⇨ JAILHOUSE ROCKS

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone who IS imprisoned, brainwashed, or infiltrating.
When: Day 175, 11:30PM onward.
Where: The Prince's shiny new fortress.
What: Those that have been imprisoned by the Prince languish in their underground cell, while those that are under his control continue to do his nasty bidding. Also, Foster might be here? We'll see how that goes.
Warnings: General fuckery, maybe torture.

THE LAIR OF THE BEAST↴ As the fortress comes into being, the Prince has been reaching far across his realm, beckoning his servants back to him and corralling as many helpless hostages as he can manage. In the case of the unfortunate carnival members who made the mistake of crossing him during their stay, they are being locked away in the most secure inner sanctums, held as collateral against their former master. Those freshly captured haven't yet been bent to his will, but they can certainly be neutralized. Carted away by security and pulled deep underground, there feels like there is little hope of them escaping on their own. ► GROUNDED: The Prince's dungeon is a simple one - in place of cages and manacles, there is only natural stone. A claustrophobic cave somewhere deep in the earth, those within it will soon be completely cut off from the outside world. All the prisoners will have been injected with manticore venom at some point or another, which will be slowly turning parts of their bodies to stone, and if that wasn't enough they have also been partially encased in the stone walls and pillars, as if phased halfway into the rock and left there in various positions. It is an enclosed area, and all the prisoners are within talking distance of each other - which is a good thing, because there isn't a lot else to do with their powers mostly bound and their bodies becoming less and less capable of movement. ► CONTROLLED: Those of the brainwashed that manage to return to the fortress will be set to work guarding and attending to these hostages, along with the help of some of the long term Manor servants. They still need to eat, right, and that can be difficult when you arms are stuck in a cave wall. Otherwise, there may come a time when the Prince calls upon them to do something more specific - and there's also the chance that the new prisoners will fall victim to his power and succumb to his control as well. With the poison in their bodies, it's only a matter of time before they lose themselves.

Comments

o ... t a i guess

[whattaprick]

Lambert is stuck in a wall. Literally stuck in a wall.

Thanks to the fairly extensive amount of petrification he had going on before he ended up here, he's embedded in the stone more or less up to mid-thigh. One arm is trapped halfway in the wall, and he's turned facing towards it, severely limiting his range of movement. Unfortunately, it also doesn't mean he can see into the rest of the room. Tragically, the room can see plenty of him -- he's obviously lost his clothes at some point upstairs, but at least his tail and the rocks and all the mud he's plastered with keep that from being an immediate offender for delicate sensibilities. It's not enough to obscure the scratches and bites over his bare skin where Sans got his teeth and claws in, but that's the least of his problems right now...

"Damn," Lambert mutters out loud, to no one in particular. His voice is a harsh, scratchy mess -- surprisingly, it turns out, breathing fireball after fireball kind of fucks your throat up. "Pissing's going to be a bitch."

That's what you get when you have a fae for a captor, complete disregard for mortal bodily functions! Above all else, he's exhausted, but he can tell he isn't alone, so he's going to announce to the room in general:

"If no one needs me for anything, I'm taking a nap." Whatever's happening up there, he knows the Prince isn't happy about it, considering he hasn't returned to cackle smugly about his own cleverness. Mission accomplished, as far as Lambert's fucking concerned.

[pipers_son]

Eventually, Joker takes a break from singing, and takes a glance over to his fellow supervisor. The only one in here is Sans, who has.... clearly seen better days.

Then again, Lambert might literally have mud up his asshole, so the jury could be out on that one.

"At least ya probably won't get it on yerself," he says, letting his voice take a rest from carrying a note. "Probably."

OPEN

[anti_nonsense]

If you were hoping for some peace and quiet while enduring your imprisonment, there won't be much of it to be had with Rita around. She's not screaming or flailing like she was when she was dragged in, but she's been mumbling to herself for a while.

She hangs from a wall, suspended by her two wings and her left arm, which have been trapped within the wall itself. Her legs, too, have been encased in the stone, though what little of them stick out remain covered by her dirtied and rain-soaked dress. Her only movable limb is her right arm, which itself isn't entirely free. At some point, her shoulder was injected with venom, and from the wound, a layer of stone has spread over the entire shoulder, over her upper arm, chest, and even to her neck.

Though much of her mumbling is too low and rapid to be coherent, one might occasionally make out a phrase, like o infernal emperor, rise from the depths, or grant them thy undefiled fury. They're magic incantations, of course, though to those not in the know, it might sound almost like she's praying. Those "prayers" appear to go largely unanswered, however, though sometimes they seem to be followed with a rush of heat in the air, a mild rumbling in the ground, or the appearance of harmless sparks from her gesturing hand.

Occasionally, her lack of success leads to a burst of frustration, as she grunts and curses and smacks her one movable fist against the wall.

[whattaprick]

Eventually Lambert wakes up enough to register who's actually here, after a fitful nap (meditation is really hard when you're full of poison, who knew) and he realizes he's hearing a particularly familiar sort of chanting. His back is to her, so he can't see her, but he'd know Rita's cursing anywhere.

"Not having any luck?" he calls, twisting around to look back as best as he can (that's not saying very much).

open

[wild_magic]

So being captured sucks.

Somehow, despite how many adventures he's gone on and how reckless he could be, this was the first time he'd found himself actually caught, and it wasn't a fun first experience. He still had a free arm, and he was quick to try and summon up his magic, to cast something to get himself out, but it was no use. He could feel the magic, it was still there, but he couldn't make it work, couldn't control it. His attempts to summon his familiar were useless, too.

Even having his brother here isn't helping, as he can't help but feel responsible for him being here, too. Maybe he shouldn't have tried to help Reira? He thought he was doing the right thing, but maybe he only made things worse.

It didn't matter what he thought, though, it all still lead to this, to being trapped here with whatever was going on outside, without knowing what was going to happen. Normally it's hard to get him down, normally he always thinks things will end up okay, but normally he has his magic. Normally he can do something.

And so that leads to now, to Susan not saying anything, remaining uncharacteristically quiet as he tries to figure out just where he went wrong.

[mylastchance]

Like Susan Lauren only has one appendage trapped in stone. Unlike Susan, it's his feet. On the one hand, he can sit. On the other, Susan can't. He makes himself stand whether he wants to or not, just because he feels bad if he can be comfortable while his brother can't.

"You in there?"

OPEN

[osteothropy]

Sans is having a bad time of things.

Things had been so clear, right before the fight began. Yet, since it ended, since his other form crumbled and he was dragged down into the mud, only to wind up here... everything is unbearably twisted and confusing. Maybe having his whole mind taken from him was more merciful than leaving him like this, unable to sort out reality from the lie.

All he knows is that he's trapped and hurting, and whatever he's supposed to be doing for the Prince, he is apparently doing it very poorly. He's naked and stuck with most of his legs, pelvis, and arms embedded in one of the natural stone pillars. One half of his face is still cracked from hitting the ballroom floor, and there are hairline fractures along his arms and ribs where the stone covering increasingly large portions of his body wasn't protecting him.

Blue ectoplasm drips from the cracks, as does a murky looking brown and purple fluid - the poison. It's dispersed so thickly in his bones right now he's practically swimming in it, and without the stabilization of the enchantment keeping him together, his mind is in pieces over it. He doesn't know who are his enemies here - the only figure he has any clear relation to the is the Prince, and the Ringmaster as his opposition. Everything else is a mess and he can barely sort out where he is right now.

If it weren't for the fact that you know you have skeleton coworkers, it'd probably be pretty hard to tell that Sans was alive. He's still covered in mud, stone, and the weird magical fluids dripping from his mouth and cracked eye sockets.

In any other dungeon, he'd essentially just be a piece of decor.

[betheman]

Gongenzaka is weak.

He seems to lay on his side-the side with no arm, the side which was struck by poison. His left legs are entirely submerged in stone, and the rocks have reached his mane with ease, a 'bush' coming from the cavern earth. But his right side, as well, is being pulled downward. Up to the thighs on his legs, up to the upper right arm, as it's awkwardly held and angled... It forces his head to the ground, as if bowing.

Or perhaps more like something lowering their head to drink.

He is a mess-clothing torn, still bleeding glowing blood from a few places he was scratched up-Gongenzaka breathes roughly, struggling with so much of his body cemented in place, but he looks around with shining eyes until he can see more clearly.

And when he does, he grimaces. Chokes- "....Sans..."

[whattaprick]

"So, Sans," Lambert drawls eventually, into a rare moment of silence. "Why'd Daddy stick you with us?"

Though he's been aware Sans has been here from him speaking, he can't get a good view of the skeleton, but he can deduce he's restrained just as much as the rest of them. He's refrained from addressing the skeleton since his arrival, largely because there's not much to say. 'You fucked up, I fucked up, now we're both fucked up' isn't much of an opener either.

"I thought he'd keep a good boy like you up top."

[bananaspeedrider]

Meanwhile, there's that one token prisoner who's struggling with futile jerking within his section of stone- breathing toward the stone near where he's sure his feet are somewhere with unfortunately just literal hot air that occasionally flickers weakly at best with the sound of a flat 'pwww...fsshh'

"Dammit, but there's gotta be some way out of here..!!"

Can't even summon Clear Wing to scout the place, stupid guards took the enchanted dice that was in his pocket and likely brought said artifact straight to the Prince.... basically this all sucks and slowly turning into a jagged stone statue is icing on the top at this rate.

[osteothropy]

"Shut up," Sans growls, a few glowing eyes settling on Yugo in the dim lighting. He's encased in his own stone pillar by his arms an legs, and what's left exposed is naked and covered with blood. "You don't have anybody to blame but yourself. You did this... to yourself..."

[whattaprick]

"Stop squirming," Lambert calls. He knows that voice -- even if they haven't really spoken. It's that kid Yuya hangs out with, the daredevil, and he's certainly full of energy right now, isn't he?

"You're only spreading the poison faster."

[otoko]

"Hmm!" Gongenzaka grumbles a little bit, raising an eyebrow at the...'flame', or literal lack thereof. It is difficult to take much of this seriously, what with how Yuugo took the Prince's accusations. That was maybe...a little too ballsy, after all.

Still. "Save your energy, Yuugo.... ....we must think on how to keep the strength to get out, not spend all of it..."

[pipers_son]

"Throw out the lifeline across the dark wave... There is a brother whom someone should save..."

In the back of his head, a part of Joker can't help but wonder whether this or Hell is worse. Hell, of course, played dirty. They wrapped their captives in cruel, cold iron from throat to wrist to worst. If not for blood going down his throat and knitting up the wounds, he'd still have the scars. Actually, Joker thinks he might still. In his hand, a patch of wood has never looked the same, and he thinks the place where opalized wood shimmers is where an iron knife once drove in to force out a scream.

"Somebody's brother, oh who then will dare, to throw out the lifeline, his peril to share...?"

On the other hand, most of Joker's wings have been stuck into stone, with only a few feathers sticking out awkwardly behind and over his head. (He may have been trying to struggle, you see, which was an interesting sight when every part of him is unnaturally flexible.) His arm is crooked, elbow and the parts attached sunken in as well which leaves only his wooden arm. This would be an issue enough, but the damn gargoyle didn't even put him upright. Instead, he's slouched against the wall, legs awkwardly spread out before him.

It's turning to stone, as if the patch on his face wasn't problem enough. So what does he do, while he still has a mouth that's of flesh instead of stone?

"Throw out the lifeline, throw out the lifeline, someone is drifting away..."

Mhm. Yeah.

While it's not a song that's being belted out by any means, simply a quiet melody under Joker's breath, the dungeons of the Prince are rather cave-like. The acoustics mean it's easy for even quiet noise to carry, and they are all stuck together no matter how much they might not like it. It's clear that Joker's not doing this for lackadaisical reasons, however. There's no smile on his face, no ease, and his bright pink eyes are focused straight ahead. Constantly, never staying still, his fingers knead and flex.

Scout isn't here. Papyrus isn't here. Childermass, apparently, got up to something.

The Prince is in a panic and a fit.

Add that all together, and surely they must have done something- who did what doesn't matter. What does is that they've got him on the run. All Joker can do is sit and wait while the Ringmaster does whatever it is she needs to do.

...Well. That, and sing quietly to himself. Joker is pretty sure if he doesn't keep himself occupied, he's going to slip into the same paralyzed panic from the start of the ball. Useless, and vulnerable, and too easy to exploit. Who knows what the Prince will try to do to them while they're in his hands, or what their rescuers will need of them when they get here.

So, he keeps singing, shifting occasionally as best he can in his position, much like he used to when he was younger and in the gutters.

"Throw out the lifeline with hand quick and strong..."

[wild_magic]

It takes a while for Susan to stop being caught up in his own thoughts. He's worried and honestly more than a bit scared, his magic being inaccessible only serving to exasperate that. But there's only so long a kid like Susan can stay stuck in his head, and eventually he turns to the others to find something else to latch onto.

Joker is fun, Joker is nice, and so that means that, to a dumb kid needing a distraction and needing something other than worrying about himself and his brother, Joker is good to pay attention to. He maybe can't quite make out all the words, since he's singing quietly, but it's hard to not hear it with how close they all are.

He swallows to try and keep the waver out of his voice as he speaks up.

"You can sing louder, we can all hear you anyway." Maybe then it'd be easier to not think about this stuff any more.

[anti_nonsense]

It's no surprise for Rita to see Joker here. He was caught shortly before she was, and in roughly the same way. If anything, she’s a little surprised that everyone else who was caught ended up in the same place as them. Not that she’s complaining about that part. It means she can tell who isn’t here; who made it. There’s good news to be found in that.

But the mood here is anything but celebratory, and a soft, melancholy song fills the silence between them. It’s not a bad song, exactly, but the very act of singing in a situation like this just strikes her as weird. She doesn't get it.

"Hey," she speaks up, turning her body slightly to face him. "You better not be freaking out over there."

GONGENZAKA

[betheman]

Focus | Early Jail-Time

[betheman]

His soul cannot be summoned.

Gongenzaka notices this the moment he's locked into place, his consciousness swimming through a haze of poison and earth as he is 'settled' into awkward rest. Half of him, the side that was well covered with stone already, is practically sunk into the floor. If he had an arm on that side still, it'd no doubt be just as submerged. The rest is more awkwardly laid to the ground-hoof and paw alike on all three of the other limbs stuck down, forcing his arm at an awkward angle while his head occasionally rests upon the floor.

Yet somehow, he seems to have an expression of serenity. A look of calm, his eyes shut....and as his aura glows into faint visibility it can be clear why. No matter the spell he uses, if meditation is involved, and a focus of energy is there, an aura matching his soul shines off his form-it creates a faint look of icy blue, and occasionally his ears twitch while Gongenzaka frowns.

Finally, with a choking gasp, one which breaks into coughs, he shakes himself, and the glow fades. "Khh.... If I...the man Gongenzaka...were not so certain of the source of my weakness in this moment....I would say I was misreading the energy around us now..."

"Yet....I...the man Gongenzaka....feel as though the very walls are alive..."

LATE IMPRISONMENT

[betheman]

By the time numerous hours have passed, and a meal or two has come and gone, Gongenzaka is deathly silent compared to when they were first brought in. A slow decrease, but a startling one indeed, for those who have paid attention to it. Food could not be given to him in any manner that could be called clean, either-his head stuck near the ground and against it as it was, he could only feebly use a vine or two to scoop things inward, left to lap at the liquids with his tongue. His cuts no longer bleed-but they still have dried, slightly glowing crusts of blood as they scab over, the marks somewhat illuminated by now faint faemarks that only in the dark can be seen shining under his leaves. The clothes he wore in have, as well, since been tattered apart. Pulled off by relative force of motion from vines and things, or even from more accomodating servants, if only to give a fragment of comfort in this place.

And his face is a mess, but not as much as the rest of him. It is now more than ever, as though he is one with the earth itself, a pathetic beast sunk into the mire with only his once proud mane to identify him. The leaves and flowers seem half wilted-the vines, or their shredded leftovers, hung along the ground as stone crawls along even those. His arm has long since been forced from its awkward crook in order to be pulled under-a lump of stone, against which his face must rest. And he is tired-but he does not allow himself to sleep, merely closing his eyes to meditate in the traditional sense.

To gather his thoughts.

To hold them close.

To keep in mind, no matter how heavily he is poisoned, that he is him.

But even as he meditates and strains to focus himself, what fragments of aura can be displayed seem somehow, in this time, tainted.

⇨ THE PRINCE RETURNS (EVENING DAY 176)

[npcarnival]

It's not until the next evening that the Prince returns to his prisoners in any meaningful sense. Servants have been in and out, handling feeding and other necessary housekeeping, but otherwise the dungeon has been left alone. The air is stagnant and increasingly oppressive, any smells being generated in the area onto becoming more thick with time.

There is no sense of time to being here. The only way to guess at measuring is by the routine of the servants, and even that might be off. Is time even real in a Faerie Realm?

At last, though, the Prince returns to his subjects. An ambient light enters the room the same moment he does, through a staircase tunnel that appears effortlessly in the rock. He doesn't bother speaking to any of them as he approaches - for all he's concerned they may as well not be there. That is, except for one.

He looks over Sans with a distant, clinical gaze. The skeleton is obviously getting increasingly worse for wear, through a combination of magical poisoning and general exhaustion. His derisive behaviour has only been getting more incoherent and futile as the day goes on, whatever enchantments that are controlling him seeming to wear away at his ability to form reasonable thoughts, like someone with a high fever.

Silently, the Prince will begin to place his claws against the places on Sans's bones where he is cracked, where the area of monster flesh will shift into stone, the cracks repairing themselves.

It will take him a few minutes to do this, so if you want to yell stuff at him, here is your chance.

[betheman]

"You...." Gongenzaka is far from the picture of health, himself. He sniffs the air, and snarls despite his own weakness, barely able to move his head. He has enough strength however, to see what is happening, and even if he can do nothing, he cannot stay silent.

"Get your hands OFF HIM..!!" he roars, the leaves of his back rustling while he yells. "You've tainted his soul ENOUGH!!"

after ___ is taken; night of the 176th

[whattaprick]

In the wake of the Prince's exit, taking the skeleton with him to do whatever the hell it is he plans to do with him, the quiet lasts for all of one minute before Lambert speaks up, his face lit by the flames he can't entirely suppress curl around his lips.

"All right." In the dim light of the cavern, with the mud finally drying and flaking off his skin, the fae marks that drape over his body like a chain of letters hung over his shoulders are a steady, golden glow peeking through the cracks. The petrification's progress seems to have stopped, finally, but he's tired and angry and just had to watch someone's name get ripped from them. He's not in a pleasant mood.

"I don't know about the rest of you," he continues, "But I'm not interested in staying here and being a bargaining chip." Because there's no doubt in his mind: that's all they are, right now. Not everyone here stepped into this with that in mind, but they deserve to know at least part of the reason they're even in this mess to start with.

"We're here because the Prince wanted to get the Ringmaster to grant him a favor. Marrying him, apparently." He looks at the ceiling, frowning. "I get the feeling he wouldn't shut up if we were in for some happy nuptials, so I don't think he got what he wanted. But we need a better plan than waiting until we turn into garden sculptures, so let's start thinking."

[ ooc; this basically exists as a spot for lambert to catch characters up on plot and noodle out potential escape routes. :|b feel free to tag in any order or threadjack as appropriate. ]

[mylastchance]

Lauren realizes Lambert is trying to be calm and rational and make a plan for all this, but unfortunately at the exact moment all of Lauren's calm has flown out the window.

"I'm sorry, but what the fuck just happened?"

He's still a little hung up on the whole magic identity destroying skeleton man in intense pain ritual.

177

[espigeon]

Julien arrives in the dungeon and pauses. He's using his bird body here, a huge pigeon with scales made of stone now, and that was kind of a mistake. He's too big, and it's too dark and close here.

"Hmm. I was expecting cells or shackles. Better than the underbelly? Worse?" He realizes that he's thinking out loud. Julien shakes his head in the blurring-fast way animals do, as if to fling things off of it, and tries again to focus. Why did he decide to come here again? The Prince hadn't ordered him. This could be dangerous. He dips his head and picks at feathers around the leather collar on his neck. They're getting sparse and patchy and plucking like this hurts. He wants to think it clears his head.

Julien still has his name, but he also has the dull certainty that that's only continuing until the Prince decides to take it away. He can't seem to think straight, he knows he has to - wants to? has to? did someone give him an order? - go here and do something. "I think... I was going to say that the one who was the warden, he was here? The Carnival has him now."

[whattaprick]

It's that bird. The one who helped find them in a tree in the Summerlands, the same one who raised a warning on the radio that would have been a lot more appreciated if it hadn't ended in the Warden getting fucking caught. Lambert doesn't have a lot of kindness or patience in him at the best of times, but with exhaustion gnawing at him despite his best attempts to stay focused -- wondering if the fox girl took his message to LeFlamme, if anything came of it, if he really is going to die in this hole -- it's going to take him a moment to process that.

"What?"

Yeah, that's all he's got for your initially, Julien. Just a 'what.'

176 Middayish

[scientificist]

Freshly redressed in a servant outfit (that really isn't all too far from the Victorian formalwear he wore to the party), Herbert enters the room the same as any previous servants: through a door that appears in the rock wall. His hair is a bit rucked up like he's been running hands through it, even though he looks calm and unaffected in the dim cave lighting. Or, mostly. His mouth is a little too tight for complete calm, his fingers a little too white-knuckled and clenched on the rim of the bowl he's carrying, clenched against his chest in the loop of his left arm.

The bowl is full of round objects, which as he approaches, reveal themselves to be onions. He has a bowl of onions. Simple yellow onions for what's about to be an absolutely ridiculous feeding time.

"Who's awake." The words are curt, almost pulled out of him. "Who wants to go first, I hh-ave." He looks at the bowl, breathes in through his teeth. "Onions..." It trails off, nearly into a question, like he's realised there might be something off about this. The uncertainty gets pulled back in fairly quickly, though and he reaches into the bowl, grabbing an onion and brandishing it up at eye level.

[anti_nonsense]

"Onions?" echoes a feminine voice from one of the walls, where a teenaged girl is partially suspended just above the ground, her wings and one arm trapped in the stone behind her, her feet similarly stuck below. Rita, still dressed in her teal gown from the ball, a headband of dust-covered flowers on her head, turns to sneer at the man... but pauses, surprise evident on her face.

That is, in fact, a bowl of onions.

"You're joking, right?"

OTA | 176? [TW: SUICIDAL IDEATION, UNLESS REQUESTED OTHERWISE.]

[criticallyfucked]

Foster doesn't really last very long when he's delivered. He's eaten hardly anything at all in going on six days now; nothing of what little he's eaten has been substantial. By the time he's brought down to them and shoved unceremoniously in the wall, he's been running on adrenaline, fumes, and a psychosis-fuelled sense of higher purpose.

Which he failed.

All told, it's probably for the better; he sleeps for hours, waking only when the Prince arrives. He doesn't struggle, or speak, or react at all except to watch in silence, cold-faced. He falls asleep again soon after.

He was actually shoved into the wall backwards, so only his face and his arms protrude from the stone--his arms cut off just above the elbows, one stiff, furry ear bent backwards into the stone.

It's basically like this.

Even on the odd, short intervals where he's awake, though, he won't speak to anyone at all unless addressed directly. He just... stares. Either at his fellow prisoners or at the floor or wall.

He doesn't look happy.

Then again... who does?

[otoko]

Gongenzaka, despite all his fragility, is the one who speaks to Foster eventually. He is quiet-his voice hoarse, and lacking in the strength there would typically be. And yet there is amazement, of all things, in his tone. A respect that Foster no doubt would not want there. It helps, perhaps, that Gongenzaka has never truly had a face to the name, not even after Portland. He does not know quite who it is. Only that they are here.

Late. "....You..." he breathes, looking up from his pathetic position with glowing eyes. "....You....why were you brought here, so long after the others... ....Had you merely been left behind.... ....you would have no doubt been captured sooner....and yet....here you are," he observes, blinking slowly. "...what was it that you were doing..."

The way his words trail off, one could almost wonder if Gongenzaka would be saying anything more. Yet he doesn't say anything else, in the end. He merely remains...quiet. Waiting for an answer of some sort.