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peckenpaugh2020-06-11 02:59 pm
peckishmods) wrote in peckenpaugh2020-06-11 02:59 pm
Entry tags:
DAWN BREAKS
It’s not one single attack that does in the nightmare tree, not one being, one teacher, one student, but the concentrated efforts of dozens and dozens of lives. Students below, striking at roots, magimagicicada above, attacking the canopy, and everyone in-between, muscheron and aurors and freed BoMB agents, Mothman Jr. and Bigfoot, herself, fighting tooth and nail to stop the horrible thing from beyond as it shambles up from the pit at the heart of the Sorting Path.
Under a barrage of spells and attacks from weapons both improvised and forged from the heart, the malignant maple tries to ascend. It climbs, roots grasping for purchase as it wrenches itself free of the sorting path, and takes its first real step out into the world, but that’s as far as it gets.
The nightmare tree shudders and shakes, and then it gets weird, as its form starts to glitch and tear. Static and color and strange sounds, as though the awful thing is being hit by the spirit stick…
Because it is.
Pocket, fluttering defiant before the nightmare tree as it tries to climb free of its auditorium prison, smack SMACK SMACKS the trunk over and over with that broken spirit stick. Each strike rips and tears at the nightmare tree’s form, leaving it even more vulnerable from the gathered force’s attacks, until the whole tree flickers to a television test card. Block colors and a single long electronic tone that cuts through the rank air, loud and clear.
At the sound, the assembled brood of magimagicicada rush the tree at once, their bodies disappearing as they collide with the trunk.
Above, the gray-green swirl blanketing the sky starts to break, and all around vines wilt and die. The malignant maple changes. Its roots sink back into the Sorting Path’s heart, no longer fighting the feeble prison around it. The last of the glowing blue maple seeds hanging in the tree fall at once, sprouting up into the stolen souls and freeing them from their prisons. A thick coating of moss grows over every inch of the tree, expelling the nightmare right from its leaves and boughs.
As the last of the sickly clouds disappear, dawn breaks over the holler, and what’s standing in the place of the nightmare tree is a truly magnificent maple, the song of cicadas ringing from its moving branches. At the foot of the tree, a spectral Caleb Qualls stares up into the green with a tranquil smile on his lips. His oldest son joins him, bonking shoulder to shoulder, and finally, after thirty years, they embrace. As sunlight spills through the green canopy, their ghostly forms fade, mist in morning light.
Under a barrage of spells and attacks from weapons both improvised and forged from the heart, the malignant maple tries to ascend. It climbs, roots grasping for purchase as it wrenches itself free of the sorting path, and takes its first real step out into the world, but that’s as far as it gets.
The nightmare tree shudders and shakes, and then it gets weird, as its form starts to glitch and tear. Static and color and strange sounds, as though the awful thing is being hit by the spirit stick…
Because it is.
Pocket, fluttering defiant before the nightmare tree as it tries to climb free of its auditorium prison, smack SMACK SMACKS the trunk over and over with that broken spirit stick. Each strike rips and tears at the nightmare tree’s form, leaving it even more vulnerable from the gathered force’s attacks, until the whole tree flickers to a television test card. Block colors and a single long electronic tone that cuts through the rank air, loud and clear.
At the sound, the assembled brood of magimagicicada rush the tree at once, their bodies disappearing as they collide with the trunk.
Above, the gray-green swirl blanketing the sky starts to break, and all around vines wilt and die. The malignant maple changes. Its roots sink back into the Sorting Path’s heart, no longer fighting the feeble prison around it. The last of the glowing blue maple seeds hanging in the tree fall at once, sprouting up into the stolen souls and freeing them from their prisons. A thick coating of moss grows over every inch of the tree, expelling the nightmare right from its leaves and boughs.
As the last of the sickly clouds disappear, dawn breaks over the holler, and what’s standing in the place of the nightmare tree is a truly magnificent maple, the song of cicadas ringing from its moving branches. At the foot of the tree, a spectral Caleb Qualls stares up into the green with a tranquil smile on his lips. His oldest son joins him, bonking shoulder to shoulder, and finally, after thirty years, they embrace. As sunlight spills through the green canopy, their ghostly forms fade, mist in morning light.