unsheathedfromreality: (reflect on a thousand lifetimes)
Illarion Albireo ([personal profile] unsheathedfromreality) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-05-16 04:23 pm

Real & Half-Real: Chapter 2 - Nephele-That-Isn't

Who: A brave party of rescuers and their intrepid support staff
What: Pocket dimension shenanigans to save a missing Sleeper
When: Two insane days in May
Where: Nephele-that-isn’t, which isn’t Deer Country either

All at once–one day, in early May–the portal’s finished, and the planning is as near to done as it will ever be. All at once, it’s time to venture into Nephele-that-isn’t, and retrieve not one but two Sleepers who’ve gone astray.

The team assembles in the clearing by Argonaut’s abandoned shrine, in a darkness lit by glowing CRTs and the green, green moon. The portal itself, and the world beyond it, casts a light all its own–and one by one they step over that rune-etched silver threshold, and one by one vanish into another story than Trench’s own.


What does it feel like, to journey to a dead reality?

Like being sieved through strands of glass and fire. Like being picked apart thread by narrative thread as the Words themselves that write the universe flash before stunned eyes in the seconds before they’re erased and something worse substituted. Moments of fleeting alignment between passager and host-creator come in stopped heartbeats and empty lungs, in the memory you’ve been dead for years and the cold slide of steel between ribs.

Then that second-that's-years is over and deposits its captives beneath an alien sky, with sun and ring and stars and moons foreign as any far-flung land. Some travelers wear skins and magic to suit those stranger heavens; some have been changed by the logic of the half-world half-story to better fit its weave.

With a changed nature come changed senses and abilities–and those in the skins of shrikes, with eyes to see, may notice much more if they look.

All can see one grim fact, however, on entering the world: Any clock, any watch, any Omni now displays 48:00:00 or its analogue equivalent... And begins at once to tick down.

[[ Part of the Real & Half-Real player plot! Navigate to other plot posts: [OOC] Interest Check | [IC] Prologue | [IC] Iskierka's Notes | [IC] The Portal & the Plan ]]
that_isnt: (Default)

[personal profile] that_isnt 2022-06-03 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
A butterfly can be found in each room. The butterflies will not lie about what the next step in the puzzle is. Of course, an animal that can't speak can only answer questions in a few ways.

They're all waiting on the object that is the first safe step - except the one in the room of the Throne. It is waiting on the cabochon for Eyes.

Upon spotting a person, it will cheerfully take its correct position.