The Seeds of Unrest, Phase Two 🌱

[beleos]

UPROOTED

Time has not been kind thus far, and the future will be no kinder.

The slow passage of days to weeks has seen both cities increasingly ravaged by the untamed growth of the enlarging roots. Their size is enough to uproot buildings by their foundations, if not bisect them entirely where they push through unfettered. In the worst-hit areas, entire blocks are left abandoned - if even standing at all, displacing families and leaving businesses in ruins.

Cetina and Kathova have been in near constant contact with Bearers via Communion, feeding them information about which areas to focus their lifesaving efforts. Yima’s Manor and the Seat of the Tribune - despite their closeness to the Trees - have been fortified by your leaders and act as a base of operations for each respective faction. You will be able to return to either to find sanctuary from the chaos beyond, but the innumerable civilians are not so lucky.

Bearers are tasked with rescue and recovery efforts and requested to assist hands on the ground with taking refugees to temporary shelters. Survivors must be dug out of the debris. Those who are capable of healing will be enlisted to assist at hospitals and triage centers. Supplies must be gathered and harvested from areas that are collapsed and too dangerous for civilians to navigate. If you are feeling generous, you can go on search and rescue missions, as many people are considered missing in both Highstorm and Springstar. Some areas are completely cut off to regular foot traffic by the massive, winding roots bearing countless Blight-blooms. Citizens are succumbing to the Blight flower’s effects persistent from phase one with more and more frequency.

While both cities slowly succumb to a deepening catastrophe, the situation worsens.

STIRRING STORMS

As the days pass, inexplicable and unnatural weather occurrences will randomly plague both cities. They can last as long as a full day or as little as an hour before dissolving entirely.

• Flurries: this snow is tainted by the Blight, making the snowfall look like ash. Any organic matter it touches will be affected by reopening wounds, re-infection of illnesses, or re-experiencing injuries that may have healed over years ago.
• Thunderstorms: these storms carry a frigid rainfall and heavy cloud cover, making already difficult-to-navigate disaster zones harder to clear. As each thunder bellow crashes overhead, you might swear you hear a familiar voice reaching out to you in the fading rumble… one that sends a message - either from the future or past.
• Fog: dense clouds of thick, freezing fog will roll in randomly, making visibility even more precarious. In your search for survivors - or your companions, you may find yourself coming face to face with someone else, instead: a version of yourself (or a companion) from another timeline. You may also hear your own voice calling out to you from within the fog, attempting to beckon you further into the mist.
• General Note: Exposure to any of the above weather patterns will increase your Blight infection.

THE BLIGHT COMES FOR ALL

As if it were not enough to see the cities that have become your salvation at the end of the Timestream falling to collapse and ruin, the Bearers will slowly begin to realize their previous immunity to the Blight is eroding. They will begin to show symptoms of infection that increase into May’s event. ( For more information on the effects of the Blight and purification methods, please see the OOC Summary. )

Now that their last bastion - the Bearers - are just as much in harm’s way as everyone else, the populous’s efforts to formulate a temporary stop-gap solution are being rushed to completion. Time is not on anyone’s side. They will continue to work with those who have been kind enough to volunteer their resources and brilliant minds - collecting materials and attempting to figure out a way to avert their otherwise inevitable destiny.

ORDERS

Orders from your leaders will come as soon as infections among the Bearers have been confirmed.

🌙 YIMA will stress for all Zenite Bearers to prioritize their well-being and to avoid unnecessary exposure, to manage their symptoms as much as possible. They must fight for their own survival to bring in the birth of a new universe - and their lives are too precious to risk. Beyond that, she asks them to save what they can of their people and their most critical structures with the understanding that hard choices may be necessary.

🌞 CYRUS will implore all Meridian Bearers to prioritize the general population's lives and turn their efforts to save as much of Springstar as they can. He will note that Bearers have ways to help keep one another from suffering too much contagion and to coordinate their usages appropriately, to keep one another safe, and watch their backs.

ANOTHER EN-TREE-TY

The Tree of Life continues to sicken, yet - thankfully - the progression of the Blight is slow. Still, Bearers will find themselves occasionally compelled to take a moment to sit beneath its boughs and vibrant leaves, even as some begin to show signs of discoloration and rot. Any characters who sit with the Tree with the purple leaf they found on their person after phase one will find it warming to the touch, its veins laced with gold. This effect will be even more effective if taken into the cavernous roots beneath the Tree! While this may fill you with a temporary sense of calm, it doesn't seem to have any other effects... yet still, you are compelled, if not curious.

The Tree has offered you this gift for a reason. Perhaps you will find its use before long.

...As long as you - and Kenos - survive long enough to discover it.

CODING

Comments

[grunehexin]

[The second she's set down Sieglinde's body curls in tight, rigid and trembling with pain. Her hand reaches blindly until she seizes on one of Rin's hands, and though she is not powerful in the slightest... she still clutches as desperately as she's physically capable of. Despite how nothing should be wrong with her, whatever is happening...]

My feet-

[It's real to her. She grits out the answer with tears already pricking, falling from the corner of her eyes. She hadn't... she'd been prepared, for the ritual, she'd been prepared then, but now-]

Something's wrong- They're breaking again- !

[Something moves, sick and unnatural, beneath the thick woolen stockings and in her tiny heels.]

[erbe]

[Disgusting. Not Sieglinde's feet, or the way her face twists when she endures the pain. Disgusting is the world that makes such a young girl suffer so severely — again. And while watching her in pain is a shock, Rin has already learned her lesson about hesitation. She cannot allow herself to falter.

Quickly she yanks her scarf off her neck, and urges Sieglinde to hold it in place of her hand.]

If the pain is too great please bite onto that. It's better than your teeth taking off your tongue.

[What's the next best step? She's not sure. Rin panics. Would creating a bounded field, basically a barrier of knitted magical energy over them, be better than cutting off the nerve pain?

One more tear falling from Sieglinde's eyes urges her to action. Tohsaka pulls out a blue gem from her pocket and begins an incantation in German to try and cut off the pain while Rin removes the young girl's shoes to try and see if she's truly expriencing the breaking of her feet again rather than an illusion.]

[grunehexin]

[When she had taken on the mantle of the Green Witch, Anna and Greta had held her hands. She remembered it vividly, like she remembered everything she's ever read, seen, or had happen to her. Her tiny hands had been dwarfed by her handmaidens' but she'd had them to clutch as her manservant took her feet into his hands and snapped them. She'd had them to squeeze when she tried not to scream, failed not to cry, but now-

She has Rin's scarf. A pained cry is all that comes out when she tries to answer, and then her teeth bite in to the fabric as the older girl suggested- because she was right. Even now she knows, her tongue... She hears a chant-

But it isn't an illusion.

Beneath the dark stockings she wears, now freed from her tiny, custom heels... the bones in her misshapen feet shift. Crack.]

CW: mention of body horror bugs

[erbe]

[Useless. It's useless, isn't it? No amount of magic seems to be able to prevent this. Tears well up at the corners of Rin's eyes as panic takes her. She hasn't felt this helpless since the death of her father — since Kirei presented her with the Azoth blade that should have been given to her by her father. Useless. A mage of her caliber sitting, useless, as a young girl screams in pain as her body betrays her.

Tohsaka's stomach flips. Was Sakura in this same amount of pain when she trained in that "workshop"? Was she writhing and screaming just like this when the worms overtook her body and burrowed inside her? The thought makes Rin falter, and she has to bite her lip to hold back the feeling of wanting to wretch.

One hand leaves the jewel attempting to numb Sieglinde's nerves, and grabs her hand. Rin grabs her hand and holds it tight. Bringing the knuckles up to her forehead as she hunches over the young girl's tiny body.]

I'm sorry, [She whispers. Something that Sieglinde might miss. She's sorry. She cannot help this or stop this and she does not know why.]