they climb. The whispers and glimpses on the lowest floor become voices and lingering shadowy figures on the second. Someone might turn and find their hand briefly held by an unfamiliar man's, warm and real for the moment it takes him to say, "Come with me." Or behind them, a woman's shocked and seething voice says, "What are you doing?" Or maybe it's a hand they do know and a voice saying something they've heard before.

As people venture to the higher floors--whether intrepidly seeking the source or involuntarily herded onward by spirits--these moments will begin to last and linger and repeat. And those who don't dare venture higher won't be exempt, confronted by stronger spirits that emerge like ants from a kicked hive as the upper floors are disturbed.

As they approach the uppermost floor, reality will begin to slip away from them. They may find themselves lost in a maze of rooms, even though that shouldn't be possible in so few square feet, and ultimately enveloped in comforting worlds where they didn't do that thing they regret and that, like dreams, feel real until they suddenly don't--until something is too unbelievable, until someone interrupts, or until a demon is holding them under the water of the warm bath they were tempted into, shoving them off a balcony, or whispering into their ears and minds, let me in and you can keep it.

The hauntings will continue until morale improves the eldest, most powerful demon has been dealt with.

THE END

When it ends, it ends abruptly. Weaker spirits vanish; stronger ones retreat into the dark. The lesser demons on the upper floors linger, and some may put up a last-ditch physical fight, but without their superior, they've lost most of their mental pull and emotional sway. The castle has changed, too. Its abandonment no longer looks so recent. The food and firewood is gone, along with any sense of warmth or satiety anyone used them to acquire earlier. There is dust where none was before, mildew and rot, and a few scattered, unfortunate skeletons.

The sun is not quite up, the sky a faintly luminescent grey. But the weather is survivable, though it will be slower travel than it would have been without the fresh snow. The doors will open, and the portcullis will raise. Everyone can set off on their cold, hours-long journey back to the city. Talking about their feelings or avoiding eye contact the entire time: the choice is theirs.

Comments

[icasm]

"At least I'm not going mad, then," he grouses a bit, because it makes no sense for Thor to be here and yet. He definitely heard his brother's voice, and so did someone else. So whatever is happening here, it's not just happening in his head.

Which hurts like hell; so Loki gives a small nod to the woman he recognizes from the triage tents at Val Chevin, standing still as she approaches. "I should have been paying better attention." Possibly true, but also.

[tender]

Her fingers tap at his elbow, before she tips her head to one of the dusty, plushly-upholstered chairs beside the fire.

"Come sit," is a necessary instruction. She can't possibly examine his head otherwise.

But she does acknowledge, "It's alright," before pressing, "What do you think you saw?"

Because Derrica hadn't been able to place the voice. The accent was only familiar in that it has the same lilts and dips as Loki's voice.

[icasm]

Loki listens. Goes. Sits. Blinks at the woman and her question.

"My brother," he responds quietly, doing his level best to keep still while Derrica pokes him in the head or whatever she opts to do. "Who isn't here, and I haven't met the version of him that is from Tevinter, so there's no reason to believe it's that him."

[tender]

"I didn't know that was possible," is not really a request of Loki to expand on the idea of versions upon versions of his relations.

No prodding. Just a careful pass of her fingers through his hair, checking for rising bumps or drawn blood. Nothing. Just bruising, perhaps, but nothing he need be concerned for or that she would need to soothe away to keep him on his feet.

"Have you ever heard him before now?"

[icasm]

"Multiverse theory, it's..." Dumb. Too complicated. "A thing. A thing that doesn't really matter. I just know he exists, is all." Because Alexandrie knows her brother-in-law, and thus, Loki is aware of him.

His head is tender when her fingers pass by but if he hasn't started swelling or bleeding by this point he knows he's probably fine.

"No." He shakes his head and winces.

[tender]

No, his head is not seriously injured. Derrica's fingers make one last pass over the injury, before nodding and drawing not only her hand away, but back a step. Giving him some space, which feels polite in this moment.

"Do you miss him?" might sound invasive. (It is invasive.) But maybe that's part of this.

Not that it explains Derrica hearing a disembodied voice, but there are many of them and sounds carries. Maybe they've both heard someone's shout transformed into a similarly strange phenomenon.

[icasm]

"He's my brother." As if that explains everything. "I may have hated him at times but I've loved him for longer. Of course I miss him."

Loki takes in a breath. "Unless he shows up here, I will never see the brother I grew up with again. Just, possibly, some other timeline's Thor."

[tender]

A slight wrinkle of confusion for the invocation of timelines. It doesn't quite make sense, but it's the sort of thing she might ask Holden to explain. Later. Perhaps when they ride back into Kirkwall, and they are all in need of conversation that isn't about the strangeness of this place.

"Why?" she asks. "Is he gone, in your world?"

Gone.

A very careful way of treading around the possibility that his brother is dead.

[icasm]

Loki shakes his head; he appreciates the gentleness of the query, even if it is not necessary.

"The world I knew was gone. My brother survives, or some version of him at the very least; it would just be..." Strained. Strange. "Different. I suppose."