Are we not brave enough? [Closed]

[ghostharasser]

Who: Dipper Pines (ghostharasser), Falco Grice (grice), maybe others later, TBA
What: Dipper tries to perform an emergency exorcism on the demon plaguing Falco. It goes...badly...
When: Early December
Where: Gaze
Note: This is the log to kick off this player plot

Content Warnings: Possession, violence, body horror, potential cannibalism, (child) death



Top levels below

Comments

cw: body horror, small eye mention, possession

[grice]

[ a tickle at the back of his neck becomes an excruciating crawl beneath his skin that felt like it would burst at any moment— like vermin, plump from a heavy feed; like ooze, in the way it seemed so viscous and thick, invited right out of the cracks of a protective seal nearly broken (and now, it was; dipper had thrown a hammer right on top of glass). falco himself had little time to react to the ritual’s start, not when the taste of iron filled his mouth but no blood was in sight. oh no was the last whimpering thought he had before his consciousness is not shut down, but thrusted back. he hears nothing, the sound drowns out— the telltale start of when the silence had breached through was the panic-inducing silence it caused to its hosts. falco’s earlier soft sobbing escalates to screaming in a pinch— thank god for his bit to muffle it for a limited time, but not for long. not with the way the boy throws himself and contorts his body erratically and in unnatural bends. he screams until his stifled voice cracks and keeps at it like an animal cornered with nowhere to go, he thrashes his confined limbs far past becoming sore from rope burn. falco sees all of this, is aware of all of this through his little faraway window of consciousness— he simply no longer has a wheel over it.

now, it was a slimy, oozing, burning horror that swallowed the boy’s aura up tight and used his vocal chords, his expression of pity and terror and his pain. the bloodshot veins in his eyes have darkened into purple, the brand behind his neck spreads to his shoulders, up his neck— the mass of negativity in the boy is snaking from inside its anchoring vessel to outside in the realm dipper had coaxed it to, and it feels nothing but strong and capable. it felt suffocating. the air burned to breathe and more than once did it sound like falco was choking on something ugly and tar-like lodged in his throat with no way out other than the occasional spit and splat of metallic, purple goop that reeks of infection.

a little hope is what always made the fall and breaking of an inkling of a chance all the more tastier. the negativity doubles. and, that’s what it proposes. as falco writhes and bends, he cries through his muffler, that every time, comes more loose:

dipper, stop, you’re hurting me, stop, why would you do this to me?! i never did anything to you! drop dead! you’ll pay for what you’re doing to me, i’ll do it myself, i hate you, you’re not going back home alive you should’ve left h̸̡̻̘͑͋̒i̸͓͖̟̿͒m̴͇͇͛͋̓͜mmm m̶e̶ to die liͥᴋⷦeͤ ᴛⷮhͪeͤ rͬeͤs͛ᴛⷮ yoͦuͧ’rͬeͤ noͦᴛⷮhͪiͥng oͦn yoͦuͧ’rͬeͤ oͦwn w̺̻̫e̙͕̘ ᴋⷦneͤw iͥᴛⷮ s̶t̶o̶p̶—

it seems to be contained, but it keeps talking— right at him. ]

cw: body horror, small eye mention, possession

[ghostharasser]

[It's working. It's horrible, and the air is such that Dipper feels like he will choke the moment he stops chanting, but it's working. He's dragging this thing to the surface, he's letting it bleed apart from Falco. All he has to do is keep it up until it's free just enough for Dipper to make a move.]

[It's oppressiveness makes his skin tingle, like getting too close to a fire. It's a miasma that could swallow him alive if he's not careful. He realizes then, what a precarious tightrope he's walking.]

[The thing begins screaming at him, speaking in the way Falco warned. He can tell, at least, that it's the demon for sure. He's known Falco just long enough to be able to gauge his manner, his way of speaking, and he's dealt with enough possession to tell when the shift is obvious. This is what he expected, but it hurts to listen to. It hurts to know this thing is making him say such terrible things, when Falco had seemed so gentle thus far.]

[It's awful, too, because this realm is a dream, a pocket of malleable reality, and things like words have their own special weight, with the right intent. They feel like barbs, striking at him. He keeps his resolve, but its a very near thing.]

Daemoniacus Entitatem Eicere!

[The end of the spell, Dipper claps his journal closed with an echoing snap, and flings the book behind him. It slows to a halt as if time itself has froze it in place. With The Silence out, but contained, Dipper thinks he has just moments to act.]

[Dipper seizes forward, breaching the line of Blessed water on the ground, and reaches through the ward to grab the demon with his bare hands. He knows this will work, he tells himself, because he's seen it done. He remembers the soul rending feeling of having his soul ripped out of his body by Bill. If he has to command powers like this, then he's going to use them for good, even if he has to emulate the monster he hates most.]

You're coming with me!

cw: self harm too

[grice]

[ the silence buckles down and puts up resistance by anchoring its roots to its host as soon as it feels its presence being tugged out of a system that it has made its home in. if the air had been brutally hot before, it was now thin, like being in the middle of a fire as well as it was putrid— not of sulfur, but of blight. what was breathed felt concentrated like mucus and made inhaling and exhaling irritable, causing the lungs to feel the need to expel a substance unwelcomed (bubbly, sticky, and horrible tasting). the line of holy water made it shriek at the direction it was being pulled toward&mdashç

but there was also a breach, and dipper leg(s) were what bridged that detested gap. it was too fed, too energized to be an easy pull— and it very well knew that when it took dipper formidable resolve head-on and combats it with a gnawing shroud of, what was it? hostility, antagonism, fear. fear may do. much like meat hanging in a river for a pack of piranhas to snap at, the silence attempts what it does best: it brings out the worst in every memory, every emotion ever felt, and wrenches it into a grudging wound that festers fast.

whatever it is that frightens or angers dipper the most, the silence probes for it on contact— and as dipper pulls, so does the silence, spitting right through falco's bounded lips and clenching teeth: you'll be dead before then! with all of the boy's rabid battering about, he's rolled himself to his front, pauses in a beat to bring his eyes to the ground— and spontaneously, he rears his head back to slam his forehead into hard earth, then his temple, then his face, his nose, his exposed teeth or bottom lip, and he wouldn't stop after each thunk, not until it has harmed him.

falco, though, the real falco, is the one shedding these genuine tears, he can see dipper reaching and the silence being stretched— he can feel it, the ugly disease lodged in him being manipulated and reacting. maybe, he’s doing it. maybe there really was a way. the boy’s head still rams on it’s own accord, as if something had gnarled claws into his hair and threw his face to the ground, repeatedly, but there was a mechanical slip, intentionally done or not, where falco’s fingers twitch under his want. he can’t reach, but he wants to, and for a split of a second does falco look like he too, is fighting for slipping reins.

he’s too desperate to tell that it was a dangling fruit poisoned at the core. his wrists hurt, so just his chest from rattling so tightly, but the ropes are loosening their knots. he wants to reach as it seems like silence’s goop is coming just as undone as the binds. ]

Dipper—!

[ just a little more— ]

cw; PTSD,

[ghostharasser]

[For a split second, Dipper thinks he's managed to come out on top. He thinks he's gotten the upper hand. Falco responds to him, through the haze of violence and hatred The Silence is spitting at him. If he just doubles down, pulls harder, he can actually do this.]

[He reaches, his hope shining bright like a beacon.]





[And misses.]

[There's a dread in the pit of his stomach that ignites like a bomb, and that's all it takes for the Silence's miasma to consume him. For The Silence to find what it was looking for in Dipper's vulnerabilities. His fear, his anger, he has all of it in spades. He has nightmares that plague him the likes no one has seen. He's a fucking all-you-can-eat buffet of everything the Silence wants to feed off, and it's just been handed the golden key.]

[The worst part of it? This realm is a dream. It takes these things and gives them form and the line between what is a dream and what is a nightmare is ever a precarious balance.]

[The world plummets into red, and screams fill the air. Some of them are Dipper, but most of them are from his memory. Blood rains down in torrents, the skies open up, the world is falling apart and there is a shrill, unhinged laugh that echoes louder than than anything else, a sound so all consuming it smothers the ears, the mind. These are Dipper's worst fears made real.]

[The fear of losing, of uncertainty, the fear of lost agency, of lost sanity. The fear of becoming that which he hates most.]

[Once the claws are in him, it takes nothing for them to drag him under.]

[grice]

[ he couldn’t reach, they couldn’t reach each other— to be fair, neither had a chance, and falco was never close to independence. the fracture was only an illusion to haunt their thoughts going grimy and bountiful for the silence’s natural inclination to spread and sustain itself. suffering was so good, and it had not one beacon to drink from, but a second snack bar for the measly price of deception (nothing that different from breathing or giving a wink).

falco’s gut goes ice cold when he felt his consciousness take a pitfall backward; any control he thought he had was ripped from his sensibility and replaced with sparks, visible sparks, crawling up his face and bouncing off his self-inflicted wounds— a busted, bleeding lip and broken blood vessel snug in his nose. if only he could say something, if only he could push the other boy back to safer distances. at least he hadn’t been within an embrace’s range, but the heat about to emit right off of him was enough to blow a good portion of a home away.

but cry was all he could do, and what made it worse was the clear memory of his older brother refusing to let go of him in a similar situation. he’s so hopeless. so useless. why does this exist? he hated this— but the silence loved every second of one negative thought busting a domino effect into the other.

the glare and heat off of falco is followed by a strike, a damned sound, like metal and thunder, one that ignites and cracks, sparking light and opening paths to bring veins, muscle fiber and bone fragments to a skeletal frame and then life, skin, feathers— something magnificent made absolutely ugly by dripping tar caking its spreading wings and infecting its talons. his, maybe.

because this massive thing was falco. not beasthood, but a gifted ability, or curse, that was now hijacked. what to do with dipper . . . or, what’s left of him. it shouldn’t take long to find the sickly wide eyes behind the sockets of a bony beak mask. falco didn’t want to find him— the silence did. ]

[ghostharasser]

[Dipper might not have been within arms reach at that moment, but he was still terribly close to ground-zero either way. The force throws Dipper back, with only his Sleeper resilience keeping him in one piece as he crashes into the tree line.]

[The world around them goes dead silent. That feeling of weightless anticipation finally drops, and the colors of the real world spread out once more. That dreamlike feeling fades altogether when the master of that realm falls either unconscious or worse.]

["Worse" might be more true, if the smell of burnt flesh is anything to go by.]