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]

...hm. [That was a half-formed laugh, bitter but proud smile coming to Ardyn's face.] He really scared the hell out of you, didn't he?

[founderinglight]

I think only Ignis has ever frightened me more. Thank fuck the doctors here like me even if Strange will probably call me an idiot for allowing such a thing in the first place.

[burninglight]

Oh, he's not even the one you have to worry about.

I'll let you figure out which of them is the most dangerous all on your own.

[founderinglight]

Junpei refused to hit me because I was crying and Yuuri attempted to frighten me off with a sword with a twisted ankle, I think I can guess. I've never even seen someone pull a Royal Arm on their own that easily before, did you know? Usually they need at least a little help from the true owner.

[burninglight]

[That got a real smile from Ardyn, the bright and dangerous sort with only a little malice behind it.]

I could not be less surprised. I've already seen her pull one out once with only a little guidance.

[founderinglight]

[Izunia drags a hand through his hair, not even aware that the gesture was, originally, Ardyn's, it's so ingrained at this point.]

She also did the...

[He stops, for a moment, trying to figure out how to words the thing he's trying to say, and then gives up with a look of frustration. At a flick of his hand, The Blade of the Mystic appears in the air before shooting off in a direction perpendicular to the two of them, embedding itself in a tree and sending a cascade of leaves spiralling down.]

That. She might well have the kind of affinity for Royal Arms that Ignis does for elemancy, you found one hell of a talent.

[burninglight]

[Ardyn laughed, even if it held a spiteful edge.]

Yuuri's magnificent. I'd be careful around her, she's basically Ignis as it is.

[founderinglight]

[Deadpan:]

Oh, good. Someone else can make you eat your vegetables for once.

[He waves his hand again and vanishes the blade from the tree. There's the smallest, most tentative of smiles on his face, too.

This is the brother he missed so dearly. He can hardly believe this is real.]

[burninglight]

Two thousand years without a sense of taste made me a bit less selective, you'll find.

[founderinglight]

And yet you immediately started rotting your mouth out with sweets again, didn't you?

[Such is the power of twins. He might not know you anymore, but no matter what, he knows you.]

[burninglight]

. . .

[Ardyn calmly took a frozen blended coffee with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles out of the Armiger and deadeyed Izunia while taking a long drink from it.]

[founderinglight]

As I thought.

[With equal calmness, Izunia takes a Dr. Jalapeno out of his Armiger, pops the tab, and sips from it.

They're doing this now. This is what's happening.]

[burninglight]

I didn't get a body 3D printed out of thin fucking air just to have standards on what I do with it.

[ardyn...]

[founderinglight]

[... Sip.]

That statement raises so many questions.

[Sip.]

I don't know where this one came from, I think it may have been mental image based. I'm fairly sure we weren't quite this identical, but I can't remember clearly anymore.

[burninglight]

[sssssssssiiiiiiiiiiiip]

It's been a long godsdamned year, Izunia.

[founderinglight]

I may have gotten that impression. You should get your bangs trimmed, they're hiding half your face.

[Sip.]

It's been... a terribly short little-over-two-months.

[burninglight]

I will do no such thing.

[leave him alone, he's actually aging]

...That's all it's been since Insomnia?

[founderinglight]

That's how long I've been here. Time doesn't seem to matter much, considering that Noctis and Prompto are ten years younger than they were then.

[Sip.]

I haven't told them exactly what happens. They deserve that happiness while they can find it.

[burninglight]

Are you stupid, why wouldn't you tell them?!

[oh lord here we go]

If they're that far back, maybe there's a chance to make some kind of difference if they're given some knowledge of what's to become of them.

[founderinglight]

Because I brought the prophecy in general and Prompto immediately had a panic attack and I'm not fucking cruel! How do you think he'd react to hearing that Noctis is already dead when I'm from?!

[burninglight]

How do you think he'd react to knowing it was kept from him? What makes you better than the Draconian in that regard?

[founderinglight]

I -

[He stops, and sighs, the can vanishing from his hand and a pink folding chair appearing behind him so that he can sink into it.]

I don't think sparing people from pain has ever crossed that bastard's mind once in all of eternity. But you're not wrong, either.

[burninglight]

[His own drink disappearing, Ardyn folded his arms.]

I'm well aware, but the point remains. If they don't know, how can they hope to change it?

[founderinglight]

Can it be changed? I don't...

[He puts his face in his hands, exhaling slowly.]

...I haven't had hope in a very long time.

[burninglight]

You straighten the fuck up right now before I strike you again.

[Ardyn himself stood tall at the shift in topic, arms falling to his side and resolve rushing into his voice. It was without doubt the demeanor of a king, even if in name alone, and he stared down Izunia with fire in yellow-gold eyes.]

I refuse that future. I will not accept it, I will not cling to what the gods deem an acceptable loss for the dawn to break and the Accursed to vanish. Neither will I presume their carefully written plan to be the only possible course of action when it costs so much for so many.

You who followed along blindly at the Bladekeeper's words may be willing to see further Lucis Caelum blood shed in sacrifice, but I am not. I will do all in my power to see some universe, some timeline in which His Majesty lives to watch the sun rise with those he so loves, one in which the monster I was shall finally be put to rest.

['My life is nothing. Giving a future to those who want to see it...is everything.']

[Ardyn may never have heard those words spoken, but their sentiment was echoed by him as strongly as it had been in a falling Insomnia. He pressed his left hand to his heart, black and cobalt engagement ring glittering in the light.]

Fate is immaterial. If an unfavorable outcome is written in stone, then the stone itself should be shattered and a new future made where it once stood. Prophecy is naught but the machinations of the Astrals written in verse and presented as gospel to the flawed humans made in an equally flawed divine image.

And if you dare to follow the future as written and accept it as unchanging, then you are a poor excuse for a king and I will make an enemy of you here and now if I must.