peckenpaugh | HE IS HERE

the vines have run wild

it's over Everything is in shambles. Walls and floors torn and broken from roots and branches sprouting through. They block doors and crowd passages and pulse with sick life. The Thing sits in the center of it all, angry and starving, its trunk both still and moving in ways you catch only when it is in the corner of your vision. Branches that look less like bark and more like skin stretch in every direction, lush with shadowy leaves and dotted with bits of glowing blue. The ruined floor is littered with those little twinkling dots. Seeds. Everywhere, seeds. They hang on boughs, and rest on banisters in the upper levels. The one thing in this nightmare that doesn't radiate that awful, pervasive hunger.

The roof is gone, replaced with a writhing canopy of shadow and muck. Some parts of it are complex spiderwebs of tendrilly shapes, others solid formless movement. The only consistent thing about it is that it is terrible to behold, faintly nauseating to look at for too long. Ash rains down between gaps in its branches, and what glimpses of sky are visible are nothing but swirling gray clouds. What stars still shine are magic, man-made, floated between balconies by prom committee before the dance.

Those remaining begin to stir. Each one of you has heard Pocket's words, "Find the roots." And if you want to save your friends, your family, the holler — hell, maybe even the world — that's exactly what you're going to do.

You climb from protective cocoons of dying moss, push your way past walls of solid ice, emerging into utter destruction. Things move and make noise at the edge of your vision, but for now, at least, all is calm. What to do? Where to start?

it's ruined Among the twinkling maple seeds are the dropped possessions of students and staff, lost when they were pulled away. A compact mirror, a cell phone, a pair of glasses, cups of punch spilling across the floor. A single red heel sits at the edge of the jagged pit that peers down into the Sorting Path. The air here is hot. Too hot. If you jump, you'll surely be boiled alive.

Though locked when everyone tried to flee, vines and roots have torn the doors to the auditorium off their hinges. The splintered remains of heavy oak doors litter the entrance halls and stairwell alcoves, leaving an open path outside. Not that you'd want to flee, by the looks of it.

A cool night breeze is the only relief from the growing heat of the auditorium, yes, but even that is tainted by the heavy scent of flowers. Outside, vines and purple flowers have exploded over every surface. They climb up lamp posts, engulf buildings whole, hang from trees. It would be beautiful if it weren't horrifying. Campus is unrecognizable.

there is no hope Roots and vines clog the way to the Sorting Path, and most stairwells are completely obstructed by the growths of that horrible tree. Up above, something buzzes and wails, a mockery of a cicada's cry, and beyond that the twittering of birds nesting in the tree's highest branches.

Pouch coalesces in the middle of it all, a one-winged magimagicicada, weak and weary but undaunted. Resolute, if not reinvigorated. He bends down to touch a seed, and the moment his obsidian fingers light on it, a blue-white portal to somewhere else rips right through reality. A memory begins to play. Somehow, the bug seems to know what he's seeing.

She gave us what we need, the one who ran says to the gathered students, his voice in their heads as much as the air. Let's all not let her down, huh?

Find your friends. Find my siblings. It's time to fight.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(ROLLED 5) The melting phone beeennndds just enough to dodge the can lobbed its way.

"Wait! No!" the gray sludge begs in a voice that sounds almost like Winter Carmichael. Winter Carmichael with lungs full of water. It bubbles and pops. "It's me! It's me!"

Edited 2020-06-02 01:53 (UTC)

Fiona doesn't trust this thing. While cradling the bowl against her side, she picks up the knife from the block and slashes at the grey sludge.

Eddy grabs another can, but hesitates when he hears Winter's voice. Ms. Guzenhauser had warned him to be on his guard. That it could become what it consumed, almost flawlessly. Had it consumed their friends?

"Uh? How?" It's not the most articulate series of questions, and maybe-goop-Winter isn't given a chance to answer.

Mary Grace tries to punch the thirteen-year-old Winter, just in case she's a melting monster too.

Thirteen-year-old Winter takes the fist like a real champ, but the goopy phone is not quite so sturdy. Fiona slashes just as Eddy's getting his question out, (ROLLED 9) and chops the phone neatly in two.

It hisses and squeals, sublimating into a quickly disappearing fog. And as the last of the gray goes, the Carmichaels spring back to life, moving as though they hadn't been disturbed at all.

"Well, honey. It's uh—" Steve Carmichael stammers, then falters and drops his cereal bowl. Cornflakes and sugary milk splatter across the floor. "Augh, damn." He fetches the dish towel from its place draped over the kitchen faucet and tosses it on the mess. "Grab some paper towels, would you?"

"Can't we just...magic that up?" Winter asks.

"Oh," her father pauses, withdraws his wand from his back pocket. "Yeah we can!"

As he gingerly steps over the splattered cereal to vanish it up, the oven door falls open behind him. Within is a portal back to Peckenpaugh's auditorium.

[MEMORY COMPLETE! Muck defeated. Linchpin located. You may continue to thread here or move back to Peckenpaugh through the portal.]

The blob fizzles into nonexistence and Eddy awkwardly lowers the can he's holding as Winter and her father come back to life. Yep. Really helped out on that one.

He peers into the now-open oven, and then back at the girls, looking incredulous at the implication here. "..So.. do we take her?"

"This bitch hurt my hand," Mary Grace says, shaking her hand out. An unstoppable force met an immovable object, and now it's offended. "I don't think she's going anywhere."

She nods to the oven. You first, possum husband.

Edited 2020-06-02 03:39 (UTC)

Cool. Cool. Okay. His butt jingle's gone silent, so, yeah. Guess that's that. Hopefully the real Winter is somewhere on the other side of this weird Hansel & Gretel scenario.

He tests the stability of the oven door and lets out a long sigh before crawling in and disappearing through the portal. Looks like possum chivalry isn't dead after all.

Edited 2020-06-02 04:05 (UTC)

Eddy, Fiona and Mary Grace completed Winter Carmichael's memory!

Upon emerging from the memory out into the auditorium, the portal snapped shut behind them.

At The Foot of the Tree, Winter Carmichael was freed.

Eddy, Fiona and Mary Grace received 5 Tokens for completing a memory!

They each received 2 Tokens for defeating a Muck!

You can check your token totals in Pouch's shop here, and maybe see if there's anything worth grabbing while you're there!

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