TEST DRIVE 003

[phantasmods]

Hello, and welcome to the third test drive for Phantasmal Rift!

Test drive threads are assumed to be game canon for accepted characters unless otherwise noted, so don't feel like you'll have to introduce yourself a second time to everyone you meet! As an added bonus, participation in the test drive comes with the chance to earn up to two items of loot for your trouble! Characters who are accepted can earn one item for having a top level, and one for tagging out to someone else's top level! Your SWEET LOOT will be included with your acceptance notice.

Additionally, characters currently in game can earn themselves a piece of bonus loot for the dungeon by tagging people's top-levels on the test drive! Existing characters get their bonus loot along with the rest of their loot at the conclusion of the dungeon.

This test drive takes place in the Fissure known as Amesta Forest - a forest filled with silver mist and shrouded in eternal twilight, where your dreams become real! For a certain limited definition of real. This is significantly less awesome than it sounds. On the bright side, anyone within the mists will find themselves with no need to sleep, as though trapped in the same spring evening as the rest of the forest.

OPTION ONE: DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

This first option might happen to you just about anywhere. From the swirls of silver mist comes a shape - or perhaps more than one shape? Who knows, it's your dream -

Well, probably. It could also be someone else's.

Those who stay too long in any one part of the mist will find their subconscious minds influencing it into shapes - the exact sort of things that appear in their dreams. As with their real dreams, the details are sometimes strange - too much detail, or not enough, depending on where your focus is. The character who 'created' the dream specter will instantly understand what it's supposed to be, but other viewers might have some difficulty with it.

Fortunately for those of you prone to violent nightmares, these dream figures are incapable of doing harm - any blows struck by them simply leave behind the dampness of walking through thick mist. A hard enough blow will similarly disperse them - or, in most cases, you can simply move quickly and leave them behind.

OPTION TWO: THE MOVEMENTS OF THE TREES

A forest filled with mist is honestly a kind of spooky place, isn't it?

Well, it's about to get spookier, when you notice that there's a tree... somewhere there wasn't a tree, before. Or maybe it's that you were looking around and realized that a tree wasn't there here there was one before, instead leaving behind only a round, torn-up patch of earth from where the roots were buried.

Either way, there's only one conclusion to be drawn - the trees are moving.

Those who pay close attention will soon realize that it's only one kind of tree that moves - an absolutely unfamiliar kind, with mist-silver bark and thin, almost translucent leaves in large handlike shapes. They aren't very tall, and their branches split low to the ground, the structure something like a less crooked Japanese maple. The Wanderwoods seem prone to following specific people, usually only moving when out of sight, though you might catch them shuffling along if you have quick reflexes for looking over your shoulder.

What do they want? Well, nothing, really. They're just attracted to sapient beings and, especially, the way the mist forms into their dreams. So while they won't do anything in particular to the characters themselves, anyone with a dream-form hanging around them might find that manifestation suddenly papered in thin, grabbing leaves... and swallowed up.

OPTION THREE: WHAT NOW IS FOUND?

Not all of the forest is trapped in eternal spring. One part of it is held in exactly the opposite - a brilliantly colored autumn morning, just before dawn, with the trees overhead colored in brilliant reds and oranges. Leaves drift down in a slow breeze, and pile up in random places among the trees (which never seem to run out of leaves to drop), and silver pools of water gather at the bases of the trees and in any other depressions, their surfaces perfectly still mirrors.

The mist is quite a bit thinner here, too, which allows you to see... What is that familiar shape in the distance, between the trees?

While dream manifestations are uncommon in the region of Fall's Heart, it's not only dreams that manifest here. Instead, characters will see the figures of those they've lost - instantly recognizable, but unreachable and nearly impossible to catch, running through the trees heedless of how you call after them. It's impossible to catch up to them by mundane means, and those who use supernatural means to do so -

- will find that, at their touch, the vision crumbles into silvery mist-water, forming another of those perfect, reflective pools at their feet.

Comments

what now is found

[founderinglight]

[It takes a long time to admit the possibility. Junpei's warping had been something he didn't want to think about, didn't want to risk hoping for. But Yuuri's sword and the words of that young man - between the two, there can be no doubt that Ardyn is here, somewhere, beneath these trees. Beneath the same sky.

For all of the thinking he's done, lately, for all the friendships he is beginning to build, once the thought takes hold of him Izunia is utterly helpless against it. He may as well try to fight a whirlpool, sucking him down until he drowns.

Ardyn is here, and Izunia has to find him. Should he die for it - it would be no less than he deserves.

But so it is. And so Ardyn will likely see the flash of blue light, first - a warp trail in the air, much longer than Noctis could probably manage, high up in the trees. It's a better vantage point to find that which he seeks.

And careful looking will reveal the shape in black, with hair the color of the falling leaves in the massive maple he stands in. Now that he's here, Izunia is frozen, unable to say or even think anything except - ]

Ardyn.

[It is not angry it is not fearful it is just, longing, two thousand years of love unreturned compressed into two small syllables. All of the stars, now hidden by the light of the sun.

He wishes, distantly, that the world would stop re-orienting itself for just one day.]

[burninglight]

[Ardyn wanted desperately to chase that figure again, even knowing...knowing he wasn't hear, knowing he was again the only Glaive that wasn't. Even with the hope Akechi had given him that no one would register them as being gone...it still ached, deep in his chest, to be separate once more.]

[Ached more to know he was here, and there was no Shield to save Ardyn from his own thoughts and fears, no one to ground him and stop him from falling into memories two thousand years old, of execution after execution after execution and Angelgard and I have lived in darkness for ages--]

[He stared at the figure with wide yellow-gold eyes that didn't quite see him, and said nothing.]

[founderinglight]

[Another little blue flash, bringing Izunia back to the ground some ten or so feet from his brother. Close enough to look him over thoroughly, hopefully far enough away to not seem like an immediate threat.]

Ardyn? Gods, you've - you've aged.

[Izunia looks, strangely and almost too precisely and uncannily, like the form Ardyn had left behind in the Fantasy Sweet, just blue-eyed and dressed in different, pure-black clothing. There's perhaps a shred more hair growth, but nothing in comparison to the messy ponytail Ardyn now sports.]

You've - you've aged, I didn't think it could be real but you -

[burninglight]

[Ardyn wore Lucian black and gray himself now, brought down from the intricate layers and long coat with the only immediately notable color apart from violet hair the orange scarf at his throat.]

[He stared as if he hadn't even heard anything spoken, struggling to comprehend what he was looking at. Obviously he knew what his twin brother looked like, had been told he was here, but this...it was already too much to process. How could he just talk like nothing changed, how could he-...even be here?]

...Izunia.

[founderinglight]

[That's okay, he can take all the time he needs, because Izunia is having some kind of experience over here.]

I - yes. In the flesh, this time.

[Unlike the last time they met, which hardly qualified as meeting, ancient kings presiding over the end as shadowy figures of flames and armor.

He wants to touch. He needs to touch, something to keep him from losing himself into that place again. Something to make this real.

For now, a pen slips into his hand from the Armiger, something he can grab onto and squeeze so that he doesn't float away.]

[burninglight]

[Ardyn's thought processes in the past week or so were best compared to a sheet of ice under gradually more weight. Slow cracks turning to spiderweb fissures under one problem after another; Nina's arrest, restoring Kip, meeting so many people he was sure he'd never have crossed path with again, having what he'd refused to acknowledge finally confirmed-]

['But you seemed more daemon than all else; your brother made more king than you. None would have suffered the scourge sitting on the throne.']

[-being away from home with Junpei, Yuuri, Touko, Heart all just as lost--Noctis, ten years younger and rightfully furious, and now-]

['He said you're the most dear person in the world to him. He loved you...didn't you know that?']

[The cracks grew wider, faster, louder like the single herald to a sudden disaster, and all at once the sheet of ice broke to the danger lying beneath.]

[Ardyn was in front of his brother in a flash of red, right hand curled into a fist and flying at his jaw much as he'd done to Xander not too long ago.]

[founderinglight]

[It's still overwhelming for the both of them, it's -

Is that the sort of feeling it is?

Well, if you consider the feeling of a fist slammed in your jaw knocking you flat on your ass because you didn't even try to dodge, yes. Izunia only barely moves with the blow, just enough to keep it from breaking anything, and down he goes.

It isn't that he didn't see it coming. He just didn't even try.]

...Can't say I don't deserve that.

[His pen flicks back into his Armiger, because he doesn't need it when he's using one hand to push himself off the dirt and the other to trace along his jaw. That's going to look nasty in an hour or two.]

[burninglight]

Shut up. You...you...how could you--

[Eloquent as he was, lately Ardyn found words utterly failed him sometimes.]

[founderinglight]

Because I'm a fucking idiot, next question.

[Probably not the phrasing of that sentiment Ardyn would have expected to hear.]

[burninglight]

[Were you getting up?]

[Because that's a kick coming at your ribs next, Izunia.]

[founderinglight]

[...Naw, that one he'll avoid. He knows what your kicks are like, Ardyn.

Warpf, was that a playing card?]

[burninglight]

[...what even]

Don't run away from me, you coward!

[founderinglight]

...I'm not running anywhere, Ardyn.

[He went like, maybe eight feet?]

I'm just not going to sit there and let you break my ribs with your feet.

[burninglight]

[eight feet too many when ardyn's this angry, honestly.]

Then give me a real answer!

[founderinglight]

I absolutely gave you a real answer, I'm the biggest fool to ever exist, also, then ask a real question!

[burninglight]

Why.

Why...why did you do that to me?

[founderinglight]

...I believed it wasn't you. Just a daemon that took you away from me.

[He closes his eyes, just briefly.]

You're far from the only one with a taste for bloody, dramatic vengeance.

[burninglight]

Oh, and a shared vengeful streak makes me feel so much better regarding how you brutally tortured me.

[founderinglight]

I'm not going to claim that was I did wasn't beyond terrible, Ardyn.

...I'm sorry. I know it is worth less than nothing, but it is the truth.

[burninglight]

An apology no more fixes what you did to me than it rectifies what I've done to Noctis and so many others. Truth or not, I don't need your pathetic appeals to my sympathy or humanity.

I know why you did what you did. But I will never forgive you for it.

[founderinglight]

I know. But, I -

[But what?

Faced with the Ardyn before him, he suddenly surges with an emotion he can't name, can hardly understand. But - ]

But I, too, have chosen to live.

[But faced with the Ardyn before him, he cannot cower and hide away. He cannot be any less than what he is -

Because he can't stand to meet his brother on anything less than equal footing, or at least as equal as he can manage to make it.And so even if the path is frightening, he will straighten his back and walk tall into it.

Not only Ardyn, but the people who have reached out to him here - they deserve no less.]

[burninglight]

You think me so vengeful that I would demand equal payment for what's been done? Once, perhaps--but I am not going to kill you even if part of me may want it.

I'm neither you nor the monster you drove to utter madness. Your blood will not be on my hands.

[founderinglight]

That isn't a matter of living, Ardyn. Only existing.

I think we're both old enough now to know the difference.

[burninglight]

It doesn't matter to me. Do whatever you will--live, survive, or pitch yourself off a cliff for all I care.

But if you come near me or my family, you will quickly find the limits of my patience.

[founderinglight]

...I suppose now is a bad time to mention that your alternative to living in the woods is a fairly small research station, isn't it.

[Like. He can't imagine you wanting to live in the woods, even with how hoboish you look right now.]

Large enough to have some space, but not nearly large enough to avoid anyone.