⇨ THE WYLDLANDS

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone pursuing the Huntsman.
When: Day 134 - Day 140
Where: The Wyldlands
What: Working as scouts from the Summer armies, the carnival makes a dangerous trek into the Wyldlands to find the Huntsman, defeat him, and save the Ringmaster from the Hunt. The day descriptions below are an outline, and details may change based on actions earlier in the week. Overall, though, it will keep the same general locations. You can make up encounters with Wylderkin at any time.
Warnings: Probably violence and gross Huntsman stuff.

HUNTING THE HUNTER↴ Upon first arriving in the Wyldlands, the carnival will find themselves in a scene much like the picture above - strange mountain ranges rise up around them, while thick forest cling to the land between. Every so often, giant silhouettes of Wyld Fae will fly overhead. Thankfully, the Summer Fae have picked an area with plenty of cover to hide in to begin their infiltration, and as the carnival is arriving via teleporation, there will be squadrons of Summerland and Summer Court Fae spreading out and concealing themselves within the trees. They will be following the carnival's trail as they move deeper into the Wyldlands, looking for their guidance to avoid the maw of the Hunt. The carnival Supervisors will be given several golden scrolls that unfurl into small light elementals. These will transmit information between the Summer armies and the carnival at speeds similar to sending a text message. They takes various forms, but most of them are abstract motes of light with wings and tails. When delivering messages, they take the form and voice of whoever gave the message, like a custom hologram that disappears immediately after finishing. After the carnival has been debriefed one more time, they will be sent off ahead to begin their scouting duties. Through a mixture of augury and expertise, the Summer Fae have narrowed down an area the Huntsman should be, as well as designated a general route that will mostly have ground cover. Who knows if it will stay that way, though, with how quickly the Wyldlands change. Much like in the Summer Court, time here is subjective - all sense of time varies between individuals, and the only solid way of knowing when a day is over is to have the light from the sky disappear. All time pieces will perform erratically while here. The carnival will still need to eat and rest, as well, which means that they will have to figure out the best times to set up camp. They have sufficient rations, at least. ► DAY 134: The carnival heads deeper into the forest on the first day of their scouting mission, told to head for a giant tree that they can see on the horizon. Apparently, this tree is a landmark that will remain consistent for the time being. Someone will have to check above the canopy every so often to keep everyone on target, which risks gaining the attention of flying Wyld Fae. There are plenty of Wylderkin around (lesser Wyld Fae that behave more like standard fantasy animals) but overall the journey through this section will not be hugely perilous, as long as they remain cautious and hidden. There will be a Megathread on this day, dealing with some optional and only mildly important Summer Court NPC interactions. ► DAY 135: Early during the next day of travelling, the forest will begin to fill with more and more magical fungi until giant shrooms have almost completely replaced the trees. At first they will seem innocuous, but as their presence becomes more inescapable, it will gradually become apparent than many of the mushrooms are poisonous to the touch - and eating them will be far worse! Those with empathetic connections to plants may be able to determine which are poisonous and which aren't, while some fungi may even have beneficial effects, if they get lucky enough to find and identify them. Generally speaking, though, there are few non-plant creatures around here, due to the fact that everything is toxic, including the swampy water that covers large sections of the ground. There will be no mod directed interactions during this period, besides handling general investigations. ► DAY 136: During the middle of this day, the carnival will finally reach the giant tree. On one hand, the plant-life has become relatively safe again. On the other, the giant tree is the lair of several neutral Wyld Fae who probably won't like the carnival's presence. On the other other hand, maybe those Wyld Fae might be willing to help or offer them directions? It's up to the group to decide if they want to attempt diplomacy, or to stealth past the tree and find their own way. There will be a Megathread on this day, based on however the team decides to handle it. ► DAY 137: Past the area surrounding the big tree, the lush foliage of the forest will begin degrading until nothing is left but dark naked trunks filled with glowing pods of various sizes. It's here that those with a connection to the Hunt will start to get a sense of the Huntsman's presence, and will be drawn in a vague direction. Unfortunately, this will also be their first major brush with the Hunt itself. Hunt patrols skirmish with neutral Wyld Fae in this forest, and the collateral damage of their warfare can be seen all over. The carnival will want to either map out a path through the trees that the fighting can be avoided for the sake of the Summer troops, or give them enough data to be able to handle the threat. How this portion goes will partly depend on the outcome of the previous day's Megathread. ► DAY 138: The forest will open up into the beginnings of a mountain range, with flowing water, luminescent plant life, and the occasional cluster of crystals sprouting from the earth. There are large parties of Hunt controlled Wyld Fae patrolling this area, and so making it through will require careful navigation. As the path becomes more and more mountainous, it will be possible to find routes that mostly avoid the patrols - this information will need to be communicated back to the Summer troops. There will be a Megathread here dealing with a Hunt patrol encounter. ► DAY 139: The mountains will continue to steepen, and the crystal formations will grow more huge and consistent. The air is always cloudy, and the air condition is bad, making it harder to breathe. Weather will become more and more unfavorable the higher into the mountains the carnival gets, with cold winds and lightning that frequently strikes the crystals and causes them to send out bursts of destructive energy. Paths will occasionally crumble. There is still a heavy Hunt presence, here, though they keep to safer trails - the best way to avoid them may indeed be taking the most dangerous routes. It's probably better than being mauled to death by beasts, though. Some distant mountain tops look like the might be volcanoes. There is almost no plant-life here, besides the most stubborn of brambles. By this point, the pull of the Huntsman has grown much stronger. ► DAY 140: The sky clears enough to show a deep red skyline. Barren cliffs are punctuated with rivers of lava, and paradoxically vibrant trees and foliage in erratic spurts. The those in the carnival with a connection to the Hunt will find themselves drawn to a valley in the center of the rocks, absolutely filled with Wyld Fae and other slaves gathered from around the multiverse. This will be the final encounter, and the carnival may have to trust in their Wyld Fae disguises to make it through. There will be multiple Megathreads here, detailing the encounter with the Huntsman and bringing this log to an end.

Comments

[starseedling]

Steven wouldn't have seen it coming. His thoughts are almost completely outside his body, trying to guide the Ringmaster through this. The rest of his strength is going onto using his healing capabilities - he'd raised the dead before, maybe he could bring back the Life in her somehow. He tries not to think about how much this hurts, and in some ways, it's easy. When there's so much pain all around him he can't really internalize what part of it belongs uniquely to him.

It's actually through the Ringmaster's emotions that he becomes truly aware of what just happened. There's a surge of confusion and defensiveness - and then loss and dismay. Something has just slipped away from them, and they didn't do anything to stop it.

Steven opens his eyes, trying to bring himself back into the real world - but the moment he does, his legs give out under him, and he slips to the ground right next to where Amethyst fell. He hears her speak, and it's a found he couldn't forget. It's the sound of a cracking gem.

He doesn't know what happened. Someone... attacked them? Frost attacked them. Frost. Frost did. Frost, that fucking bastard-

Those thoughts aren't his own. His own thoughts are completely focused on Amethyst, even as his vision swims. He crawls to her side and tries to lift her up, to cradle where her broken gem is... finding tears, this time, is not difficult.

"Amethyst..." he blearily looks around him, and he can see she isn't the only one. Yuya, Gongenzaka, Childermass... "Guys?" What just happened? He can't take it. He can't heal everyone - even now, his own strength is fading more quickly than he can give it away.

"Guys..."

[moonfang]

Zangetsu misses the shower of deathly ice shards by virtue of being a distance away. He can only watch as the people he's grown close to these past months go down, one by one -- all because of that stupid pixie, and the stupid Huntsman, and Winter's stupid goddamn meddling.

Besides that, he still needs the Ringmaster. He needs her alive, to help save his world. He wants his stuff back. But more than all that, he wants to make Frost suffer for how he's made his friends suffer. He feels their souls flicker, beginning to fade. He kicks off the ground, cloaking his blade in dark energy. He raises it high above his head, red-edged blackness swirling around it.

"Getsuga--!"

He slashes downward.

"TENSHOU!"

A crescent-shaped arc of pure soul energy surges toward Frost at incredible speed, joining the volley of attacks on the pixie.

[drrdrrdrr]

Amethyst weakly lifts a hand when she hears Peridot's voice, but her arm just sort of unspools onto the ground. When Steven tries to lift her up her head falls onto the floor. It's goofy as shit but it does mean she is dying; it takes an effort for her to burble out, "KO uoy era, nevetS..."

[whattaprick]

Childermass staggers into Lambert, and it's a miniscule difference that black ice slams into the gap between bones instead of through Lambert's neck. The witcher whirls, in time to see the shard protruding from Childermass's shoulder, and his eyes widen.

He's too well-trained to drop the light he's holding on to, but it's a near thing. He grabs Childermass as best as he can, supporting his weight and struggling to keep him to his feet. If it's any kin to the magic the Hunstman used on the Ringmaster, he already knows, it's over. Childermass isn't the embodiment of life and death, isn't a miracle. He's the man Lambert loves, and he's dying, with no guarantee that magic held in the shells lying dormant in a pocket dimension will bring them back.

"No." Lambert doesn't scream or shout his denial, ears pinning back against his head as he tries to brace Childermass with one arm, offering the only support he can, because he's got fuck-all to fix this and his voice is choking with useless rage and tears. "No, not like this--"

They'd been so fucking close.

[scientificist]

Shoe of principle thrown, Herbert slips off the other one to improve his balance and hunches for a moment. Considering it was just ice, it really is incredibly painful. Draining. He really could have used it hitting his arm, really, glancing off void metal.

But he has better things to do than yell at a pixie. Clenching his jaw, he straightens and walks the rest of the way to the Ringmaster, checking for whatever part of her is the most fleshy. And then, unless she or someone else actively stops him, he goes to inject her with reagent.

[atouts]

Childermass manages to keep his legs under him with the support from Lambert, though he does lean heavily against the witcher just to do so. For something so simple looking, the chill it causes to spread through him from his shoulder is startling. He shouldn't be bothered by the cold. He's gotten so used to it by now and then this happens? How can he freeze to death after everything that's happened, everything that's been changed about him? Isn't that unfair?

He reaches up, hand hovering over where it the shard is stuck. Black ice to go with black blood and black clothing, he supposes. He doesn't touch it, though, thinking better of it even as he answers Lambert's choked words with his own fading voice, "It's only my shoulder. I've had worse. This... this won't even leave a scar, I'm sure..."

[npcarnival]

Ignatius hates the fact that he wasn't anticipating this. He got too distracted with everything else. The idea of all the carnival members wasting away in here had preoccupied his thoughts, to the point that he didn't keep an eye out for an ambush.

He can't help but feel like he should have done better.

One of the ice shards strikes him in the side, though the ribs, and the feeling is immediately familiar. It's the kind of thing that is rare but expected on the battlefield. He received a wound similar to this a long time ago, before being captured by the Winter Court. The associations are immediately unpleasant.

The ice part doesn't bite as hard as it might have in the past, though. That part he has some control over. As for the rest... he doesn't scream or panic. After feeling the hit, he just exhales as calmly as he can imagine, and lets go of the Ringmaster so that he can take a knee on the ground.

He visually confirms that Rita hasn't been hit. Then, he siphons some of his own strength through the connection in their Hearts.

"Rita," he manages, his voice a bit muffled by the tar-like fae blood that's now in his mouth. He is clearly focusing very hard on staying calm. "Do something about him, could you?"

He doesn't trust himself to control his own magic after taking a hit like this, so he funnels what he can to Rita instead

[anti_nonsense]

As the shards fly towards those nearest to the Ringmaster, Rita lunges forward, hoping to share in the protection of Yuya's shield, as she has before. She doesn't make it there in time, but she gets close enough to clearly see the black shard pierce through the boy.

"Yuya--!" she chokes out in horror, stopping dead in her tracks.

That magic... Death... And he isn't the only one struck with it. Childermass, and... As she spots Ignatius, her gaze is transfixed on that shard in his side, her fists tightening so hard her knuckles turn white. It's all she can do to keep from shaking. She looks up at Frost with rage in her eyes, opens her mouth to yell something...

But she stops as Ignatius speaks. Do something about him? She would have thought he'd tell her to get away. Of course she wants to rip that little freak to shreds, but his encouragement is unexpected. That is, until she feels a surge of power in her heart, and immediately, she understands.

"You're dead!" she shrieks at Frost, seemingly having lost whatever other words she was trying to muster up a moment earlier. In an instant, her body erupts into pale white flames, and it's in this elemental form that she launches herself into the air and charges at Frost. She conjures in one hand a whip made of more of the same flames, and as Rin's own fire flies at him, she moves at a different trajectory before lashing out with the blazing weapon, hoping to catch Frost should he try to evade that first attack.

[alphudo]

Yuusei's further proximity from the Ringmaster allows him to avoid becoming a target to Frost's strike, and he can thusly only watch in horror as the shards of ice shoot forward toward those giving a more productive effort. He can only hope that everyone will make it out alright. It's hard to tell from here, but the magic emanating from the strikes feels stiflingly cold and heavy.

Being closer to the back, however, puts him closer to Frost himself. He's never encountered this pixie himself before, but it was obvious from the beginning he was nothing but trouble to show up. With the culmination of everyone's rage, right now...

Yuusei lunges at Frost himself, intending to grab him and hold him still with two sets of arms while the pixie anticipates the others' attacks, hoping that his own lack of magic will keep attention off of him. The least he can do is help everyone stay on target with the little bastard.

[bananaspeedrider]

Yugo stayed further behind as well, working to ignore the nagging will of the Huntsman. As much as he felt the urge to similarly encourage the Ringmaster with raw and heartfelt words, self-doubt reared up its ugly head again.

But then eventually Frost appears, making what's already gone to a slow and agonizing hell thanks to that fog of death. One by one the carnival seems to begin to fall...

"Yuya...!!!" It's bad enough when he can see that Carly won't last much longer, he has to get over there!

And so he moves to do exactly that. There's nothing of use in his skillset, but emotion rules over logic.

[whattaprick]

"Stupid bastard," Lambert chides, voice choked. "You can teleport."

Childermass might be managing his bravado, but the witcher can feel what he can't: his body losing the strength to hold itself up. Exhausted as he is, he can't hold both of them up for long, either, so they end up awkwardly crumpling to the ground, half-sagging against the Ringmaster's shuddering corpse.

The Ringmaster. Lambert raises his head, teeth gritted, and looks at the hulking, rotted corpse of her, hearing the rest of the Carnival hurl themselves at Frost -- though for all they know, it's only to fling themselves onto more of the same black ice that's already claimed more than a few of their number.

"Come on!" he shouts hoarsely. "Snap out of it! Are you just going to let him take it all without a fight?!"

There really probably isn't any real harm he can do to the embodiment of Life and Death by hitting it ... but that's what Lambert does, anyway: clumsily whacks the nearest bit of bone he can reach with the misshapen lump of Creation's light he's still holding in his hand. The impact is more than his faltering grip on the spell can stand; when it makes contact, it bursts apart into scattered motes of light, leaving only the other Carnival members to keep the shadows at bay.

[hippocarnival]

Yuya coughs, mustering what strength he has to lift his head and see what's going on. He sees Ignatius first, a wound cut through his ribs. He lulls his head to Gongenzaka, also struck, and the chaos goes on from there. They're already...

He shifts, letting out a cry of pain as he jostles the shard wedged into him and slumps back against the Ringmaster. His fingers twitch, brushing against her before Yuya closes his eyes with a sigh and focuses.

The light from his hands almost dims, but not quite. Instead it starts to quickly build up again, a smaller hope standing against the loss of illumination from Lambert as he focuses on sharing his energy with the Ringmaster--this time to rejuvenate her. He doesn't have a lot left, but--if he can just get her started, that's enough, isn't it?

"We didn't... give up on you," Yuya rasps. "So you--you can't give up..."

[spaghettimonster]

There's no signs of bindings on her legs on this side, no signs of injuries - except, well, the entirety of her. Or at the very least Papyrus can't see any, not between his usual vision and the way the painful fog has his eyesockets prickling and watering.

But it seems like she's lashing out less, as if everyone's encouraging words are getting through to her, and that's promising. He turns back, planning to walk around past the cluster at her face and check the legs on her other side - walking to save the energy of blue magic for getting everyone to safety out of this fog, as soon as they have a plan where to go...

When Frost appears. And the fae barely announces himself before there's shards of ice flying everywhere.

It's a normal-looking sort of magic, perfectly familiar aside from the odd coloration, and Papyrus tosses a few bones up to block the projectiles almost as an afterthought. But the errant shard of ice in his direction doesn't get blocked; it cuts right through the bone bullet and continues at him, stabbing through the metal and into bone.

It hurts, a lot, but everything already hurts, so he grits his teeth to keep going towards everyone's shouting... and makes it only a few steps before his leg buckles under him.

"Huh...?" He looks down to see dust trickling out of the puncture in his hip's coppery shell, a quick tap of a knuckle on his hip results in a hollow, metallic clang "Oh. Oh."

Maybe he's dying. Papyrus looks away from it, trying to put it out of mind, and squints towards the others' silhouettes in the fog ahead to take note who's fallen and who hasn't. His brother's standing. A lot of people... aren't. And there's a lot of unhappy voices.

Maybe... there's no sense in saving his energy. Papyrus looks up towards wherever Frost's fluttering at, focuses, and does his best to ping the fae blue - to drop him to the ground, hard. Maybe somebody who didn't get hurt can talk him into not killing anyone else.

...Or, maybe one of the others can 'convince' him to stay here, and not hurt anyone else. Maybe that would be fine, too.

[osteothropy]

Sans's mistake comes mostly from aiming too high. There was only a few seconds to react, after all. He saw that some kind of projectiles were about to be launched, and he did the thing that seemed the most likely to save the most people. Maybe if he had prioritized, maybe if he hadn't tried to do everything, it would have worked.

He'd summoned a portal in the way of Frost's trajectory, hoping to redirect the shards away from the entire group. Unfortunately, the shards had no interest in participating in his spell, and shattered right through it instead of disappearing into a pocket dimension. It's over very quickly, and his death senses sing. The looming threat of death is gone and real, present death is here.

He thinks about attacking, about just latching onto the aggression the Huntsman has been trying to coax out of him and going on the attack. There's so many other angry people here, though, so many people who want to fight. Maybe he doesn't. For once, he wishes he could just fix something instead...

Papyrus is hit. Carly is almost certainly already dead. Amethyst's gem looks like it's about to break. He thinks about souls and how if you lose them, they're gone forever. Will the egg dimension work with all this death in the way? Has the magic of death destroyed their souls as well?

He summons up his angelic aura and dives down towards those that have fallen, latching onto what memory he has of guiding souls during his time as an angel. It was his job to make sure they got to the right place.

As the others fight, he reaches out for the souls that may be ready to depart, aiming to shelter them in angelic magic. He doesn't know how long he can hold it but he has to try. He lands next to Papyrus, putting a hand on his shoulder in particular, that angelic radiance bright in every bone.

"H-Hold on, bro," he says. "I've got you."

[npcarnival]

There's a lot that comes flying at Frost all at once, and he's clearly expecting it. He wasn't just going to kill a bunch of people and not expect any payback, after all! Revenge makes the world go round.

So when the first attacks come, from Syrlya and Rin, he's already got a shield on the read and is quickly moving away. The flames smash away chunks of the shield, but the death fog seems to diminish the power of anything that flows through it - anything besides more death, at least. Zangetsu's attack has a similar effect, with Peridot's sword simultaneously sticking into the ice up to its hilt, and its enough to cause Frost to let the shield go and dart away instead.

Yuusei tries to reach him, but Frost is too high in the air for that - Papyrus's blue magic manages to tug him, though, just long enough for Rita to be fully unleashed. As he darts away, she will catch him with the crack of her fiery whip, with a force far greater than he was expecting.

He smacks into the wall with an odd high-pitched laugh and then puffs into a cloud of snowflakes.

[npcarnival]

The chain of effect is a fast one. Frost strikes while she's on the precipice of understanding, the sheer, gut-wrenching loss of it is enough that something breaks inside of her. She had been hurting them before, something she was dimly aware of, but what is crystal clear is the death that's been wrought on them, and then death that is coming.

She lifts her head, fire catching in her throat - fire now, not poison. She torches the wall where Frost was last seen, rather too late. It's too late - too late for violence to matter. She screeches and howls in despair. She remembers a time, not long past, when she would have seen this in her power to repair.

Is there a reason that it isn't anymore?

It's him, of course. The Huntsman has been in control, and it's made everything else a blur. Yet, the touch of healing, of Creation, has reminded her of another part of herself - the deep desire for Life. For change.

All she ever wanted was to protect them.

A radiance builds within her skeletal chest, a flame beginning to burns across her ruined body. Her wings ignite, a strength born from the ashes that remain.

[anti_nonsense]

"Get back here, you coward!" Rita screams, her fiery form charging at the space where Frost was last seen, her free hand conjuring a ball of fire to lob at it...

But another stream of fire beats her to the punch, and she stops herself, hovering in the air with a ball of flames in one hand and a fiery whip in the other. He's gone. She failed to kill him. The realization stings more than it ought to. Surrounded by death and looming despair, she needs this anger to keep going. If she stops... if she turns her eyes away from her foe, she'll have to look back and see her friends dead and dying, and know that she might be next.

That's why she hesitates, her back still turned to the center of the room... until another source of light appears, one rapidly growing to become even more brilliant than herself. She turns to face the Ringmaster, her weaponry fizzling as she stares in awe at what might be their last hope.

[scientificist]

After injecting reagent into what remained of the Ringmaster, Herbert had decided to take a rest. He's been napping for a while, of course, but this fog is something of an energy drain. It's a little concerning that his reagent blood isn't patching up the hole left by the ice, but it probably just needs some time. It will be fine, especially now that the Carnival appears to have exploded that Winter fae.

He just needs a moment, sitting on the ground near the injection site, neon green oozing from his shoulder and eyelids drooping.

And then he's pulled back to alertness by a sudden heat at his back, and he turns to see the Ringmaster on fire--which...that's good! He knows enough about phoenixes to get that. So that means...

"It worked!" he yelps, gleefully struggling around to stare up at the growing flame. "It worked!"

[alphudo]

Frost is gone, likely still alive knowing the nature of these sorts of things. Yuusei never stood a chance at aiding in the fight, and acknowledging that bites just a little.

Nonetheless, the growing, revitalised flame of the Ringmaster snaps him to attention. It sets him on-edge for a moment, especially with her blast of flame shooting so close to him; the last time he felt this particular warmth being when it caused his sudden immolation. It's easy enough to recognise that this fire holds no hostile intentions toward them, though. Or at least, he sure hopes. Fire is difficult to read, okay.

Please, let something have worked out for them all.

[periphrasing]

The moment that Frost disappears is the moment that the fight leaves Peridot completely. Her sword clatters to the ground, and she doesn't even bother to call it back, preoccupied with staring at the snowflakes the pixie leaves behind.

She manages to turn back towards the Ringmaster and stare in quiet awe at the flames that now surround her. That has to be a good sign, right? Right. Strange how that almost feels like a footnote, at the moment; if the Ringmaster is fine, then Peridot can prioritize checking on Amethyst and Steven.

She stumbles over to them in a rush and keeps flickering erratically as she does, the different parts of her face occasionally rearranging themselves in bizarre ways like she's some kind of living Picasso. It was idiotic to leave their sides in the first place. She draws up and drops to her hands and knees next to Steven, staring down at Amethyst, choking back tears.

[starseedling]

Steven is looking pretty terrible, though in not as obvious a way a Peridot. He's been trying to heal Amethyst's gem, but it isn't working. Maybe he just doesn't have the strength.

"I can't... I can't fix it," he sobs to Peridot as she kneels down next to them. Yet, before he can say anything more, something seems to strike him - a sudden pain in his head? He cries out softly, putting a hand to his temple.

Something big is happening.

[betheman]

The last clear memory he has is of Yuuya's shield shattering. It is clarity only in terror and understanding of what follows, with the next split second robbing him of proper thought entirely.

Ice hits him. It would be difficult enough to avoid even if he were properly mobile- one doesn't simply dodge at that size, not with something akin to a magical bullet shooting in your direction. Gongenzaka's voice comes out not with a strangled choke, but more of a breathless, and even gentle gasp. As if even his lungs have immediately frozen from the strike at his middle despite their momentary function.

Seconds pass. The sounds around him fail to come into focus, and if anything move from white noise to distant and incomprehensible 'sounds', things his brain idly wants to call shouts that simply aren't.

Gongenzaka's assistance to Yuuya disappears immediately.

But it isn't until the sounds seem to...stop that he feels everything else disappear for himself.

His eyes were not closed- and even closing them feels like it takes too much effort. Barely, and slowly, he manages to move their attention toward the one next to him however. And wasn't his back turned, before? Wasn't he focused on the Ringmaster, on bringing her back?

...It felt cold already, and yet everything feels....colder.

There are flames roaring just beside him, but his vision grows black regardless- and his already slow movements finally cease.

[hippocarnival]

Yuya slips unceremoniously off the Ringmaster as she rises, his back hitting the ground with a soft thud. But he's smiling, vision blurred but he's certain that's her fighting, that's her coming back.

"Thank goodness..." His body is too heavy to move, but he manages to blink his vision a little clearer and lull his head back to Gongenzaka. Did he say something when he was hit? Yuya was so focused on what he was doing, he didn't even think...

"Gongenzaka, it's..." His expression freezes when he looks, really looks at the way he's crumpled on the ground with glassy eyes staring back at Yuya. There's blood--where did it hit him? Where was he hurt?

"... Gongenzaka?" Yuya's eyes widen, his breath coming shorter when there isn't a response. They were so close, they're so close to making it out of here.

"Gongenzaka, please..."

[lordofthering]

The fire spreads.

As it does, it stops feeling like raging heat, instead of transforming into a gentle warmth that rolls over the group less like a wildfire of renewal. Like the fog but in reverse, it encourages growth and healing, and for a time everyone is left to bask within it, the damage of Death being made undone.

Yet, the red fire doesn't stop there. It spreads to the earth and the walls, consuming the bone and leather and climbing to the ceiling. The bone peals away like a melting candle, changing shapes and revealing the interior of the fortress above.

The fire inside of the Ringmaster has allowed her body to be reborn - still in its black draconic shape but with the red light of her flames, and massive feathery wings that share the traits of her heritage more truly. Gradually, the red fire passing over the carnival will begin to fade, restoring visibility, and leaving everyone healed. The Death shards have been melted away, the darkness in them turned on its head and converted back into light and life. Such is her power, after all.

Something has started that can't be stopped. The fires of change are here.

[insidescoop]

Frantic tweeting of all things breaks into the air as the fire rolls over them all, Carly's own mess of a body quickly enveloped in the healing light. As if rewound by a clock, everything pulls back together and into the air- flapping wings accompanied by sudden shocked chirps as the seamstress regains herself. In a flash, she takes her proper form- pixels and feathers scattered for her more humanoid shape as she looks around with her brilliant shining eyes.

"I..." She remembers feeling tired- exhausted. And then everything snapping without warning, and now-

She looks behind her to the form of the Ringmaster, and finds her eyes welling with tears of another sort. "...R... RINGMASTER..!"

Hopefully she won't object to an attempted hug. The Ringmaster of course is quite a lot larger than Carly is right now, but like hell that's going to stop her. "I knew it..! I knew you'd come back to yourself..!" she laughs, the sound broken with relieved sobbing. "I just knew..!"