06 . the sleepy town expedition.

[necrolord]

Who: necrolord, Gideon, Harrow, Paul, Kaworu, "Shannon," Mako, Ford, Shiro, Ruby, Luna, Faith, Willow, Ezra, Zhongli, Perell.
What: An intentional family-and-friends roadtrip to a forbidden holy ruin. A less-intentional catacombs adventure.
When: 3/14.
Where: Sleepy Town and the Catacombs.

Content Warnings: Sleepy Town-typical themes of grief, loss, and surreal landscapes. Catacombs-typical horror per the March event. Also, note all the usual warnings of this character.

[ See this doc for info! ]

Comments

[arclightning]

That would match up with those other two doors.

[ Only one had opened, but Mako remembers camping out by the other two, trying to learn anything he possibly could about them, pulling at the bare threads of information he could get about them. ]

One of them looked kind of overgrown and one looked worn. You think that desert was what Deerington turned into in May?

[cryptograms]

[ Mako mentions the doors and Ford nods, excited. ]

Exactly! I believe each reality we saw was connected with the doors in the sinkholes.

[ As for whether the desert in May was that same desert, Ford hums. ]

That's harder to say. I don't believe it was actually that reality, but it may have been a reflection of it - like how the architecture in October was altered to resemble Trench, and the whole city was converted to a forest in the spring prior to that.

[ He says it absently at first, like he's not wholly committed to the idea, but the more he speaks the more sure of it he feels. ]

[arclightning]

Like clues.

[ But even that doesn't sound quite right, because why would they be hints? They're not clues, there's no mystery to solve here, no matter that Mako's brain just operates in that channel. His thoughts run in the pattern of cases, but this is a wider and more open mystery than any he'd ever solved in Republic City. ]

Or... maybe those realities, scraping through? Back in my world, there were, guess you'd call 'em weak points. Bridges between our world and the spirit world. Spirits would come through way more often in those places, and it only got worse once the spirit portals were open.

[cryptograms]

[ Clues doesn't sound right to Ford, but Mako changes course before he gets a chance to correct him. Which is fine but Ford, of course - that makes it easier to jump right to the point he was going to make. ]

I think 'other realities' is close, but not quite precise. We know the Pthumerians refer to this place as the Waking World, we know there are countless dimensions besides this one and the Dream, and we know that this particular planet used to be very different when Julia was alive.

[ This... is not even slightly why they're here, but Ford is on a roll now. ]

I think those slivers we saw were glimpses at already existing yet still potential realities, possible future courses this world could take depending on Julia's influence. Just because we ended up here doesn't mean that the others didn't also come into being.

It's not as though everyone in the Dream eventually awakened in Trench.

[arclightning]

So... then those worlds might still be out there?

[ Mako's never been the most theoretical guy—give him problems with teeth and real-world consequences any day—but he thinks he gets what Ford's putting down, anyway, and it... has implications. Is there some half-world out there? What if the dream isn't really gone, but hanging on in shreds and tatters here and there? ]

[cryptograms]

I believe so! Either as fully formed alternate realities to this one, or as fragmented sub-dimensions - though truthfully I believe the answer is both.

[ Ford is, fortunately, completely willing to be the theory guy. ]

What's more, given the nature of how they came into existence it may be possible that the walls between these dimensions are easier to breach.