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

[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.

[burninglight]

I'm glad you think this is some kind of joke.

[founderinglight]

I'm not joking, I'm informing you of the current situation because the alternative is letting you find out on your own later and get even further distressed over it.

[He's trying to look out for you, bro.]

[burninglight]

I'd rather sleep in a damn tree than be confined anywhere, least of all with you.

[founderinglight]

At least sleep on the beach, it's bound to be more comfortable.

[A pause, and then he sighs, pressing a hand into his face.]

Is there truly no chance of working anything out between us, then?

[burninglight]

I have a family that didn't execute me, and you aren't part of it.

[founderinglight]

I've noticed, I have no idea how I managed to avoid having bruises before now, phasing and quick reflexes aside.

[It's... strangely fond?]

But Junpei said that you and your Noctis worked out some kind of an arrangement.

[burninglight]

Good, I'm glad they've their priorities in order.

['I'm glad someone almost knocked you the fuck out', in other words.]

What if we did? You're not him.

[founderinglight]

...Nevermind, then. Good luck with ours, he's from right around when he fell into crystal sleep as far as I can tell.

[You'll need it, brother dear.]

...They love you very much. I'm glad.

[burninglight]

Is-

[Ardyn broke off and hesitated, approaching the same question from a different angle.]

...Who did you meet apart from Junpei?

[founderinglight]

Yuuri, and... hells, I didn't even get his name, the attractive young man with convictions who could punch out a bloody zu.

[Technically he's also met Touko but he doesn't know she's one of Ardyn's yet so pretend she's in this list if that thread goes there.]

[burninglight]

[For just a split second there was something startled and hopeful on Ardyn's face--Church couldn't exactly punch out a giant bird, but if it was for his king and fiance he'd probably damn well try. Then again...no, that description fit someone else a bit better.]

...that'll be Heart, most likely.

[founderinglight]

...That would explain the particular expression of loathing I bumblefucked into. Hells, no wonder he was vicious.

[burninglight]

Oh, he's wonderfully dangerous.

[If it was possible to sound proud and threatening both at once...well, there you go.]

I chose my glaives wisely, for loyalty as well as willingness to fight.