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

[gravings]

[ Gray's body is frustratingly unresponsive as he grabs her arm and turns her around. She no longer has the strength to control her spin, and it's all she can do to fall to one knee instead of collapsing entirely, her back bowing in an attempt to keep her arm from popping out of its socket.

It's been a long time since she's felt so powerless in a fight. Her spirit is willing, but her mind and body were already on their way to shutting down before Silco arrived. She feels so cold that she expects her breath to frost as it leaves heavily from her lips, for her arm to snap like ice as it bends under Silco's grip. It would be easy to give in to the chill, curl up, and surrender consciousness...

But Gray doesn't want to die. Not like this. She would sooner break off all of her limbs than lie down. If Silco doesn't take prompt advantage of his position, then Gray will rock backward into him in an attempt to knock him down with her meager weight, heedless of what damage may be done or what she could actually manage to do in the aftermath. Maybe she wouldn't be able to do a thing. She's devolved into a simple animal state, a cornered mouse thinking it might have a chance clawing at a cat's eyes. ]

[zauneyete]

[ Gray doesn't want to die -- but neither does Silco, and he went into this knowing it was a possibility. Sebastian would likely be angry with him for it -- putting the demon's meal at risk -- but the temptation to truly hit Meridian where it hurt was far too great. She tries to cut short the advantage and rock back, but she's already on one knee, and Silco's quick to put a foot down on the bent leg, a calf, and tighten his grip.

He is not strong, but he is driven, and he shoved her again, pulling strength from some reserve even though his hands shook from the bitter cold. He just had to concentrate, and not lose his concentration.

He focused on her shard, trying to keep her from fighting too much, his gaze locked on it. ]

Don't worry. [ He said, with remarkable calm. ] You don't have much longer to suffer.

[ As if he was doing her a favor, to kill her from the blight. ] You asked for help, didn't you? [ His unblinking eye kept locked on the shard, unwavering. ] Don't complain, just because you don't like the form it takes.

[gravings]

[ Even with his weakness, his weight alone is enough to pin her leg in place. Her little bursts of resistance, futile as they've been, have drained her of her last reserves. She wills and begs her arm to wrench itself free or for her body to roll him off-balance. Her arm doesn't manage any more than a whisper of a tug; her body only sways, not nearly enough to affect Silco's posture.

She can feel his eyes bearing down on her. She understands that what she has left in her isn't enough. Silco's — reassurance? lecture? — falls on numb ears. A frustrated prickling at her eyes cuts through the oppressive cold throttling her, which plunges well beyond the physical as the inevitability of death sinks into her.

Only her voice is left to her, but even now she doesn't use it to curse Silco or deliver meaningful parting words. Instead she swallows a hard gasp of air as if it might give her strength, and continues to struggle in her futile way against Silco's hold. She hears a grunt turned into a strained growl in her ears, and doesn't register that it's coming from her own throat. ]

[zauneyete]

[ Gray is left with so little, she cannot even speak, and Silco finds no reason to fill the silence. He stares down at her, at her shard, and feels the Blight leave him, slowly over time, but it does not take long. Not really. Not once she can no longer wrench herself out of his grip, and he can actually stare at her shard with his unwavering, unblinking gaze.

He feels it, the moment the blight left him, fully, and he can breathe, though he waits, still holding -- until he is certain that Gray will have no opportunity for retribution, in whatever that form it takes. Whether she will fall to the ground, or death will come, he doesn't know.

But he makes sure to stay still, holding her in place, until it's over. ]

[gravings]

[ She can't see him, but she doesn't need to; the Blight encroaches from the inside like rot accelerated. She imagines she can feel its spread cell by cell, atom by atom — feel the death of her in frigid chunks like frostbitten fingers breaking off one at a time.

The process doesn't take long, but it still gives her too much time to think: about her helplessness, about the sensation of drowning from the inside out; about how much this pathetic death suits her; about the terror of this being the last memory she'll ever have; about Add being alone and silent forever if she gives in now.

The last thought is the most terrifying of them all. It injects her with one last punch of resolve — but her final jerk in Silco's grip is a needle to an already bursting balloon. A harsh cough turns to a retch, sap black on the ground and down her chin, seeping from her eyes like angry tears.

All at once, the floodgates are open. Her body begins to wilt and wither in a way she couldn't describe as human. There's little pain to be had as even her nerve endings seem to numb and shrivel into nothing. The thoughts that make her herself curl away from her in gnarls; her body curls too, downward and inward like a neglected plant until her skin is as gray as her hair. As she slows to stilness, the green of her eyes is the last color left to her — and that too fades to gray as she becomes a weathered lump hunched under a blanket of cloth.

Her Shard can no longer sustain her form. She dissipates in a gentle collapse of ash, leaving only a small puddle of her clothing. A shape pokes from her cloak, a small elongated dome. If one were to check the shape, they would find a curious birdcage containing an even more curious cube. The cube's carved faces are inert as if sleeping, unresponsive to any kind of stimulus. ]

[zauneyete]

[ Silco waits.

He watches.

This is not the first person he has watched die -- not even the first person he's found necessary to kill, though for the life of him he cannot think of a circumstance when he had, like his mind finds quicksand and he cannot find the memory, it slips through his fingers like quicksand, but he knows this is no surprise or shame.

He watches her die, watches her body collapse, her arms underneath his hands holding her down wither, like a plant left out of the sun for too long, and Silco thinks that it is fitting, that she wilts like a plant in the dark, given that it's he who is killing her. Her body leaves nothing behind, beyond a shard, and... something else.

He does not rifle through the pile of clothing for her shard. Silco does not know if he could shatter it quickly, which would be the only reason to do so.

But the cube... in a cage? That's truly...

Unusual.

He reaches out, to pick it up.

Why on earth would this child keep a cube in a cage? What purpose does it serve? His head tipped back, and forth, as he tried to puzzle it out, though...

Perhaps he should do so elsewhere, before someone finds him. He's already killed two from Meridian. It would be dangerous to get caught now, in the moment of his triumph. ]