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

[MODERATED]
[CRITERIA: suffer through an RNG game until you find the linchpin]

This is Mothgarden's atrium, a Victorian-style solarium garden, glass walls reinforced by white painted metal and everything touched with springy pink and green accents. Though outside a light snow falls, it's warm in here, and every plant is lush and blooming. Overhead, magical moths and butterflies flutter, watching students mill about. It's all very lovely, one of the best places on campus in Mr. Berzelius's estimation. He wouldn't voice that fact out loud.

Today, there are two long tables of food flanking the front doors to Mothgarden's common room. And in the center of the main patio where potted plants usually sit, the space has been cleared to make room for a massive bubbling cauldron of cheese. It's the fondue party from February of this year, and just as before, the offerings are impressive, enticing, and presented in a very aesthetically pleasing sort of way.

Mr. Berzelius steps away from the mocktail bar when he sees the foggy figure of someone approaching from outside. The front glass doors part, and there she is, the love of his life. Oh, he has to do something to ruin her day.

"Hey watch this!" Berzelius shouts, and then he trips on a gap between mosaic tiles, stumbles forward and drops his eye in the pot.

Ms. Altizer stares at him. He stares down at the pot, watches his magic eye disappear in the hot cheese.

Everything freezes.

Kermit trips and faceplants straight into his very first portal of the night, and misses most of what's going on.

"IS THIS EDIBLE?" he shouts into the dirt he's already eating.

"Don't eat Mothgarden dirt babe, it's the least nutritious," Jupiter says as she steps over Kermie and then crouches down beside him. "Hey isn't this the cheese party?"

"Mothgarden dirt is the most nutritious, actually." Trudy reaches out to grab Kermit by the elbow and haul him up to his feet. Then, she shoves him right back down in the dirt. "That's because something that looked like you kissed me without my permission."

She walks toward the cauldron and leaves him there. "Must be. Look at all this cheese. And, oh, there goes his eye."

"DO THAT AGAIN!" Kermie hollers into the ground again, then flops over on his side on his own. What an ordeal. "But slower."

Pulling himself up to sit cross-legged on the ground of the greenhouse, Kermit is in no hurry to solve this puzzle or even really figure out what's going on. It's prom!! This is what prom is!!

"Do you think his eye is edible?" he asks after several seconds of silence on his end. Willy Wonka was a very formative movie for young Kermit, probably.

In time, the scene starts moving again.

Ms. Altizer turns around and walks right back out of the room.

"Aaaaaaa!" Mr. Berzelius calls brightly after her as she disappears, like somehow his losing a magical eye in cheese is one-upping his own wife.

He clasps his hands together and steps away from the pot. "Alright! Guess I gotta find my spare."

If you look in the pot, there’s no cheese there anymore. It’s a passageway back to the Peckenpaugh atrium.

HE IS HERE

MEMORY: The Big Cheese

MEMORY: The Big Cheese

MEMORY: The Big Cheese

MEMORY: The Big Cheese

MEMORY: The Big Cheese

MEMORY: The Big Cheese