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

While Aris makes a few flailing attempts to find and grab his wand out of the grass, it's soon out of reach and there's nothing for him to grab onto as the vine pulls him from his friends. He makes a few futile attempts to twist away before beginning to to riffle desperately through his jacket pockets. Fortunately, what he's looking for hasn't fallen out.

The drum stick.

In a moment of impulsive inspiration, he snaps the tip off to turn the blunt end into a jagged one and tries to stab it into the vine.

Edited 2020-06-05 03:32 (UTC)

The broken end of Aris' drumstick (rolled 5) punctures the vine but it only winds further up his leg with crushing force (rolled 2), threatened.

The grip around his leg goes from firm to sharply painful and Aris cries out. Now out of weapons and ideas, he tries again to grab for anything he might be able to hold onto and casts a desperate look back at Tybalt and Winter. His wide eyes linger on his roommate.

Edited 2020-06-05 04:30 (UTC)

Oh Christ. See, he'd never live it down if Aris's helpless puppy eyes were the last thing he saw. So Tybalt winks in return, and yells out, "JUST...HANG ON FOR A SEC."

Easier said than done, but whatever. He dives off of the vine, reaching to grab his roommate's discarded wand. It's probably dangerous, the way he aims it at the vine that's holding/being held by his friends, but it's the last resort, and the only thing he knows that works. "GLACIUS."

Edited 2020-06-05 04:43 (UTC)

A bite of frost encircles Aris' calf as the vine turns as cold as ice and begins to splinter and crack, falling in chunks into the grass. The the same time, the purple flowers closest to the group drop their petals and sag. For the moment, things seem calm.

Winter hops to her feet, embarrassment momentarily forgotten in this gap in the chaos, and hurries over to Aris to check him out and lend a hand. "How's your ankle? Think you can stand?"

Breathless but finally still, Aris allows himself to lie back in the grass and close his eyes for a moment. It isn't until Winter speaks that he opens them again and tentatively lifts his aching leg enough to give the ankle a careful turn. He's always been an active guy, so the throb isn't entirely unfamiliar to him. It hurts. But he'll manage. "...Yeah. Yeah, I think so," he answers quietly, smiling a little in earnest gratitude, "Thanks you guys."

He doesn't sit up just yet, though, instead asking, "Could one of you do me favor and try the thimble?" It may not be the root, but with his mind cleared by the moment of panic he's suddenly certain that the girl in the mask is Viola and that he'd given himself away by talking to her about the thimble. So maybe...

Edited 2020-06-05 05:49 (UTC)

Tybalt has launched to his feet, vibrating with adrenaline and embarrassment both, so an errand is welcome right now. “I got it!” Comes as he is already loping away in long strides, remembering to throw Aris’ wand back at him, as he goes. Tybalt rushes over to memory-Aris (still weird), and plucks the thimble out of those beautifully long fingers.

Tybalt pulls away a golden replica of the thimble, leaving behind its iron counterpart.

The memory of Aris begins speaking again. “I dunno… do those romantic rom-com scenarios ever actually happen? I feel like if they feel the same way, it’d be exciting no matter what as long as you meant it,” Aris continues on, lowering his eyes and restlessly tapping his shoes against the grass.

Viola leans forward, sets her elbow against her knee, and props her temple against her knuckles. She looks up at Aris, clearly smitten. “But what if they just don’t feel the same way…” she pauses, leans closer. “Yet?”

Nearby, pulled onto the banks of Greentooth is a wooden rowboat that wasn’t there before. Down a ways, the river bends and you can just see that the banks are longer paralleled by the river walk but instead by the ruined auditorium of Peckenpaugh School of Magic.

[MEMORY COMPLETE: NPC defeated. Linchpin recovered. You may continue to thread or move back to Peckenpaugh by taking the rowboat through the portal.]

Winter's eyebrows climb up her forehead, blue-eyed gaze unmistakably cutting to Aristotle and then Tybalt. You can practically see the equations being broken down in front of her face as she tries to think of what a normal person would say in this situation.

"Um..." good start. "That means she's free now, right? We should...go find her?"

By the time Tybalt crosses back to the still figures and moves to take the thimble, Aris is sitting up in the grass and turns to watch the the scene as it plays out. He remembers the conversation clearly but everything about it feels different now and his mind and heart are racing all on their own. No evil flowers required. He just wants to see Viola.

This is the thought that gets him moving, hauling himself up onto his aching leg and nodding in agreement with Winter, "Yeah! Let's find Vi."

Edited 2020-06-05 18:20 (UTC)

Tybalt beams, delighted that he’s finally contributed. But this isn’t his thimble. He falls into step next to his roommate, and slips him the little glowing object. He knows how he hates to lose it. What is going on in his brain is actually pretty similar, likely, to whatever is going on in Winter’s. He just masks it with a loud, annoyed sigh. It’s hardly a complaint, when he vocalizes it.
“Nose goes on rowing the boat.”

He walks backwards toward the little rowboat, and though he immediately puts a finger up to his nose, cheating this game, he’ll contribute some muscle if he must.

"Ah, finally. A chance to show off my strength," Winter deadpans as she hops into the boat and grabs an oar.

She finds herself wondering if her coworkers are okay. Whether or not someone's found a memory of Bruno Ellerby playing accordion for the first time. She doesn't show these questions in her expression. Now's a time for celebration—they've freed a friend. "Avast, let's set sail me hearties."

Aris, Tybalt and Winter have completed the memory "Unmasked"!

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

Backstage on the first floor of the auditorium, Viola Warbeck was freed! Elsewhere in the auditorium, spring flowers, a magimagicicada was freed!

Aris, Tybalt and Winter each earned 5 Tokens for completing a moderated memory!

They also each earned 3 tokens for completing a memory encounter and 1 Token for finding the linchpin!

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

Edited (I can't belive I wrote viola davis lmfao) 2020-06-05 18:42 (UTC)

HE IS HERE

MEMORY: Unmasked

MEMORY: Unmasked

MEMORY: Unmasked

MEMORY: Unmasked

MEMORY: Unmasked

MEMORY: Unmasked

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MEMORY: Unmasked - COMPLETED & TOKENS!